The Gate Jumpers Saga: Science Fiction Romance Collection

by Elin Wyn

  She knew that she couldn’t outrun them, so she waited until she’d gotten to the end of the alley before dashing around the corner and slamming her foot into the ground. It activated the knife, popping it out to shine against the murky street. She crouched, waiting as her pursuers rushed out after her.

  “Bitch—”

  She slammed her foot into his leg, catching him as he ran forward. His friends sent him tripping to the ground as they fell over him, and she jumped away from the wall, raising her fists to fight.

  The others came at her all at once, but she’d never expected them to fight with honor and she was ready to move, jumping and kicking as they surrounded her. As a red alien shot out a fist, she dodged, grabbing his wrist to yank him over her shoulder and into the muck. A quick kick to his neck stopped his string of slurs, and a hand on her back had her whirling around, breaking the finger that she was able to grab.

  The aliens seemed to back up as she snapped anything that touched her, but the larger one just grinned, stepping past the ring of men surrounding her to crack his knuckles inches from her face.

  That’s when Dojan crashed into him.

  Dojan

  Dojan could smell her fear before he’d stepped out of the tavern’s door.

  It was suffocating, a heavy smell of laser burn and ash, and it was the only thing that finally made him stand up and face the day that his bond mate walked out on him.

  He’d thought the Thagzars were invading, at first. Rolling off of the bed and onto his feet, he’d rushed to the window, yanking back the drapes with the expectation of fire and blood. Instead, it was just another artificially brilliant morning, with hazy holo-lights illuminating the spread of people shopping below. Everything was peaceful, and that could only mean one thing.

  Stephine had to be in danger.

  Dojan dashed through the streets with shallow breaths and a heaving chest, his heart beating frantically as he followed the scent of death though back alleys and dingy streets. He’d always heard the stories of mates in danger, how they smelled like the other’s worst fear and propelled them forward, but he had never expected it to be quite so intense. He kept thinking to himself, “Just a little more.” He had to see her, find her, and then maybe his heart would finally calm down.

  He didn’t expect to turn a corner and see her faced with nine opponents, and three more unconscious at her feet. In that moment his heart slowed so much that he could’ve sworn it had stopped altogether.

  As the biggest alien in the group stepped forward, his intentions obvious as he eyed Stephine up and down, Dojan attacked.

  “Dojan!”

  He barely registered Stephine’s scream as he dug his white claws into the belly of the alien, his blood pumping in his ears as he gutted the fucker. Knocking the alien flat on his back, he jumped back to guard Stephine, his arms spread wide to keep the rest of them from advancing.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked over his shoulder, his green eyes narrowed at the eight aliens shifting uneasily on their feet.

  “No,” she said, trying to move and stand beside him. He gently blocked her, the blood dripping from his nails splattering onto the ground like a red line to stay behind.

  “This your bitch?” one of them, a Hyundir with orange eyes and a fat nose, asked.

  “This is Stephine Willovitch of Earth,” he snarled. “Don’t confuse her with one of your whores.”

  “You fucker!” a gorganal shouted, diving at him with a knife. Dojan didn’t dare side-step him and put Stephine in danger, so he hit him head on, knocking the knife out of his hands to knee him in the stomach. His friends tried to help him, but one went for Stephine instead, and Dojan flung himself at the alien, sending them both to the ground as Dojan grabbed his throat.

  “Dojan,” she hissed, grabbing his arm. She flicked her eyes up, and he followed them to see that the other aliens had fled, leaving their wounded friends to fend for themselves. Dojan glanced at the man in his grip and threw him back, spitting in his face.

  “Don’t you ever,” he growled, ignoring Stephine as she tugged him up by his arm. “Come near her again.”

  The alien nodded, his hand over his nose as green blood flooded through his fingers.

  Dojan finally let Stephine lead him away, and he didn’t bother pointing out that they were going the wrong way as he tried to get himself back under control. Thankfully, the smell of laser burn had subsided, replaced by the bittersweet scent of rain after a new moon’s typhoon had passed.

