CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR: ENSNARE: (A Sci-fi Alien Romance, Book 3)

by Christina Wilder

  CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR:

  - ENSNARE -

  (A Sci-Fi Alien Romance, Book 3)

  Khal & Lyrie

  Christina Wilder

  &

  Laney Kaye

  CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR: ENSNARE

  Copyright © 2018 Christina Wilder & Laney Kaye

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or

  reproduced in any manner whatsoever without

  written permission except in the case of brief quotations

  embodied in critical articles or reviews. This book

  is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events,

  and incidents are a product of the

  Author’s imagination. Any resemblance to an actual person,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ASIN: B07JK2HVWS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For Taylor, who cheerleads and chastises with equal enthusiasm.

  With special thanks to Anne Raven, Elena, Lindsay Landgraf Hess, and Lacie Thorne for their unblushing input and advice, and with gratitude to all my critique partners, whether they worked on this story or others.

  ~ Laney

  Thanks to my husband and family, who’ve never stopped believing I could do this. Your encouragement means the world to me.

  To my critique partners, who offer solid advice, laughter, and endless support. I couldn’t have done this without you, ladies. And to all the other authors whose words I’ve studied. You’ve shown me how to better my craft and take my writing to the next level.

  ~ Christina

  Cover design by Black Canvas

  Lyrie

  I have three secrets, but I’ll share one with you. I’m falling for Khal, a Cheetakin shifter. But I won’t—can’t—let anyone know how I feel. Because, if the Regime who holds me captive discovers there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to keep Khal safe, well, they’ll use my love against me. Use him to break me.

  I must escape the compound and cross the desert to reach the relative safety of the Resistance. Before it’s too late. If I don’t get away, they’ll force us to come together, then steal the child we make for their evil experiments. Turn an innocent baby into a monster. So, I'll fight my growing love for Khal and somehow, resist his touch.

  Khal

  There are secrets in my past. Things no-one outside my band-of-brothers will ever know. Guns, fangs, and claws for hire, the guys and I are tight, and I know they’ll never judge me for what I did. They don’t need to. I judge myself.

  And that’s why I have to be alone. That’s why I can’t allow Lyrie into my heart, into my life. Because loving her means death. But not necessarily for me.

  Books by Laney Kaye & Christina Wilder

  CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR SERIES:

  ESCAPE

  ENGAGE

  ENSNARE

  ENDINGS, January 2019

  By Laney Kaye

  THE LURE OF THE MER: HOOK

  THE LURE OF THE MER: LINE

  From The Wild Rose Press, Spring 2019

  By Christina Wilder

  MY BIG FAT POMPEII ROMANCE

  Legally Blonde meets Gladiator in this

  romantic comedy with a historical twist

  DRAGON MATED

  A Steamy, Funny Novella Series

  December, 2018

  CAPTURED BY THE DRAGON

  HUNTED BY THE DRAGON

  CLAIMED BY THE DRAGON

  Chapter One

  Lyrie

  I n my dreams, I could transform myself into a lioness with long, sharp teeth, and a gorgeous pair of russet wings.

  Muscles tight, tawny fur pressed sleek against my body, I ran, my broad paws drumming the desert sand. Vipers fled deeper underground at the sound of my passage. Armor spiders coiled tight in their nests. And, overhead, a broad-winged scree soared higher, as if it feared I’d reach up and snatch it with my claws.

  I was queen of everything around me.

  Yet, even in my griffin form, soldiers hunted me. In relentless pursuit, they remained on my trail until they wore me down. Trapped me.

  At the sight of them stalking toward me, my heart shuddered. If I was in human form, I would tuck my head under my arms. Draw my knees up to my chin. Curl into a ball and hide.

  Instead, I stiffened in front of the rock wall and glared at them, my lips pinched tight to hold back my pleas.

  Laser pistols drawn, crude taunts erupted from their throats.

  I tipped my head back to let loose a roar of fury and pain.

  The desert stilled. Eyes wide, the solders halted.

  In the prison, men like these had controlled my days and nights and everything in between. But in the wild…they would soon learn that a griffin ruled.

  The sweet, luscious smell of their terror hit my sinuses like turgurken sizzling on a branch extended over a fire. Prime meat to be sliced into and enjoyed.

  Knowing they were afraid of me sent my soul flying up into the sky. These men who’d imprisoned me, experimented on me, now trembled in my presence.

  Did they actually think they could contain me?

  As their cocky grins fell, I prowled forward.

  Limbs quaking, they backed away, prayers bursting from their bellies. Piss streamed down their legs.

  While I couldn’t laugh, I could snarl.

  And rip them apart.

  Something clanged deep within the prison, and a gut-searing cry of agony echoed from down the hall, jarring me awake.

  Pulse thrumming in my throat like an armatote caught in a trap, I sat up too fast, hitting my head on the low sirdar slab extending above the area I sought refuge in when they’d finished with me for the day and returned me to my cell.

