by Louise Wise
Hunted
The conclusion to Eden Sensual Romance Series
©Louise Wise 2014
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Hunted (Beauty and the Beast, #2)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Chapter Fifty Four
Chapter Fifty Five
Chapter Fifty Six
Chapter Fifty Seven
Chapter Fifty Eight
Chapter Fifty Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty One
Epilogue
Eden
Louise Wise also writes romantic comedy: | A Proper Charlie
Oh no, I’ve Fallen in Love!
As the only survivors of their fate, they rely on one another. But he isn’t human and the place she calls home, isn’t Earth.
Eden concludes with Hunted.
Published by Amazon, 2014
Copyright © Text Louise Wise
First Edition
Hunted
By
Louise Wise
The author has asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Special thanks to my editor, Johnny Hudspith, and to the creator of Hunted’s cover, Jane Dixon-Smith.
Chapter One
They had reached the end of summer without Bodie and Matt yet Jenny was still looking peak-key. Fly thought that’s what she called feeling ill. That’s what Bodie said to her just before he left:
‘Looking peaky, Jen, sure you don’t want to come with us?’
She’d replied with a snap, ‘Stop it, Bodie. We’ve already discussed this. I’m not going back. I can’t leave Fly. I don’t want to leave Fly.’
He’d held up his hands and backed away saying, ‘OK, OK, keep your hair on.’
Fly dropped the spade to the ground and made circular movements with his head to release the stiffness in his neck. He’d been rebuilding the foundations to the bridge he had destroyed to stop the humans finding their home. Shading his eyes, he watched as Jenny pushed the woman-made plough through the field, stopping every now and then to remove a stone that had become stuck in the wheels.
She looked well in the distance, but up close, there was a pale tinge to her face, and her appetite wasn’t as it used to be. A human body wasn’t built as strong as a Jelvia’s. The Jelvias had evolved to eradicate disease immediately and tissue repair was fast—Fly touched the thick scar that distorted one side of his face—although not satisfactory.
Maybe she was missing Bodie and Matt? Maybe the emotion of it was making her ill? Emotion. He didn’t pretend to understand it. It was powerful, and that’s all he knew. It had caused him to withhold his instinct to kill the men and to help Jenny instead of… an old memory brought a nasty taste to his mouth. He swallowed it down.
Jenny had been an astronaut and came to Eden in a small pod from the mothership, Taurus. Bodie and Matt were her companions left in orbit inside Taurus, but because of a communication fault, Jenny was stranded on Eden.
They came for her though—or tried to. Taurus crashed and they nearly died, and if it hadn’t been for Jenny’s soft persuasion Fly would have made sure their deaths happened. It was almost too hard to believe that they eventually became friends. He’d learned so much from the humans: a race he thought primeval. Bodie and Matt returned to Earth when the humans sent another ship to complete their failed mission, but Jenny hadn’t wanted to go back.
She loved him.
Just thinking of that caused a bubble of emotion to erupt inside his gut. It was an odd, but not unpleasant, feeling. It dispersed as he bent to pick up the spade and continued to dig the trench.
Love was all-consuming. It made him obsess about things: illness, injury, famine, attack. Famine and attack wouldn’t happen while he was around to look after Jenny, but he couldn’t protect her completely from accidents. And illness, especially human illness, he had no control over. And she was definitely peak-key.
She strode across the field towards their house. He heard her bang inside. Fly had constructed the house from the remains of his old ship after listening to Jenny’s tales of her perfect home. Bodie and Matt’s old house stood in the distance and was used as an abattoir for their cattle and storage of their meat.
Both houses had been built on a lush prairie and detached from the rest of world by a semi-circle of sheer rock and a fast-flowing river. The only entrance, apart from the river, was a cave-like walkway to the beach. Fly had found the area by accident, and he’d begun building the house bit by bit as Jenny told him about her house back home. It stood as a one-storey, one-entranced house with a grass-thatched roof, synthetic windows, manmade furniture and a huge solar-powered generator strapped to a nearby tree.
The door banged again, and Jenny came out wielding a large hammer. Even from a distance, her determined face was pale. She’d vomited this morning, as well. She didn’t think he’d heard her, but he had.
