The Lady and the Tigershifter

by Kara Lockharte

  The Lady and the Tigershifter

  A Space Shifters Chronicles Christmas Short Story

  Kara Lockharte

  Smartia Publishing

  Contents

  Blurb

  Get in Touch

  The Lady and the Tigershifter

  Chapter 1 - TAKEN BY THE TIGERLORD

  Chapter 2 - TAKEN BY THE TIGERLORD

  Chapter 3 - TAKEN BY THE TIGERLORD

  Book List

  About the Author

  Space pirates? Here?

  Solstice Week should be a time to celebrate.

  Not a time to chase a tomb raiding tigershifter through a cold alien swamp.

  When librarian-guardian Seria discovers a vandal raiding the ancient site she's charged with protecting, she pursues to bring him to justice.

  Obviously, being captured by space pirates and caged with the criminal wasn’t part of the plan.

  Now she and the irritatingly handsome rogue must work together to free themselves or be enslaved.

  Little does she know, that the tigershifter is more than he seems…and might just be a greater part of her destiny.

  * * *

  Reader Note: This is a prequel short story to the novel TAKEN BY THE TIGERLORD.

  No prior reading of any of the previous Space Shifters Chronicles is required.

  Kara Lockharte

  Kara on Facebook (usually around)

  Kara on Instagram (occasionally there )

  Kara on Twitter (once in awhile)

  * * *

  The Space Shifter Chronicles

  * * *

  NOVELS

  Wanted by the Werewolf Prince

  Taken by the Tigerlord

  Desired by the Dragon King (Spring 2018)

  * * *

  SHORT STORIES

  The Boy Who Came Back a Wolf

  The Lady and the Tigershifter (December 2017)

  In Search of Skye (January 2018)

  * * *

  Note: This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real life Tigerlords or the actual laws of quantum physics or anything else else is purely coincidental.

  The Lady and the Tigershifter

  The eve of Solstice Week was a time when people typically left the borderspace planet of Tranquility and returned to their home planets. It was a time for family, friends, and feasting, a time to light candles and decorate greenery with sparkling colors in homage to First Earth, the birthplace of humanity.

  I didn’t have family. My friends were gone. I had been lying in bed, wearing the same pajamas for the last two days, absolutely not feeling sorry for my lack of holiday plans. It wasn’t like this Solstice Week was going to be different from all my other Solstice Week and I had survived those on my own just fine, thank you.

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t use a change of pace.

  Though an alarm going off around the Ealen ruins in a wilderness preserve a forty-five minute flight from the center town was definitely not what I had in mind.

  The only way to properly assess the situation was to go over to Site 43 myself. Spherical surveillance drones had caught blurry images of movement and the electronic signature of a speeder. And now, here I was sloshing through the swamp, knee-deep in the stinking sodden green bog, toward the alarm that had called me out.

  It was almost certainly some tourist who thought they could avoid paying the high-priced visitation fee. Admittedly, it was an unusual charge for most of the Ealen ruins under the jurisdiction of the Universal Library, but for good reason. Though the Ealen were now extinct, their technology still baffled even the most advanced scientists of three galactic civilizations. The sanctuary was still filled with dangerous Ealen tech and traps that could only be avoided with the help of an Infoist like me.

  All around me, the tangled white branches curled around mysterious black stone columns, slowly crumbling them with the ceaseless patience of trees. I kept my distance, even with the knowledge that the many-mouthed things that lived inside were in deep hibernation at this temperature. A sickly sounding whistle of a surveillance drone flagged my attention.

  I called it to me with my vambrace. It floated toward me, its circuits faltering within this Ealen no-tech field, its movements unsure as a soap bubble. As I reached for it, purple slime fell onto my exposed hand. It glowed neon against my brown skin, and had the faint smell of rotting flesh. Haklor shit.

  I looked up and saw the orange three-eyed blob staring at me. They were vegetarians and an ecological keystone for this jungle.

  More purple slime hit me in the chest. Apparently, it was annoyed that I was in its territory.

  “Hey, I don’t even want to be here!”

  More purple slime came flying. This time I grabbed the sphere and used it as a shield.

  And of course, at that moment, the sphere died as did its self-supporting weight systems. The sudden change in weight knocked me off my balance, and I fell backward into the bog. Cold nastiness seeped into my pants.

  “Oh, this Solstice Week is just getting better and better.” I shoved the sphere in the crook of a tree, making a note of where it was so I could retrieve the stupid thing later.

  The Haklor shook and made a whistling noise. “Okay, okay, I’m leaving,” I said, getting to my feet. I activated the quick-dry feature to my pants, and within moments my pants were no longer wet, though I knew that stain was something not even the washbots would be able to get rid of. “I have to be more thankful,” I said to myself, as I made my way through the underbrush. I saw another Haklor staring at me, oozing against the trunk of a tall stalking tree. “Not every orphan makes it off of Karj to attend schooling at one of the most ancient and respected institutions in the known universe,” I said to it.

