"Jared," Scott snapped, glaring at his leader. "Are you listening?" No other person in their midst would dare speak to him so audaciously. But Scott was practically his brother, and knew the boundaries he could push.
"You're still angry," Jared observed.
Scott leaned over the plans, dropping his voice low. "Stop watching Thea and pay attention to what I'm saying."
This time Jared did growl and, as if reading his thoughts, Thea left the meeting room with another officer. Jared watched her departure, and when he was sure she was beyond earshot said, "Thea doesn't interest me."
"So you've explained, sir." Scott inclined his head with exaggerated respect.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Scott leaned back in his seat, staring out at the aspen trees outside the full windows. "There's fear for your life. That's what I'm saying."
Jared folded his arms over his chest defiantly. "Always has been."
"No, Jared." Scott leaned close until his piercing eyes blazed like lasers. "These chances you've taken lately have left fears within the people."
"The people," Jared repeated dully, sensing the direction this conversation was headed.
"The council."
Jared blew out a furious sigh. "I have little patience for the council."
"If you do not marry—do not have children—the line ends with you."
"The people don't need a figurehead," he argued softly. "They need a leader. And a leader doesn't need a lifemate. I remain purposeful in my intentions."
"Then why do you keep dwelling on the human?"
Jared shuddered, staring back at his best friend, who fixed a wry smile on him. Blast Scott and his soul gazing, Jared mentally cursed. No wonder the man's eyes had been blazing like that a moment earlier.
"Well, sir?" Scott tapped his finger on the meeting table for emphasis.
"I will not marry," Jared said, "and if you hear rumors from the council again, tell them as much." He rose to leave, feeling his hands tremble and his heart race beneath his ribs.
"They don't know about the human," Scott answered in a low voice. "I'm asking as your friend."
Jared paced the length of the pine-paneled meeting room, raking a palm over his short hair. It bristled beneath his fingertips, still an unfamiliar sensation. Until recently he'd worn it long, but he had wearied of the constant feel of it around his face, and so had shaved his head. His hair had grown out some, but not completely. He stopped before the large fireplace and studied the licking flames and the smoldering embers beneath. The banked fire steered his thoughts in the direction of the human once again.
Kelsey Wells. He spun the name in his mind, liking the sound of it. He'd encountered many of her kind in his tenure on Earth, many young women with nubile, arousing bodies. Many Refarian women, as well, who would have taken to his bed without argument, but there was something familiar about Kelsey that transcended the bond they'd formed on the shore, something that had been perplexing him ever since.
His gaze traveled upward to the fireplace mantel, where someone had placed fresh winter flowers. Narcissus, they were called. Life, even in this cold, forbidding landscape. That was it, he realized, his ordinarily serious face breaking into a full smile. Kelsey had aroused something he thought dead in his heart. He spun to face Scott, who sat at the polished meeting table, waiting.
"This Kelsey Wells…." Jared paused, trying to find the words, and thought of how she'd opened to him. Her brave innocence had thawed something cold in him, something he thought the Antousians had killed long ago. "She made me feel alive," he said, planting one worn boot on the brick hearth. "Very alive, I'm afraid."
Scott's dark eyebrows shot upward in amusement. "While you were nearly dying?"
"Strange, I know."
Scott leaned back in his chair, studying Jared. "Maybe it was all a hallucination."
Jared shook his head. "She opened to me."
"She did not."
"Scott." Jared's voice rose as he crossed the room and took his seat at the table again. "I bonded with her."
"So you told me," Scott said blandly. "All for a data transfer."
"It was something more." Jared dropped his voice much lower, so none of the others would dare hear—especially not Thea, who was now right outside the doorway. "It wasn't just me, Scott," he explained. "I think, well, that... we bonded together."
"Commander," Scott whispered, leaning close across the table. "Were you insane?" Both men knew the significance of a two-way bond with a stranger—an interspecies bond at that.
"I had to protect the mitres."
