Liana Peterson led an ordinary life back on Earth, if you considered being an Empathic Omega with too many brains and no friends ordinary. When Taliff Shi’Lan offered her a new life on Chantrea, her ancestor’s homeworld, she thought it would be her chance to have a life of her own, a new start where she wouldn’t be abused on a daily basis. It didn’t take long for Liana to learn that whether on Earth or Chantrea, being the Omega left her with few options. She turns to what she knows best, her love of science as she attempts to solve the Chantreans’ fertility problems.
Ryan Morgan has spent the last five years since his escape from the Black Rose searching the known galaxies for the treacherous woman who had stolen him from Earth to use in her breeding program. Now free, he’s dedicated his life to finding and releasing the other victims of her villainy, male and female. But when his actions lead him to being captured by the Black Rose again, this time along with the head scientist for the Chantreans working on curing their fertility problems, Ryan is determined to destroy the Black Rose once and for all, because no one would hurt Liana and live.
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Ryan’s Hope
Copyright © 2010 Bonnie Rose Leigh
ISBN: 978-1-55487-543-6
Cover art by Martine Jardin
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Ryan’s Hope
Worlds Apart Book 4
By
Bonnie Rose Leigh
Dedication
An author’s life can be very insular, meaning to do our job we often hibernate in our homes, only sticking our noses out long enough to scarf down something edible, check to make sure the house is still standing, and that the rent got paid. So, I’m dedicating this one to Andrea Cope: Beta reader extraordinaire. She’s been more help than you can imagine. More help than I could have imagined when I set out on this project. Dear readers, as always, this one is also for you, because you are the ones that insisted I write Ryan’s story next. Hence one of the reasons I’ve been hibernating in my cave for the last few months. Enjoy! And of course, to my real life hero, Chris: Every hero I write has his beginning in you. All my love… Forever and Always!
Prologue
Ryan held on for dear life as the small ship left the shuttle bay. A Laser Canon blast rocked the larger ship as they exited as swiftly as they could during the firefight, using the battle as a distraction. He managed a quick glance over at his companion as another blast rocked the craft.
“We’re going down!” Anna screamed into her communications device. “Dear Goddess, we’re going to crash on this planet and we don’t even know where we are to call for help.”
“As long as we’re away from the Black Rose, I don’t give a damn where the hell we are,” Ryan said with a snarl. “Nothing could be worse than staying on that ship.” He was tired of being poked and prodded—sick of the drugs they injected him with. He could not have endured hearing another woman’s scream as they repeatedly raped her in an attempt to impregnate her. He gave Anna a meaningful look. “Even death was preferable to that hell.” He jerked his head toward the others. “I think our friends would agree.”
The other three women he’d helped to escape merely nodded their agreement with thinned lips. He wished he could have taken more. Still, four women out of the Black Rose’s grasp were better than none.
Fire blazed over the nose of the shuttle as they forced their way through the layer of atmosphere.
“Shit! I don’t see anything down there but water.” Anna fought with the steering lever, trying to regain control of the ship. “I can’t… Brace yourselves for impact and try to find something that floats. We’re going in and going in hard!” she called over her shoulder.
Ryan gripped the arms of his chair and kept his gaze glued to the window in front of him. He was a dead man, plain and simple. He glanced over at Anna again. “You know, as soon as that glass breaks, we’re goners.”
“It’s not glass. It won’t break.” Anna gave him a tight smile. “The dampeners should slow us down at least a little and afford some protection. My main concern is water temperature.” She glanced back at the others, then at Ryan.
And whether or not everyone could swim, he thought.
What seemed like forever really took less than a minute, including their conversation. Strange how falling several thousand feet could seem to take so long.
The dampeners held. Damage from the impact was minimal and, thankfully, no one was injured. The women screamed at the bobbing of the small craft. None of the women could swim. They were nothing but big cats when shifted, so he could understand their immediate fear—but fear had to be overcome. How in the hell would he save them? He was a water baby. He’d been more comfortable in the water than out all of his life. And he was an award-winning swimmer. But none of that suggested how he’d keep them all from drowning. He glanced through the transparent hull just in time to see a large fin disappear.
Anna opened the hatch. Two of the women held cushions that would keep them afloat, if they were lucky. That still left two to keep above the surface. He sighed. He didn’t have the heart to tell them they were dead already.
“On the count of three we all need to jump from the shuttle as fast as we can. The force of our leaping out and the loss of weight will cause the ship to spin, take on water and sink. Understand?” They nodded. “One.”
The women moved closer to the hatch, two in the doorway and two just behind.
“Two.”
The women grasped their cushions in white-knuckled grips and braced themselves for their jump.
