Alien Protector’s Mate (Latharian Mate Program #4)

Chapter 2

2

S ’aad walked down the corridors of the Latharian Mate Program offices, his footsteps silent against the plush carpet as he made his way back to his lab. It was a dichotomy to the rest of the station with its exposed deck plating and utilitarian build. The whole of the human mates section was similarly luxurious, designed to put the human females at ease and reassure them that they hadn’t made a mistake in signing up and essentially giving themselves to an alien race they knew next to nothing about.

He walked into his lab, the soft hum of the scanning and matching equipment greeting him. With a deep breath, he settled into the chair in front of the main console and flipped his hair back over his shoulders. The honor beads woven into the ends of the braids clicked softly, the sound making his lips quirk up at the corners as he recalled the conversation at lunch.

The older females saw him as young and therefore less of a threat than any of the warriors who came in to meet their mates. He suspected his scars played into that. He’d caught a look of sympathy on their faces more than once, hastily blanked as soon as they saw that he’d noticed, of course.

They viewed him as gentle. Safe. Not dangerous.

He was anything but, as every single one of the warriors who came in here knew. He might act soft-voiced and gentle with the females, bouncy in manner and a little scatter-brained like the younger males he’d seen on their media, but he’d cemented his reputation as a warrior before most of their grandparents had been born.

His braids were packed tightly and held more than one bead each. His scars weren’t all from his healer trials. Most warriors got them removed, but he’d never seen the point when he already had so many beneath his leathers.

He caught sight of himself in the blank screen of the console and lifted a hand to rub at his jaw. His face and neck were clear, untouched by scars. It was the luck of the draw, and a lot of other healers hadn’t been so fortunate, which wasn’t a problem unless dealing with humans, who didn’t know at a glance what those scars meant.

If anything, the marks scared them.

So he hid his as much as he could and was soft and gentle. Then he took all his aggression out in the training hall.

His gaze fixed on the blank console, and he grunted as he sat up from his comfortable sprawl in the chair. The console activated when he waved his hand in front of it. His fingers danced across the holographic interface, inputting his credentials to access the mate program database.

The blue glow of the screen cast shadows across his angular features, and a muscle in the corner of his jaw pulsed as he opened his own matching file and prepared himself for disappointment. Again.

No matches found .

The words scrolled across the screen, burning themselves into his brain. Disappointment rolled through him, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth, and he closed his eyes to allow himself a moment of weakness.

“One day,” he murmured softly to himself. “One day that screen will say there’s a match.”

Taking a deep breath, he pushed his disappointment down and pulled up the next file on his list. The emperor’s file. It took the system a moment to load it, and S’aad’s breath caught as hope blossomed in the center of his chest.

No matches found .

“ Draanth ,” he muttered as he leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair as he contemplated the implications. Him not having a match was one thing, the emperor, though… that was totally different. The emperor needed an heir. His sister’s son, Lord Tarrick, might be the next in line, but without a direct descendant to secure Daaynal’s lineage, there would be power struggles if the worst happened.

A soft chime from the computer pulled him from his thoughts. An alert flashed on the screen, and his expression cleared. Nothing important, just a routine maintenance check scheduled for the system. With a sigh, he initiated the process. It was necessary but boring as draanth as he waited for it to run through the routine.

A dull blade was useless in battle, he reminded himself, the saying drilled into him since childhood. And if the matching system was dull, they risked failing to find matches for the females in the program.

So he slumped back in his chair, an inelegant sprawl as he leaned his head back against the headrest. Idly, he watched the scrolling data. He couldn’t do anything until the process was complete, and it wouldn’t take long enough that he could head out for a second training session. At first, everything seemed normal, the familiar patterns of genetic markers and personality compatibility scores flowing across the screen. Then he frowned as something caught his eye.

Twisting in his chair, he reached out to pause the data and scrolled it back. Sure enough, he saw a discrepancy—a genetic marker that had been matched with a personality profile that didn’t fit.

“No… that can’t be right,” he muttered, sitting up to take a closer look. His fingers flew over the input interface as he dug into the data. He must be misreading the code; he’d been working hard over the last week or so, and the late nights and early mornings were taking their toll. The tiredness must be clouding his judgment… He adjusted the holographic interface, a frown creasing his brow as he checked through the data again. But the mismatches were still there—not one but three. They were only tiny, just a few points out each side, but still. That kind of error shouldn’t be possible.

So how had they happened? Was there a glitch in the matching program code?

His heart rate kicked up a beat as he dug deeper. If this was a glitch, they could have a huge problem. Females could have been matched to warriors who weren’t suitable. But then he found more and more. He sat back, staring at the screen. This was too consistent. Almost as if it was deliberate…

He rubbed at his face with both hands, looking past his fingers at the screen. This shouldn’t be happening. The recent updates to the matching algorithm were designed to prevent just these kinds of mismatches—meant precisely to ensure that every match was as accurate and reliable as possible.

