by Alix Labelle
He ripped his cock out of her, coaxing his seed out and spreading it all over her.
As Keira’s heart rate slowed, the thoughts came back. “I can’t believe I did that,” she whispered.
Garthen didn’t respond, just stood up, holding his hand out to her. “Come. Let’s wash off.”
Neither of them spoke as they went back toward the ocean, staying strictly knee deep and splashing water over themselves until Garthen said, “You never told me who you are.”
Keira smiled. “Well neither did you, but if it’s a name that you want, then it’s Keira.”
“Keira.” He nodded and looked out in the distance.
Keira followed his gaze just in time to spot something in the distance. “Is that a boat?”
Chapter Six
Garthen sat in a secluded room in what had to be the bowels of the ship. It rocked from side to side, the water level reaching nearly halfway up the small window by his bed.
Keira.
He stood up and rushed toward the door, stupidly trying the handle. Of course it was locked. He banged his fist against the door. One knock. Then another. And another.
Then he heard a siren. He slid to the ground, desolation washing over him.
Aleksey.
And just like that, he wasn’t alone in an unknown room of an unmarked ship. He was standing in the doorway, at forty seconds until impact. There was Aleksey, standing outside, beyond the protection of the small house he had built for them. He called to him, but the disabled Kaharan wouldn’t listen. The colors were too pretty. He had forty seconds. Not long enough to save him.
So he didn’t.
There was the navy.
A lottery.
An aircraft.
A crash.
Keira.
His heart ached at his initial intentions. He detested his former, suicidal self, but none of that mattered now.
No.
Now, he was on a ship manned by drug lords looking to take over that small island. But where was…
“Keira!”
***
Keira sat in the next room over. Another small bed and window. Another locked door.
“Keira!”
She gasped. She had every reason to believe he hadn’t survived the vicious blow they each got to their head when they took the two of them. She stood up and banged on the wall. “You’re alive!”
There was a pause before, “I’m getting you out!”
But how?
As Keira listened to him banging on the door, she set to work herself, scouring the room for anything she could use to pick the lock. But her captors were thorough because there was nothing. She stood in front of the door, a huff of frustration slipping out of her mouth when she ran her fingers through her hair and came out with a bobby pin.
Her lips folded into a tight smile.
Could she?
As she worked the lock, she heard something explosive on the other side, followed by a yell of triumph.
Keira nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
But then she heard other voices. “Hey! You vermin!”
Her heart sunk.
They were in the hallway!
But the more desperate she became to unlock the door, the harder it got. There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh before she was finally able to break through.
“Garthen!”
A man pinned him down while another wielded a club.
The man with the club came charging toward her. She had no choice but to run in the other direction. Yet that hallway ended in a dead end. She slammed into the wall and then turned. Her heart pounded against her chest in anticipation of this man.
The next thing she knew, he swung his club at her, but she swerved out of the way. As she turned around him, the sight of a small pistol clamped in his belt caught her attention.
He swung at her one more time, but she ducked his blow and delivered one of her own, right into his face. As he doubled over in pain, she snatched the gun out of his belt and pointed it at him. Her hand shook because she had never shot one of those in her life, but she pulled the trigger anyway.
A bullet found a home in his knee.
His scream filled the hall.
She ran back toward Garthen, who had managed to get out of the man’s grip. They threw punch after punch at each other, bobbing and weaving around each other’s blows like they were going for a championship.
“Garthen!” she yelled.
When Garthen glanced at her, she didn’t hesitate to throw the gun at him.
In the next second, another shot had been fired.
Chapter Seven
Keira and Garthen shoved their guards on rowboats to be found by their criminal partners, who had stayed on the island. No sooner had the ship been rid of them did Garthen fire up the engine, taking them away from their little island as quickly as possible.
Keira watched him steer the boat, all of her questions coming back. “So—”
“I remember,” he interrupted her.
Her stomach turned. “You do?”
He must have heard the fear in her voice because he shot her a crooked smile. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Keira took that as a sign that it was safe to approach him. She stood next to him, clutching the back of his shirt for support.
He chuckled. “The lifeguard that’s never been on a boat.”
“I hate sharks, remember?”
He shrugged. “I’ll just pretend that made sense.”
Keira examined him. “So, now that you remember, do you care to tell me what would have happened to me?”
He let out a short laugh. “It’s ironic, because it’s nothing different than what already did.”
Keira furrowed a brow. “I don’t understand.”
“I was sent here on a mission, so to speak, but I was so done with being myself that I had no intention of living long enough to complete it. I wanted to experience what it would be like to be with a human woman. When I saw you, I knew I wanted you and nothing less.”
Keira’s heart fluttered. “That’s oddly romantic.”
He shrugged. “I know. Poetic, someone once told me.”
Keira stepped behind him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his back. “So, who sent you and what was the mission?”
