ALIEN SHIFTER ROMANCE: Alien Tigers - The Complete Series (Alien Invasion Abduction Shapeshifter Romance) (Paranormal Science Fiction Fantasy Anthologies & Short reads)

by Tanya Jolie

  His chest rose and fell for one singular breath before he crossed what little space remained between the two of them. “I have to ask you something.”

  She stared right into his eyes. “No, you don’t. You have to tell me the truth.”

  He placed his hand on her cheek in a way that made her feel like he had already begun his question.

  She felt her heart swelling and her throat closing up, because there was no way she could deny that she felt something for him.

  “You aren’t human.”

  She grabbed his wrist. “I already knew that.”

  He grimaced. “You did?”

  “Well, sort of.” She shrugged. She would be stupid to grow up as different as she was and not suspect something.

  She felt naked in front of Marak as he scanned her from head to toe, his eyes searching her soul while his fingers examined her body.

  “Of course. I could kick myself for not seeing it before.”

  Lacey burst into laughter. For all the seriousness of the situation, she could not believe that Marak had just said he wanted to kick himself.

  “What?” His eyes were wide with ignorance.

  “You could kick yourself?” She stepped away. “I would love to see that happen.”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t a joke.”

  “So what is this, then? A kidnapping? An intervention?”

  His jaw set and his eyes narrowed. “Please do not joke about this.”

  “Maybe if you would tell me—”

  “I would if you could only shut up.”

  Lacey snapped out of it, blinking her eyes. “Sorry you’re so impatient.”

  “Well I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how to keep you in my life, so I think I deserve a little consideration.”

  Lacey gazed wide-eyed at him. There was something more to his anger than just hurt feelings or embarrassment. Everything from his messy hair to his winded expression told her that something had him completely stressed out. She took a step toward him, realizing that she had gone too far. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I get so stressed that I pretend that nothing matters.”

  He let out one stingy chuckle. “That’s an ineffective coping mechanism.”

  They both laughed at this.

  With a sigh, he took her hand in both of his. “Lacey, you know you aren’t human. You’re more, or different, or however you like to think of it. You’re part of an alien race…”

  “That’s not possible. I have two human parents. I was born on Earth.”

  “Well, they must have adopted you.”

  Lacey’s head spun. Not only did she have two asshole parents that had chucked her out, but she had two asshole parents that had chucked her out and never told her she was adopted.

  “I’m sorry. I know this must be a shock. It must hurt a little. But I have to say something else, something difficult. You’re one of the few females of our kind that still exists.”

  Lacey ducked her head. “How?”

  “A comet destroyed our planet. The military survived because we happened to be staging an exercise when it happened, but the women were in different barracks. They didn’t survive. Now, after we have gone through great lengths to retrace to Earth, we are faced with another dilemma.”

  “I think I know where you’re going with this.” Lacey pried her hand out of his. “And the answer is no.”

  Marak pursed his lips. “You have to listen to me.”

  Lacey clenched her fists. She had been plucked. The first guy to show genuine interest in anything other than getting in her pants and bolting at the first sign of intellectual conversation was trying to pluck her. “I have.” She didn’t even want to look at him.

  “Please. You don’t have a lot of options.”

  “No,” Lacey said, shooting him her iron glare. “You don’t.”

  Marak approached her again. She wished he would stay away, but she knew she couldn’t give him the satisfaction of running yet again. “They’ll make me…”

  “I don’t care what they’ll make you do.” She stood her ground, ignoring the pain in his eyes. “If you have to kidnap me, or force me, then do it, because I won’t come willingly.” She would have patted herself on the back if she knew it wouldn’t destroy the mood.

  “Why?” He grabbed her face, gripping it tightly in both of his hands.

  It scared her and excited her all at once. “Because you don’t love me. You don’t even like me or care about me.”

  His face went all soft, his eyes drooping and his lips folding into the kind of desperate frown that made Lacey want to kiss him right then and there.

  But she had already uttered her words, and she believed them with every bone in her body.

  “I do.”

  Lacey knew that he could have been lying. In fact, she was almost certain that he was lying. But she couldn’t bring herself to deny what looked like the absolute truth spilling from his eyes.

  “You do what?”

  His jaw hung open as she watched his gaze go from her eyes to her lips. She gulped, the hairs on the back of her neck raised, because she knew, without a doubt, against all odds, exactly what was coming next. “I…” But his face was already moving toward hers.

  When their lips met, Lacey’s knees went weak. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as her arms fell around his neck. His lips demanded everything of hers. His tongue jutted into her mouth, a kind of charge she didn’t expect in him.

  They continued like this, their bodies pressed together, the heat from each of them effortlessly radiating to the other. The more she had of him, the more she needed him. All she had to do was accept his offer to have all of this for the rest of her life.

  But that thought stopped her. She pushed away with so much force that she created a pressure wave that put a dent in the wall behind her. “No.I won’t fall for you and then let you take me away like this. No.”