“Three!”
He and Anna pushed the first three out, then leapt from the shuttle together. The water closed over their heads as the shuttle capsized and slipped below the surface as predicted.
Something large brushed Ryan’s side. That’s it. I’m shark food now. I hope they at least wait until we’ve all drowned so we don’t have to feel them ripping us apart. He exhaled, hoping to quicken the inevitable. His eyelids fluttered open when soft lips pressed against his, forcing air back into his lungs. A strange beauty stared into his eyes. Her golden hair floated around her face in a long, tangled mass. It covered her shoulders and chest, hanging well past her… Ryan blinked, then smiled. Now he knew he was dead. He was seeing mermaids!
When she wrapped her arms around his waist and started to tow him toward the surface, Ryan kicked his legs. If he wasn’t dreaming—or dead—he’d be damned if he’d allow a woman or mermaid haul his ass up to solid ground. He hadn’t escaped the Black Rose just to give up now.
Moments later, Ryan’s face broke the surface of the eerie-colored water. Doing his best to tread water, he looked for the others. He saw no one except for his rescuer nearby. As he searched the
water, one head popped up, then another, until he was surrounded, not only by the other victims of the Black Rose, but by more creatures like his rescuer, men and women alike.
An hour later, two guards led Ryan to the palace throne room. He didn’t know what he expected—maybe that it would be underwater, not this ordinary, but very expensively decorated, ballroom. At the far end of the room were two thrones, occupied by an absolutely human-looking couple. Not a fin or pool of water was in sight. Before he made it halfway across the room, the male squeezed the woman’s hand, then headed down the two stairs that led to the ballroom floor.
Moments later, Ryan clasped hands with Mikel Logann, High Prince of Manruvia. Within an hour, he signed up to lead the rebel forces against the Black Rose. Within a month, he began the construction of the Rebel Base of Glendor. After his first successful raid of one of the Black Rose’s prison camps six months later, rescuing both men and women, he vowed to himself that no one would remain in one of her filthy prisons one second longer than necessary. No one.
Chapter One
Chantrean Palace, Planet of Chantrea, Five Years Later…
Liana Peterson stared into the microscope and grimaced. Negative. Again. Shoving away from the lab table, she gave a frustrated sigh and ran her hand through her tousled hair. When her fingers tangled in the tresses, she dropped her shoulders and closed her eyes in defeat. How long had she been working since her last break? Forty-eight hours? Seventy-two? Longer? She didn’t even know. One hour blended into the next, one day into the other, until weeks and months passed in a blur.
So many people were depending on her research, on her finding the answers to the fertility problems plaguing the Chantrean people. Though born on Earth, she’d lived on Chantrea many years now and remained determined to solve their fertility crisis. No matter how long she worked, how many hours she put in, she continued to fail her people, continued to fail the men desperate for mates to call their own. She knew the answer was out there, she could feel it just out of reach, and that only made it all the more frustrating that those same answers continued to elude her, even after all the years of fruitless searching.
Eyeing the disheveled cot in the corner of her lab, Liana pressed her hands to the base of her spine, trying to rub out the ache that had started to spread up her back during the long hours she’d spent bent over her equipment. She should rest, try and get some sleep, but too many people were counting on her. Counting on whatever feeble answers her tired and battered mind supplied them with, no matter what agonies she sometimes suffered to get the answers she needed. With one last wistful glance at the cot, she turned back toward the microscope and the box of slides awaiting her attention.
Before she could even bend to look into the microscope, a wave of bitter rage washed over and through her, practically knocking her to her knees. Her hands gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles turned white as she did her best to remain standing. Venomous hatred and anger flowed through her. Whoever was heading her way was definitely not in a good mood, and as tired as she was, Liana had no defenses to protect herself, no strength to maintain a shield in her mind against the malignant feelings spewing from the approaching Chantrean. As an Empath, she couldn’t even defend herself physically because everything others experienced, be it pain—physical or emotional—happiness, joy, even fear, she felt the same as if it were her own. It made her an easy target for the others, made her the Omega when she’d give anything to be able to fight back.
She did what she could to fight the one battle that would mean the most to her adopted people and still it wasn’t enough. Still, some went out of their way to use her as their punching bag whenever they needed an outlet. There didn’t seem to be a damn thing she could do about it other than call security whenever someone got out of hand. It made her look even weaker in everyone’s eyes, something she could ill afford.
