Ranger Trent (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 2)

by Meg Ripley

  For a moment, their bodies seemed to meld into one, and she saw and understood everything he did: what she really was, what the Hyppo people had seen inside cypeople---what she’d really been all along. At the same moment, she saw a deep well of fondness for her from Jax, a well nearly as fresh as the bruise Ada sustained when she’d fallen backward; she saw that as he’d healed her, his energy had been mingling with hers, tasting her as she was now tasting him. She saw his kindness, his desire to help her unlock her innate ability to experience the full richness of life, and the overwhelming nature of the feeling he got when he gazed at her emerald eyes against the milk chocolate of her oval face---that gigantic, trembling sensation she knew so well: awe. She’d never seen herself look so terribly beautiful, and as she felt herself return to her body, she realized she was tearing up again.

  The Hyppo threw his head back, letting out a long, passionate cry as his cock twitched and then grew still inside her. Ada felt another surge of heat as her body seemed to absorb his energy, even as he pulled away and collapsed on the ground next to her, panting. His beautiful features seemed too calm and blissful, especially since Ada’s own mind was reeling with the shock of the truth he’d shown her the moment before. Ada drew a shaky breath as she watched his body return to its brilliant golden honey tone.

  “We all have empathy boards?” Ada whispered.

  “Yes,” Jax answered immediately. He seemed to hear her heart hammering in fear, because the next moment he’d grabbed her hand and was pulsing a gentle energy into the skin of her palm. It cooled her terror, and she could breathe again. Ada asked the next question that sprang to her lips.

  “Why don’t they tell us? Why don’t they let us all be Pathos?”

  “Well, they claim it’s for your own good,” Jax answered, and his voice made it clear that he didn’t agree. His third eye blinked, irritated. “But our people think it’s because it made you something more human than they could be…or something simply more.”

  Ada tried to wrap her mind around the pronouncement, finding it exceedingly difficult. “So, what did it for me? The furry thing?” She tried to remember what he’d called it, and was surprised to find it zoom to the front of her mind: “A Bezoar?”

  “Yes,” Jax said again. “Electrical activity stimulates the empathy board. A large enough shock will awaken it, and for Pathos, it’s usually done at birth. But for you, and cypeople like you…even the simple act of thinking, living, and learning generates enough electricity in the soft part of your brain that it can jostle the empathy board.”

  Ada laughed darkly as bitterness washed over her for the first time, acidic and invigorating. “So, we don’t have undersized empathy centers?”

  Jax laughed sadly. “No, just deactivated ones. It seems that cypeople like you are happening more and more, though---both naturally awakening very slowly, and through accidents like…” Jax stretched one of his golden arms toward the dead Bezoar.

  “And the ones they kill?” she asked as anxiety gripped her heart again. “Are they just…waking up? Why won’t the ships recognize them?”

  Jax hesitated. “The ships recognize them, but they really are corrupted. Because of the capacity for natural activation, there’s also the capacity for the board to be activated…inefficiently.”

  An icy sheet of dread settled over Ada, and she whimpered involuntarily. Jax squeezed her hand again, and calm rolled through her muscles and slowly melted her fear. “So, they are suffering,” she said through gritted teeth, “but it’s the humans’ fault?” Jax didn’t answer, but because she’d already tasted all of his knowledge, she could see the yes clearly in her mind.

  Ada locked eyes with Jax as they both sat up on the soft floor of the cave. “What will they do now that I’m…like this? Will they kill me?” Her heartbeat sped up. “Will you report me?”

  “They likely already know,” Jax said, and Ada saw in her mind that it was true. It was unsettling having access to someone else’s information---it was like having a giant library in her head. It would take some getting used to.

  “But they’ll want to use you as a poster child, most likely, and claim they didn’t know it was possible to the public. They’ll try hard to do anything that would upset the population, and once the population finds out you’re more identical than they thought---” Jax shrugged, and Ada answered for him.