  “Dojan,” Stephine said, and he looked up. She was smiling sadly at him, her hand warm from where her fingers tugged at his.

  It just made his chest hurt all the more. “C’mere,” he growled, dragging her into one of the darker alleyways. He yanked her up to stand before him, and he slowly placed his arms on either side of her, caging Stephine in gently against the wall. “They didn’t do anything?” he asked, swallowing down the vile taste that the thought put in his mouth.

  “No,” she said softly, shaking her head. “I didn’t let them touch me.”

  Dojan frowned as her scent seemed to change. It was just as overwhelming, just as intoxicating, but sweeter – more enticing. He gulped, and stepped back.

  “Good,” he nodded. “I thought…” He’d thought that the bond had snapped.

  That she’d been killed.

  He thought he’d lost her.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  “The bond,” he said simply. Then, remembering that she hadn’t grown up on a planet that practiced it, he explained, “I could tell that you were in danger. I followed your scent – it’s so much stronger now,” he breathed, inhaling deeply. “I could find you anywhere.”

  “So,” she said, clearing her throat as she looked at her feet. “This bond. It’s really strong?” She was blushing.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding his head excitedly, the edges of his mouth quirking up into a grin.

  “And,” she asked, placing a light hand on his shoulder. “It wanted you to save me?”

  He gulped, his skin on fire from where she touched. “I wanted me to save you.”

  Dojan hadn’t realized that he’d been leaning towards her, or that his lips had parted of their own accord in his movement. But when his mouth descended upon hers, a grinding mess of tooth and tongue, he was all too aware.

  “Dojan,” she moaned, her arms wrapping around his shoulders as he picked her up by the hips and pushed her against the wall, hiking up her legs to settle just perfectly on his crotch.

  “Steph,” he responded, a hiss of her name, and then he was kissing again – biting and licking and sucking and feeling.

  And then, suddenly, it stopped.

  “Get off,” she muttered, shoving at his chest as she dropped her feet back to the ground. He let her down, his blonde hair falling over his eyes as he adjusted his pants. No need, really – her rejection had softened his bulge almost instantly.

  “Let’s just go back,” she said quietly. “I feel too vulnerable in these clothes.”

  Dojan wished that he could hide his own vulnerability by simply layering on ugly shirts, but alas, he was not from Earth where such skills were apparently taught. So, with a bent head and a burning heart, he shrugged, and said, “Whatever you want.”

  Stephine

  Stephine hated not knowing where she was going. She followed Dojan back silently, her eyes on the road ahead while her real attention was on the robotic cube that her hand was clutched around.

  In all the excitement she’d almost forgotten about it, but then it’d cut into her side when Dojan had pushed her up against that wall, and she’d remembered what she’d been trying to forget this morning. Dojan, and her, and the bond.

  She frowned when she saw Derraer’s Tavern ahead, recalling very clearly that their ship was in the opposite direction. As if sensing her questioning gaze on the back of his neck, Dojan half turned and said, “Forgot your clothes.”

  Stephine nodded, but kept
her mouth shut. The last thing she wanted to do was start an argument, or worse – talk about the bond. Especially when he was leading them back to the room where it had all went down, the memory still very fresh in her mind.

  The clerk didn’t comment when he saw them return, and Stephine could only guess that Dojan hadn’t had the time to check out earlier. She wanted to ask if it was true, if he’d really thought that she was dead and if it was why he’d come running.

  It just seemed too convenient. Too perfect.

  They stepped into the room one after the other, and while Dojan walked ahead to gather up the fruits, Stephine stooped to grab her work pants. She slipped them on over her ship’s uniform and glanced at the bathroom as she felt the cube. “Uh,” she said, and Dojan looked up at her. His eyes were wide, hopefull, and she felt her heart clench. “I’ll be in here,” she said, pointing. Dojan looked away quickly and nodded, trying to hide the hurt on his face. Stephine pretended that she didn’t see it and locked the bathroom door behind her with a soft click.

