by Amanda Boone
The sound of footsteps made her heart thud.
Oh God.
She scurried into the room full of antique books, her own breathing blocking out the shuffling of her stalker. She stomped one foot in front of the other, her hurried walk becoming a run. The stale air ruffled her damp hair, but she turned because she couldn’t resist just one good look at him.
But when she chanced a glance, she found nothing in her wake. Emily skidded to a stop, resting her hands on her knees, doubling over and sucking in generous breath after breath.
When her heart had slowed, there he was, the bane of her thoughts. He stood at the end of the hall, towering six and a half feet. One fist hung down at his side, his clenched hand poking through the sleeve of a leather jacket. His other hand fiddled idly with his button.
Emily’s breath came quick and shallow as she locked eyes with the emerald stare of the man from her dreams. She told herself not to run. She told herself to confront him. But as soon as she watched him take his first step, she turned and sprinted down the other end of the hallway.
She couldn’t face him. At least not yet.
She darted into one of the tall isles of books, the shelves blocking any kind of light. She held her breath, pressing her lips shut.
She listened, for there it was again, the footsteps.
A nervous sweat streamed down the side of her face. She didn’t dare move to swipe it away. But he found her anyway. In mere moments he had turned the corner into her isle. This time her fatigue kept her rooted.
As he approached, she got a good look at his high cheekbones, his strong jaw, and his prominent brow. She gulped, ignoring the way her body melted at the beautiful sight. He kept coming until nothing more than a foot separated the two of them.
She caught a whiff of his scent: sharp, like pine, and yet soft, like the burning wood of a fire.
He pressed his body against hers, her back pushing into the shelf behind her. She felt a sharp pang of pleasure shoot through her as he rested his hand on her hip. He drew himself closer and closer. Her eyes flickered shut in anticipation…
Emily shot out of bed, her hair damp with sweat, flying all around her. It took four deep breaths for her mind to convince her body that it had only been a dream…again.
She reluctantly climbed out of bed and made her way to her small bathroom, where she washed her face and brushed her teeth, staring at the aged tile as she did so. As she dragged on a fitted, black dress and assaulted her hair with dry shampoo, the scent of frying bacon and slightly burnt toast made its way up to her.
A smile played on her lips as she hurried down the hall and into the kitchen, where Mauve stood, putting two plates together.
He turned, a plate in his hand and a smile on his wrinkled, worn face. “Hello, love. How did you sleep?”
Emily shrugged as she grabbed a newspaper off the counter and took her place at the table. “I had that dream again.”
“About the lost one?” he asked, his warm, shaking voice soothing her nerves.
She nodded. “I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”
He pursed his lips. “You said he was one of them, did you not?”
Emily sighed. “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter, right? It’s just a dream.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, jutting his fork out at her. “But one you keep having it over and over again.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m just as perplexed as you are.”
A grin stretched across his face. “Say that it’s a sign. Maybe this just means you are coming close to finding what you are looking for.”
Emily nodded. Throughout the rest of her breakfast she attempted to convince herself that he was right and this was nothing more than a subconscious product of her endless search for the histories of her true parents.
She finished her breakfast and headed out, but not before planting a kiss on the forehead of her adoptive father.
Moments later, she found herself in the basement of the very real library in the small, Australian town of Goolway. She combed through old scrolls, a pencil in one hand and her magnifying glass in the other. These were the records of the aborigines that had been driven out of this area hundreds of years ago, which had been recently excavated by a local archeologist.
She scanned the page, her heightened comprehensive abilities guiding the translation until she found it…
“ … and they were godlike creatures….”
Her heart skipped a beat as she nearly dropped the fragile artifact. It wasn’t conclusive evidence of anything, but it gave her a place to start searching, a glimmer of hope to keep her motivated in this search for the story of her parents.
She recorded what she had found, carefully stowed it away, and made her way up to the front desk to retrieve a form she could use to request more materials from the nearby excavation sight. However, as soon as she broke the surface of the first floor, she heard a voice, smooth and low, wrapped around her name.
“ …Emily Glen here?”
She paused and peered around the corner.
Her throat tightened at the sight of the man that haunted her dreams. Only, there was something decidedly superhuman about the way he stood, a little bit more still than usual. His was gaze a little too precise, his movements and little to lithe.
But, nevertheless, it was him. And for some reason he was looking for her, a woman he had never even met. Her hand flew to her mouth, preventing the gasp of surprise that would have surely escaped, as she pressed her back against the orthogonal wall.
Part of her wanted to go out there and confront him, but another part, a much more prominent part, just wanted to run. She lifted herself away from the wall and scurried back down to the basement.
