Havik Read online

  Havik: Warlord Brides

  Warriors of Sangrin #9

  Starr Huntress

  Nancey Cummings

  Menura Press

  Contents

  Introduction

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part II

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by Nancey Cummings

  Introduction

  Betrayed and sold at auction, Thalia is a long way from home. When she’s given the opportunity to bring those who abducted her to justice, she’s all in. One problem: her alien partner hates humans, and he really hates her.

  Too bad for him. He looks like a monstrous cross between a devil and an orc. He’s big, dangerous, and hits all her buttons.

  No problem. She can keep it professional. Right?

  A disgraced warrior.

  Havik’s arrogance lost him a mate. Determined to regain his honor and complete this mission, he will not allow the human female to distract him.

  He can’t trust a liar and a thief.

  And he definitely shouldn’t be kissing one.

  Havik can be enjoyed on its own but is best read after Jaxar. It has a grumpy hero, a resourceful heroine, a giant scorpion that likes to cuddle and a Happily Ever After.

  The Story So Far

  When the aliens arrived on Earth, it happened with an invasion—just like the sci-fi movies taught us to expect.

  The vicious Suhlik meant to enslave Earth and rob her of her resources. Only the Mahdfel warriors stood against them.

  Once the slaves of the Suhlik, the Mahdfel won their freedom. But as a lingering reminder of their oppression at the hands of the Suhlik, they cannot have female children.

  Now, in exchange for protecting Earth, the hunky alien warriors demand only one price: every childless, single, and otherwise healthy woman on Earth is tested for genetic compatibility for marriage with a Mahdfel warrior. If the match is 98.5 percent or higher, the bride is instantly teleported away to her new mate.

  No exceptions.

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Thalia

  Three Years Ago

  * * *

  Lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

  Never wound a snake, kill it.

  Believe people when they show you who they are.

  Thalia’s mother had a hundred old sayings for any situation, mostly for when the dumb things that Thalia did came back to bite her in the ass. Not that her mom did anything to stop said dumb things, but she sure did love cackling with glee about being right.

  Yeah, Mom had been a real charmer. All that woman had ever done after dropping Thalia into the world was give less than a rat’s ass about her child’s wellbeing. There had been booze to drink, and men to fuck for rent money. Finding enough food to stay alive and enough clothing to not be naked had been Thalia’s responsibilities when she understood that none of the adults in her life would do anything.

  Footsteps approached down the hall. Thalia held her breath. How much did it suck that she wanted her useless, drunk mom right now? Life hadn’t been great, but she felt that when it mattered, she could trust her mother. She raised Thalia with all the social niceties of a free-range gremlin, but she never actually tried to sell Thalia. That might have changed when Thalia got older, but aliens invaded and blew up the city and millions of people died in the attacks or from disease, and her mom had been one of them.

  Thalia scraped by in the ruins of what had been a major East Coast city. People still lived there, but municipal services and the population had been scaled way back. Ports, roads, and railways still existed, which kept the battered city clinging to relevance. Half of the buildings weren’t fit for human habitation, but that didn’t stop anyone. Free rent was free rent. Water and power were nice to have, but not everyone could afford those luxuries.

  The footsteps stopped outside her door. Thalia looked around the room for anything that could be used as a weapon, not that Nicky let her have anything that could be considered a weapon. No convenient vases or heavy bookends in her room, as if they would do her any good against a gun.

  She grabbed her medical bag, dumped it out on the bed, and grabbed the pair of surgical scissors. Still not much use against a gun but it was sharp and very stabby. And if the goon lurking outside her bedroom door wasn’t there to put a bullet in her brain, they probably needed to be stitched up, so the upended medical kit gave the impression of preparing supplies and not plotting to stab a bitch in the eye.

  If you play with fire, you’re going to get burned.

  In the chaos of the Invasion, it had been easy for kids to disappear and fall through the cracks. No one came looking for Thalia, so she had to fend for herself, which wasn’t too different from her life before the Invasion, only now she did it with a group of likewise homeless kids. They begged and stole and damn near starved to death until Nicky took them in. He taught them the art of pickpocketing and general thieving. Being underfed and looking young for her age totally worked out in her favor. Scrawny, malnourished kids were bendy and slim enough to wiggle their way into most places.

  The whole situation was downright Dickensian—yes, she knew stuff. Just because she never went to school regularly didn’t mean she failed to pay attention on the days she went—but you have to do what you have to do to survive. Nicky took care of his kids—food, a clean place to sleep, and, fuck, even a tutor now and then— if you pulled your weight and did the work.

  Still, some had it worse.

  Her mother never uttered those words, but had she survived the aliens, she would have embraced that bit of philosophical stoicism with zest. Orphaned and living on the streets? Some lost their legs, not just their parents. Some people needed more than a prosthetic leg; they had burns on the inside of their lungs. Breathing with an oxygen tank? Some weren’t breathing at all.

