Free The Princess and her Bounty Hunter: Alien Romance (Fated to the Alien: The Psychic Matchmaker Book 2) by Harmony Raines

go.”
    Stellia’s calm voice led him through the city. He already couldn’t wait to get off the planet. But this was his job, finding things, no matter where they were hidden, and so he would stomach the images of men with collars being paraded by women who wore clothes and jewelry that were the height of tacky grandeur.
    The women might as well have been taking a pet for a walk, and the tone of the gossip between them told him these men were expected to do more than chores around the house.
    Pushing on, he turned right, onto a deserted strip of land, with a fence around it that had once been built as a perimeter to a large complex of warehouses. The fence no longer did its job, with several of the tall, upright posts broken, taking the chain-linked wire with it. He could see why it had never been repaired; there was nothing in the complex to protect.
    In various stages of decay, most of the buildings visible had not been used for years. As Stellia had said, just right for hiding something of value. This was the least likely place to look. Not that anyone would be looking, not if the slavers covered their tracks, or dropped bribes in the right pockets.
    “I’m about to enter the complex. Any indication which warehouse I should be looking in?” Mak asked Stellia.
    “Nothing. I am not in position to use infrared. You may be able to pick it up as you get closer.”
    He slipped through a gap in the fence and jogged across the open ground to the wall of the nearest warehouse. There he took a good look around, assessing the other buildings. None of them looked watertight, but they did look like the kind of place the Maraki would operate from. Like their ships, they went for cheap, not necessarily secure.
    His suspicions were confirmed when he saw the deep grooves in the ground, a sign of heavy use. The tracks could be from when the whole complex was in use years ago, however, the grooves led almost exclusively to one section of the complex. Which indicated they were still in use.
    Taking the risk of being seen, he walked across to one of the grooves, bending down to examine them. Yes, fresh tire markings, from a vehicle that was heavily laden. That ruled out anyone coming in here for a joyride around the buildings. It was more likely cargo had been brought here before being loaded on ships.
    Keeping low, he moved back to the edge of the warehouses and followed the trail, only breaking cover when he had to move between buildings. Deeper into the complex he moved, until he was rewarded by the sound of voices, arguing.
    This was his chance. He wanted to slip in unnoticed; it would sure beat walking up to the door unannounced.
    Only he hadn’t been unnoticed. As he moved forward, the sound of a laser charging met his ears, and he wheeled around just in time to see a gun aimed at his head.
    His reactions, honed from years out in the field, were automatic: his hand reached for his side arm. As he ducked and rolled across the ground he aimed and pulled the trigger, hitting his target. His attacker fell back, the burn mark on his shirt a sign of just how good a shot Mak was.
    “Bull’s-eye,” he breathed. Pain erupted all over his body, his central nervous system screaming to shut down. As his eyes closed, he was hit even harder, by the fact that he wasn’t as invincible as he believed.

Chapter Twelve – Tiana
    “Mak.”
    “Mak.”
    Tiana listened to Stellia as she repeated her call over and over. “Stellia. If he could answer, he would,” she said gently.
    “Mak.” If it were possible, the computer-generated voice sounded worried, lost even. Tiana guessed this was the first time Mak had been incommunicado during a mission. But simply repeating his name was not going to bring him back.
    “Stellia, listen to me. You have the last known coordinates of Mak’s transmitter. Right?”
    “Yes,” Stellia answered.
    “So I’ll go in and rescue him.”
    “You can’t.”
    “Why, because I’m a princess, or because I’m a