When the bullet hit him, the officer jerked, and his gun went off, the shot barely missing me and slamming instead into Scar-Face, whose grip on me loosened just enough to allow me to wrench myself away from him.
It all happened in a heartbeat—the door hadn’t even finished closing behind the cop. Grabbing the metal edge just above the lock, I launched myself outside and took off running.
Logically, I knew I couldn’t outrun a bullet. But I wasn’t thinking logically. Adrenaline flooded my body and all I knew for sure was that I had to get away.
I didn’t even pay attention to where I was headed. My only goal was to put enough distance between me and them so that they would never find me again. Because I knew, without a doubt, that if they caught me, they’d kill me.
So when I dashed into an empty lot and discovered that I’d run straight into a dead end, a tall, chain-link fence surrounding me on three sides, I was certain I was about to die.
Still, I wasn’t going to give up. Launching myself at the fence, I tried to pull myself up and over.
I hadn’t gotten even partway up when a hand grabbed my t-shirt by the collar and pulled me back to the ground, where I collapsed into a trembling heap, heaving for breath and covering my head with my hands. I didn’t even have the breath to beg for my life.
All I could do was wait to die.
Jalek
I popped out of hyperspeed behind the solitary moon orbiting the tiny blue-and-green planet.
So much water. I frowned. They were probably aquatic creatures. Assuming they were really sentient at all. Dax had seemed certain when he sent me out on this mission.
But I wasn’t convinced. The transmissions he’d picked up when he’d been out this direction had been strange and garbled, more likely the product of odd microwaves than anything created by thinking beings.
No, I was on a pity mission, the kind a leader gave to a trusted second who had once performed well in battle but was now only a burden to the squad.
The kind of second who could no longer call upon his beast when a skirmish turned ugly.
A damaged soldier.
So he’d sent me out on this wild kalrak chase, hunting for mates for our freemen warriors.
With a sigh, I turned all my sensors toward the planet. I spun around in the pilot’s seat of my scoutship to wave my hands over a few other controls, when the computer let out a series of musical tones.
“Wait. What?” I spoke aloud, even though I had disabled the ship’s AI halfway here. I didn’t need any company. Didn’t want it. I deserved to be alone.
With a frown, I gestured in a few more parameters. Again, the computer sang out. This place was practically crawling with life.
And more than that, the life it was crawling with included a sentient population of almost fifty percent females, almost a quarter of whom were viable mates for Drovekzian warriors.
“Okay,” I muttered. “Maybe Dax wasn’t crazy, after all.” How had he known?
With a wave, I enabled the cloaking device and set a course for the planet. But the closer I got, the more horrified I became. The atmospheric parameters should have been roughly the same as ours, given the females’ ability to mate with the Drovekzian. But despite its jewel tones from afar, the planet’s atmosphere was choked with unbreathable gasses, its oceans with debris.
This planet was a wastehole.
When I got closer, I could see why. The planet’s primary inhabitants moved from place to place in combustion-powered vehicles running on flammable liquids.
It was a wonder they hadn’t blown themselves into oblivion.
I narrowed in on one large urban area, then paused.
“Oh, why not?” I said aloud. It’s not like Dax would ever know. And I was curious. I waved in my own mating parameters and waited while the computer scanned. A second later, it beeped.
A match. For me. Right here in the city I was currently gliding over. Not far away, in fact.
This is a stupid move, Jalek. I shook the thought off. I spent my life certain I would die in battle having never known love. I had to see what my possible mate-match looked like.
Just one peek. That’s all.
And with that silent promise to Dax, I turned my ship toward the beacon. I flew in low over the oddly rectangular dwellings below, until I reached an empty square surrounded on three sides by a metal enclosure. I hovered there when the ship announced my target was headed directly toward me.
When I was certain she had nowhere else to go, I dropped the ship down until it settled on the scrubby vegetation, eagerly peering out the front viewscreen.
As she came around the corner, my breath caught in my throat. She was tiny and round, her skin the color of claxov cream with a hint of pink underneath, and her hair flew around her in golden waves as she glanced over her shoulder.
She raced to the back barrier and attempted to scramble up it, but before she made it halfway up, two males—also small, like my mate—followed her, one of them pulling her down on the ground, where she huddled in terror. One of the two males pointed a weapon at her, yet another explosion-based device, according to the ship’s readings.
A growl rumbled in my chest as I waved the door open, and I was already shifting into my beast by the time I hit the ground, bounding toward my mate—the same beast I hadn’t been able to shift into for months. At the sound of my roar, the two males jerked around to stare at me wide-eyed.
As he caught sight of me, the male holding the weapon twitched, and the device went off.
My mate screamed, and I leaped to attack her assailants.
Lucy
The pain of a bullet slamming into my shoulder tore a scream from my throat, and my entire body flew back into the fence behind me. Everything around me moved into slow-motion.
I knew I must be hallucinating when a giant, hot-pink leopard appeared in the air behind my attackers, with its fangs bared and claws extended.