  It was a crappy game of comparing hurts, but it was true. Life had been hard for Thalia, but she was able-bodied and clever enough to be useful, which let her survive. She kept her head down and did as Nicky said.

  Some didn’t have food or a warm place to sleep. Some people didn’t have the little collection of books she scavenged from abandoned houses. Some people weren’t able to go to school at all, and she should be grateful for the days she could attend. Some people didn’t have a guardian—if you could call Nicky a guardian—even if he ranted about the government spying on them and poisoning the water.

  Some people had no one.

  Then one day, her skinny little kid body vanished, and she looked more adult, even though she so was not an adult, and Nicky thought of other ways she could be useful for the organization.

  Thalia attached herself to Old Doc Mitchell, acting as the pair of steady hands and sharp eyes he needed, seeing as how he ruined his own with booze and out-of-control diabetes. Doc lost his medical license long ago, but he was a real doctor. No one cared about qualifications and credentials when he patched them up.

  Trauma affected people differently. Basic, right? Some people were resilient, and they bounced back, stronger than ever.
Other people had to learn to cope with stress, anxiety, and all those lovely acronyms that fancy doctors flung at you pre-Invasion. Probably still did, but it was a fact that everyone on the damn planet had some sort of trauma. That’s what happened when aliens invaded and blew shit up and millions of people died.

  She was traumatized. Nicky was traumatized. Poor Doc was hella traumatized.

  Some people coped by staying busy. Others meditated or some shit. Some developed a fanatic devotion to the aliens who allied with Earth, the Mahdfel. And plenty of people medicated themselves with the chemical of their choice. Thalia read old books and watched too many movies. Doc reached for alcohol.

  Reeking of beer and sweat, busted capillaries turned his nose red, and his hands shook until he got his morning top-off. He never talked about what happened during the Invasion or who he lost, but that was fine. Thalia didn’t talk about her mom, either. He was a drunk and more likely to be passed out than awake to practice his version of frontier medicine, but he taught her everything he knew, or at least the bits of knowledge that clung to his surviving brain matter despite the years of pickling. He took care of her, in his own way.

  When she turned eighteen, Doc told her to run away and volunteer to be an alien bride. She was surprised as hell, needless to say. In moments between maudlin and passing-out drunk, he spoke about the aliens, and not too kindly. Not the invaders, the other ones, the Mahdfel. He never said they ate babies or whatnot, but he hardly sounded like a fan.

  Thalia didn’t run away—obviously—despite Doc looking disappointed when she turned up morning after morning, still firmly under Nicky’s thumb. He had been the closest thing Thalia had to a father figure and friend. She couldn’t run away from that.

  Which was so fucking sad it wasn’t even worth mentioning.

  So that’s how she got by. She learned to dig out bullets, stitch up knife wounds, and watch for infection. She knew her antibiotics from the pain pills and even which pills helped with common chronic ailments like high blood pressure. What she didn’t know she looked up in Doc’s old medical books, but that didn’t come up often. The people who ran with Nicky were more likely to waltz in with a stab wound than develop diabetes or hypertension.

  A fist pounded on the door. “Tallie, get dressed. The boss wants you.”

  Okay, then.

  “It’s the middle of the night!” she shouted through the door, adding a dramatic yawn.

  “No rest for the wicked,” the man said. Everyone had to have a maxim. Fuckers.

  “Speak for yourself,” she grumbled. Already dressed, she cleaned the lenses of her eyeglasses and took her time getting her kit together. Nicky’s goons didn’t need to know that she heard them coming and had been prepared to fight. It was safer to let them think she had been fast asleep.

  Nicky’s paranoia had been growing in recent months, not that she could blame him. His line of work wasn’t the safest of professions, so it was smart to be wary. Maybe if Doc had died from liver failure the way he anticipated instead of being gunned down in a hit, Nicky might have had a bit more chill nowadays.

  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Another one of her mother’s sayings.

  Turf wars sucked, and not just from the constant vigilance required to keep from being stabbed in the back. The stress wore a person down. It wore Thalia down. Between being dragged out of bed at all hours to stitch together Nicky’s minions and listening to Nicky rant about aliens tracking people through implants, she needed a break. Or at least a few hours of decent sleep.

  Thalia ran a brush through her hair for decency’s sake and pulled it back in a ponytail. Whatever Nicky needed, she figured it’d be gross and require her to keep her hair out of her face. She tugged on the ends, disappointed to see the green color already faded. Her normally dishwater blonde held color fairly well, but she tried a new brand the last time she colored her hair.

  The pounding on the door resumed. “Get your ass out of bed, Tallie. They’re almost here. Nathan needs you.”

  Ugh. That guy.

  She swept the scattered supplies back into the bag and flung open the door. “I’m here. You can stop shouting.”

  “Downstairs. Now,” the man said, his face pulled into a scowl. If she didn’t know him to be a heartless bastard, she’d say he looked worried.

