Claimed by Noatak

Marlis has a sixth sense for danger, a keen aim with her pistol... and a dream-crushing brain injury. Disqualified from the military, she signs up as a guard on an alien spaceship alongside a towering, bearded alien who has her thinking about polishing more than just the barrel of her gun…

Noatak, grappling with the scars of his past, faces a grim reality: his ionic powers are waning, and the ship's doctor has given him a death sentence within a standard cycle. When Marlis, a captivating and determined soldier, joins the crew, she ignites a forbidden longing in him. But succumbing to this desire would come with a fatal cost — taking a mate means certain death.

As their connection deepens, they are drawn into a vortex of passion and peril, thrown toward a precipice from which there’s no return. Will surrendering to their hearts mean the end of their journey, or the beginning of a new destiny?

Reader Promise: Strap in for a galaxy-spanning journey with no cliffhangers and a guaranteed HEA. This series is a rollercoaster of swearing, steamy encounters, and intense emotions, crafted for audiences 17 years and older. Prepare for a ride that’s as thrilling as it is heart-wrenching.

Marlis leveled her Blackstar E-11 and squeezed the trigger. The target at the end of the range flashed three times. Bulls-eye.

“Fuck them and their standards,” she muttered, pushing the target back another meter. She took aim and fired several more shots, each one flashing success. The E-11 zero-recoil pulse pistol had been a gift for her eleventh birthday, and after fourteen years and many other weapons, it was still her favorite. “I was even on time this morning.”

“Good shot, Marlis!” Marlis’s AI chimed from her wristband. The artificial intelligence was supposed to assist Marlis with anger management and lapses in memory, but its trite encouragements did nothing to assuage her today.

“Shut up, Twerp.” Marlis racked the energy coil’s cooling module and set the pistol aside. Picking up her customized Renegade MCS6 rifle, she reset the target for long-range and sighted in.

The lanes of the Syndicorp cruiser’s firing range were all occupied today, but she had eyes only for her target, imagining each bulls-eye as the face of the service recruiter assigned to her file. I’m legacy, for fuck’s sake. Descended from a long line of trooper personnel with excellent records. And it wasn’t as if she couldn’t keep up during the drills. She could out-shoot, out-run, and out-wrestle every woman as well as most men in the squad. So what if she needed a little help to remember what day it was?

“Marlis!” a man’s voice barked behind her.

Gut tightening, she whipped the rifle around.

Her father’s narrow gaze flicked to the barrel, his mouth in a grim line as she lowered the weapon.

She refused to feel any regret about being battle-ready. Mom had died while she and Marlis had been on Pulati for a mother-daughter vacation. Ten-year-old Marlis had only survived the sudden terrorist outbreak by hiding beneath her mother’s dead body for sixteen hours.

Marlis had no intention of letting her guard down. Ever.

Dad crossed his arms over his chest, covering the service ribbons on the lapel of his uniform. “You missed your date last night.”

“That’s tonight.” Even as she said it, she realized she was probably wrong.

Twerp’s feminine voice rose from her wrist strap. “I informed you of the engagement at seventeen hundred yesterday and again at seventeen twenty. You said you were in no mood to give someone a blow job and directed me not to remind you again.”

Marlis’s face heated to match the rising flush in her father’s usually pallid cheeks. When would she ever remember to put in her earbud? Teeth clenched, she grated out, “Shut up, Twerp.”

Dad squared his shoulders, looking Marlis straight in the eye. “He’s a respectable young man, Marlis. From a good family. You couldn’t ask for a better match.”

“I don’t want a better match. I want to join the troopers.” She turned around and took aim at the target once more. “Get me a date with someone useful and I’ll go.”

“I can’t rebuild the bridges you burn fast enough.”

Refusing to be distracted, she let out a slow breath and squeezed the trigger in rapid succession. The target lit up on all but the final shot. She lowered the rifle. “I’d be a good soldier, Dad.”

A gentle hand settled on her shoulder. “You blew up at your recruiter.”

Marlis fuzzily remembered her rage at the small-eyed, beak-nosed recruiter who oversaw the drills the troopers used to weed out unworthy candidates. He was supposed to test the recruits’ physical aptitudes. Instead, he’d thrown history questions at them. She seemed to recall a lot of swear words coming out of her mouth instead of answers. “What good is a history lesson going to do for me on the battle field?”

“He thinks you’re a liability. They want to rescind your weapon carry permit.” Dad’s voice lowered with unaccustomed softness. “I’m sorry.”

His words felt like a punch in the gut. Give up her pistol? No way. No longer able to focus on the target, Marlis shoved the E-11 into the holster built into the back hip of her pants and shouldered her rifle, turning to leave.

“Marlis.”

She continued walking.

“Marlis. Your rifle case.”

Face on fire, she halted; she might still have a permit to carry, but exiting the range actually welding a weapon, even on a military ship, was a big no-no. Stupid memory. Other AI models came equipped with a visual node to track items, but Marlis’s therapist claimed that requiring her to remember some things on her own would help her improve.

Squaring her shoulders, she spun on her heel and retrieved the case, visually verifying there was nothing else she was leaving behind. Her father’s watchful gaze made Marlis doubt herself. What else was she forgetting? Dammit!