&&&&&&

All of a sudden, everyone got into fighting stance. All three X6's and two X5's faced Max and Alec, surrounding them. Then the surrounding circle began to converge.

Alec's mission: to defend Max and, what ever happens, not let her take a single hit.

Max's mission: to glance over at Alec's amazing body with out him, or anyone else, noticing.

Max's mission was infinitely easier and more enjoyable. Well, maybe 'easier' wasn't the word for it. It was extremely difficult not to drool. But more enjoyable was a definite yes.

Alec began with a roundhouse kick to the first X5 in front of him. She was knocked right off her feet, but gracefully landed with a flip. And so it began. There was a flurry of limbs moving around Max, which was a completely disconcerting sight. But when one of said limbs was rushing towards her, she ducked to avoid it and began to fight her own battle.

After knocking two X6's together and handily rendering them unconscious, Alec looked around for the damsel he was supposedly defending. After knocking out a X5 with one might punch to the head, he spotted a blur of brown locks taking out her anger on a determined X5. Max...

Alec sighed before jumping into the contest.

"Max, don't get your ego all deflated, but I'm not supposed to let you take a single hit. Hate the game, not the player." Alec said quickly as he danced away from the defender, distracting him away from the precious brunette. But the brunette didn't lash out. She didn't get angry. She didn't say anything. She was a bit busy drooling of the picture of perfectly sculpted golden skin flexing and stretching in front of her. The whole scene seemed to go in slow motion. Now THAT was something she could get used to seeing.

Alec smirked as she did what she was told; she stood in place and didn't get in any fights. She didn't even seem mad at him – a first! Well, second, if you included yesterday's encounter. Damn that woman was cheap! Well, she thought he was cheap, at least. But now she was looking at him like he was at least worth a five – maybe a twenty. Whoa, jaw dropping- that's gotta be a minimum of a Benjamin or two! Being cocky was certainly one of Alec's more obvious character traits.

After all five opponents were defeated, Alec was mighty happy with himself, and glad he got to pass on the fun to another guy in line. There was almost no way any of them could measure up. He had taken two minutes to take them all down, and he was going easy on them. Max hadn't taken any hits and neither had he.

"Alright. Next up is Kaff. Good luck!" Alec called to the crowd, offering a wink of sympathy to the guy to follow him up.

&&&&&&

The judges of the competition were having a hard time choosing which males to keep in. Surprisingly, none could beat Alec! Okay, so no one was particularly surprised, but he had sure made it easy to make a comparison. So far, the group of contenders had more than decimated from its original amount and it still wasn't small enough. They still had 500 males left. That was just 499 too many. Oh, the following days would be barrels of fun!

&&&&&&

"Hey guys. You said you had something for me?" Max asked, entering HQ without its herds of X5 males for once.

"Max! We translated a few more of you runes!" Dix said excitedly, not bothering to hide the mile-wide grin displayed on his face. Max rushed over to the computers and looked at him expectantly, returning his grin.

"Okay, you see this one?"

"Yeah...."

"Well, it means 'protector.' You see this one?"

"Dix, yes, I see them all, but what do they mean combined?"

"Well, it says something about your protector will be the one you love, OR it says that the protector will love you, OR it could mean that the protector loves chocolate cake."

"Chocolate cake?" Max's eyebrows lifted as she looked at the computer whiz.

"Well, you see, there's this blob next to the runes that I thought looked like cake...."

"Birthmark, Dix." Max sighed.

&&&&&&

A/N: Hey again! Well, I updated faster this time. Not fast, faster. But I am improving. I just have a lot on my mind. BUT if you want to see the cover of this fic made by the lovely, inspiring, talented EMI, use the url below, but take out the (dot) and put in a regular dot. FF.net is stupid about links.

img52 (dot) photobucket (dot) com/albums/v160/ELLENJW/DARK%20ANGEL/DA%20BOOKCOVERS/23 (dot) jpg