Hallucination or no, it was terrifying. I cringed back against the fence. The move sent fire shooting through the bullet wound. I knew I should put pressure on it to stop any bleeding— that’s what all the television shows said, anyway—but even the thought of touching it made me feel faint.
The leopard landed on the guy with the gun, knocking him down. He hit the ground with a horrific crunch, the sound of bones breaking.
All thoughts of my own injury vanished as the multicolored leopard ripped through my assailant’s leather jacket and into the skin beneath, shredding both.
His companion turned to run, and the beast slapped at him almost casually. The guy crumpled to the ground with a screech and started trying to scrabble away.
The attacking monster slung its massive head around to watch. Keeping one giant paw on the back of the twitching gunman, it reached over with the other paw and hooked its claws into the escaping guy’s leg to pull him back. The man let out a wail that just kept going.
Surely this was too real to be all in my imagination.
Perhaps I was dying.
But weren’t death visions supposed to be all peaceful and floaty? Everything about this was painful and agonizing. My shoulder burned. Tiny rocks on the ground beneath me dug into my butt through my jeans. Even the metal of the chain-link fence between my fingers where I clutched it with the hand of my uninjured arm was solid. Real.
The brightly spotted leopard turned to look at me with remarkably intelligent eyes, and I whimpered.
Something warm filled my hand and I glanced down to discover a puddle of blood dripping off the tips of my fingers and pooling thickly in the dusty dirt below.
Oh, shit. I really should have put pressure on the wound.
I glanced up at the creature in front of me. Even the motion of my eyes left me dizzy, my vision wavering.
The animal’s nose crinkled, and it lifted its head as if it were scenting something.
Great. It probably smelled blood on me.
After it finished with those guys, I’d be next.
I tried to scramble to my feet, pushing my heels against the dirt as I tried to slide up to standing, but my legs gave out and I fell back to the ground with a thump.
The beast glanced between me and the two men on the ground, one of them still wailing. With an apparently deliberate swipe, it sliced across the wailing man’s ankles, disabling him by cutting his Achilles tendons. I wouldn’t have thought the guy could screech any louder, but he did.
It was almost as if the big cat knew exactly how to disable his opponent.
I wonder if that sort of thing is instinctive?
The thought flitted through my head, and on some level, I realized I was losing control of even my thoughts.
Well. Guess it’s better than being awake and alert to as the giant cotton-candy-colored monster devours me, I thought, even as the world darkened around the edges and the cat moved toward me, leaning down to sniff my face.
“Oh,” I murmured. “Nice kitty.” I reached up and threaded my fingers through the soft fur on its neck. “You are beautiful,” I managed to say, right before everything went black.
The last thing I saw as everything faded was the enormous face of the creature as it leaned in to snuffle my neck.
Jalek
My mate’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped back against the retaining structure. In the distance, strange wailing noises grew closer, loud enough even to drown out the sounds of the male’s screeching.
If this planet’s major lifeform was anything like others that used sound to communicate, that would be some kind of warning.
And it was headed directly toward us.
But without any sensors—no measurements of air density or soundwave motions—I had no way to tell exactly how long it would take them to arrive.
Which meant I might not have enough time to shift back to my biped form.
Curses.
Clearly, my animal form frightened my mate. Still, I would simply have to risk her regaining consciousness and being even more terrified.
Pushing myself behind her, I grasped the neck-hem of her outer clothing item and began dragging her back toward my ship. Once inside, we’d be invisible to any local enforcers who might arrive. We might even be able to lift off before they arrived—otherwise, we risked someone bumping into the ship. And I’d seen no evidence of cloaking technology on-planet. I didn’t want to give away my presence on the planet before I had official permission to do so.
My mate groaned as I dragged her across the mostly barren field, and I cringed at the thought of hurting her. Her wound still bled, but the blood flow had turned sluggish. I hoped that was a sign that it was less dangerous than I feared, not more. I picked up the pace, needing to get her into my medbay as soon as possible.
Please don’t let her die. I sent the prayer up to the ancient gods—the ones I hadn’t believed in since I was a child. The ones I hadn’t even prayed to when I lost my ability to shift. Please let her live. I can’t lose my mate when I’ve only just found her.
I growled out my animal-form command to open my scoutship’s hatch and waited anxiously, shifting from foot to foot as the ramp slid out and the wailing noises grew closer. As soon as the walkway hit the ground, I tugged my mate up and inside, slapping my paw against the touchpad to close the ship up tight—barely in time, as the viewscreen flickered to life and showed several of the wheeled combustion-powered vehicles racing into the small field.
With a couple of paw taps on the control panel, I instructed the ship to take off. I watched through the viewscreen long enough to be certain we weren’t detected. There was no hiding the atmospheric disturbance as the scoutship lifted into the air, but the people below weren’t able to see anything, at least. We shot up into orbit, undoubtedly leaving the enforcers confused but unable to prove anything they might suspect.
As we flew away, I finally shifted back into my bipedal shape.
Thank all the gods. I really have regained my abilities.
Then I scooped my mate into my arms and carried her into the medbay, rebooting the ship’s AI as I went.