This had to be someone tampering.

A growl in the back of his throat, he tried to track down the source of the mismatches, chasing leads in the code that only ended up slipping from his grasp like smoke. Each time he thought he had it, the trail vanished into thin air, as if deliberately erased. His lip curled back in a snarl. Who had the knowledge and access necessary to alter the system and then erase all evidence of their presence?

They’d been hacked. And he didn’t know how or by who.

He reached out, his fingers hovering over the communication panel. He should alert his superiors, but something held him back—a nagging doubt at the back of his mind, an instinct he’d learned to trust in over a century of service. What if the hack was someone on the station? Someone higher up?

No, he needed more evidence.

Decision made, he pulled back from the comm system. He would dig deeper and gather more evidence before bringing this to light. But… he stared at the screen again, he couldn’t do it alone. He needed someone with a different perspective, someone who could see patterns he might miss and who’d had nothing to do with the development of the system.

Someone outside the loop.

With a few quick commands, S’aad opened a secure channel and waited until a warrior appeared on the screen.

“S’aad,” Maax, the station’s assistant chief engineer, looked surprised as he pushed his long, dark hair behind his ears. He was obviously mid-shift, a streak of grease decorating one side of his jaw. “What can I do for you?”

S’aad leaned in, keeping his voice low. “I have a small issue, and I need your expertise.”

“Go on,” Maax said, focusing on him with interest in his eyes. “I assume this has something to do with the security level on the comm?”

S’aad nodded. “I was running a routine maintenance check on our systems and found some… irregularities. I’ve looked into them, and I can’t work them out. I don’t want to bother anyone higher up until I know it’s not just a line of code somewhere misfiring.” He paused for a second and then shrugged. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Given that your grandmother was B’Kaar, I thought you might see something I’m missing.”

Maax’s eyebrow winged up. “You do realize that B’Kaar trall doesn’t work that way? She might have been B’Kaar but no one in my line has qualified for ke’lath since.”

He inclined his head. “Yeah, I know. But I figured that even so, you’re also an engineer. You might see something I’m missing here.”

The big engineer nodded. “If that’s the case, of course. Send me what you’ve found, and I’ll take a look right away. I’m assuming you want this to stay between us for now?”

“Please.” S’aad nodded as he prepared everything he had. “I want to understand what we’re dealing with before we raise any alarms. Sending you a datapacket now.”

“Agreed,” Maax said. A soft chime as his console signaled he’d received the information S’aad had just bundled for him. “I’ll contact you as soon as I’ve analyzed the data.”

She hated bleach and every other cleaning product on the planet with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.

The pungent smell stung Jade’s nostrils, making her hands smart as she scrubbed the grimy bathroom tiles. Her knees ached, and sweat trickled down her back, dampening her threadbare T-shirt as she cleaned. The harsh chemical scent mingled with an underlying funk she’d never been able to scrub from the tiny, windowless room, creating a suffocating stench that caught at her breath and made her head spin.

She stopped for a second and sat back on her heels, pushing a damp strand from her face as she looked around the bathroom, checking for anything that would get her into trouble with her foster mother. Movement caught her eye, and she looked at her reflection in the cracked mirror by the door. A round-faced girl with tired brown eyes wearing baggy, ill-fitting clothes to cover curves no amount of “dieting” ever got rid of. Although the diets Mrs. Morgan put her on were a joke. They were just excuses to cut down what they spent on feeding her even more.

The sound of heels clicking on the worn linoleum floor made her heart rate spike. She scrambled to resume scrubbing, her movements frantic as her foster mother appeared in the doorway.

“Are you still not finished?” Mrs. Morgan’s shrill demand made Jade wince and fight the urge to hunch her shoulders. “I swear, you get slower and lazier every day. It’s no wonder you’re so fat… you’re an ungrateful bitch, and you probably sneak food when we’re not looking.”

Jade kept her eyes down, focusing on a particularly stubborn stain. She knew not to reply unless prompted.

“Well? I’m talking to you, girl. Are you deaf as well as stupid?” Mrs. Morgan snapped.

“No, ma’am,” Jade replied in a soft voice, giving the tiles a last swipe. “I’m almost done. I just wanted to make sure it was perfect.”

Mrs. Morgan scoffed, her arms folded over her narrow chest. “Perfect? As if you could ever do anything perfectly. I’m surprised you didn’t manage to fuck it up. Hurry up and finish. I want the kitchen done before you start dinner.”

She pushed off from the door and stalked off down the corridor like a vulture looking for its next victim. As her footsteps faded, Jade closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath. The backs of her eyes burned with the tears that wanted to fall, but she knew better than to let them. Really, what would be the point? No one here would care.