  “They’ll want the engineers to answer for it. Maybe not now, but eventually.” She didn’t know if wars were started over things like this on Earth, but she didn’t want to find out. “Come on, we have to get back to the hub.” She sprinted to the mouth of the cave, and Jax followed.

  Jax stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, surprise clear in all three of his eyes. “Why me? I mean, I would like to tag along,” he said bashfully. “But why do I have to accompany you?”

  “You can back me up,” Ada said urgently as she dropped to her hands and knees and pushed through the hole. “Also…I kind of don’t want to be without you. Is that weird?”

  “Not at all,” Jax said behind the sheet of aluminum.

  There were no weighted boots to hold her down, so she hesitated as she stood outside the cave. Her alloy frame was far heavier than a human’s, but this planet’s gravity was also very different. Jax frowned at her when he slipped through.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Ada pointed to her ship. “I need to get over there quickly, but…” she pointed at her naked body. Jax laughed in understanding and grabbed her hand.

  “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  Ada turned to ask what he meant, but a wave of nausea knocked her focus askew. She doubled over, gasping from the strength of it; it took her a few seconds to catch her breath. She stood up---and nearly fell over again when she saw she was standing right beneath her ship. Jax was grinning at her foolishly. It suited his handsome face, somehow. She felt warmth squeeze her heart, and she let herself enjoy it this time. What is it? She shook her head roughly.

  “I forgot you guys could teleport, but I didn’t realize you could bring passengers,” Ada admitted. She looked up. “Just a second.” She looked around in the dirt, and sure enough, she found the bubble she’d dropped earlier. She pressed it and waited for it to spring around her.

  When it did, she dropped into a squat and jumped as high as she could; Jax let out a low whistle, and she felt her whole body blush as she rose gracefully into the air, floating harmlessly above the force field. Her palm pressed the ship’s access panel, and for the first time in her life, she forgot to feel fear as she waited for it to open---and for the first time ever, it stayed closed. Ada had a moment to register what had happened before she went sailing back to the surface of Oro and into Jax’s arms.

  She realized she was crying again just as he caught her. She wiped her tears away angrily as he held her in his strong arms, cradling her to his broad chest as she the bubble’s field dropped away and she finally broke down. Oddly, most of her tears weren’t sad; the first feeling she’d felt when the panel blinked red was the same boundless joy she’d felt when Jax’s energy locked with hers---the feeling of knowing, finally, who and what she was.

  As the sea of emotions quieted inside her, she made a decision. She’d go back---and force them to activate the other cypeople. She didn’t know how, but he had more knowledge then they were counting on. She was determined and felt reinforced by the limitless energy of the new bond she’d formed. She took a breath and focused on Jax’s words.

  “It’s okay,” he was saying. “I can teleport us; we’re not far from Earth’s hub. It’s okay… it’s okay.”

  “Jax,” Ada cried. “Shut up and take me home.” His body rumbled as he laughed.

  “Fine,” he said warmly, and kissed her forehead. “Hold on.”

  His lips left an unbearable tingle behind, a gentle, velvety warmth that squeezed her heart and had nothing to do with their nakedness. It grew to a burning heat, and she was still trying to name it when he started to teleport them. She had
the sensation of being pressed through a hole the size of a marble, but she felt so full of the feeling that it blocked out everything else; her last thought before her lungs started to pull in air was a single word, and her mind screamed it as sure as it new her own name:

  Love.

  THE END

  Forbidden Alien Warlord

  Jenna is the most skilled warrior Earth has in the fight against Yazul, a planet known for its rich soils and simple people. It’s been one hundred years since the first weapon was fired, and the war has moved past their own planets since then, allowing them to use Earth’s moon as a neutral territory in the constant push for peace.

  But one sleepy afternoon following a routine mission, Jenna’s world is rocked: a confrontation gets tense, and she’s forced into close quarters with a Yazulian warrior who seems too wise and deadly to be real. Leo is as intrigued by her as she is by him; worse, he hints that he knows something about the war that she doesn’t.

