by Imogene Nix
Rogue nodded. “Let’s arm up.”
Elara smiled. “Let’s go get your man.”
* * * *
Damon’s consciousness waned with each blow he took to the face. His breaths escaped in ragged, painful exhalations with each boot that kicked his ribs in.
“Where is the ship!”
The question had long since become a curse because Crool had realized Damon wasn’t going to talk. By this point, Damon wasn’t even sure if his jaw still worked.
“Where is the fucking ship?”
The roar caused the pain in Damon’s brain to explode in another wave of agony.
“Out of your reach.” The soft, lethal tone made Damon’s body lurch upward. Angela.
Before he could react, the thunder of gunfire exploded in the space. Bullets ricocheted all around him, the sound drowning out the screams and curses of men as they fell to the ground. Several bodies landed on top of Damon. He fought to move and free himself from the cage of carcasses, but it was no use. His leg was shattered, most of his ribs broken, and likely he had a concussion.
“Angela.” He hoped the word escaped and it wasn’t just his imagination. More explosions deafened him. “I love you.”
His already black world went silent. His time was done.
* * * *
Thump. A steady drum woke Damon from his slumber. As a peaceful silence lingered, he realized it was the beating of his heart. Instead of the cold cave floor he was used to, he rested on something soft and warm. His body ached, but he’d never been so elated to be in agony. Pain meant he was alive.
“Damon?”
The soft tone was enough to make him fight to pry open his swollen eyelids. His reward caused his pulse to spike, sending a wave of heat through his body. “Angela.”
She smiled, a bright white light that took away all his pain. A tear slid down her cheek. He tried to lift his hand to wipe it away, but his limb wasn’t ready to move. Angela smiled through the tears and Damon couldn’t help but wonder at his luck.
“You’re okay,” he breathed in relief.
She sobbed through a laugh. “I could say the same about you.” She cupped his cheek and bent down to kiss his lips. Her softness melted against him and he had the only medicine he’d need to recover. She pulled away much too soon. “Don’t worry, you’re safe.”
“Why did you come back?” His voice sounded weak, startling him.
“Because I realized I couldn’t leave this planet without you.” Happiness gleamed in Angela’s eyes, causing elation to spread through his chest like a magical drug. “I love you, Damon.”
“I love you so much.” The declaration took any remaining weight from his shoulders. “I can’t deserve you. I’m so sorry I lied to you.”
“Shh.” You need to rest. She silenced him with a long, lingering kiss. He felt more and more alive by the moment. When she pulled away she smiled again, a sight that he’d never get enough of. “You’ll need to be in tip-top shape when we arrive.”
He looked around, dragging his eyes away from Angela for the first time. “Where are we?”
Angela climbed into bed where Damon lay. She fit perfectly into the crook of his arm and gazed up at him with a planet-shattering smile. “I’m taking you home, Damon.”
As the space shuttle propelled past stars toward a planet that might not accept him, Damon feared nothing. His life lay beside him, a precious warmth that he would cherish no matter where in the galaxy they ended up. Damon found the strength to place his arm around her. “I’m already there. I love you, Angela.”
About Jaye Shields
Jaye Shields is a flight attendant by day and romance author by night. Her addictions include reading, travel, and other activities not even a romance writer will confess to. She’s in a committed love affair with her readers so don’t be shy!
Jaye’s Website:
www.jayeshields.com
Reader eMail:
[email protected]
Bond
by Beth D. Carter
A woman who has nothing to lose, and a man with everything to gain.
They had known each other a lifetime ago, but love while serving as slaves to the TEV, the aliens who rule Earth, wasn’t something that could ever last. When Freya’s family escaped, leaving the only home she’d ever known, she left Kory behind, but she can’t forget him.
When she meets him again, Kory isn’t the human boy she remembered. He has survived a horrific scientific experiment that has changed him into a hybrid—half human, half TEV. Can she trust this man who has now, essentially, become a member of the enemy?
Content Warning: contains sexual content and some violence
Dedication
For the other lovely ladies I share this book with: Ashlynn, Imogene, and Jaye. This book happened along during a rough patch in my life, and the message I write about in Bond is one of hope and perseverance. I cling to both now as I journey into an unknown future.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Pamela and everyone at Beachwalk Press for greenlighting Volume 2. I hadn’t thought of a future for Gravitation, and now I’m glad I got the chance to write Freya’s story.
Prologue
From the advantage of the rocky shelf she lay on, Freya was able to spy on the meeting her parents had hurried to attend. They stood talking to Adam, his wife, and two other couples, and none of it sounded good.
A warm body slithered up her side, and she startled before Kory’s mop of dark hair popped up beside her.
“You scared me,” she whispered.
“You’re scared of everything,” he teased, tugging on one of her curls. “What have I missed?”
Freya looked back down on the grown-ups. “Adam and my father are trying to convince your parents to leave.”
“Leave? Leave for where?”
“To the outside. Leave the mountain.”