“I’ll need help healing this sentient lifeform,” I informed the ship as I placed my mate gently on the gurney.
“Scanning now,” she replied. “Please remove all garments from the lifeform.”
Her life is in danger, I told myself as my cock jerked at the thought of undressing her. This is no time for desire.
Trying to keep my hands gentle, I began removing her clothing. Stepping back to give the ship’s scanners room to work, I tried to view her dispassionately. I couldn’t. Even the ugly red-and-purple wound at her shoulder couldn’t detract from her beauty.
Holy Carvidyin’s eye-sockets. She’s glorious.
I blinked. Only two breasts?
Somehow it worked for her, their round fullness balancing the curves of her hips, the length of her limbs. It was all I could do to keep from touching her, cupping her breasts in my palms, running my hands down her stomach to that soft core.
I swallowed and my cock grew hard.
Mine, my inner beast growled.
Yes, I agreed. Mine.
Her eyes fluttered open and she stared around bemusedly until her gaze landed on me.
And then she screamed.
Lucy
“Blafonda cala anja.” The strange words, apparently broadcast from somewhere above me, cut through my reflexive scream, then repeated several times. I fell silent, still staring at the man standing next to the metal table I lay stretched out on.
At least, I was pretty sure it was a man. I mean, he was huge and muscled, and he seemed to have all the right man-parts. I could tell because he was totally naked—and one of those parts was standing tall.
I tried not to stare at his erect penis, but it was difficult not to. Not only was it absolutely enormous, but it, like the rest of his body, had a bright, spotted, hot-pink pattern similar to the one on the leopard that had attacked me earlier.
Or had it attacked me?
I glanced down at my own body, surprised to find that I was naked, too, but unable to see any injuries. I sat up on the table, pulled my knees to my chest, and wrapped my arms around them, trying to hide myself.
“Please lie still. Your scan is almost complete.” The voice had switched to English, thank goodness.
“Where am I?” I asked, aiming my question toward the ceiling before staring at the oddly patterned man. “Who are you?”
He narrowed his eyes at me for a second before shooting me a smile that transformed his angular face from forbidding to absolutely gorgeous, despite the pink leopard pattern.
He’d be beautiful in any color.
I shoved the thought away. I would have to be insane to get mixed up with a guy who kept a giant leopard as a pet—and then dyed it in bright colors and tattooed himself to match.
Because that had to be the explanation, right?
“Do you speak English?” I asked when he didn’t reply for a long moment.
“Her translation implant should be working now, captain,” the disembodied, vaguely feminine voice said.
With a nod, he turned to me. “I am Jalek Fuldrant,” he said, “and you are aboard my ship. I brought you here for medical attention after you were injured.”
Injured? Right. One of those creeps had shot me. My hand jerked up to my shoulder, but the pain I expected didn’t appear. I ran my fingers across what felt like scar tissue—the kind that should take weeks to develop. That’s what it looked like, too—an old wound, long healed.
“Lucy Gray,” I introduced myself absently. “What happened?”
He flashed that glorious smile again. “You were attacked by two males. I rescued you and brought you aboard.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Although his English was perfectly good, looking at him when he spoke was like watching a badly dubbed movie. His words didn’t match the motions of his mouth.
“Aboard your ship?” How long had I been out? The nearest harbor was miles away f
rom the youth center, and in LA traffic, that could mean well over an hour of driving. “Why didn’t you take me to a hospital?”
“My facilities are far superior to any of your planet’s.”
Oh, God. He’s crazy. I should have known. I watched that big-cat-guy on TV. Anyone with a pet like that would have to be nuts. And he has me naked and locked up in his ship.
I’m going to die.
And then he’s going to feed my body to his pet.
Where was the leopard, anyway?
I hoped he had it in a cage somewhere.
“Well,” I managed to get out, “thank you for your help.” Shit. I sound too nervous. But there was nothing to do but soldier on. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give me my clothes back and drop me off on shore somewhere. I can make my way home.”
The beautiful, crazy, pink leopard-spotted man’s gorgeous face clouded over in a moment of confusion, then cleared up almost instantly. “Ah! You believe we are in a vessel upon one of your oceans.” He moved toward some kind of computer pad attached to a wall. “We are not. We are orbiting your planet in my spaceship.”
Totally bat-shit insane. Definitely.
Jalek tapped in something on the computer screen and the metal wall before me folded in on itself, opening to show Earth far below.
I stared at my home planet below, then glanced back at the naked…man?
“Oh, hell,” I said, covering my mouth with one hand as my mind raced. “That leopard isn’t your pet, is it?”
He tilted his head and frowned, but I didn’t wait for him to answer, my mind flipping through all the information I had almost faster than I could put it all together.
“That was you. You’re the cat. Because you’re not human, are you?” I froze, almost more afraid to say the next words than I had been when I thought Jalek was a crazy man.
Still, I managed to spit them out. “You’re an alien.”
I thought I’d been as stunned as possible for one day, but the alien’s response turned my knees to water.
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