He let the wheel go and turned to face her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Keira scoffed. “Please. I have silver eyes.”
He laughed, taking her face in both of his hands. “And I have purple ones. So what?”
But before Keira could say anything more, he kissed her.
“Why won’t you tell me who you are?” she asked when they broke apart.
“Because I want to be lost with you forever,” he said.
Keira liked the sound of that. “Okay,” she said, turning back toward the front of the boat. “But I’ll never stop asking questions.”
“Then maybe, one day, I’ll start answering them.”
THE END
Chosen by the Alien Lord
Kahara Lords
Book 5
(Can be read as a standalone book)
By: Lindsay Blanc
Chosen by the Alien Lord
Prologue
Sweat fell onto the polished marble. The soundless impact occurred over and over again, one drop in front of the other. One step in front of the other. One breath after another.
Frigid, sterile air nipped skin. Toes pinched and muscles burned from strain: the calves, and then the thighs and the abdomen, the chest, rising and falling, expanding and contracting.
A cramp shot through Kalas’s stomach as he ran. His heart slammed against his rib cage in a rhythm that matched the beating of his tracer, a small neogeographical locator implanted in his left arm.
He was being summoned.
The hallway extended out in front of him, lined with windows that projected identical images of black space punctuated with stars. His breath was the
only thing audible in that empty hallway on this, the third hour of the circadian clock.
His stomach turned over and over with nerves as he propelled himself down the hallway, the door only growing larger and larger.
Finally.
With a loud “umph,” he skidded to a stop and yanked it open, letting it slam against the wall as he hopped over the threshold.
The commander turned at the sound of his entrance, his sapphire eyes scanning him from head to toe. “I called you one hundred and forty-seven seconds ago.”
Kalas opened his mouth to utter some kind of response of faux-respect, but a piercing scream stole the words from his mouth.
Jenna lay in her own pool of sweat. A body-contouring cot had been prepared for this very reason, for she writhed in pain. Her nerves pinched her olive skin. Busted blood vessels surrounded her emerald eyes, the gorging mass that was the child she carried taking on a sickly gray color.
“When did this begin?” Kalas crossed the room to her and knelt, scanning her body for any irregularities he could find. He focused on the belly and the baby inside it. He caught a heartbeat—small, faint, but there nonetheless. He traced the blood through the fetus’s body, into the placenta and then the mother’s body.
“Don’t just sit there like a dunce! DO SOMETHING!” The commander stalked across the room with his fists clenched and his teeth barred.
Kalas flinched but, other than that, tuned him out.
He went to the small chest directly under the cot, a collection of medical supplies suited for emergency use. He retrieved a small needle, collected the Kaharan woman’s arm and pricked it. Deep dark red blood pooled on her slick skin.
He gazed at it as hard as he could, his eyes picking up the red blood cells suspended in the plasmid…and something else, a toxin, an infection. He collected the blood with a white strip and…
“Kalas Naja, I will end you if you do not take action!”
Kalas glanced at the commander, catching one quick look of the worry in the Kaharan’s eyes. He could understand his impatience, but he could waste no time explaining himself. He stuck the blood into a small analyzer and set it down…
No sooner had he done this did the commander’s wife seize. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets, her skin stretching taught across her face, and her hands petrified, her fingers bent at uncomfortable angles.
“Jenna!” the commander yelled, stalking to her other side. He reached out toward her but was afraid to touch her.
Kalas acted fast, retrieving a precise amount of channel blocker with a syringe. “Help me turn her.”
The commander obeyed him, turning his wife onto her side in one swoop.
Kalas sucked in a deep breath and injected the serum into the back of her neck, allowing the substance to diffuse into all of her nerves. Her body melted into the cot, her face settling into a calm expression. But Kalas could see that her blood flow had slowed to near stagnant.
He took a shock baton out of his kit and pressed it into her chest, delivering two shots precisely to her heart. He waited, releasing a sigh of relief when she returned to normal function.
“Commander.” He rounded the cot.
The commander shot him an even expression. “I will call a meeting with the council.”
***
Kalas didn’t get a wink of sleep after that, and, four hours later, he sat before the surviving members of the Kaharan council. He struggled to keep his eyes open and his stance upright as he turned toward the projector and attempted to explain high order inter-species medical phenomena to a bunch of bureaucrats. “It is time that we reconsidered the search for Unice,” he said, an apologetic frown on his face.
“I don’t understand.” Councilman number 478 spoke first. “We have performed this argument many times before.”
Kalas nodded, opening his mouth to speak, but the commander took the words right out of his mouth. “Yes, and before, my wife was not hanging on to life by a thread.”
The council assumed identical looks of horror and surprise.
Kalas spoke first. “So, as you can see, this is a very sensitive situation. A woman will die if we do not enact this mission.”
“What of the child? Can it survive without the mother?” That was 467.
The commander shot him a deathly glare. “Are you suggesting we kill my wife?”