Chapter Two
The sun hung low in the sky. Its crimson light bathed everything in a reddish glow as Lycon broke the line of trees and stepped out onto the beach. He stood there for a short moment, he shoulders slumped over, his eyes scanning. Even from that distance he could see the clear water, so transparent that there was no place for the fish, the turtles, the snails to hide. Someone told him that he had been lucky to have been stationed here, that this place on Earth was a goldmine for Kaharan settlement and promised a rich history to boot.
But he didn’t feel lucky.
He felt exiled.
He peeled off his layers of clothing, revealing the smooth, olive skin, and then made his way to the waterfront. He didn’t bother to glance around him for the sight of onlookers, for the remote location of this beach made it unlikely that anyone would find him, and what’s more, find his actions the least bit strange.
Lycon folded his clothes and stowed them into an inlet he had carved out for these purposes. Then he retrieved the wet suit he had placed there that morning. He donned it and half walked, half ran toward the ocean. The water greeted him, warm and inviting.
Lycon could almost smile to himself as he waded out until he couldn’t feel the bottom anymore and then swam down to his subraider.
Once inside, he peeled off the suit, washed himself, and sat in front of his computer, awaiting instructions from the commander. Although they had spoken just that morning, he hoped he would call in again, just so that he could relay the news that he had tracked a half-Kaharan down to her place of work. As he climbed into his cot, completely covering himself with his blanket, he wondered if they had all but forgotten about him.
The next morning, he continued his search, honing in on the woman who had showed promise in the past. After weeks of following her around, he felt like he knew her, and in some ways he did. He knew she liked her coffee with lots of cream and sugar, that she lived in a small one-story with an old scientist named Mauve, that she worked as a researcher at the large library in Goolway, that she hated wearing her long, curly hair down, and that she had an affinity for black dresses.
He followed her to work that day, the recent snub from the commander fueling his actions. He was determined to gai
n contact no matter what it cost. And yet, as he watched her step out of that old truck, her steps lithe and graceful, his gut feelings took over.
Without a DNA test it was impossible to make a definitive determination of her lineage. But he felt like he knew already, and, if she was one of them, that only meant she would be happy to find someone like him, someone like her.
As soon as she walked inside, closing the door behind her, he pulled out of the parking lot and drove across the street. He knew she occupied the top floors of the library on Wednesdays and Thursdays, doing what, he couldn’t know. He parked and, taking his equipment, travelled up the unfinished building until he sat on the roof.
He gazed down at her, marveling at the soft curve of her lips, the flit of her dainty fingers, and the concentrated curve of her brow. As he watched her, something ripped him away from the mission and pushed him toward her.
He slipped his phone out of his back pocket and dialed a number he knew he shouldn’t have.
***
Emily sat in front of her computer, feverishly attempting to type out her discoveries. She had scoured all of the available materials but had come up empty handed. Every option had been exhausted, and now she was considering going down to one of those sights herself. But first she had to request clearance.
This whole search was nothing less than an uphill battle, but as Emily banged her head against the metaphorical wall, her phone rang. She glanced at the small landline but then returned to her work.
It rang again and again and again, until finally it stopped ringing. After the tone, a smooth, dark voice filled the room.
“I thought I’d call just to request a meeting.”
Her hands froze. There was something about that voice, like she already knew who it belonged to.
“Oh, what am I doing? You don’t even know who this is. My name is Lycon and I…require your expertise. Just call me back.”
There was another tone and then silence.
All Emily could think of was the man from her dreams even though it made no sense. She thought about answering, or calling him back, but the thought of getting lost in any kind of conversation with a man that made her heart flutter just by opening his mouth frightened her. She had to find her parent’s ancestors. Nothing could be more important.
So, she ignored the call and tried to forget about it. After lunch she made her way back up to her office to continue working, but she hadn’t so much as logged back on to her computer when she heard him.
Her eyes widened at this, the sight of the man she had dreamed of for weeks on end. “Who are you?”
“I called earlier,” he said, stepping farther into her office. He ran a hand through his thick, dirty blond hair.
“You’re Lycon.”
His lips folded into a crooked smile.
Emily gulped, taking a cautionary step away from him. “What do you want?”
He chuckled. “Relax. I’m not here to collect your liver.”
Emily felt a warmth seeping through her veins at the sound of this, but she denied it, shutting the notebooks that covered her desk and putting her laptop to sleep. She couldn’t let him see what she had been working on. “So why are you here?”
“I have questions. I’m looking for something and I thought you could help me.”
Emily put the desk between her and Lycon. “And what is that?”
“A lost civilization.”
Emily raised an eyebrow, her hand frozen over a stack of papers. Could it be? “What civilization?” she could already feel herself losing ground.
But then he wouldn’t answer her. He took a step toward her and yet all she could think about was that dream she kept having. Her eyes lingered on his lips. His stare held her to her spot, those peculiar, emerald eyes making it impossible to think.
