by Tanya Jolie
“You’re a refugee!” Javen roared. The sentence sounded more like an insult coming out of his mouth.
Valerie froze.
“Your parents belonged to the province that lost the Great War. They escaped to earth like so many others did. Your sister couldn’t fit in the pod so they had to make a hard decision. You’re the lucky one because now she’s dead.”
Just like that, Valerie gained and lost a sister in less than a minute. Guilt she had inherited from her parents’ situation washed over her. “How unfortunate,” she said through her clenched teeth.
Javen released his arms and stepped towards her, but she stopped him with her hand. “Don’t!” Then she glared at him. “I think it’s safe for me to go back now.”
Part of her wished he would protest, but he didn’t. He just made his way to the kitchen, muttering something about a wet suit.
***
Three years of religiously running the five miles it took for Valerie to get all the way down the beach did not prepare her for a thirty minute swim under water with a huge oxygen tank attached to her back. Nevertheless, she survived the swim and broke the surface more than ready for another nap. As soon as she ripped the mask off of her head, she glanced to see that Javen was still there. But when she laid eyes on him, she found him gazing, eyes wide with terror, at the seawall.
“Oh my God.” Valerie said as she saw the wall of men waiting for them. Her heart sunk at the sight of the guns in each and every one of their hands.
“There are too many.” Javen said, his voice unnaturally rigid.
“We have to go back!” Valerie screeched. She could not believe she was staring death in the face yet again.
But Javen shook his head. “It’s no use. They will just keep waiting for us.”
Valerie gasped. She knew he was right. “Oh God, no, I can’t! I can’t let them touch me again. You have to do something!”
Javen thrashed through the ankle-deep water to reach her, but as she looked into his eyes, she could see… feel that he had no solutions for her. “We can’t run.”
Suddenly, Valerie hated herself. If she had known that this is what they would meet, she wouldn’t have been so unkind. This… creature had put himself in danger for her and now it was perfectly possible that she may never see another sunset again. “I’m sorry,” She hissed, her eyes tearing up.
He took her face in both of his hands. “No. None of this is your fault. I’m sorry I wasn’t transparent with you. I’m sorry I can’t control my emotions.”
Now the tears were pouring from Valerie’s eyes. “The FBI said that they would probably kidnap me. That they would try to get me to refuse to testify against them and to call myself a liar. I won’t do it, so they’ll probably kill me. I can’t imagine what they’d do with you.” She melted into his arms, the despair getting the best of her.
Javen petted the top of her head. “If they kill you, it won’t matter what they do to me.”
Those words were a small glimmer of happiness into this impossible situation. She opened her mouth to say something more, but didn’t manage to, for something distinctly sharp hit her back. It wasn’t a bullet, but a needle. Perhaps…..
Her eyes flickered shut.
Chapter Seven
Valerie’s eyes flipped open. She was in a bedroom with linoleum floors and a white ceiling tainted with water damage. The sun streamed in through a high window. There was an ache in her back from where the blow had hit. She blinked her eyes, struggling to regain her composure, but she couldn’t manage any coherent thoughts because she was so foggy.
Then she heard a beeping sound coming from within her. She scrunched up her face, glancing around her for the source of the annoying noise. “Oh shit,” She whispered as she shoved a finger into her mouth. Of course she would have forgotten about the police tracker and of course it wouldn’t have worked a mile under water.
But now it was kicking. Her heart thrashed around in her chest as she heard the sound of sirens wailing. It got louder and louder as an armada of police cars raced in her direction. She went straight for the window, peering out of it, the colorful lights only confirming her guess.
“Holy shit!” she screeched.
Just as she said this, she could hear the rumble of steps racing overhead and just outside of the door. The men were clearing out, trying to get away while they could. They had given up this business of extracting her. She raced to the door, but was disappointed to find that it was locked. “Help!” she slammed her fist against the wood over and over again.
“Valerie!”
It was Javen.
She could scream for joy. “Oh my God, you’re alive!” she yelled over the sounds of him dislodging the iron rod that had been slid across the door.
He yanked the door open, his eyes wide with expectation.
Valerie threw her arms around his neck, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Oh thank God. Thank God!”
“Ms. James?”
Javen kissed her on her forehead, but then held her at arm’s length apart. “I can’t be here when they come.”
The footsteps were getting closer and closer.
“No, but you can’t leave me!” Valerie felt the urge to hold on to him even tighter now that it was apparent that he was getting away.
Javen wrapped his arms around her, giving her one long kiss.
Valerie sighed, wondering how she could have ever lived without his touch.
“I’m not leaving you. I’ll come find you after all of this.”
Valerie narrowed her eyes at him. “You swear to me.”
He nodded. “I swear to you.”
Valerie nodded. She had to trust him. So she watched him run down the opposite end of the hallway. “How are you getting out of here?” She asked.
He stopped, pointing upward. “I’m gonna scale some buildings.”
He disappeared around the corner just as the first policeman made it to the top of the stair case. “Valerie James?”