"But you didn't need her bonded to you," Scott said gruffly, shoving back from the table with an angry gesture. "And for that, my friend, you cannot offer any excuse."
"Excuse for what?" Thea asked, entering the room again. She might have been his supposed destiny, but as she stared at him with those ethereal blue eyes, Jared felt guilty—even though he had promised his cousin nothing. "Excuse for what?" she repeated, clearly frustrated at the veiled looks Scott exchanged with Jared.
"Commander Dillon is unsettled by my seeming recklessness," Jared answered carefully, staring down at the plans to avoid his cousin's blue-eyed gaze.
She lifted a hand to his shoulder, which was still bandaged even though the wound had mostly healed. "How does this feel?" she asked, turning her touch into something of a caress.
"I am well," he rumbled, ignoring her hand. Finally, she dropped it away.
"Good," she said, formal again, "Because we have a situation this morning. Anika and Anna are on their way now."
Jared opened his mouth to question her further, but at that precise moment a pair of female soldiers entered the meeting room. All of his troops looked a bit alike, thanks to their uniforms and their military bearing, but these two were identical twins, and they shared a grim expression. Jared sensed fear—smelled it on them even before his energy made contact with theirs.
"Sir," Anika announced, out of breath. "We've been patrolling Mirror Lake."
"We were hawking it," her sister explained, black eyes fixed on him. Changelings, the twins were capable of assuming simpler forms: in this case, gliding over the lake as hawks, surveying the scene in bird form.
"Go on," Jared urged with a nod.
Anika stepped forward. "The USAF is searching the lake, sir. The place is swarming with uniformed search teams and equipment."
Inwardly Jared groaned, though he kept his demeanor calm while the soldier continued her report.
"But that's not the worst," she added. "They've located the remnants of your craft."
In all these years, they'd lost only a handful of planes—but every time they did, it put more of their own technology into the humans' hands. And this, of course, put them at a disadvantage, especially since the humans did not differentiate between their own race and that of their enemies: Aliens were aliens were aliens in the eyes of humans—and Jared trusted the human governments very little. He was all too aware of human behavior, their defensiveness when frightened. He'd seen that much firsthand over the past six years.
But Anika wasn't finished. Clearing her throat, she revealed the one thing Jared had feared most about Mirror Lake. "There was a woman there," she continued, suddenly awkward and stammering where she had been confident a moment before. "On the lake's shore, before the teams arrived. She wasn't camping; she seemed to be collecting some sort of samples from the site."
Apparently the camp rumors had traveled very quickly: he knew that much from the quiet blush coloring Anika's cheeks. But it was Kelsey who concerned him at the moment, not the gossip among his people. Jared's head snapped upward, power roiling within his core. "Did the USAF see that human? Did they interact with her at all?"
"No, sir. She left before they arrived."
"Good." Jared released a sigh of relief, but his need to protect his bondmate only intensified. "Very good." He instructed the twins to return to the site, to continue surveying, and to keep him poste
d. Thea followed them out, but not before a telling glance in Jared's direction.
As they left, Scott pulled him aside. "If they find out about the human, they'll take her in for questioning."
Jared set his jaw. "She has no idea what she's actually carrying around."
"But the data is still inside of her, Jared," he cautioned. "If they do anything with her—to her—they could uncover it."
"Don't you think I know that?" Jared snapped.
Scott gaped back at him, but then his features softened. "You know, the bond thing," he said, wincing in obvious displeasure at the idea, "is supposed to be pretty powerful. I wouldn't trust whatever it might be doing to you right now."
"I do not feel the bond," Jared answered. Staring beyond Scott's tall shoulder, he hoped his friend could not detect the bald lie in his words.
"I'm glad," Scott replied. "Because you can't afford any distractions, sir. I'll go get the data from her later today."
Jared raised a staying hand. "I will go," he insisted. "She knows me. And she trusts me."
