Redemption: Sci Fi Romance (Far Hope Series Book 2)

by E. A. James

  Bane nodded. He was skilled as a soldier but he knew little of this world and even though he would be able to find it – his mind was powerful after all – it was easier when Hannah helped him. He was amazed that she was willing to do so even though he was alien to her. He was amazed that she’d developed feelings for him. He was amazed that he felt the same about her. He’d searched for a mate for years, and now he’d found one a foreign life form.

  They climbed the stairs. Hannah paused at the door, listening. The war was over. Bane could feel it in his bones. There were many humans out there but none were fighting.

  He nodded at Hannah who typed in a code and the door clicked open. They emerged in the same loading dock where they’d been when the war had broken loose, and they crept to the small door once again. Bane wasn’t nervous but his heart fluttered in his chest nevertheless. He was feeling Hannah’s emotions and her nervousness bordered on fear.

  “We will be alright,” he said to reassure her. The nervousness lifted slightly. Not a lot but it was something.

  She led the way around the side of the facility. Rubbish bins lined the wall and the stench was overpowering. A moment later they were in a parking lot and Hannah walked toward a black car that looked a lot like the machine that had nearly run Bane over when he’d arrived on the planet.

  “Get in,” she ordered and Bane complied. He opened the door on the other side she got in and slid into the leather seat. The inside of the vehicle looked a little like a space ship. There were controls everywhere.

  “Does this fly?” he asked.

  Hannah shook her head, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “We’ll drive there, but we can make good time. A lot of it is open road.”

  She started the car and turned into the road. There were people everywhere, bright lights flooding the war scene. Bodies were littered across the grounds, humans and his own people alike. Dragons were twisted in unnatural ways, and scorched patches of land showed where there had been fire from a dragon’s mouth.

  Sorrow grabbed a hold of Bane when he saw his people slaughtered. The humans had reached a similar fate but somehow death was too final for the destruction and pain they had caused.

  “We have lost so many,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse. Emotion flooded him and pricked his eyes. He felt the war inside Hannah, how she fought to find the right words. Eventually, she spoke.

  “If there was any way I could make this right…”

  Bane nodded. So pure of heart was his Hannah. She had lost as many of her race as Bane had lost of his, and still, justice was important to her. His affection for her only grew the more he got to know her.

  “You already are.”

  She looked at him and smiled. He reached to her hand on the stick she kept shifting and held it. She made her way through three gates, holding her breath every time, and then she turned into a road that seemed to stretch to the horizon both ways.

  “We’re out,” she breathed and I felt the relief coursing through her veins. “Three hours and we’ll get you home.”

  Bane looked out the window. The night was completely dark, pin pricks of light stretching across the vast span of darkness above them. This world was beautiful. It was difficult to see how the creatures that lived here could take it for granted. It was impossible to know how much cruelty existed here, side by side with the beauty and the harmony.

  “I don’t understand your race,” he said after they’d driven in silence for a while, linked by their hands.

  “To be honest with you, very few people understand. They’re always talking about peace and they’re always finding new ways to kill each other. We’re a walking contradiction.”

  Bane nodded and looked back out of the window to his side. She was right. The fact that she agreed with him made him warm inside. They were of different species, but they spanned the universe by agreeing and he knew that if she came with him she would fit into his world. She wasn’t like the rest of them.

  “Tell me about your life,” he said. He knew so little about her and her life, about the world that she grew up in. He was leaving soon, and he found he wished he knew more about what she was leaving behind. About what she was choosing to leave behind for him.

  She took a deep breath and once again her emotions were conflicted. There was passion, nostalgia, but also pain and regret.

  “My father is very strict. He has very high standards and it’s impossible to please him.”

  “But still, you try?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Being a disappointment seems so much worse. I lost my mother when I was very young and my father makes it clear that I will never be like her. The alternative is to be like him. Apparently, I failed at that as well.”

  Bane frowned. She seemed to regret her inability to please her father.

  “Being your own version of yourself is not an option?”

  She chuckled but there was no humor, only sadness. “You make it seem so simple. It’s hard to be yourself when no one wants you to be.”

  Bane thought for a moment.

  “I want you to be yourself.”

  He looked at her. She glanced at him before she turned her eyes back to the stretch of road they drove on and her mouth curled up in a smile. “It’s all I want you to bring with you when we leave. Yourself. Nothing else. No expectations.”

  Hannah nodded. The thought of leaving brought on a spike of sadness, a touch of fear, and something else that felt a lot like excitement. Bane focused on the first two.

  “Do you want to stay?”

  He would respect her wishes to stay behind if he left. It would tear him apart to leave her behind and he doubted he would ever heal from such a wound, but if that was what she wanted she deserved it.