  He stepped away from her, adjusting the bulge in his pants, his chin raised. “What would you do otherwise?”

  Lacey ducked her head. She hated that question. “Whatever I have been doing.”

  “How can you go back to the way things were? My reality is shifted now. I won’t return to my mundane search for a stupid town hall design, not without you.”

  Lacey glowered. “I refuse to lose myself in you!”

  “I think you already have.”

  Lacey shook her head, her eyes stinging. She wouldn’t allow him to tell her what he’d done. “No. You have to get out of here. You have to leave me alone.”

  Marak bit his lip. “I can’t.”

  Chapter Six

  Lacey turned to pick up the cabinet door she had plucked off. She clutched on to it as hard as she could, bending the corners, but she didn’t turn around. She was afraid that if she looked at him, she would forget all the good reasons for why she could never honor his request.

  “Yes, you can. You can find it in your heart to let me live the rest of my life without you.” She felt the warmth of his body right before he placed his hand on her hip.

  “If you let this go, I will have to erase your memory. Everything from the moment you met me would be gone.”

  Lacey felt like someone had punched her in the gut. “So you were never planning on kidnapping me?”

  “I could never force you. No one ever wanted to force you.”

  She needed to reject him, because she needed to be able to believe that she still could. She needed to know that she held within herself the power to rid herself of him, that falling for him had not caused her to sacrifice herself. “I need to remember.” She turned around.

  “You need to remember that you rejected me?”

  She bit her lip. It sounded so heartless when he said it out loud, but he didn’t do it justice. For her, it was more than a show of dominance. He represented the first real indication that her childhood spent othered and alone hadn’t been for nothing. He was the pure representation of everything she already knew she was. W
ithout this to hold on to, she would have to go back to being truly alone and that was more than she could handle. “I know it sounds stupid. I know. It just took so long for me to find myself. I just can’t let you take it away.”

  Marak opened his mouth to say something, but he stopped when he heard a loud click. The two of them snapped their heads in the direction it had come from.

  “What was that?” She heard another sound, a whine coming from the front of the cabin.

  She froze, but Marak seemed so much more alarmed.

  He stepped away from her, his eyes wide and his movements stiff. “How long has this space ship been here?”

  For lack of knowing what else to do, Lacey followed him as he rushed down the small hallway that connected the passenger cabin to the cockpit and pulled it open, using his sheer force to bypass the obvious lock.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I put it here!” Lacey followed him inside, stopping short at the sight of all of the gadgets and controls. She had never been in the cockpit of a human spaceship, much less an advanced, alien one. She gulped as he sat down, his eyes scanning everything.

  “Why is it all lit up like that? I thought it was broken.”

  He glowered at her. “You’ve been harnessing energy from this ship for who knows how long, and you thought it was broken?”

  Lacey’s heart sank down into her chest. She watched him throw switches on and off, press buttons, and grumble to himself, but it was too obvious that he wasn’t making any progress.

  “Sit down!”

  Lacey clamped her jaw shut and followed his direction. The whine of the craft had reached an unbearable noise. She could hear and feel the metals shifting all around her.

  Marak strapped himself in. “Are you aware of any human settlements nearby?”

  “What?”

  A strong rush of air drowned out her question.

  Marak had to yell to be heard. “Does anyone live around here?”

  “I don’t know! Why?” Lacey’s heart thudded against her chest as she internally kicked herself for not being able to be more helpful.

  “Because this ship has decided to take off, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Chapter Seven

  The sheer force of the ship plastered Lacey against the back of the chair. Because it was so large, she could barely feel the wind resistance that must have been slamming the ship. It was one smooth, strong accent. She grasped the edges of the seat, her mind working a mile a minute, because she could see that Marak had already given up.

  She thought that she would feel less afraid once the force slowed and they had stopped fighting air itself, but that didn’t help a thing.

  Marak huffed out a breath. “We’ve broken the surface of the atmosphere.” He took off his seat belt and began scanning the control board all over again.

  “Where are we going?” Lacey hovered over him.

  “Probably back to Kahara. This ship only had two destinations programmed into it.”

  “So what do you want to do? What are we gonna do?” She hated how shrill and feminine her voice sounded.

  But even in all of his struggling, Marak stopped and glanced down at her. He placed his trembling hands on her shoulders and gazed right into her eyes.

  She resisted it at first, but then she let herself look right back at him and just be grateful that he had chosen her and had followed her there that night, because if he hadn’t, she would have been hurtling through space all by herself, and no one would have been the wiser.

  “I’m going to figure this out, and then I’m going to fly us back.”

  It wasn’t until he had let go that her pride started seeping back in, and the urgency with it. “I don’t know why men think the shoulder grab thing is helpful. It’s not. It’s just patronizing.”

  Marak waved her away. “The controls are disabled.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  Lacey glowered at him. But then, as she listened to the shifting metals and watched the stars engulf them, she got an idea. “Why don’t we just push it back down?”