“That’s crazy,” he said. “There’s nothing outside this mountain.”
“Apparently, Adam has found a way to get out. He’s been there.”
Outside. Both knew the significance of that word. They’d been told the world was contaminated, filled with poison gas since the terrible war between the humans and the invaders. Nothing had survived.
“It’s a wasteland,” Kory said.
“He said there’s a world out there,” she whispered. “Trees. Grass. He calls it freedom.”
Silence fell between them as they watched the adults argue.
Freya felt lost. Bewildered. How could her parents want to leave on the word of one man? The elders told stories of a time when people lived above ground, with no aliens to herd them like cattle, but no one had been alive at that time. No one remembered, so to Freya they were just bedtime stories to induce pleasant dreams.
However, the more Adam talked about the world beyond the mountain gates, the more intriguing it sounded. He talked about how the invaders controlled the masses and fear was the best weapon, especially for people who knew nothing else. It made sense. If her family, or Kory, were being threatened, there wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for them. They might only be fifteen, but Freya loved her friend with all her heart. In the darkness, she grabbed hold of his hand and held tight.
“They want to leave,” she murmured, getting to the heart of what the argument was really about. “But I don’t want to leave without you.”
His grip was tight, but she loved that fierceness about him. Kory didn’t work in the mines, at least not yet, but already his lanky form was filling out with muscle. Soon he’d be digging for the minerals the TEV wanted, just like his father and grandfather before him.
“If you leave, I’ll go with you,” he vowed. The promise fell so easily off his tongue. “I’ll always be at your side.”
The knot in her stomach slowly unclenched. She could face anything as long as Kory was next to her. “Promise?”
“I swear it.”
Chapter 1
Freya woke with tears still fresh on her chee
k. Damn it. She hated dreaming about Kory, or about her parents. Nothing good ever came from remembering the past. After she and Kory had crawled away from listening to their parents, they’d gone to their special place, a hideaway, where they usually vented about how unfair life was. That day, she and Kory had kissed. They had declared their love, their intentions to always be together.
That night she and her parents had left the mountain thinking Kory would meet up with them, but as each day slipped by she’d come to the horrible conclusion that she had been the one to break their pact by leaving him behind. She’d begged her parents to go back, had even tried running away only to get hopelessly lost. It had been a bitter revelation that they were forever parted.
She impatiently wiped the wetness off her face and rose to stretch before moving into the bushes to relieve herself. It got harder and harder to wake up, to find the energy to continue moving forward. Hopelessness was fast filling up her heart.
As she walked back into camp, the rest of the group stirred to wakefulness. Presently, she was with a bunch of people that didn’t seem to know that staying in one place, singing songs, and building homes wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Yet she’d been sick and desperate when she’d stumbled into the settlement and so she’d stayed far longer than she should have, only to have to scatter in the night when the invaders had come to annihilate them.
The invaders, or TEV as they called themselves, were humanoid looking creatures with large oval eyes and defined cheekbones. They’d arrived a couple of generations back, taking over Earth, reducing the population by half and turning the survivors into their own mining slaves. Freya had lived her childhood inside a mountain, until her parents had run away.
They’d been gone a long time, and her soul was completely alone.
Shaking her head, she pushed aside the memories. There was no room in this world for memories, for “what-ifs”. If she wanted to survive, she had to set one foot in front of the other. It was depressing as hell, and once again she wondered what, exactly, there was to live for.
It had been two weeks since the attack and all she wanted to do was forget, but the quiet gloom that hung over everyone made sure that couldn’t happen. Children had been lost, and there wasn’t anything sadder than burying the body of a little boy or girl. Freya stayed with the group because she didn’t know what else to do, or where to go, but she would never consider herself part of them.
The morning rays woke the rest of the people up. They all ate jerky for breakfast and washed it down with water. She hated jerky. Hated the fact they would be on the move again, pushing ever closer to the mountain. Why they were going back she didn’t know, except maybe that was the only place to survive anymore. The scouts were numerous now, seeking out any humans and killing without mercy. Men, women, children. It didn’t matter to the TEV. Those outside the mountain were expendable.
They got moving sometime after daybreak and headed north. The days were growing shorter, the nights a little chillier. Freya had no idea what they would do once the winter winds came. The men talked about joining up with another group, but she thought maybe they were trying a little too hard to be optimistic. She no longer believed in a happy ever after, or luck. Or peace. Life wasn’t peaceful, or easy, or even good. It was just…moving.
They stopped for lunch and ate jerky. Freya knew they would soon have to scout for something different, wild vegetables or berries or something. The human body needed nutrients to survive, more than just dried-out rabbit or squirrel meat.
One of the survivors named Ben meandered up to her and sat down next to her on the cool ground. Freya looked at him out of her peripheral vision but didn’t acknowledge him outright. Ben had lost his wife in the TEV attack, and while she felt sorry for him, she didn’t like that he’d invaded her space.
“You’re going to have to choose,” he said abruptly.