Scott stared hard into his eyes. Piercingly hard, so much so that Jared knew the man was soul-gazing him again. Jared's temper sparked at the intrusion. "Do not do that," he barked, stepping backward. "Ever. I am still your king, Lieutenant."
Scott dropped his gaze with a slight bow, heat creeping into his face. But he said nothing. No apology, no explanation. Jared clasped his lifelong friend by the shoulder. "Scott, I won't put myself in danger," he said gently. "I promise."
This time it was Scott whose temper flashed hot. "You're already in danger, sir," he snapped, turning on his heels. "I'm just trying to keep you alive despite that fact."
Chapter Four
Kelsey burrowed beneath her grandmother's quilt on her living room sofa, sketch pad balanced on her knees. From the TV in the background, an old rerun of Buffy droned on. That stupid episode about the mayor: probably the single most over-aired episode in Buffy history. Despite her lack of artistic ability, Kelsey had nevertheless been trying to render some sort of drawing of the visitor—as she'd come to term the entity at the lake—that captured his beauty. She knew all about shape-shifters, and she'd watched and read enough sci-fi in her time to understand that her visitor had to be one. A being didn't morph from a ball of light into a six-foot-something gorgeous man without possessing supernatural abilities. It flew in the face of every law and fact she'd learned as a scientist, yet somehow it just felt right. Logical even. The paradox of such illogic confounded her to no end, but the enigma always circled back to the same conclusion: The man she had encountered one week earlier had been like a being right out of science fiction, only he had also been real.
The most bewildering thing about their encounter, however, hadn't actually been his transformation; it was the fact that she'd found herself so attracted to both of his forms. That was a new one for a practical girl like her. And it fascinated her. Exhilarated her. It was as if he'd awakened some slumbering aspect of her soul with that strange fiery touch of his—and with his raw beauty.
It had been one week since their meeting. One week of restless sleeping, of feeling her body blaze hot at the oddest moments. One week of aching for him so intently that she'd felt as though she'd go blind with need. But need of what? An abstract being's caresses? Was he really a man in any form she might recognize? Insanity, she cursed, slamming down the sketch pad. Despite her familiarity with the idea of shape-shifters, as a scientist it contradicted everything she knew about matter and energy. That was a puzzle she'd found herself revisiting all week long. Yet even as the scientist within her protested, she could not deny the reality of what she'd glimpsed with her eyes. Nor could she deny that, based on just one brief encounter, she already had strong feelings for the man—as irrational as that sounded.
In the first day or two, she'd fantasized that he would come for her. That somehow he'd know how to find her—and that he would care to do so. But the passing days had given way to despair as she came to realize the foolishness of the schoolgirl fantasies for an alien stranger that she'd begun harboring. Yet even as she cursed herself, she wondered if there weren't some way to call him back to her, some way to let him know that not only did she want his return, she begged for it with every cell in her human body.
Jared stood before the mirror in his bedroom, examining himself, turning first one way and then another. After nightfall, Anika would drive him to meet with Kelsey Wells. Scott had surveyed her apartment earlier in the day, and all agreed that access would be easy. None of his officers were pleased about Jared going out into the open, yet they couldn't argue with the importance of his retrieving the information he had locked within her mind.
Given the danger, he would not visit her in his usual human form—a form that only thinly veiled his Refarian body—but instead he would morph into a temporary identity. Normally he gave little thought to such a choice; today, however, he found that it was keenly important to choose well. Studying his appearance, he gave his body armor a tug, adjusting the outer shell of his bulletproof vest. At six-foot-four, he was a tall man and definitely a large-framed one. Kelsey, he had noted, was also quite tall for the female of her species. Perhaps she would find his natural Refarian height appealing? He smiled at the thought, pleased, and without meaning to, he felt his internal heat escalate. His energy had been unstoppable for the past week—ever since their bonding—but he had to tamp down those impulses.