  She pulled out the cube. She could see that it was dirty, under the proper lighting, but there didn’t appear to be any rust. She would’ve been more surprised if there was, given how smoothly the robot had run.

  “But how on earth…” she muttered, slipping into Dutch, her mother tongue. Turning the block over in her hands, she searched for a button or a switch, frowning as the smooth surface revealed nothing.

  She almost dropped it when a loud thump sounded on the other side of the door. “Y-yes?” she asked. When she didn’t hear anything, she reached for the doorknob.

  “Don’t!” Dojan shouted, and another bang erupted against the door.

  “Dojan?” she panicked, twisting the lock to get it open. But the knob wouldn’t turn, as if something was blocking it.

  She froze when she heard two voices that’d been in the alley just outside her door.

  “Boss wanted the girl!” It was the blue alien.

  “We can come back for the bitch easy,” orange-eyes scoffed. “Once he’s out of the way.”

  As their footsteps retreated and she shoved against the door, a sudden smell of burning pine needles made her choke. It reminded her of the cold earth beneath her bare feet, and a corpse’s closed eyes. Stephine fell to the ground, one hand clinging to the doorknob as she tried to breathe through the knots forming in her stomach.

  She needed Dojan.

  Forcing herself to stand on shaky legs, she tried the door again, silently screaming as she suffocated from the smell. Banging the door with her body, she kicked and punched, even using the cube as a makeshift hammer.

  Finally, she felt the door give way, and she yanked on the doorknob, falling out into the main room as she tried to inhale the fresh air.

  Only, it was the same smell of burning pine.

  “Dojan,” she croaked, pushing herself up. Stepping around to look at the beds, it was clear that there’d been a fight in the mess of ripped pillows and torn blankets. Dojan was nowhere to be seen.

  Still, she had this creeping feeling that he was close, and all she had to do was walk a few steps to find him.

  She opened the door and glanced out into the hall. It was empty, but she was sure that if she just went left, she’d spot him. It kept her walking all the way to the entrance, and further out into the marketplace. She didn’t balk at the crowd as she met it, but rather welcomed it, certain that she’d run into him there.

  And so she went, walking blindly by instinct as she kept her eyes narrowed and her breaths shallow. As she turned at all the right corners and stepped deeper into the darker part of the space station again, she could almost swear that she felt the heat of a funeral pyre, and she knew that she was close.

  “It’s not so easy, is it?” a voice boomed. Stephine moved quickly, dashing into the shadows as she spotted a ring of aliens up ahead. They were surrounding a bonfire, and she recognized the two that had been in her room earlier.

  “What?” a confident voice shouted back. “Kidnapping one Sarosian? Certainly seemed hard enough for your men.”

  Stephine sagged in relief as she recognized that voice. It was Dojan, and he was sitting in the middle of the angry mob of a gang.

  “Well then, we’ll just have to make easy work of your death,” the alien promised.

  Stephine’s heart dropped inside her chest, sinking far within her stomach as it pinged in fear from the fall. She had to do something – had to move, had to save him.

  “Go ahead,” Dojan yelled, and Stephine froze. “I have nothing to live for.”

  The words cut her deeply, and she wasn’t even sure why. If she were able to ask Dojan, she knew that he’d just blame it all on the bond.

  How strong was it, anyway? Was it the thing that had led her here, to Dojan’s imminent death at the hands of the alien gang?

  She couldn’t let him die like that. And with her weapons, she wouldn’t have to.

  Crouching, Stephine slipped out her thin throwing knives from her inner breast pocket, fanning them in her hand while she grabbed the biggest and took aim. It hit the first alien in the back of the neck, slicing straight and true as he fell forward.

  “Who dares?!” an alien screamed, and the others twisted to search the darkness for their comrade’s killer.

  Stephine didn’t speak, but sent another knife into an alien’s eye as her response. His friends scattered as he, too, dropped dead.

