by Abel, Regine
Raven
Xian Warriors 2
Regine Abel
Copyright © 2019
All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal and punishable by law. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This book uses mature language and explicit sexual content. It is not intended for anyone under the age of 18.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Raven
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Also by Regine Abel
About Regine
Raven
Her beautiful mind was her own prison.
After betrayal and abuse destroyed Liena’s dreams of becoming a Psychic Operator, she warily accepts a temporary position on Khepri, the homeworld of the bioengineered Xian Warriors. With entire Warrior units getting mysteriously wiped out, she must help devise a critical antidote. But when a buck naked, sexy as sin, Xian Warrior walks into her lab, Liena's bone-deep fear of psychic contact, of touching another’s soul, doesn’t trigger with him.
The minute Raven sees Liena’s aura, he knows he has found the one. She’s broken, but he vows to fix her, and then claim her as his bonded mate. When she inadvertently sets them on the path to discovering, at long last, the human’s elusive third psychic ability, the need to mend her becomes urgent. As the strongest of her kind, she may be their only hope of saving an entire species on the verge of annihilation.
With time ticking and so many lives in the balance, will Liena overcome her trauma, or will her mind and the rescue mission descend into madness?
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the readers who approach a new story with an open mind and don’t jump to conclusions at the first sentence that troubles them.
The Xian Warriors series is a celebration of the human race. We are different, and it is a wonderful thing. We shouldn’t try to fit in a single mold but embrace our uniqueness and put it to the service of each other. Together, we are stronger. Together, we are invincible.
Chapter 1
Liena
Heart pounding, I stepped up to the door of the shuttle as the ramp lowered onto the docking bay of Khepri, the home world of the Xian Warriors and HQ of the Vanguard. My whole life, I had dreamt of joining the elite intergalactic force protecting all the free worlds of the galaxy from the Kryptids. Without the Warriors, those insectoid aliens, on a mission to conquer the universe, would have eradicated the human race and turned Earth into a breeding ground. The Xian Warriors were the ultimate soldiers, bioengineered by my great-grandfather, Dr. Liang Xi.
But my dream had been crushed by past abuse and genetic limitations.
The doors of the shuttle opened on a vast, state-of-the-art ship hangar with steely-blue walls and dark-grey, metal-plated floors. It contained an impressive collection of vessels, from small skiffs, to chasers, to battleships.
My breath caught at the sight of the few Xian Warriors within, going about their business, their muscular bodies clad in skin-tight, black armor that sharply contrasted with their golden skin and shiny scales. Many of them turned their beautiful faces in my general direction, their large, black eyes, devoid of any white, examining me as I stepped down the ramp towards my hostess, Dr. Victoria Lashan.
Silencing my irrational fear that the Warriors would attempt a psychic connection with me, I forced myself to focus on the doctor. I returned her welcoming smile, although mine probably looked stiff. Despite our multiple video calls, in the flesh, Victoria’s youthful appearance was even more striking. She had recently turned sixty-two but looked barely thirty. With her trademark single braids on each side of her long, freckled face, the rest of her red hair flowing freely down her back, she could almost have passed for a Viking, if not for the colorful maxi dresses she also loved wearing.
I liked Victoria—as she insisted I call her. Even though she would be my boss during my short stay on Khepri, she never cared for any kind of hierarchy or pompous titles people in the medical field always liked flaunting about. Instead of giving her a sour expression, Victoria’s fairly thin lips always gave the impression she was pinching them to keep from bursting out laughing. Her eyes, the same light blue aqua as the clear water of a tropical beach, sparkled with mischief.
“Hello, Liena,” Victoria said, extending both hands towards me as I reached the bottom of the ramp. “I hope you had a comfortable trip.”
“Hello, Victoria,” I said, taking her hands, slightly taken aback when she leaned forward and kissed both of my cheeks in turn.
Although aware of her friendly and laid-back personality, I’d been used to more formal—if not pretentious—behavior from my peers. As a biochemist and geneticist, considered a genius in my field for my young age, I’d jumped at the opportunity to work with Victoria, away from the jealousies, petty rivalries, and overall stuffy atmosphere of the milieu where you could only be taken seriously if you walked around with a stick up your rear. To be given the opportunity to help formulate the antidote for the neural inhibitor drugs that prevented Soulcatchers and Portals from rescuing the souls of fallen Xian Warriors was too great an honor to pass up.
“Yes, it has been great,” I said, genuinely. “The personnel on board the spaceship were wonderful; I’d never been treated to such luxury before.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Victoria said, her eyes lighting up, “you haven’t even begun to taste Vanguard luxury. I will convince you to stay.”
My face heated, flattered to be so courted by the Chief Medical Officer of the Vanguard and the first human to have mated a Xian Warrior. But, at the same time, my stomach churned with the familiar unease of the psychic implications of life on Khepri.