Using every ounce of her remaining energy, Liana straightened away from the table and stood proud, tall, and waited for the newcomer to enter her domain. In this one room in the palace, she ruled, she held the control. In the entire palace, it was where she felt safest, especially with no mate and no male family members to protect her if she needed help. The High Princess Amy Shi’Lan had linked this one room to her private quarters in case of emergency. She should be safe here, but almost immediately, she knew that wasn’t the case this time. Someone had bypassed the Prince’s secured system. She knew of course, who that one person had to be, the one who still had access to the palace despite the constant security sweeps. The Black Rose, former Princess of the Crown.
Her door slid open with a barely audible hiss, revealing three men towing a fourth, barely conscious Chantrean Lionese male. Everything inside her stilled. The world narrowed down to this one male. Her pulse sped up as she instinctively inhaled the scents of the males entering her domain. Her fight-or-flight responses kicked in. Three of the males weren’t here simply to drop off a sick Chantrean, as they claimed, but to observe the layout of the security and report back to their mistress before the offensive was to begin. Hatred and fear, lust and eager perversion wafted off the men in sickening waves. From the Chantrean, she only sensed a deep well of hurt and shame that he allowed the men to use his body to lure her into a trap of some kind, that he would in the end be the downfall of the people he’d been trying so desperately to save since his own capture and escape so many years ago.
It was hard to tear her eyes away from the injured male, but she had to, because he wasn’t the most dangerous one in the room—not to her and not tonight. The other three were. She could feel their evil intent. She knew they had weapons on them that her security system had not detected. For now, she was on her own. By the Goddess, what was she to do?
“Please, put him on the cot, I’ll see what I can do for his injuries. I don’t recognize you. Did you just arrive?” Liana tried to keep her voice calm, professional, but inside, she quaked in fear. Somehow, she had to get help down here without alerting the other spies in the palace, because where there were three, there were bound to be more. If only she could fight somehow, without it coming back and harming her instead, they might stand a chance. Alas, her powers didn’t work that way—not even in self-defense. Her heart stuttered and stammered in her chest. She only knew that she had to protect the male. She must protect him at all costs. He was hers to protect.
Liana swallowed and looked toward her uninvited guests. They made no move to deposit the injured male on her cot, and did not introduce themselves to her. Her unease grew. Someone should have noticed the newcomers. Help should have arrived already. That meant only one thing. Spies were once again infesting the palace, gaining access where they shouldn’t, or someone would have detected this intrusion and sent in a rescue unit already—especially here in this room—a room supposedly monitored every moment of every day for her safety and because of the absolute importance of her experiments. For now, she and the male were on their own. Gathering all the courage and strength remaining in her small, exhausted body, Liana straightened to her full height, barely reaching the chest of the smallest of the foul-smelling men filling her lab. “Go ahead, put him on the cot before he collapses on the floor and someone comes in and sees him lying there at your feet instead of where I can treat him.”
Slowly, reluctantly, they put him on the cot, as though they weren’t sure if they believed someone might come in or not. He dropped in an unconscious heap, unmoving. Her gut cramped at seeing her male—her mate—lying there so helpless. It shouldn’t be this way. She had to do something to help.
“What you are doing here?” she demanded. “Who sent you?” she asked, though she pretty much already knew the answer. If the Black Rose had come here, to this lab, to this place, then she must be closer to finding the cure for the fertility problems than she’d thought. Without a cure, men from all across the galaxy were willing to pay the Black Rose outrageous black market fees for sex slaves to bear their young, to breed more women to bear more young. Liana supp
osed in the Black Rose’s mind, she’d become the single most valid threat against the vile bitch’s powerbase—if she were close to a cure, that is. She wasn’t so sure she was.
Even while she waited for the men to answer, her mind spun, trying to come up with some plan to affect her escape with the injured male. With her mind racing, she tried to put as much space between herself and the men as possible, but still stay as close to her workspace as she could. There were things on her worktable she could use, drugs that could incapacitate her attackers or revive her male, whichever she needed, but she needed to be able to get to them.
Sidling up to her table, she casually leaned her hip against it and crossed her arms, attempting to look as if the men oozing menace with every breath didn’t bother her—not the easiest thing to do, considering how terrified she actually felt. “I don’t recognize you, but then again, I’m stuck in the lab all the time and don’t know many of the guards now that that King has increased the patrols. Was this man injured searching for the Black Rose?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, he wasn’t injured on patrol.”
“Then how was he injured?”
“Well, doc, we needed to infiltrate the palace. What better way than to injure one of our own? You’d never suspect your own people of working for the enemy, even after all the treachery. That’s your downfall. It’s always been your downfall.”
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” Liana swallowed bile. Her stomach cramped and twisted. Another wave of sick and perverted lust washed through her. Yes, they planned to kill her, but not before brutally using her body.
“The Black Rose sends her regards, Ms. Peterson.”
Worlds Apart 4: Ryan's Hope Page 1