Valerie rolled her eyes. She was getting sick of this kind of thing. “Yeah, that’s me.”
THE END
Desired by the Alien Lord
Kahara Lords
Book 4
(Can be read as a standalone book)
By: Lindsay Blanc
Desired by the Alien Lord
Chapter One
Garthen smirked at the guard standing just on the other side of the bars. His lips folded into a sneer as he slammed his baton against the concrete walls.
One.
Two.
Three.
Garthen knew what they expected of him. Stand up. Acknowledge.
The guard let out a huff of breath, his jaw set as he yelled, “Get up!”
Garthen couldn’t help the way his smirk widened at this. Sure he was the one in the cell, but the guard had just lost the face-off. He swung his legs over the side of his cot and stood up, shuddering at the way his muscles stretched. “Am I being punished for breathing again?” He wrapped his hands around the bars, an action that brought himself less than a foot away from the guard.
He flinched, but otherwise kept an even expression. “You know well enough that it was more than that.”
Garthen rolled his eyes. “Please. He’ll heal in days. Don’t be dramatic.”
The guard flexed his jaw, whipping his key out of his back pocket and unlocking the cell. “I don’t have time to discuss this with you. The lottery is in minutes.”
The lottery.
Garthen tried to ignore the way his heart skipped a beat at the mere sound of that word. His dissidence had passed. He stepped out of the cell and joined the other soldiers in the hall, marching to the cafeteria.
Garthen listened to the names, jumping when a sound even remotely similar to his filled the air. His heart pounded so loudly in his ears that he barely heard the words, “Garthen Vell.”
“Fuck,” he whispered.
A thin tear streamed down his face.
Garthen took his ti
me stalking through the crowd to the front of the room. The men who had not been chosen stood with their hands folded behind their backs and their eyes drooping with relief.
They were the cowards, the ones who would rather waste the rest of their lives stuck in a brig in the center of an ocean on a nearly desolate planet than go somewhere new and inhabitable and filled with inferior creatures just waiting to be colonized.
His assent from prisoner to pioneer only made him think of his charmed past. Visions of sterile conference rooms, the modern derivative of the thrones that had been burned in revolutions past filled his head. He could just see it, the matching stern faces of his mother and father buried in stacks of paperwork from the council.
The memory had been blurred by trauma and willful forgetting, but the words could never fade.
“Where is my brother?” His voice had echoed.
Their mumbling ceased.
“What do you mean?” His mother’s words meshed together.
“Honey, the calculations.” His father barely looked at him.
“My brother. Aleksey. Your oldest son. Where did you put him?”
His mother’s chest rose and fell with a sharp breath. “Really, Garthen? A comet is going to hit our planet in 32 moons and you’re worried about where your brother ran off to?”
“He didn’t run off. He was put somewhere.”
“Just because Aleksey is pathologically dumb doesn’t mean he can’t do things of his own accord,” his father said. His brows furrowed as he eyed a piece of paper.
“Besides, we need to focus on your engagement.”
But Garthen knew his parents. The engagement was only a distraction and a halfhearted attempt to hide whatever they had done to Aleksey. He let out a slow sigh. Suddenly a thick wave of fatigue had washed over him, and the thought of arguing his point any further made him want to vomit. “What engagement? The world is ending in 32 moons, remember?”
But there Garthen was, four months after impact, in a world still very much in existence.
“Everyone looks so goddamn desolate.”
Garthen glanced over at the Kaharan assigned to copilot his journey to Earth. In the short three hours since they had been plucked, they had been suited and assigned spaceships. The crafts seemed a bit overstated, considering the fact that they were only made for two people and meant to only last the one-way journey to Earth. “So, you’re excited or something?”
He shrugged, fingering the helmet in his lap. “We are the apex. I can’t wait to collect our own.”
Garthen glowered. “What’s your name again?”
There was static in the craft, followed by, “Vell and Dredson. Prepare for takeoff.”
Garthen nodded. “Dredson.”
Dredson placed his helmet in the small hatch next to the seat. “Just twenty seconds. I can’t wait to feel a true star shining on my skin again.”
“What are you? A poet?”
Dredson lifted a brow in confusion. “Are you excited about anything?”
It sounded like an accusation. “I’m not gonna be doing anything when I get to that sickening place.”
“Take off in twenty, nineteen, eighteen…”
“But you’ll at least find a demi? An Old Kaharan?”
A dry laugh slipped out of Garthen’s lips. “Oh yes, of course. I’ll find a female, but I’m not interested in her bloodline.”
“Ten, nine...”
Garthen checked all the readings on the monitor. He was no scientist, but he learned quickly and was confident that manning a spacecraft couldn’t have been that much of a challenge, especially for Garthen.
“So what are you interested in?”
“One last moment of true freedom. Mind and Body. Before I end it.”
Dredson let out a humorless laugh. “What, like your life?”
“There’s nothing funny about it.”
“Three, Two...”
Dredson turned away. “And I thought I was the poet.”