  Hannah hesitated. “No, I don’t think so. This world is all I know but life here hasn’t exactly been fun. It’s been hell, actually, until I met you. How much worse can it really be?”

  Her last sentence was meant to be humorous, but it sounded grave.

  “If you’re unhappy I promise to return you to your home.”

  Another side glance from her. She nodded.

  When they were close Bane felt it.

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” he asked. Hannah nodded and turned off the road. They were in the middle of nowhere, but his people were here. He felt alive again. She parked the car and got out. He followed. She turned in a circle, looking.

  “There’s nothing here.”

  “Wait.”

  As he spoke the place lit up. A wind started blowing, whipping her hair, and then his ship appeared. It had been cloaked until his arrival.

  Hannah gasped.

  “That’s it?”

  He looked at the ship as if it were strange, from another world. It was spectacular. Smooth metal, oval shaped and larger than the facilities where he’d been held.

  “It’s amazing,” she breathed. It really was. The door opened with a swish and Mage stepped out. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders.

  “Bane, it has been too long. We feared you were dead.”

  “I’m alive.”

  Her eyes slid to Hannah. She opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t have a chance to speak. Light flashed and the roaring sound of a helicopter cut her off. There were spotlights on both of them. Lines and lines of trucks and cars pulled into the field.

  “Oh, no,” Hannah said and there was genuine fear. It was like a cold rush. Bane followed her eyes and saw them trained on a man in the front vehicle. The man who had ordered them to stop in the cell when he was beaten. Her father, he realized. Her fear of him was painful. No one should feel that way about the person that raised you.

  “He’s brought the entire army,” she said. Her voice was high pitched.

  “We will make sure you are free,” Bane said. He looked at Mage who nodded. She was on his side, less suspicious than Hocus had been. Was his friend alive? He didn’t know yet.

  “Stay behind me,” Bane said. Hannah stepped onto the r
amp that led to the ship. Mage stepped forward so that she was in line with Bane.

  “There are others around,” she said. “They will help.”

  Bane nodded and believed her. He heard a pop and he knew Mage was changing. He looked at Hannah. She was wide-eyed and scared but there was determination coming from her, too.

  Bane turned his attention to the army and brought his own dragon to the party. This was ending here and now.

  It happened very fast. They all opened fire at the same time. A moment later more dragons appeared and the war was back where it had been at the facility. It was impossible to think that the humans were willing to do the same again after they had lost so many lives. Bane fought, spraying fire, trying to eliminate the weapons and not the people. Sometimes it failed.

  At one point a sharp pain penetrated his chest. Bane checked his body but there was no sign of blood. He turned and looked toward the ship. He felt like he was dying, his body suddenly weak. He saw Hannah lying in a crumpled heap, blood pouring from a wound in her chest the same place he was hurting.

  They’d hurt her. That bastard had hurt his own daughter. Bane turned back to them and saw red.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hannah opened her eyes. She was surrounded by white. She couldn’t tell where she was or why she was there. A sharp pain in her chest made her wince. The rest of her body felt numb.

  Where the hell was she?

  A face moved into her line of vision.

  “Where am I?” she asked. It was a woman and she wore white. Her skin was pale, her hair virtually colorless, so that she looked like her surroundings. She checked Hannah’s vitals without looking her in the eye once or speaking.

  “I asked you a question,” Hannah said. Breathing made her chest hurt. “Where’s Bane?”

  The mention of his name caused a flicker of recognition on the nurse’s face but she carried on ignoring Hannah.

  Hannah tried to push herself up. The nurse didn’t try to stop her, but the pain did her work for her. Hannah fell back, whimpering. She remembered the shooting, the dragons, and her dad’s empty eyes. God, the way he’d stared at her it was like he’d disowned her as his daughter. It had been apparent what she’d done, whose side she’d chosen.

  And he hated her for it now. If he came in here she was going to get it and bad.

  “Please talk to me?” she asked in a polite voice. It didn’t help any more than demanding or pleading had.

  She closed her eyes and tried to figure out if there was pain anywhere else. Other than her chest, though, she seemed okay. Her chest and her heart. Where was Bane? Where was her father?

  The doors to the white room slid open and Bane walked in. His black hair and diamond eyes were in stark contrast to all the white.

  “Thank you, Fern,” he said. The nurse nodded and moved away.

  “You’re alive.” Bane looked like he’d been scared she wouldn’t be.

  “I am,” Hannah said. “Hurting, but alive. What happened with the war?”

  Bane shook his head. She wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “We got away. We’re in the ship now, on our way to the next planet that might be habitable.”

  Hannah looked around. “We’re in outer space.”