Damn the human: she'd reduced him to a schoolboy, he thought with an angry scowl at his reflection in the mirror. Never before had he cared whether a woman admired his height or his eyes or his natural coloring, but now he found his mind wandering in that direction far too many times a day. Like now, as he studied his black eyes, his copper-colored skin—darker than he would ever reveal out in public, among the humans. The unusual tone looked too foreign for this part of the planet, he had learned, despite its general similarity to that of the Native Americans in the region. As Scott had explained, in a large American city such as New York, he would never stand out; however, here in the mountain wilderness, his moody eyes and rich-toned skin marked him as a stranger.
With a weary sigh, he shifted a bit, diminishing his alien coloring into something paler and more unremarkable. Next he adjusted the shape of his fine cheekbones and regal nose, assuming instead a freckle-faced "cowboy" look, then he allowed his black hair to become sandy brown. These changes had the effect of making him plain and unnoticeable, and his pride rebelled at the image staring back at him from the mirror. But it was not ego that drove him; he desperately wanted to appeal to Kelsey Wells. Wanted it more than his very next breath.
Oh, he had lied to Scott this morning for sure. I don't feel the bond, he had claimed. The thought was laughable, and Scott had been right to call him insane for allowing a two-way bond with an alien stranger. Taking a bondmate had always been a sacred ritual among his people, reserved for lovers, for lifemates. Not for alien women like Kelsey Wells, dangerous to a fault. Why dangerous? logic questioned. Because you might open your heart to her even more next time?
Reaching for the bottle he always kept in his dressing quarters, he silenced that nagging thought with a quick shot of whiskey that made his throat burn. Humans possess their share of fine inventions, he thought admiringly as he studied the golden-brown liquid inside the bottle. But then he felt a literal tug in his spirit—a physical reminder of his separation from the human stranger—and his mood blackened again. Indeed it is possible for a king to be a raving idiot, he mused with a weary sigh. So many years in control of his emotions, his thoughts; then he'd gone out of his mind in a fleeting moment. Irrational, that was how he'd felt for the past days, driven by thoughts of a woman he barely knew—yet whose soul kept touching his own hundreds of times a day. How can a man think under such conditions? Simple answer: He could not, and Jared knew that tonight was finally his chance to remedy the situation once and for all.
Yet even with that vow, he found himself turning to the m
irror once again, wondering what she would think of the form he had now assumed. A woman with auburn hair like hers would surely find dramatic looks appealing—and so, with a frown, he shifted his eyes back to their natural dark hue. Rubbing his open palm over the top of his head, feeling the sandy-brown hair prickling his fingertips, he groaned aloud. There was no way he could make all these decisions on his own comm button on his forearm and called for Anika.
When she arrived, he formed his hands into a temple shape beneath his chin as he wrestled for the proper words. He knew that Anika would make an excellent consultant on a choice such as this one. She'd lived deeply enmeshed within the shape-shifter ways all her life, and would understand his dilemma perhaps better than anyone else within camp. And unlike some others, she could be trusted to keep their conversation private.
"I go to see Kelsey Wells," he grunted at her finally. He could have said much more, but he stopped there and stared at her.
She stepped close and patted his thick body armor. "And you are wearing this?'' she asked, tilting her dark head sideways.
"Scott insisted on the protection."
"It hardly . . . blends." She laughed. "If I may say so."
Again he grunted. "I agree with this assessment."
She studied his features, reaching up on her toes to gaze plainly into his face. "And, my lord, if I may further say, you resemble"—she paused, narrowing her eyes— "well, sir, you resemble yourself. I do not think it is safe to venture into the open in such a recognizable form."
"I am having some difficulty," he admitted, dropping his gaze to the floor between them. "I seek your advice."
"Advice about visiting the human, Kelsey Wells?"
"I find there are…too many possibilities for my form." He hesitated. "In this particular situation." With that admission, he coughed into his hand but said nothing more, instead becoming preoccupied with the button on his flak vest.
"Well, then," Anika announced brightly, "we shall definitely make some choices."
Parallel Attraction Page 5