  In the kitchen, Thalia wiped down the counter to lay out her supplies and scrubbed her hands. The backdoor banged open as two men carried in a third. Nathan clutched his gut, blood staining his shirt.

  Not good. He had no color and barely looked conscious.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “He got shot,” the man with the buzz cut said, ever so helpfully.

  “He needs to go to the hospital,” Thalia said. Gut wounds were more than just tricky, they were a fucking disaster. Too much could go wrong and too many vital organs to hit. Doc had been an actual doctor, albeit unlicensed. Thalia was, at best, an orderly and sometimes paramedic. “Seriously, a hospital.”

  The men ignored her and hauled Nathan onto the table. He moaned in pain, the poor bastard.

  “Hey! You, buzz cut, don’t put him on the table. I have to clean that,” she said as the men hoisted Nathan onto the kitchen table. Shit. Fine. Whatever. Nathan would be lucky if he survived long enough to worry about infection. “Remove his shirt.”

  “I’m not your servant, and my name is Blade,” he said.

  “Of course, it is,” she muttered, snapping on latex gloves. “How exceedingly original.”

  “You think you’re hot shit, but you ain’t nothing Nicky can’t replace,” Blade said, stepping toward her.

  “We’re all replaceable. You gonna hold Nathan down or am I going to tell Nicky that his best friend died because his minion had to front?” Thalia asked, suddenly tired. She took her scissors to the ruin of Nathan’s blood-soaked T-shirt. Gut wounds were the trickiest. Gunshot wound, dead center of the abdomen. Sloppy. Hits were normally a single shot to the head. Boom. No chance of survival. If Nathan had been the target, someone wanted him to suffer. “Roll him to one side. I need to check the exit wound.”

  Nathan’s bulk moved enough to expose his smooth, unblemished back; sans exit wound.

  Fuck.

  The bullet was still in Nathan, which meant dying horribly on the kitchen table, and Nicky would blame her.

  Thalia pressed the wadded-up ruins of the shirt against the wound, helpless to do anything else. Short of surgery, she could only alleviate the pain. She could pour whiskey down his throat and try to get him to swallow enough pain pills to make his last moments bearable.

  “Get me some towels,” she ordered. “And a bottle of whiskey.”

  “Drinking on the job? Must have learned that trick from Doc,” Blade said. He jerked his head to the door, and the other man went to fetch the towels.

  “It ain’t for me,” she said. Not that she had to explain herself to anyone but Nicky.

  The back door banged open, bringing in a draft of cold air.

  Speak of the devil.

  “He needs a hospital,” Thalia said, moving Nathan to rest on his back again.

  “Not an option,” Nicky said, elbowing past her. He leaned over his wounded friend, his black wool coat falling open and the ends of his scarf brushing against the bleeding wound.

  Thalia bit her lip to hold in her snarky comments about no one caring to keep the wound clean. “The bullet is still in there.”

  “Then get it out.”

  “With what? My fingers?” Thalia held up one bloody gloved hand. “He needs to go to the hospital.”

  Towels arrived and she pressed one to the wound, leaning forward with all her weight.

  Nicky frowned, his demeanor shifting from concerned to cold. “Mitchell would patch him up, no questions asked.”

  Thalia shivered, afraid to anger Nicky. Somehow, she found her voice. “Doc went to medical school, but he wouldn’t be able to do much with the bullet somewhere in that mess
. I’m not qualified here at all.”

  “Didn’t I send you to him to learn? Are you telling me that I should have sent your stuck-up ass to walk the streets?”

  Thalia shook her head. Blade snickered, no doubt loving Nicky putting her in her place. He just needed a bucket of popcorn to go with the look of utter glee on his big, dumb face. “He’s lost a lot of blood too. He needs a transfusion.”

  “Do it. I’ll have one of the boys donate.”

  “I need equipment, an IV, a PICC, and I don’t even know Nathan’s blood type. The wrong one will kill him. Please, Nicky, he has to go to the hospital.”

  “If I get you the equipment?” He had out his phone, already typing orders. Brand new medical equipment would arrive in minutes if she asked for it.

  “I don’t know how to use it. Doc never did anything like that. I’d have to read up and Nathan doesn’t have that kind of time.”

  Nicky fixed her with his cold blue gaze. His eyes were empty. Soulless. She swallowed but did not flinch or look away. Tougher guys than her had caved to that heartless stare. “Tallie, Tallie, Tallie,” he said, drawing out her name. She hated that nickname. “Doc’s only been in the ground for three weeks and you’ve done nothing but tell me no.”

  Her eyes fell to the floor, all submission, and she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  “You tell me ‘I don’t know how to do this’ and ‘I don’t have the tools,’” he said, pitching his voice in a mockingly high tone. Blade and the other meathead snickered. “Did you learn anything from Mitchell, or did he just keep you around to suck his cock?”