A memory surfaced unbidden… of her crying in this same bathroom after one of Mrs. Morgan’s beatings for something trivial, like putting the salt shaker on the left of the pepper instead of the right, and Jared, her twin, comforting her.

“Don’t listen to her, Jade,” he’d said, his small arms wrapped tightly around her. They were twins, but he’d always been much smaller than her and always ill. “You’re the best sister ever. We’ll always have each other.”

The ache of loss hit her like a punch to the gut. Jared had been gone for so long now that she could barely remember the sound of his voice, but the pain of losing him had never faded. Gathering up her cleaning stuff, she shoved the memory down, hard. Thinking about the past wouldn’t change anything. She had to keep moving, keep working, keep surviving.

Somehow.

Cleaning bucket in hand, she moved on to the kitchen, cleaning it quickly before pulling out the ingredients for her foster parents’ evening meal. The clink of dishes and the sizzle of frying meat filled the air as she prepared dinner, her movements automatic after years of performing the same routine.

Her stomach rumbled, but she ignored it. This food wasn’t for her. Even if the meat was the lowest quality artificial meat and the vegetables were genetic clones and had been force grown in the nearest factory, at least they were food. Not like the tasteless nutri-blocks that Mr. and Mrs. Morgan bought for her. They didn’t even buy her an adult’s weekly ration… no, she had to make a child’s weekly ration last. Ducking down, she looked in the cupboard to see how much she had left and sighed. Two blocks for four days. She’d be going to bed hungry again tonight.

The sound of the front door slamming made her jump, and she almost dropped the plates. Heavy footsteps stumbled down the hall accompanied by muttered curses. Mr. Morgan was home, already, and she wasn’t done yet.

Her heart raced as she set the table quickly. She could hear Mrs. Morgan’s shrill voice from in the living room. “You’re late again! And drunk, as usual. Do you even care about this family at all?”

Mr. Morgan’s slurred response was too low for Jade to make out, but the anger in his tone was clear. She busied herself at the stove, plating up dinner and hoping they didn’t bring their argument into the kitchen.

Those hopes were dashed when they burst through the doorway, still bickering. Jade kept her back turned, plating as quickly as she could before they noticed her.

“I told you I was working late,” her foster father growled. “ Someone has to pay the bills around here.”

Mrs. Morgan laughed, the sound bitter. “Yeah, right…working late at the bottom of a bottle, you mean. We’re barely scraping by, and you waste what little money we have on booze!”

“I gotta have something. You think I like living like this?” Mr. Morgan snapped. “At least I’m trying to do something about it!”

They stopped speaking, the silence so thick you could cut it with a knife. The skin between Jade’s shoulders crawled, and she knew they were looking at her. She hunched her back, wishing she could disappear into the peeling wallpaper.

“And I have,” Mr. Morgan said, his tone suddenly calm. “Get your coat, girl. We’re going out.”

Jade turned, trying not to show her surprise. “Now? But… dinner’s almost ready…”

“Did I ask about dinner?” Mr. Morgan snarled, his face turning red like it always did when he was mad. “I said get your coat. Now.”

Jade glanced at Mrs. Morgan, but the older woman’s face was a mask of indifference. “You heard him,” she said, her voice cold. “Go on, make yourself useful for once.”

She tried to keep her face as neutral as possible as she skirted around the kitchen and retrieved her worn jacket from the hook on the back of the door. Where were they going? Her foster father had never taken her out before, not even when she was a kid.

As she followed Mr. Morgan to the door, Mrs. Morgan’s voice called after them. “Maybe now we’ll see a return on our investment.”

A chill rolled down Jade’s spine. A return? What did that mean? But she knew better than to ask, especially with the tight set of Mr. Morgan’s shoulders. She kept quiet as they left the grotty apartment building and stepped out into the cool evening air. Jade cast one last glance at the rundown apartment and hurried down the street after Mr. Morgan.

He didn’t say one word to her, instead walking straight to the metro station three streets away and purchasing two tickets. She moved so she could see what destination he was getting for their tickets, hoping to get a clue as to where they were going, but frowned when he brought two of the cheapest zone tickets. So, they weren’t going far then, just within the same zone as they lived in. Which was huge… so if it was at the other side, she definitely didn’t want to walk that far.

They made it down to the platform, Mr. Morgan snarling at her to keep up, just as the train rumbled to a stop. Its engine grumbled tiredly as they boarded. She chose a seat near the window, wanting to keep her distance. They pulled away from the platform, and her nerves formed into a hard knot it the pit of her stomach.

She slid a glance sideways, but the tense set of Mr. Morgan’s jaw and the smell of alcohol on his breath reminded her to stay silent. She clenched her hands in her lap, her nails digging into her palms as she tried to calm her racing thoughts.

Wherever they were going, she knew one thing for certain. No change in her life had ever been for the better.