The council members shifted in their seats.
Kalas took a deep breath. “No one has to die. It is a simple operation. You discharge me to Earth, I find the antibody and I come back.”
“It is a rare antibody. What makes you think you will find it in time?”
“A Kaharan gestation lasts two Earth years. I am certain I am efficient enough to meet that deadline.”
“So we waste time and resources we don’t have on a mission to Earth that will surely fail?”
Kalas refused to be swayed. “She is a Kaharan just like her baby, and thus, just like her baby, she is just as important. I cannot sit by and let her die when I know what will save her.”
“But—”
Another council member raised his hand. “Let’s just vote now.”
Kalas’s heart fell. Premature votes never ended well.
But the commander stood, a determined glower in his eye. “There is no vote. I, and I only, am the commander of this ship and of the remaining Kaharan population. I decide what’s best for us. My wife is the only known woman of our kind in existence. She is the future…not just her unborn daughter.”
“But rovers on Kahara are much more likely to find female life than…”
The commander raised his hand. “It is decided.”
He turned his gaze on Kalas. “Tomorrow, you will be dispatched.” With that, he left the conference table, pausing with his hand on the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a sick wife to attend to.”
Kalas had only just begun to understand the breadth of responsibility that had been placed on his shoulders when the door slammed behind him.
Chapter One
A scream of frustration rolled up the back of Olivia’s throat, but she held it down, sucking a gulp of water out of the water bottle she kept in the back of the EMT truck.
“You have to let me go! This hurts! You’re hurting me!”
Olivia glanced at the woman tied to the stretcher. A steak knife protruded from her right lung, a soft stream of crimson blood seeping into her white sweater.
“Ma’am, I am going to have to ask you to sit still.” Ben, her partner, struggled to keep the woman still.
“LET ME GO!” she screamed over him.
Olivia rolled her eyes at Ben’s unnecessarily polite stance. She stood up and maneuvered her way around Ben and the stretcher just as the ambulance screeched to a stop. She barged through the doors, hopping out of the back and pulling at the hem of the stretcher.
“What do we have?”
“I don’t want none of these DEVIL DOCTORS. You’re all DEVIL DOCTORS.”
“Yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t have stabbed yourself, lady,” Olivia said, being the only one brave enough to talk over her deafening screaming.
“Olivia!”
Olivia glanced at Dr. Kal, the surgeon who had been running the ER for the last six months. Even though it had to have been his twelfth hour on duty, his black hair was still perfectly slicked in place and not so much as a wrinkle of fatigue disturbed his marble-like olive skin.
One look at his even, black stare tugged at Olivia’s nerves, but she ignored it because this woman, however stupid she apparently was, was eons more important than the ongoing feud she had with the man who had stolen her job. “It’s simple, Doc. One stab to the right lunch. One broken rib, two fractured ones. An obvious puncture to the lung and disruption of the cardio-thoracic cavity.”
Dr. Kal gave her a curt nod before hastily delivering instructions to prep an OR and grabbing the second side of the stretcher. “We have to pull the knife out,” Olivia said as they lifted her onto a bed. “It moves every time sh
e does.”
But Dr. Kal just shook his head in that infuriatingly calm way and turned to the patient. “Hello, my lady. What’s your name?”
The woman just stared stupidly back at Dr. Kal, fixated by his gaze.
“Look, none of us have time for this.” Olivia reached over to the tray for a pair of scissors, using them to cut right down the middle of the sweater.
The woman shot up. “That was a gift!”
Kal placed his hands on either one of her shoulders. “Miss, you are very hurt. You need to relax.”
Olivia couldn’t wait for Kal to make some kind of personal connection with this woman. She jumped in. “All right. I know this sounds crazy, but I am going to have to remove the knife from your chest.”
Dr. Kal shot her a stern look, his black eyes piercing her. “You will do no such thing.”
Her face flushed bright red at this. “Every time she moves, that blade digs deeper into her. After I take it out, you can take her to surgery.”
Kal rounded the stretcher to face her, his jaw set. “An OR hasn’t been prepared.”
“Well, if we don’t get one in time, we’ll just have to operate right here then,” Olivia said. Being an EMT and ER doctor for over eight years had given her plenty experience in unlikely conditions.
“I don’t have to listen to you.”
Olivia raised a brow. “Oh really?” Then, in one quick motion, she reached over and ripped the knife out of the woman. “Because I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Olivia!” he hissed.
The woman cried out in pain.
“I’ve contained the damage. You’re welcome.”
Dr. Kal shot her a glare before turning to the nearest nurse’s station. “Page Jeffries. I need an OR stat!”
The nurse gave a hysterical nod before ripping the pager off her belt.
Olivia turned to the woman and stuffed the wound with sterile towels, preventing blood flow. Kal took to the head of the stretcher and shoved it toward the double doors that led to the rest of the hospital.