A loud howl caused him to turn. From across the rushing river stood a native ‘man’. His form was covered with matted hair, his arms were overly long but his body was stout and obviously strong. He stopped howling and looked directly at Fly. The ‘man’ chuffed—the voice undeveloped—then he dropped to all-fours and began to pace along the riverbank; reverting to animal with one movement.
The natives had been acting strange lately. Their numbers had lessened, as well. He hadn’t seen any bodies though. They’d just been disappearing a few at a time.
He began making friends with them before Jenny arrived. It was an unconscious act of survival. They knew the land, an
d he didn’t. They taught him a lot. But he had Jenny now, and she mattered much more to him than the natives.
A shout caused him to turn around, and he saw Jenny kick the cart.
She still looked peak-key.
Chapter Two
Fly had become suffocating.
She was trying to keep her morning nausea private, but it was difficult as he hovered around all the time. Obviously, she must look how she felt—bloody awful!
Because of a contraceptive implant, falling pregnant never entered her mind. And even when her periods came back after the implant had ran its course, she still never worried because, after all, she and Fly were two different species of people. She was a human and he a Jelvia—a man from the planet Itor, and she’d assumed their bodies wouldn’t be compatible in that way.
It was a huge shock when her periods stopped, the sickness started and her breasts became tender. A huge shock. In fact, it freaked her out, and she wanted to come to terms with it herself before she told Fly. She wondered how he’d accept her condition—if she was pregnant, that is. She might just be ill.
She was pummelling the dough in the kitchen—a room with a cylindrical clay oven, work surfaces and storage cupboards—and getting it ready for baking in the oven. The oven was always lit in order to maintain a high cooking temperature, and so the room was extra warm. It was Jenny’s favourite room. But today, the heat was getting to her.
Maybe she was ill? Maybe she was running a fever? She was humouring herself. She wasn’t ill. She was pregnant, and it was time to get used to the idea and tell Fly. She glanced at him over her shoulder. He was sitting on the creaky stool, watching her as she worked. He drank from a plastic carton. It had alien words on the side, which Jenny was now fluent in reading. He put the carton down on the wooden side table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Jenny turned back to the dough and rolled it onto a floured tray.
She was pregnant. P.R.E.G.N.A.N.T, she spelled the word in her head. A warmth of excitement rushed her; surprising her and chasing her anxiety away. ‘Up the duff,’ she said softly. Then louder, ‘Knocked up. The eggo is preggo!’
‘What?’ asked Fly.
She smiled, and bent to put the dough into the oven. The door opened with a blast of hot air, and she closed it quickly. She rose, and wiped the film of sweat off her brow. She looked at him, wondering how to break it to him. He was a possessive man. Could he handle some of her attention being taken away from him to look after a child?
Child.
Oh, my God! Jenny Daykin, you’re pregnant! ‘The bun is well and truly in the oven,’ she said.
‘I like your baking,’ he said. ‘Will it be sweet bread?’
‘No, it’s savoury. It’s to go with the fish you said you were going to catch.’
‘I will catch some,’ he answered. ‘I’m waiting for the tide to turn.’
‘You’re seeing if I’m OK, really, aren’t you?’
‘You were sick again this morning,’ he said, his black, dry gaze fixed on her face. ‘You’ve been sick every morning for many days. Fifteen days.’
‘You’ve been counting?’
He cocked his head at her, his long black hair falling to one side and exposing the scar that began from the corner of his mouth and ended at his ear, as if someone had plunged a blade in his mouth and ripped that side of his face open. ‘You are ill,’ he said.
She cleared her throat and reached for a square piece of cloth to wipe her hands. ‘Fly,’ she began, ‘there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m not ill—’
He stood up and came towards her, took the cloth from her hands and threw it to one side. He rested his hands on her hips. ‘Then you are upset that you didn’t go with Bodie and Matt?’
‘What? No! No, of course not.’ She pulled his hands off her hips and clutched them in hers. They were riddled with scars. He was born to such a savage world and sometimes failed to understand her gentler emotions. ‘Come into the other room. It’s too hot in here,’ Jenny said. ‘There’s something I need to tell you. But it’s nothing bad,’ she added. She led him into their living room. Because the oven warmed this room too, they used this room as a bedroom, and their bedding was on the floor in front of an unlit fire. Jenny sat on their homemade settee.