  The orange blob rippled. Was this one laughing or getting ready to fling more crap at me? “I could have been sent on a year-long expedition to the Far Reaches in search of the Lost Ealen Fleet, rather than stationed on lovely Tranquility.”

  Three eyes closed and recessed into the blob. Apparently it was going to sleep.

  My vambrace beeped. I glanced at it and sighed in relief.

  I had cleared one of the fields and four silver floating sentinel spheres flew toward me, ready to assist.

  I unbuckled the flattened rod on my back and dropped it. The rod hovered at waist height, its back end widening into a seat as its forward arms opened and two gray wings unfurled. I straddled the glider and leaned forward, grasping onto the now extended grips.

  The glider moved forward, zipping through the air in silence. The Coalition military had designed it with a frequency intended to be sub-audible to most shifters. Which is probably the only reason why I was able to sneak up on the vandal.

  Even as I neared him, I could tell he was larger and taller than the average human male. He stood on top of a four-story ruin, in front of one of the Ealen mosaics, surrounded by floating screens directing him to some destination within the building he was trying to desecrate.

  Then he suddenly turned and jumped off the building.

  In moments, he had leaped back upward, a pack slung across his back, climbing and jumping as only a shifter could.

  Of course it would be a shifter. Catching him wouldn’t be easy. I let out a sigh of exasperation.

  He froze at my exhalation. Slowly he turned, tense and alert. He was wearing goggles. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was looking right at me.

  Well, there went the advantage of surprise. I was definitely out of practice when it came to staying quiet during a hunt. I came out of the foliage, charging up my glider’s weapons with a warning hum. “Hands up. Get away from that mosaic now.”

  He put his hands up. “I’m going
to take off my goggles,” he said, trying to take control of the situation.

  “Wait—”

  He took them off. Vivid green eyes stared back at me from his perfectly chiseled face.

  Sometimes, there are moments that you know will be burned into your mind, chasing you in your dreams for the rest of your life.

  I had the oddest sense that this was going to be one of those moments.

  I blinked at my sense of ridiculousness. He was more than classically handsome with that strong jawline and perfectly proportioned nose. He was a shifter; the Ealen had bred them for beauty as much as utility.

  The shifter held his hands up and smiled. If he hadn’t been trying to desecrate one of the most ancient, unique, and historically significant Ealen structures in the universe, it would have melted my underskins. “What’s a gorgeous girl like you doing in a swamp like this?”

  The sphere that floated behind me flashed my identification.

  The expression on his face changed immediately. “Infoist,” he said, wrinkling his nose in disgusted disbelief.

  It took all my effort not to roll my eyes. For most people in the universe, the Universal Library for which I worked was a respected institution. We studied and preserved history and knowledge to make it accessible to everyone, regardless of nation, creed, or species.

  But shifters had their flawed conspiracy theories about who we were and what we did.

  "I am the Infoist assigned to these ruins. You don’t have the clearance to be here.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” He turned with shifter quickness and punched a hole in the mosaic wall.

  Fire ignited in my head. A red haze of anger settled over my vision.

  I was standing right here!

  I unleashed my attack. Dozens of silver needles flew from my sentinel spheres—more than necessary. An energy shield materialized between him and my attack, the needles dropping into molten pebbles at his feet. He continued punching the wall, the mosaic crumbling under his fists.

  Something inside me twisted in anger and panic. “Stop!”

  He continued ignoring me. I released the safety settings on the spheres. The hiss crackle of electro-bolts filled the air as they shattered against his energy shield.

  “Vandal!”

  As the sparks flew, I saw him reach into the hole he had made and shove something in his pocket.

  My spheres stopped, out of power. “That mosaic was one of a kind, thousands of years old, you—you—” I racked my mind, looking for something to describe the horror I just witnessed. “Vandal!"

  The energy shield fell. He turned and winked.

  Fire shot through my veins. My hands shook, needing to punch him, strangle him, do something that would make him pay. He winked!

  And then he took a running leap into the treetops.

  Heat flushed my skin. The vandal was not going to get away with this. I may be just an Infoist, but if there was anything I knew, it was how to hunt prey.

  The glider thrummed underneath me, redirecting all of its power to thrust, rather than stealth. I chased the shifter through the treetops, firing tranquilizers and nets, all of which he dodged effortlessly.

  I was going to catch him. I was going to follow him off planet to the cold moons of Tarsus if I had to.

  He dropped from the trees, down to the edge of a cliff, bracing himself with a hand on the ground. He glanced at the cliff. A jump from there would kill or at least grievously injure even a shifter.

  “There’s nowhere to go,” I said to him. “Surrender!”

  He stood up slowly, raising his hands, which was unfortunate, because it meant I couldn’t just shoot him. Now that I could see him up close, I was grateful for my anger because he was so good-looking my mind would have stumbled otherwise.

  Handsome-shifter-man narrowed those green cat eyes at me. “Stop chasing me. We have other things to worry about. Look at your other sensors. What else are they telling you? Their ships are shielding themselves from your sensors. Recalibrate them to match Lothar’s algorithm.”