Victoria had barely spoken those words before she cast a sideways glance at one of the Warriors who nodded at her. She smiled in response, a grateful look in her eyes. I didn’t need to ask to know they had telepathically communicated. My stomach twisted further.
I couldn’t join the Vanguard, despite being a rank five psychic, the highest level one could possess. The thought of another mind touching mine, reading my thoughts, influencing them—controlling them—had me on the verge of hyperventilating.
A shiver ran down my spine as I chased away the unpleasant thoughts. I’d undergone extensive therapy after I’d been freed from my former mentor’s abuse. I no longer went into a hysterical panic whenever another mind brushed against mine. If need be, I could engage in short telepathic conversations, but they left me feeling soiled.
The Warrior Victoria had mind-spoken with headed towards the shuttle I had just disembarked from.
“Rage will bring your belongings to your apartment,” Victoria explained. “First, I’m going to give you a quick tour of the Vanguard. Then I hope you are hungry because you are having dinner at my place. Doom, my husband, is once again off saving the world somewhere, and my son, Raven, is always too busy to entertain his old lady.”
“Hardly old,” I said, smiling as we headed for the security gate leading out of the docking bay.
We walked through an arched-shaped, giant scanner on our way out. It tickled my skin, and I stared at my arms, intrigued by the tingling sensation that lingered for a few seconds.
“The latest addition to our defense systems,” Victoria explained. “It tingles because it’s actually scanning your DNA. After a nearly tragic incident last year, we no longer take chances. But I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, I want to show you the beauty of Khepri so that it can seduce you into sticking around for more than a handful of months.”
I followed with an indulgent smile as Victoria led me down a long corridor into an impressive transport hub. The white, circular room, with black and gold accents, had six large archways, three on each side of the hover train tunnel situated right in the middle.
“These archways,” said Victoria, pointing at them, “are tubes through which high speed bubble transports carry us to various sections of Khepri. They can carry up to six passengers—if they are humans—but with Warriors, you’ll find yourself rather squished,” she said with a teasing smile. “There’s a very user-friendly navigation panel inside the bubble that allows you to select your destination.” She turned toward the sleek, bullet-shaped train to our right. “If there are more people in your group, you can split into a couple of bubbles or use the train. It stops at all the official buildings and leads to the residential area on the outskirts of HQ.
My eyes lingered with envy on the Soulcatchers and Portals, looking smart in their formal, black Vanguard uniforms. Although my genetics would have never allowed me to have either role, I could still have been wearing the black uniform as an Operator—if not for my trauma.
My great-grandfather had created the Xian Warriors to be nearly immortal. Upon physical death, a Warrior’s soul could be sheltered in the psychic vessel of a Soulcatcher, who carried him within her until she could transfer him back into a new mortal Shell grown inside an incubator. While human females proved to be the most powerful Soulcatchers in the galaxy, to our great dismay, only Caucasian females appeared to possess that ability. For the rest of us wishing to join the Vanguard, if our psychic powers were strong enough, we could become Operators, telepathic communicators that instantly relayed important information from Warriors battling on the front to other members of the Coalition or the Vanguard.
After more than three decades of that belief, a Black girl named Ayana flipped everything on its head.
Through her, we discovered Blacks and brown-skinned people also had a unique power: they were Portals. While they didn’t possess a vessel to carry a soul within them, as long as a fallen Warrior had a new Shell within their psychic range, they could immediately redirect a soul into it or into the empty vessel of a Soulcatcher. With their power, they eliminated rebirth sickness for the Warriors, allowing them to be instantly battle ready. On top of revolutionizing the Vanguard and giving us a serious edge in the war, this momentous discovery brought hope to my people—Asians—that we, too, held a unique power that would make us as invaluable as the others.
Yet, a year later, we still hadn’t found our spark—the anomaly within the psychic void of Ayana’s mind that had allowed the Xian Warriors to reveal the Portal power. But like the Warriors, we held the firm belief that it was only a matter of time before our special ability manifested itself, at long last.
Chasing these thoughts away, I stepped into one of the transport bubbles, far more spacious inside than they had seemed on the outside. Victoria showed me how to use the intuitive interface to select our destination, the Vanguard HQ. While you could stand during the ride, I took advantage of the narrow, circular bench around the circumference of the bubble to sit. A wise decision as the unusual transport smoothly went from stationary to flying through the tube at dizzying speed, giving me an odd lurching sensation in the pit of my stomach.
In the blink of an eye, the bubble came to rapid—but smooth—stop at the edge of a massive plaza surrounded by a series of oddly-shaped, towering buildings. In the backdrop, the ghostly silhouette of the planet’s three rings graced a clear blue sky. On the opposite side of the buildings, in the center of the plaza, the giant, golden statue of a Gomenzi Dragon spread its wings, its head pointing at the sky.