  Just when she’s starting to get answers from him, they’re both forced to make a decision that may alter the course of countless lives forever—and start a new history in the wake of their forbidden love.

  “Jenna, how close are you to a 100% success rate?”

  Jenna looked up from her nutrient smoothie and paused, pretending to think through her battle scores as if she didn’t already know them by heart. Her best friend was sitting across from her at the gleaming silver table, his gravelly voice booming over the constant hum of humans and aliens chattering in the background. “Six percent away,” she said causally, and Victor whistled, impressed.

  “I’m only at eighty-five,” he said, scratching his tattooed chin thoughtfully. “I think it has something to do with my reaction time—I keep trying to train it and it never gets any better. I thought Luna would be a better place to practice, since we have other species here to help us train, but Lizzie warned me that neutral territory isn’t always indicative of a neutral atmosphere.” His thick fingers moved over the thorns inked on his cleft chin frantically, a nervous tic the big man couldn’t shake. No one but Jenna ever called him on it because they respected him too much.

  Jenna was surprised he was showing his nerves at all. In the years she’d known him, he’d been the one to shove his fears down deeper than anyone else. Most people assumed he had no flaws; A-Level warriors like him loved to strut around as though they were gods among men, but Victor was caring, not cocky. His straight spine was strictly for show, a pillar of discipline and patience that set the bar for nearly every warrior there, even some of the older ones. Jenna was the most technically skilled, but she’d seen Victor walk out of a burning ship carrying two people and then resuscitate them both. Jenna didn’t have that kind of nerve or boldness; she preferred to be sure of her success, and that meant she relied on machines.

  “My light cannon seized up during the last skirmish on Mars II,” she mentioned, brushing a stray onyx curl away from her face. “Almost got fried by some piece of Yazulian trash, but then my cannon unfroze and I shot a double-pulse at him. Knocked his bot out of the sky in under a second. I love our new fighting pods, they’re so much faster.” She smiled, remembering the fierce sense of satisfaction that shot through her muscles as she watched the Yazulian’s spherical black pod start to smoke and fall toward the soil, sending up an orange mushroom cloud of debris as he slammed into the ground. No one died during the skirmish, human or otherwise, but they’d destroyed every weapon the rebels were attempting to carry past the peace border. It seemed like no matter how many of the Yazulians they got to join the struggle for peace, half as many rebels violently rose up to squash the attempt. After a hundred years, the war’s front had been pushed back past Earth, Yazul, and even Luna, Earth’s moon; Yazul’s forces were finally diminished enough to contain the fighting and start working toward a tangible, significant peace. Truthfully, Jenna loved her job; ever since she’d been a little girl, she dreamed of defending her planet from the humanoid beasts that tried so hard to claim Earth for themselves. She kept hearing that peace would be achieved in the next five years, but she wasn’t ready for peace. She was still getting her taste of war.

  “I’m gonna go do some research,” Victor said suddenly. He picked up his lunch tray and rose from the table. “Luna’s library is way better than Earth’s. Wanna come with?”

  Something in his tone made Jenna look up, and she noticed his tattooed fingers were tapping against the tray like they were keeping time in a tempo only he could hear. His eyes were darting from side to side as though he were trying not to look at something in the wide cafeteria, and Jenna turned to try to find out what had made him so antsy.

  Her gray eyes scanned the rows of tables, split by species for the most part, but she didn’t see anything out of sorts. Toward the middle of the cafeteria, the more peaceful humans mingled with the friendlier Yazulians, creating fifteen or twenty tables of mixed company. The cafeteria’s eighty-five humans in their varied tones—from soft white to deep chestnut brown—looked dull compared to the Yazulians, whose skin came in every imaginable shade, but who all shone softly like they held some secret flame inside. Nothing out of the ordinary struck her eye, still, so she gave up the search.

  Jenna started to ask Victor what was wrong—and tease him for his jumpiness— when her gaze was pulled toward the center of the room.