  The reference to the obscure algorithm threw me off. And then I realized where I had just finished reading about a newly discovered use for it. “You’re a holedark space pirate! Do you think all Infoists are that gullible or just me?”

  That moment, of course, is precisely when the pirates and weapons around us dropped their cloaking.

  A man with surgical beauty and cosmetically implanted horns curled around his ears sauntered forward. “Well, well, well. Looks like we found ourselves more slaves for shipment.”

  I swiped at my vambrace. I needed my spheres to go for help.

  They responded by falling to the ground in deep thuds.

  Null emitters. Solstice Week was getting more fun by the moment.

  Something snaked around my neck, tightening fast.

  I grabbed it, gasping for air as it yanked me back.

  “Let her be,” said the shifter I had been chasing. “She has no part of this. I have what you want.”

  “Too late for that. Your payment is overdue, so we will just have to take you, too.” He laughed and slapped his thigh. “Hey, look at that! I am a poet.”

  Not only was I going to be enslaved by space pirates, but by ones spouting bad poetry at that. This could not get any worse.

  I felt an odd wet mist on my face and looked upward.

  A sphere, one that was not mine, sprayed a white cloud above us.

  I breathed the tranquilizing gas in, even as I tried not to.

  Of course it could get worse. It could always get worse.

  I couldn’t see. My mouth tasted like a Haklor had crawled in and died. I tried to move and found myself nearly immobilized. I blinked several times, my eyes feeling dry as a Kynian worm, trying to figure out what was going on. My butt was cold. Gradually my sight returned, and I realized I was stuck in a metal crate.

  Even worse, I could feel the heat of another large living being against my back where my hands were tied.

  I had a terrible suspicion about who they had caged me with.

  “They chained you to me with restraints designed for shifters,” said a deep voice.

  That vandal shifter space pirate.

  Yes, this was definitely worse.

  I yanked on the restraints again, and large warm hands closed around mine, easily done since we were cuffed back-to-back.

  “It’s not going to do any good,” he said, releasing my hands.

  I tightened my fists and punched backward as hard as I could, right into a very firm ass.

  I was gratified by his surprise jump, less so by my inability to hurt him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “That’s for the holedark mosaic.”

  He inhaled loudly, clearly annoyed. At least, that’s what I hoped he was. “I don’t suppose you have any lock picks hidden in your robe?”

  “Sorry, vandal. I’m not the Infoist with amazing pockets hidden in her robes from your children’s fairy saga. And no, I don’t have any candy either.”

  His growl sounded as if he was either annoyed or constipated. It was hard to tell with shifters.

  I wrinkled my nose, looking at the tiny space we were in. With my luck, he would be constipated. And probably prone to vomiting, too.

  Just what I needed.

  “Shouldn’t you have been home, cooking? It’s Solstice Week.”

  “I don’t cook, pirate.”

  "I'm not a pirate. Or a vandal.”

  I rolled my eyes, unable to believe the nerve of this guy. “Of course not. You’re a thief.”

  There was another deep rumbling noise from him. He vibrated against me, like a cat. I was pretty sure he was a tigershifter. There was a feline quality to the way he moved, which was why it had been so difficult to catch him. Not to mention, he was more excessively muscled than was the fashion on most human planets.

  “I can explain,” he said slowly as if I were lacking in brain cells.

  “I’m sure. Because
destroying a one-of-a-kind, thousand-year-old façade created by a long-dead alien culture isn’t vandalism. It’s worse—the destruction of a priceless piece of history that belongs to the universe.”

  “It’s not what you think it is, Infoist.”

  I rolled my eyes, so sick and tired of shifters and their grudges against the Ealen. Not only were all the Ealen dead, but the library had moved far beyond its origins as an Ealen institution of genetic experimentation.

  “Then tell me, what were you doing smashing a hole into an ancient Ealen mosaic? And what did you take from there?”

  The metal crate we were locked in suddenly banged in a fury. “Shut your holes!” screamed one of the space pirates.

  The shifter lowered his voice. “For us to get out of here, we need to trust each other.”

  “Nice avoidance of the question,” I muttered so low I couldn’t even hear myself. But he was a shifter; he’d hear it all right.

  “I’ll tell you when I get out of here.” His voice might almost be sexy if he weren’t a vandal.

  I pulled at the restraints again. They remained unforgiving, which, of course, lent even more credence to my reply. “I don’t need your help to get out of here.”

  “You got more drone spheres hiding in the treetops ready to shoot down all the space pirates with paralyzing darts?”

  He had a point. The space pirates had caught and fried all my spheres with a weapon that was supposedly restricted to the military.

  If we didn’t get out of this, the pirates would eventually shove enslavement crowns on our heads, put us in stasis, and we’d wake up, decades from now, brainwashed into docile servitude.

  “Fine.”

  I would just take him into custody afterward.

  TWO HOURS LATER…