“Excuse me?” she asked, confused. Choose what?
He pointed to the assembled group. There were six men and two women, counting her. Suddenly, she understood very well what he meant.
“Resources are going to be tight,” he replied. “We no longer have the settlement, and we need to rebuild. That means children. So you’re going to have to pick which man you want to protect you.”
Anger swelled within her. She glared at Ben. “Didn’t you just lose a wife?”
He shrugged. “If it had been me, I wouldn’t expect her to remain faithful to a memory. This world doesn’t let us mourn.”
She didn’t tell him she’d been mourning her lost love for thirteen years.
“Besides, you’re slightly long in the tooth,” Ben said, looking her over. “Time you had a man.”
Freya shot to her feet. There was no way she was going to continue to sit next to him while he talked about being an undesirable because of her age. Yes, she was older than most, but that meant she’d learned how to remain hidden far better than others.
She hurried away, from him, from all of them. The stares of the men scorched her back, but she ignored them. Ben’s words were an unwanted reminder that she was all alone in this world, unwanted except to be Eve to an Adam.
Once she was far enough away from them, she sat dejected on a log and stared into the forest stretching out endlessly in all directions. Tiredness wrapped its chain around her shoulders, a never-ending feeling of desolation and melancholy. Ben’s words made the weight almost unbearable because she couldn’t deny them, unfeeling as they may be. She had a choice to make. Go on with them and become the next wife to one of the men, or branch out on her own. Neither prospect was very appealing, but the latter she could live with. The former...well, Kory’s ghost made that option intolerable.
She got to her feet and took a deep breath. Without looking back she continued her trek deeper into the wilderness, away from the survivors.
Chapter 2
Freya had no idea where she was headed, except for the fact she was walking west. She had no desire to return to the mountain her parents had left. That night had been fraught with tension as they’d followed Adam and his family in complete silence through the winding corridor of rock. She still remembered the first time she’d smelled fresh air. Had seen the sun and the moon. A bird. A fox. Fish. It had all been new and wondrous, and yet sad. She’d been the only teenager and had deeply missed Kory, wishing he’d been there to explore the freedom with her.
Toward evening she came to a wide river and bit her lip. It was too dangerous to travel at night, so this would be the best place to make camp. In the morning she’d reevaluate her situation. Nestled at the base of a tree, she closed her eyes.
A noise jolted her awake and Freya sat up quickly, listening. The ominous absence of sound shook her, and she quietly scrambled to her feet in order to be ready to flee if need be. As her heart thundered in her ears, she waited, running her sweaty palms down her trouser legs. How long she stayed poised for flight she didn’t know, but gradually the tension through the night creatures relaxed. Crickets chirped. The leaves blew. Freya felt whatever presence had been close disappear, and she slumped against the tree trunk.
She couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, and when dawn finally broke she hurried to clean up in the ice cold river. Her belly rumbled, reminding her to find some food. Scavenging, she came across gooseberries and along the shady tree line she found Indian cucumber root. The plant itself was poisonous, but the roots could be eaten raw, and right now, she wasn’t picky. A quick rinse off in the river and she happily had enough to munch on through the day.
The river blocked her from heading west, forcing her to turn north. About midmorning, something ahead caught her eye. Curious, she hurried forward, and as she crested over a hill, she saw a TEV warrior. Her breath hitched with fear, and she ducked down so he wouldn’t see her. She was downwind from him, so that eased her panic a little. Still, she wondered why he was walking. Why wasn’t he using a hover disc to travel? And where was he going?
Following him would be complete
ly foolish, and yet she couldn’t help herself. Like a marionette being guided by invisible hands, Freya stalked him. Several times he looked behind, causing her to hide, and each time he did that she held her breath, waiting. But he’d continue on his journey, so she continued hers, keeping far enough away to blend into the wilderness.
They walked for hours, and she munched on gooseberries. She’d gotten used to always being hungry, so her rumbling belly didn’t faze her at all. When the sun cast long shadows over the land, the TEV warrior entered a clearing and halted.
She skirted the perimeter and saw a narrow, rectangular building emitting a low, humming buzz. What was that thing? A generator? If so, for what? The questions tumbled through her mind, and she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if it was turned off. What calamity could befall the TEV, if any? And once that idea tumbled through her head, it was like a snowball rolling along, gathering mass.
How could it be disabled?
As she sat in the thicket of trees and studied the strange, pulsating edifice, the warrior lifted his arm and tapped on a small computer strapped to his wrist. Then he held up his wrist toward the building and slowly walked around it. Why he needed it scanned confused her, but whatever it did had to be important to the TEV, because the warrior had traveled a long way to get to it. They were in the middle of nowhere.
When he disappeared around the side she silently, carefully, left the grove of trees and walked toward the generator. Why weren’t there any guards? She stopped about ten feet from it, picked up a broken stick, and threw it at the generator. It sizzled and bounced off the force field protecting it. She’d been expecting one, of course. Still, it would have been nice to have been proven wrong.