  She crept closer as they ran, sending out her thin throwing knives until she’d run out and had to rip at her shoulder pads to free her silver throwing stars. Dojan was twisting around in his bonds now, the ropes cutting into him as his gaze flickered across the darkness.

  He saw her, just before she let loose another shuriken. As it struck an alien in the leg, the air seemed to change. No longer was she kneeling under the weight of funeral fires and burning pines, but a rather sweet smell had suddenly wrapped around her, lifting her up. It was a sticky scent of calyder berries and fresh shrimp caught from the sea.

  It smelled like Dojan times a thousand.

  She ran for him, then, dropping at his knees to slash through his ropes and grab his hand, pulling him away.

  Pulling him to safety.

  The aliens finally spotted her from behind the heaps of trash that they’d dived under for cover, and they shot at them, their screams of outrage overpowering the illegal misfiring of their lasers. Stephine was content to run, to find her way back to the ship with Dojan and leave the bustling space station once and for all, but Dojan had other plans.

  He grabbed one of Stephine’s heavy daggers from out of her hands and threw it by the tip, sending it flipping through the air until it struck a screaming alien in the heart. The rest ducked, and did not shoot at them again.

  The race back to the ship was a short one, and Stephine found that she was happy to be back inside the cramped pod ship with Dojan Cholsad, navigator from Saros.

  Only, Dojan didn’t seem too happy to be back with her.

  He kept quiet during the launch, and while Stephine had simply added it up to making a clean getaway, he still wasn’t talking after an hour of warp travel.

  “Dojan?” she asked, her quiet voice a shout inside the tiny pod. She cleared her throat, and said, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said simply, his eyes on the screen as they traveled towards the elusive Eiztar laboratory. “What is it?”

  She looked at him oddly. He was being serious – no smile, no joke. Almost like a proper officer of a ship.

  “I…,” she said, pausing. She didn’t really know what she wanted to say, only that she wanted to be talking with him.

  “You don’t have to force yourself,” he said quickly, adjusting the controls. “We’ll be there soon.”

  “You’re proposing that we sit in silence for a day and a half?” she scoffed, trying to get a smile from his unusually sullen face. He didn’t so much as glance at her. “Dojan—”

  “It’s difficult,” he said stiffly, his jaw
clenched. “To be near you, to talk to you, like this.”

  Stephine frowned. “Like what?” When he didn’t answer, she stood up, crowding him. “Don’t sit there and pretend that you’re doing something,” she fumed. “The ship is in warp. It’s out of your control until you take it out, so fucking talk to me.”

  “About what?” he turned to her, his eyes hard. “That night? Our failed bond?”

  Stephine frowned. “Failed bond?”

  “Rejection, abandonment – call it what you will,” he counted them off on his fingers.

  Stephine raised her eyebrows. “You’re mad,” she said.

  “I’m certainly not happy,” he growled, his hands fisted on top of his knees.

  “Because the bond failed?” she asked.

  “Because I fucked up the bond!” he shouted. “I screwed up the one thing that’s supposed to come naturally – the thing that everyone wants!”

  “Everyone but me, you mean,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “You’re really telling me that you don’t bond on your planet?” he asked, standing up to look down at her. “You don’t spend every day wondering, hoping for your other? Your soulmate?”

  Stephine looked up at him, her lips pursed as she replied. “We look for a person,” she admitted. “And, if we find one that we like, then we choose to be with them, and hope to god that we’ve chosen right. Because Earth doesn’t have soulmates – it’s just filled with a lot of lonely people looking for someone to not be lonely with.” As Dojan’s lips formed a grim line, she said, “But maybe that’s because my soulmate isn’t on Earth.”

  Dojan paused, uncertainty crossing his face as he looked her in the eye. “No?”

  “You know where I think he is?” she asked, stepping closer to run a hand over his chest. He shivered at the touch, and she wrapped her other arm over his shoulder.