Watching her sit Fly said, ‘I will fetch you medicine anyway.’ His all-black eyes were sparkling. ‘Sit back,’ he said and gently pushed her backwards. ‘Put your feet up. Maybe the hard work is too much for you. Your human body is weak—’
‘Stop while you’re ahead,’ she said.
He frowned, not understanding.
She lifted her feet and stretched out. ‘Look,’ she said, teasing. ‘My feet are up.’
Fly wasn’t one for understanding jokes.
Her smile left her face. ‘Sit down, Fly. I want to talk to you.’
‘Soon,’ he said, and irritatingly left only to come back a moment later with several packets of medicine supplies and a carton of fresh water. He gave her the water, and stood and tried to decipher the words on the packets. Bodie had taken them from Taurus XII before he’d returned to Earth—he’d left them many other supplies. She held out her hands for the medicine but laid them in her lap without looking at them.
‘I’m not ill,’ she said. ‘We might need these pills and antibiotics later, but for now, I don’t need to take them.’ She moved her legs off the settee saying, ‘Sit.’
‘You look peak-key,’ he said, sitting beside her.
‘Fly, I’m pregnant.’ She had to say it quickly, and when she did, they stared at one another for a full minute, neither speaking.
Jenny broke the silence, ‘In the early months women used to get sickness. Morning sickness they called it because it happened mainly in the morning, but medical advances saw that eradicated on Earth, but well, here, we’re basically starting again, aren’t we?’
He hadn’t spoken yet.
‘Fly?’
‘Our genetic makeup is too different,’ he said at last. ‘You can’t be pregnant!’
‘I’ve been feeling like this for a while. I was about to announce it when Logan came, then, well… you know what it was like. Bodie and Matt deciding and undeciding whether to stay or go. Making sure Logan and crew didn’t spot us, faking my death and all that. It slipped my mind.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘This is bad.’
Bad that it had slipped her mind? Jenny frowned. ‘It’s good news, Fly. I’m not ill. I’m pregnant!’ She injected enthusiasm into her voice and beamed at him.
He drew himself up as if he needed to regulate himself, then got up and turned from Jenny so she was left staring at his broad back. He was a huge man, and Jenny had often wondered if it was typical of his race or just genetic.
In another life, he had been an assassin, but he’d killed the wrong person, and his primary managers turned their backs on him and saw him imprisoned. His punishment, along with others, was banishment to another planet. Fly had told her that this was an experimental venture by the Jelvian authorities, but the prisoners rebelled, the spaceship crashed, and all but Fly had perished. He had lived on Eden alone with the natives until she, Bodie and Matt arrived with their European flag and excitement.
He believed that loneliness had crippled him but Jenny knew it was because there was no need for his brutality here. Survival mattered and as social creatures, they needed one another. But sometimes, sometimes, she could see he was battling with his old teachings. She told herself she wasn’t frightened when she saw his eyes dry up, or his large, scarred hands clench into fists as if an emotion was struggling to erupt. But she knew she was lying to herself. The old Fly she was terrified off. Her Fly, the one who was tender when they made love, who had brought her food from the very beginning and built her a house from the stories she told him of home, that was the Fly she wasn’t scared of. He was the one she loved. But sometimes there were glimpses of the murderer, and Jenny was all too aware of how dependent on him she was for her survival�
��at his hands, not just the planet’s. He had been so jealous of Matt and Bodie, surely he wouldn’t be jealous of his own baby?
Time had helped her come to terms with her pregnancy. Maybe that’s all Fly needed, she assured herself. Time.
‘Fly?’
He turned around. His all-black eyes either glistened or were completely dry depending on his mood, now they were as dry as a sandstorm. ‘How did you forget something like that? You should have told Bodie. He was a doctor.’
Her own anger caught her unawares. She was always piggy-in-the-middle—between him, Bodie and Matt, and now the baby. She was pregnant, for Christ’s sake! He could hardly be uncertain of who the father was in their situation! She stood up and faced him with her arms folded across her chest.
‘I didn’t forget. I chose not to tell him. He would’ve stayed and forgo his chance of going back home. I couldn’t risk that!’
‘He was a doctor. He would have helped you remove it before he went home.’
Did she hear right? Did he say ‘remove it’ like it was a mole on her leg or something?
‘He was a doctor,’ Fly repeated. ‘He would have made something for you to drink. To destroy the foetus.’