It only took Garthen five minutes of staring at the controls and listening to Dredson’s nervous muttering before he dozed off. He had a fitful sleep, twitching this way and that, his breath shallow and irregular. Something kept tapping him on the shoulder, then the chest, then the face.
“Garthen!”
His eyes flashed open just in time for a slap in the face. The sting wrenched him into awareness.
A piercing screech cut through the craft.
“What the hell is going on?”
“We’re in the atmosphere.” Dresden punched a red button in the center of the control panel.
Garthen let out a grunt as it shifted into a nosedive. His chest pressed against the front panel. “Why the hell did you do that?” he yelled over the screech of the warning sirens and the lurch of the spacecraft.
“There’s too much resistance!” Dresden wrapped his hand around his joystick and heaved, struggling to drive the spacecraft back upright.
Garthen ripped his hands away. “No! Not yet!” He buckled himself in and grabbed the control. “We have to wait this one out.” He kept his stare even and his jaw set even though his heart pounded in his chest and his stomach rolled like the waves of an unsettled sea.
Garthen could feel the exact moment when the resistance fell away and they had finally entered Earth’s atmosphere. He couldn’t deny the mild excitement he felt about being in a new place, but he had to put that on a back burner.
There they were, in complete hold of gravity, propelling themselves toward hard rock faster than a freefall.
“Now!”
They both pulled. Garthen regretted falling asleep with each new second of being faced with a death he didn’t plan. Their spaceship fought against them, its dense body barely yielding to their attempts to steer it upright. They had waited far too long to do anything.
Garthen had made the wrong call.
As soon as the engine failed, the spacecraft suspended itself in the air. Dresden jabbed his finger on a button, opening all of the windows.
Garthen glanced out, holding his breath at the first sight of open water since before the impact. It glistened in the moonlight, the silvery streams of water intertwining with dark slosh. Garthen didn’t want to admit to himself that he thought it was beautiful.
His insides curdled as the spaceship tipped forward and eased into a plummet. After steering had failed, he clutched the seat with his hands and tried his best to stomach every flip and roll of the craft. Dresden screamed throughout the whole thing, his words, Kaharan chants, bouncing off the walls.
Garthen knew the end was coming when, out of the windows, he started to gain vision of the sky and its stars…its moon. He let out a solitary “humph” right before the craft slammed into the ground. One boom after another.
An airbag erupted from the control panel, whacking Garthen in the face. He winced at the crack in his neck, taking in shallow breaths just as he noted the fact that Dresden had finally stopped screaming.
The tumbling seemed to last for days. The craft juddered, Garthen’s brain jumbling around inside of his head until finally the craft slammed into something, throwing Garthen back into the airbag.
Silence cut through the craft as Garthen looked over at Dresden, who sat staring at the controls, his face wet with tears and his chest rising and falling with his rapid breaths.
Garthen opened his mouth to say something, but a crack sounded, so loud he could hear it through the craft. “Oh—”
But that’s all he got out before something slammed into the craft. It hit the space directly on top of Dresden’s head. A small dent fell out of the ceiling, punching Dresden in his skull.
Garthen winced as he watched him melt, lifelessly, back into his chair.
Chapter Two
Keira stomped across the sand, her feet sinking into the damp ground as she pressed her fingers into either side of her temples. “I made the right decision,” she said.
I made the right decision.
I made the right
decision.
I made the right decision.
She stopped, turning her face up to the sky. The sunrise hadn’t quite reached her yet, and she had nothing to look at but a depressing combination of grays and blues. “So why do I feel like shit?” she yelled.
Her voice diffused out all around her, but she never worried that anyone could hear her. She loved that about the quiet beaches. When no one was on them, no one was listening. Her only answer was the sound of water rushing over itself and waves dying at the shore.
“He was a brute who didn’t understand me and didn’t even try to understand me. He didn’t care what was in my head. Listening to himself speak was his favorite thing to do. He was awful at sex…”
But she stopped, lifting her left hand up to face the rising, crimson sun. It looked naked without the ring. “But he was going to marry me.”
She huffed out a breath. All of her attempts not to think about the way his eyes had turned red with the news, the way his lips quivered as he tried to argue his points, went to shit. All she could think about was the grief she had felt when she let him kiss her one last time.
Greif that wasn’t hers.
She knew they weren’t meant to be, but why did she feel so goddamn guilty about it? She huffed out a breath, turning her head up to the sky again and hating everything about the human condition.
A scream shot out of her mouth.
***
Garthen had never been to a Kaharan funeral. In fact, the first time anyone he knew died was only after impact, and no funerals were held, just a mass memorial service conducted by the men who survived. So, when he had finally erected the observation station they had come to Earth equipped with, he looked to Dredson’s lifeless body.
After only twelve hours of being dead, the green pigment had begun to take over his skin, and anything remotely human about his appearance had drifted away. Garthen figured he should bury him. It seemed a little unfair to the both of them that Garthen could want so badly for his existence to end but Dredson was the one to die, almost as if his wishing it had killed him.