I still held the hope of encountering one of those legendary creatures in the flesh. Being spliced with those dragons had given the Xian Warriors their golden skin and scales.
“This is HQ,” Victoria said, pointing at the tallest building in the center. “This one on the left is the Convention Center, which also serves as residence for visiting dignitaries. And this one on the right is the Science and Research Center—your new playground.”
I smiled, my skin tingling with excitement as we sauntered towards the flame-shaped building with a large ring around its middle.
“We’re not going to stay long,” Victoria explained as the large, glass, entrance doors swished open before us. “You just had a long trip, and I’m only giving you a glimpse while picking up some reports.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all!” I said, genuinely excited to visit the state-of-the-art facility where the most revolutionary bioengineering research in the entire universe had been—and continued to be—developed.
“Tsk, tsk,” Victoria said to me before nodding at yet another handsome Xian Warrior who stood guard at the entrance of the building. “We’re getting you settled in first, and then properly fed. It will not be said that Victoria Lashan was a poor hostess to Dr. Xi’s great-granddaughter!”
I couldn’t help smiling. Usually, it made me uncomfortable when people commented about my link to my famous ancestor. I sometimes regretted going into the same scientific field as he did. It seemed to give people some crazy expectations about what my skillsets should be, and what things I should accomplish. I wanted to be judged for my own achievements, not compared to someone else’s. But I genuinely loved biochemistry, bioengineering, and genetics, passions my parents had wholeheartedly nurtured and encouraged.
A number of Warriors nodded at us in greeting as we passed them. I silenced the instinctive unease I systematically felt in the presence of powerful, male psychics. Their gentle smiles as their friendly gazes met mine shamed me. I didn’t believe for one moment they would try to violate the privacy of my mind, but my subconscious trusted no one.
By the fifth Warrior we passed on our way to the lab, it suddenly struck me that each of them had stared above and around my head before locking eyes with me, a strange smile stretching their lips. I considered asking Victoria what that was all about, but decided to keep mum, wondering if I was imagining things.
My jaw dropped, and my eyes all but popped out of my head when we stepped into a bioengineer’s heaven. The vast room, all gleaming white and chrome, with dark grey accents, contained the most advanced models of every piece of laboratory equipment one could dream of. Biosafety cabinets, incubators, microscopes, containment enclosures for the safe use of hazardous drugs, you name it. I nearly had an orgasm just taking it all in, not to mention the absence of the sanitized smell that usually lingered in such environments.
A pretty redhead standing next to one of the four workstations chuckled at my gaping expression, which had to be comical. Despite the unnatural red hue of her hair, her freckled face confirmed her to be a true ginger, just like Victoria.
“I had the same reaction the first time I walked in here,” the girl said with a friendly smile.
“Liena, meet Shereen,” Victoria said. “Shereen, meet Liena, our visiting bioengineer.”
We exchanged greetings, and my eyes lingered with envy at her thigh-length, sleeveless, black, Vanguard uniform. The blue pin on her chest indicated she belonged to the Science and Engineering division of the Vanguard who rarely went to battle on the front, unless a grand scale attack loomed ahead.
“So good to finally have you here!” Shereen exclaimed with a beaming smile. She gestured at Victoria with her head. “Good ole doc here is always too busy taking care of training booboos to feed me numbers to crunch. I’m not a
med-head, but I rock numbers like no one’s business!”
Victoria chuckled. “I’ll be right back,” she said before stepping away from us.
We both nodded, then I grinned at Shereen, unable to resist her bubbly personality. “I’m honored to be here,” I said, instantly liking her. “But remember you asked for data. In a few days, you’ll be begging me to give you a break,” I added in an only partially teasing tone.
She had no clue what a workaholic I could be.
A set of large doors at the back of the room slid open without a sound as two very naked Xian Warriors entered, keeping Shereen from answering. I stared, mouth gaping, as the first one nodded nonchalantly at us before padding towards one of the cooling units, completely unfazed to be strutting his stuff in front of us. Golden all over, scales covered his muscular chest and arms as well as parts of his legs, but not his chiseled abs. A natural loin plate, also made of thick scales, shielded his naughty bits from view. He stopped in front of the unit and retrieved a rack of vials.
Then my gaze landed on the second man. Time stood still as I took in his oval face framed by dark, slightly curly hair through which the pointy tips of his ears peeked, and his thick, plush lips parted slightly with shock. He had stopped dead in his tracks, his stunning, black eyes staring above and around my head, like his peers had done before him. I couldn’t even wonder about the strangeness of that behavior as my brain had stopped functioning. Breathtaking didn’t begin to describe the perfection of that Warrior. My breath caught in my throat, and my heart seized when his gaze finally lowered, meeting mine.