She felt herself losing ground, so she knew she needed to get out of it. “Look, I don’t have time right now.” She sat down at her desk.
“When will you?” he asked as he rested his hands on the other side of it.
She shook her head without even looking at him. “I don’t know.”
“That doesn’t sound very convincing.”
Emily huffed out a breath. “What do you want me to say?”
He shrugged. “That I interest you?”
“And why would I say that?”
He sat down in the chair on the other side of her desk. “Because it’s the truth.”
Emily scoffed, hoping it would cover up her surprise. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“What a cocky thing to say.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
Emily pursed her lips. “What, exactly, do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
“About what?”
“I already told you: the project you’re working on.”
“How do you know what I’m working on?”
His only response was an even stare.
Emily’s eyes flashed wide as a thought crossed her mind. “You’ve been stalking me.”
He let out a short breath. “That’s beside the point.”
A lump lodged itself in Emily’s throat. “Why?” She found herself possessed with the urge to run, or at least to throw him out of her office, but she couldn’t bring herself to do either. A small yet prominent part of her could not deny that she liked having him around and would be sad to see him go.
He leaned toward her. “Because we’re looking for the same thing.”
She gazed right into his emerald eyes, the perfect complement to her sapphire ones. She couldn’t deny the similarities, the clues slapping her in the face. “And what is that?”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be daft.”
She just kept her stare even.
“The Kaharans?”
She furrowed her brow. “I’ve never heard of—”
“The lost ones,” he said, his fist clenching.
Emily glanced at his hand and then at him, her own heart fluttering in her chest. This was the first mention she had heard of it from anyone that wasn’t Mauve. “What do you know about them?”
But he just stood up, glancing around her office, a sudden disinterest taking over his whole frame. “Come to lunch with me tomorrow. There’s a café at the corner. I will explain everything.”
Emily wanted to protest this, but he turned and left before she could manage to get the words out of her mouth.
Chapter Three
As afraid as Emily was, she could not deny her fascination with Lycon. There he sat across from her, his long fingers caressing the rim of his cup of coffee, his lips morphing this way and that as the unique sound of his voice spilled from them.
Every word felt carefully chosen, engineered for a specific purpose. She peered at him with her searching eyes, taking in everything from his bushy brows to his chiseled bone structure and full lips. Her heart thudded in her chest just at the mundane thought that she sat a mere foot away from him.
Her drive to learn more about who he was, what he looked for, and why he struck her as so similar to herself competed with a more womanly desire. With every movement he made, part of her wished that he would just reach across the table and touch her.
She wanted to know what that felt like in the real life: Lycon’s touch.
“So what is Kahara?”
“My home planet,” he said after a sip of his coffee.
Emily stabbed a piece of lettuce with her fork but waited before putting it into her mouth. “Are there others like you?” She internally kicked herself for this. It was an obvious question.
He nodded.
She furrowed her brow. “Then why are you here?”
His lips folded into the crooked smile she had grown to enjoy so much. “I’m looking for others like myself.”
Her heart skipped a beat. But could he know?
“So you’re Kaharan?” her voice trembled with excitement. All these years sh
e had gone searching for the very thing that had just landed right in her lap.
He nodded.
“So there is a Kahara…a planet…” She laughed at herself. “I can’t believe this. My whole life I think a part of me just assumed Mauve was crazy.”
“Only a part of you.”
Emily nodded, placing that stabbed lettuce into her mouth.
“Who is Mauve?”
“Just my adoptive father. The story goes that he found my mother when she was pregnant with me.”
“Where are they now?”
Emily gulped. A block came crashing down in the back of her head. She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about her parents. Not like this. Not with him. For all she knew, he could have been responsible for their deaths, anyway.
“I don’t know,” she said.
The gleam in his eye told her that he suspected she was lying.
She tried to turn on him to take the attention off herself. “So why is it that you’ve got a whole planet at your disposal but you come here to look for others like yourself?”
His chest rose and fell with his breath. “Because I don’t have a whole planet. No one does. Not anymore.”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
He gulped down the last bit of his coffee and placed it on the edge of the table. “Our planet…”
She like the sound of that, “Our planet.”
“…was destroyed by a comet. Impact killed almost every living thing, not all at once, but over time. What’s left of our population lives in a space ship circling Earth.”
Emily’s heart dropped. “So does that mean I’ll never see it? My true home?” Her eyes stung with tears.
Then, when she least expected it, he did reach over and place his hand over hers. Their skin seemed to meld together, the fit perfect. A chill shot up her spine at that sensation, her eyes wide. Suddenly everything was brighter, louder, stronger. As inappropriate as this was, as ungrounded as she felt, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.
“I know. It is tragic.”
“So you want to settle on Earth?”
“That is part of it.” He removed his hand, using it to pick up his sandwich.