  Blinking back tears, I peered around the dark, dank room they’d thrown me into what felt like a lifetime ago.

  There was nothing here with me. I was safe. For now.

  My breath whooshed out, and I fell back onto the stone floor and pulled my scratchy blanket up to my chin. I rubbed my concave belly, which had long since stopped rumbling. Unwelcome tears leaked from my eyes, and I sniffed and shoved them away.

  Cold air ghosted beneath the door, snaking across the room to wrap itself around me in a damp caress.

  My teeth rattled. My body quivered.

  Please. Mama.

  Help me.

  Footsteps stomped closer, and my door swung wide, banging into the scratched sirdar wall.

  “Come on, girl,” the guard said in a guttural voice.

  Before I could shrink closer to the wall, a boot struck out, hitting me hard enough to draw out my groan. Another bruise I could add to all the others. I had so many, my flesh bloomed with every imaginable color in a garden. Not that I’d seen a garden for months.

  “Get up,” he said. “It’s time.”

  Time for what?

  I knew better than to ask. The last time I’d questioned him, he’d backhanded me, and I’d slammed to the floor, hitting my head and blacking out. I’d woken pinned to the slab, men with lab coats standing around me. Their needles…

  “Grab her,” a woman said, entering the room and approaching as I rose to my bare feet. My legs shook, barely able to support my weight, but I struggled to stand tall.

  Show. No. Fear.

  “Don’t let her get away,” the woman said, her voice one big shiver.

  As the guard latched onto my arm, I winced but held in my cackle. Did they really think I’d run?

  Only in my dreams.

  With the light from the hall behind h
er, I couldn’t make out the woman’s face. But I could smell her terror. Hear the worry she couldn’t hide.

  I shook my head, because, somehow—for some darkly sadistic reason—I also knew her taste. But that was impossible. I hadn’t had the chance to hurt her, had I?

  “Don’t let her touch me,” she said, high-pitched. More scared than me, which was silly, because they were the ones in control. All the time. “Hold her still, dammit.”

  The guard’s grip tightened.

  A poke of a needle in my arm, and my awareness faded. My griffin gnashed her teeth, but slunk away to cower in the shadows.

  “Come,” the woman said, hurrying from the room and out into the hall. Her silky top rustled, and her heels clattered on the stone floor.

  The guard grunted and prodded me to follow.

  They led me down the hall, around the corner, and deeper into the recesses of this hell-hole I would never escape. The air reeked of urine, pain. Death.

  Stopping outside another cell, the guard keyed the code into a pad beside the door. With a grating screech, the panel recessed into the wall, leaving a yawning black hole behind.

  My heart skipped a beat. What now?

  “Go.” Stepping away from the opening, as if she feared I’d slash out as I passed, the woman flicked her manicured hand toward the room. “Go inside.”

  “Why? Where…” I croaked out, my voice hoarse from screaming.

  “Just do it,” the guard said, striking his fist into my back.

  My kidney spasmed, and I gasped, my breath sucked away from the blow. I stumbled forward, tripping on the lip of the doorframe, and fell to my knees on the unforgiving floor, though I kept my left arm pressed tight against my stomach.

  The door swept closed behind me as I lifted my head and squinted around in the murky, gray light.

  A large man lay on a rough bunk built into the wall on the other side of the room, his back toward me.

  I must’ve squeaked or made some tiny sound to give myself away, because he rolled over. His amber eyes slitted open and sharpened in on where I cowered on the floor. Short, messy hair slipped across his face and brushed his shoulders.

  He sat up on the side of the bed, his hands forming fists. A low growl rumbled through his broad chest. Thunder on a cold, dark winter’s day.

  I knew that sound.

  My griffin heard it in her dreams.

  Cheetahkin.

  Chapter Two

  Khal

  W ith the drugs they’d pumped into me, it was hard to focus. Not so hard to scent, though. I caught the reek of fear mixed with excitement from the curly-haired woman outside my cell, her face pressed to the viewing hatch. The guard who would never enter the sparse room but had, for days now, slid a tray of cold slop across the floor toward the hard sirdar bench that served as my bed, gave off a stench of his own, but always feigned indifference. At least when the door between us was safely locked.

  This other woman, though. She tumbled to the filthy stone floor, remaining on one hand and her knees, her left arm pressed to her stomach. Her position almost feline, her back arched as though she was ready to either pounce or flee. Yet she didn’t give off any kind of fear. More a resilience, a barely controlled anger as though, despite her ragged, emaciated appearance, she had a core of gypsa, the unbreakable gem melded by heat and pressure, beauty formed in the ugliest of conditions.

  I swung my legs from the bed, planting my bare feet on the gritty stone. My movement was slow, thanks to the combination of drugs retarding the healing of the laser wounds across my chest, and the black and blue markings— shaded with yellow, now—that patterned my tan skin. Not that the guards dared beat me while I was conscious. No, they waited until the drug they darted into me from the safety of the observation hatch had taken effect. Then they’d pile in, boots and fists flying.