  He stared at her, his eyebrow raised. “What? You’re going to maneuver an entire spacecraft with your mind?”

  Lacey ducked her head. “No. You’re going to help me.”

  He pursed his lips. “I don’t have that kind of capability.”

  “I thought everyone did!”

  Marak just shook his head, his jaw set and his gaze growing tighter and tighter. His sapphire irises shifted back and forth as if he was trying to read something, and yet nothing made any sense. “You can’t move a ship all on your own.”

  “Yes, I can!” Lacey barged through the cockpit, determined to do something useful.

  “If you tap into this energy like this, you’ll kill yourself!”

  “You’re not my dad!” she yelled back at him as she made her way up into the observatory. It was the best view she could find to use to direct them back down.

  “How are you going to navigate?”

  “I know the precise energies of my car. I spend almost all my time inside it. I’ll use that as a target.”

  “Lacey!” He grabbed her arm.

  “No!” She turned to face him. “You can’t talk me out of this! I will not die alone in space!”

  With that, she turned back to the large window. She stared at the stars until she couldn’t see them anymore. Then she shut her eyes and she listened. A force like a white wave slammed into her every orifice, captured every cell of her body, and ossified her.

  She could only manage one massive push before her body gave in.

  She had no way of knowing if she was falling, or if the entire space ship was.

  ***

  Marak stared down at Lacey’s sleeping body. After that whole stint with the spaceship, he’d had to rush her to the settlement so that he could use the commander and his physician’s help to save her life. Now all three of them stood in his bedroom. Since a hospice had not been built, it was the best place to keep her.

  “You presented your case?” The commander asked, his eyes trained on her.

  Marak gazed at her still body, at the curve of her lip, and the furrow of that critical brow of hers.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “She refused.” The words broke his own heart.

  “You know what you have to do.”

  Marak nodded. He had known it was coming, but even as he sent the command from his head to his foot, he just couldn’t make himself move.

  “Marak?”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “You know how important discretion is to this mission and to our kind.”

  Marak nodded. All of those words made sense to him, and yet they meant nothing to him. “Yes.”

  “You know that to refuse a command from me is to refuse the will of Kahara.”

  “She wouldn’t want me to do it.”

  “What difference will it make to her?”

  Marak stared at her one last time. He tried to bring himself to move, but he couldn’t do it. This was important to her, and he needed to honor it and her. Even if she didn’t want him, even if she could never return his favor, even if he knew the commander would do it anyway, he just couldn’t let her go.

  The commander gave a curt nod. “You will be reprimanded for this.”

  But Marak hardly looked at him. He had eyes only for Lacey, who stirred as if she was waking up.

  ***

  Lacey’s eyes flickered open to the sight of a tall man wearing what looked like war decorations on a military jacket. He leaned over her, his hand hovering over her forehead. Her heart soared into overdrive as she glanced around the room.

  There he was, Marak, standing just off in the back corner, his head bowed. It took her less than a second to realize what was happening. There were three Kaharan men in the room and only one of her, so there was no question that she would be forced.

&nbs
p; “Marak?” Her voice sounded so small in that room.

  But he shot up anyway.

  They locked eyes, her gold ones with his sapphire ones.

  A feeling like burning rose petals shot through her whole body. Goosebumps sprouted on her skin.

  She gulped and then glanced at the commander. “Don’t do this. I don’t want to lose him.”

  As she said this, she saw Marak take a step toward her.

  The commander narrowed his eyes. “That isn’t an option. Close your eyes and relax.”

  “No!” She shot up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “I don’t just mean in my head.” She kept her eyes locked on Marak. His stare grounded her as she made her way toward him.

  “I mean at all. This is real. I can’t lose you without losing myself.”

  Marak’s eyes went wide as she wrapped her arms around him.

  The commander cleared his throat. “Well. I am glad you came around. I’ll give you a moment while Turen and I discuss the particulars.”

  With that, the commander and his physician cleared out, shutting the door behind them.

  Marak’s chest rose and fell with one breath. “What changed your mind?”

  Lacey burrowed her face into that stupid turtleneck sweater of his. “Nothing. My mind was always set. I’m just finally embracing it.”

  Epilogue

  “All right, this is it. I think we’re finally ready.”

  Lacey watched Marak poke his head around their bedroom door through her mirror. A gasp leapt out from between her lips. “No way! I’m not ready!”

  Marak set his jaw, stepping all the way inside the room. “What do you mean? The commander is landing in three minutes.”

  “Relax!” Lacey said in a shaky voice as she went rummaging through her things for her favorite pair of earrings. She had thus far refused to move in with Marak, demanding that they go at a normal pace if they were going to stay together.

  But Marak impatiently tapped his snow boots.

  “Okay!” she exclaimed when she had finally made herself presentable. She took his hand.

  By the time he had managed to lead her outside, Turen and their collection of carpenters and builders had gathered outside as well. Lacey gazed up at the town hall she had helped Marak design and build. It was the best work either of them had ever created.