  Bane smiled and nodded. “You’re in our medical facility. You were caught in the cross fire. I felt the bullet when it penetrated your chest.”

  Hannah gasped.

  They were silent for a while, Hannah taking it all in.

  “Do you still want this?” Bane asked.

  “Leaving with you?”

  He nodded. Hannah didn’t have to think about it.

  “I do. I saw my father on the front of that truck before they started shooting, and the truth is I didn’t recognize him. That man can’t be the person I aspire to be.”

  Bane leaned forward and kissed her lightly before pushing his hands into her hair.

  “It’s going to be uncertain from here on out. We don’t know what we’ll find. We’re still searching for a place to call home.”

  Hannah nodded, her hand sliding up Bane’s until she reached his chest.

  “It will be an adventure.”

  ***THE END***

  THE PRIMAL BILLIONAIRE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Margaret could sense someone standing over her. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know who it was—Liz. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, hoping that her roommate would eventually go away. It didn’t work. Liz began to noisily move around the room, clanging glasses together, and shuffling through papers. She must have lost patience with Margaret, because the next thing she knew, Liz was tossing bits of old popcorn in her direction.

  “I’m up,” Margaret said, covering her face with her hands to prevent any more kernels from hitting her.

  “About time,” Liz said annoyed. She gathered up a handful of dishes and walked out of the room.

  As Margaret sat up, she wiped the sleep from her eyes, and let her legs hang over the edge of the small, beat-up couch. She couldn’t believe that this was where she had ended up. When she moved to New York six months ago she had big dreams and high hopes. She was going to be a famous actress; she was going to make a name for herself.

  The city proved to be a lot more unfriendly than she had expected. Coming from a small town in upstate New York, Maggie was unfamiliar with the heartless, cold, no-nonsense world that was the Big Apple. In the last months, she hadn’t gotten one single acting job—not even a commercial spot or uncredited appearance on a TV show. She had been to more auditions than she could count, and nothing. She had already blown through her savings, which was what led her to this—sleeping on the old couch in the small, cramped family room of a dumpy two bedroom apartment in Queens. Initially she had her own room. It was a small room but it had a door and privacy, and provided her with some sort of dignity. But when she could no longer afford to pay the rent, her roommate found someone else who could.

  It was true that Liz’s willingness to let Maggie crash on the couch until she could get on her feet could be perceived as kind. But that’s not what it felt like. Margaret was more convinced that the only reason Liz hadn’t kicked her out completely was because she enjoyed having her around—it made her feel better about herself. She was constantly putting her down, reminding her on an almost daily basis that she was on the brink of complete failure.

  Liz had been living in the city for several years, and she was not afraid to tell Margaret that she didn’t think she “had what it took” to survive. “You’re too weak,” she said one day while they were watching TV. “This city is going to chew you up and spit you out. You’re better just going back to wherever it is you came from. Save yourself the embarrassment and pain.”

  Her roommate’s observations did little to help Maggie’s self-confidence, which was always low. Her family and friends from home had always said that she would need to be more certain of herself if she was going to make it in the overly competitive world of acting. Until recently it had never been an issue. Taking on roles in school plays and small, local productions was never a problem for her. She enjoyed the experience of being someone else—it was an escape from who she was.

  But now she could see that being able to portray someone self-assured and confident wasn’t enough. When going to auditions and casting calls, she needed to show the directors that she was someone who was comfortable in her own skin—someone who had spunk and tenacity.

  And that was not Margaret. She couldn’t be confident with who she was when she found herself so boring and plain. While she didn’t think she was unattractive, she didn’t think she was attractive either. She was just average. Her hair was medium length and a very dull color of brown. Her eyes matched her hair—dull brown. She was curvy, something that she never seemed to care about or notice before. But now, going to compete with other girls, all skinny and slender, she suddenly felt out of place.

  Maggie got to her feet to begin folding up the sheet she used the night before, w
hen she saw the newspaper on the coffee table. This was Liz’s newest way of dropping hints that she wanted her out. Every morning for the last week she had left the paper out and opened to the classifieds.

  After putting the sheet away, Margaret returned to the couch and began scanning the columns for potential jobs. Most required some level of experience, all in areas that she had none. There was nothing—literally nothing—that fit into Margaret’s limited frame of abilities.

  Moving past the jobs section, she decided to look at other sections of the classifieds. “There has to be something I can do,” she said under her breath as she continued to scan the black print. When she came across the “Situations Wanted” section she paused momentarily. The only things she saw were for escorts. “Right,” she scoffed, “’escorts’.” She knew what that meant—prostitutes. Her mother had worried that her moving to the big city would end in her selling her body for money. “I’ll move home before I do that,” she said to herself determinedly.