  Never any questions from them, nor demands.

  I knew the tactic. Brute force used as a conditioning tool to inspire debilitating fear, so I’d quake whenever I heard the rattle of my door, signifying someone approached.

  Shame these bastards didn’t realize they didn’t have what it’d take to scare me. No one did.

  They could piss me off all they liked, but I was a Cheetakin shifter; they had no hope of subduing me. The second these damn drugs cleared my system, they’d pay for every minute I’d spent in this room. This woman, though, what had they done to her? How was it she didn’t seem cowed?

  Unless she was Regime, a spy sent in to coerce information from me.

  I scented carefully again, pulling the odors over my vomeronasal organ and separating them.

  If she was a spy, they’d taken her disguise to the next level. Sure, what appeared to be bruises on the pale face she tilted toward me could be makeup. But there was no faking the metallic tang of dried blood in the stagnant air of my cell.

  Blood that wasn’t mine.

  I thrust to my feet, taking a moment to allow the pain to scream through my thighs, reminding me of my most recent beating. Good. The memento would fuel my anger, stoke the fire that I’d let burn inside until my opportunity came.

  When the Regime forces caught me, I’d been creating a diversion. It’d been Leo’s idea for me to draw the guards away from him and Janie while they hit the medical center. They intended to hack the mainframe within the lab and destroy the data the Regime had compiled on some DNA project that Janie, our doctor, said threatened the lives of both us Felidaekin and the Glians.

  Having bought them time, I was supposed to breach one of the gates in the wall encircling the compound and flee across the desert. We’d reconnoiter with the other two cat shifters from our team, Herc and Jag, in the Resistance headquarters far to the north.

  As soon as Leo laid out the plan, I’d known that there was no way for all three of us to get clear. Though the Regime forces were below optimum numbers, with the bulk of the army deployed to attack the Resistance stronghold several days’ march away, the compound still housed enough soldiers, armed with enough firepower, to cause serious shit for a couple of cat shifter mercenaries.

  I’d warned Janie and Leo that their attempt to break into the med lab and destroy the Regime’s research was a suicide mission.

  What neither of them had realized was that it was my own death I’d been predicting.

  I took a step toward the woman in my cell, and her eyes narrowed at my approach. Pain lanced through my thighs, which had taken the brunt of yesterday’s beating, forcing a grunt from my swollen lips.

  Shame I hadn’t been right.

  Death would hurt a fuckload less than this.

  In a lithe movement almost too quick for me to catch, the woman shifted to her haunches.

  I paused, testing the air. No fresh waft of blood, but maybe the filth that covered her masked it. “Who are you?” My voice came out like I gargled a mouthful of pebbles. Not surprising, as I’d not used it for days. Suspecting that part of the reason the guards beat me was to goad me into shifting, I’d refused, taking their blows on my human form. I’d not so much as roared since I’d first been brought in here.

  Now, I wasn’t even sure I could shift.

  The woman rifled one hand through her short, spiky hair, revealing bruised, grazed knuckles. But she didn’t reply. Maybe she didn’t speak the common tongue.

  I shrugged, regretting the movement instantly, and spoke more slowly. “Okay, let’s try ‘what are you’?”

  Her head snapped up, gaze narrowing as a frown creased her forehead. “What?” Her voice sounded as rusty as my own.

  “Regime? Resistance? What?”

  The frown fled, as though there were worse things I could’ve asked her. “What’s it to you?”

  Great. I’d be better off without a cellmate than with one who was going to snap and snarl worse than a feral she-cat.

  I retreated to my bunk and sat on it. Maybe with more room—not that there was much to be had in the tiny cell—she’d feel less defensive. “I’m Khal.”

 
She stood, her forearm still protectively pressed against her stomach. “I can see you’re not a coward. And it seems the Regime has no love for you either,” her chin jerked at my injuries. “So, what are you?”

  “Mercenary,” I said. That was as close to declaring a side as I planned to come right now. Though I guess it’d be common knowledge that the cat shifters had turned traitor and thrown their lot in with the rebels—despite being hired by the Regime—given that Herc had lit out across the desert after his woman, Maya, when she fled to join the Resistance.

  Hopefully, Leo and Janie had also made it out of the compound.

  Hells, we were going to be in a fuckload of trouble back on Aaidar when news of our defection reached the government. Not that it looked like I’d ever be getting back there to face the music.

  “Hired by whom?”

  The woman’s question surprised me. Not only the phrase, but the articulation, snapped out like a command.

  I lifted one eyebrow, aware of the tight drag of a crusted gash across my forehead as it split open yet again, blood oozing down despite my attempt to palm it aside. For some reason, the ring of authority in her words pulled me back to my feet like I needed to stand at attention. “Seems you’ve already got two answers up on me.” I crossed my arms over my chest, waiting.