  A Yazulian was standing motionless near a table of humans who were trying hard to avoid catching him in their line of sight. He had shining copper skin like a brushed penny, and his bulging arms were crossed with boxy black letters that Jenna knew were prayers and incantations in a lilting language she’d never been able to fully grasp, even though it had been taught to her in the years since her enlistment. His face was astoundingly symmetrical and smooth, unmarred by burns and cuts, meaning he was likely a younger warrior. His short-sleeved shirt had gleaming square gems in deep purple at the shoulders; she knew they were power sources, but couldn’t recall exactly what weapon they powered. It wasn’t on him, she reminded herself, so it didn’t matter anyway. The Yazulian was looking directly at their table—more accurately, directly at her; Jenna felt a river of tension start trickling into her stomach as she realized it was the Yazulian from the skirmish earlier that day on Mars II. As soon as she thought it, the warrior smiled.

  “You go ahead,” Jenna said to Victor, keeping her eyes on the Yazulian. “I’ll catch up later. Besides, I’m sure Lizzie’s missing you.” She kept her voice light at the mention of her old commander, but she felt a ghostly tug of pain at her heart as she spoke. It’s been six months, she thought. Move on.

  Victor seemed to notice too, and he hesitated, sadness etched into his features. “Jenna—”

  “Go.” She tried to smile, hoping it was warm enough to make up for her lingering bitterness. Victor was still her best friend, and he deserved happiness. What did Lizzie used to say? The heart wants what the heart wants.

  Victor was strong, but Jenna could be forceful, too. He turned on his heel and marched away, shooting her one last glance as the doors opened for him and he disappeared out onto Luna’s surface. She pushed her emotions down and turned her eyes forward, her nerves brittle and her blood roaring in her head.

  The Yazulian started to move toward her as if he’d been given a cue. Jenna hadn’t known he’d been waiting for Victor to leave, but she could see it in his eyes as he approached the table. He was wearing casual clothes, a slim black top and pants made of a strengthened hybrid material that protected his skin from the elements. Fear rose to the surface of her mind, but anger soon followed, creating a toxic cocktail of emotions that colored all her panicked thoughts as she watched the alien approach. Maybe it was being reminded of her unrequited love, but she was itching for a tussle. This is it; one of these fuckers want revenge, and I’m gonna let him have one swing before I take him out. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to wail on someone.

  The Yazulian stopped in front of her table and planted his hands on his hips. Up close, he loo
ked less threatening, but that put her even more on edge. He was a head shorter than she was, and his pupils were dark brown and flecked with a luminous golden tone, close to the shade of his own skin. His nametag had his name and rank in blocky Yazulian script, and underneath it was its English translation: Leo 17. His eyes flickered to her name tag and read Jenna A. Horizon on the silver rectangle.

  “A-Level,” he said, and his voice snaked across her skin and made her shiver; it sounded like something she heard in all those examples of cheesy radio dramas from Earth’s early twentieth century: pompous, velvety and dark, seductively sinister but utterly commanding. It was the voice of a villain or an anti-hero you were inexplicably drawn to. She hated it.

  “Yeah, I’m A-Level. What’s it to you?” Jenna shot back. “You’re a level 17. Want to keep stating the obvious?”

  The Yazulian smiled, and his teeth were too white. “Sure, why not? You’re eating a shake. Everyone else has solid food of some kind.”

  “And?” Jenna spat, curling her hands into fists. “You’re about to be eating my boot if you don’t cut the crap. Or maybe crapping my boot if you’re not careful.”

  “I guess you need less food if you’re not doing real fighting,” he continued, rolling his eyes up toward the ceiling as he pretended to think. He stroked his chin and screwed up his face in mock concentration in an uncanny impersonation of what Victor had done moments earlier. “Pushing a joy stick around isn’t nearly as taxing as, say, saving your old Commander’s life.”

  Jenna stood up, and a sharp silence fell over their part of the room. “Excuse me? You fight in a pod, too. I don’t see you out there working up a sweat. Oh, wait!” Jenna gasped theatrically. “Your kind does that every time you try to think. No wonder we’re crushing you.”