Donen raised his blaster and fired into the trees. He hit a Felsite warrior, and the man flew back and landed against a tree. He lay still and panting, and Chris recognized Manu. Was he alive or dead? She didn’t have time to wonder. When he flew aside, a space opened up between Donen and Renier. Donen’s hand tightened on his weapon, and nothing stood between him and his enemy.
Turk ran through the trees, hurdling fallen tree trunks and prostrate Ursidreans. He slashed a Felsite aside with his blade and ran on. Renier rounded on Donen, but he couldn’t reach the Ursidrean leader with any of his weapons at that distance. Donen had him just where he wanted him. Turk dashed through the trees on an intercept course between the two Alphas. He was going to throw himself into the path of the blaster.
At that moment, the cannon went off again. A rocket whined through the air and exploded behind Chris. She crouched for protection from flying shards of brick and splintering wood, but another rocket sailed overhead and landed near the first one. She looked in every direction, but she couldn’t move. Another rocket might hit her at any moment.
She must have cried out in surprise, because Turk heard her and hesitated. Even Renier glanced in her direction, but Donen didn’t waver. He aimed his blaster at Renier and squeezed. The cannon exploded, and a rocket whistled through the night. Chris extended her hand toward Turk. He couldn’t sacrifice himself like this, not when she only just realized how much he meant to her.
What a fool she was, to squander him when she had him in the palm of her hand! She should have treasured him and accepted the gift of his love, instead of running all over hell and gone trying to get away from it. She started forward, but it was too late. Donen’s blaster went off, and the energy beam streamed out of the barrel.
Renier lifted his hand to defend himself, but the only thing he had to block that beam was a club. Turk was too far away. He wouldn’t intercept the shot in time. Renier would be cut down, and the battle would be over.
In that instant, another figure materialized between the two Alphas. He threw his arms around Renier, and the blast struck him in the back. He sagged into Renier’s embrace. It was Jaro.
Renier held the smaller man in his arms and lowered him to the ground. Jaro smiled up at his Alpha before he closed his eyes and sighed. Renier laid the limp body on the soft soil. Then he lifted his eyes to Donen and shook the forest with a deafening roar. Donen hesitated with his blaster still raised, and that was all the time Renier needed.
He launched himself at the Alpha Ursidrean and knocked the blaster out of his hand. Donen tried to answer with his blade, but Renier clubbed him to the ground with one stroke of his great stick. In a heartbeat, Renier leapt on Donen and smothered him to the ground
Chris didn’t see his victory. Another rocket landed a few yards away from her, but when she tried to run, another cut off her path. Rockets exploded all around her. She covered her head with her arms, but she couldn’t see which way to go to get away from them. In another minute, one of them would hit her, and that would be the end of it.
A frustrated and confused scream escaped her, but at that moment, a great weight struck her and threw her back against the wall. She closed her eyes under her arms. She couldn’t watch death take her. A rocket must have struck her, and in a couple of seconds, she would be dead.
Her head slammed back into something solid, and her mind swam into semi-consciousness. Her body went limp, and care and anxiety evaporated. Nothing else mattered. Her struggle was over. She hovered over the battle scene and gazed down.
Renier hammered Donen with his massive fists. Renier’s guard closed with Donen’s men, and the two factions fought with all their might for supremacy. Where was Turk? Then, out of the clear blue sky, a velvet touch intruded on her foggy brain. Fingers as soft as downy fur stroked her cheek and cradled her shattered body. She lay back and took a deep breath.
Her eyes groaned open, and something big and black blocked out the light. She blinked and tried to sit up, but her head pounded and spun. A voice reached her ear from a great distance. “Don’t move. You might be hurt.”
Chris fought to open her eyes, and there he was, kneeling over her. She frowned. “How did you get here? I thought you were with Renier.”
He laid her back on the ground. “Renier doesn’t need me. You do.”
Chris looked around. Renier knelt over Donen with the Ursidrean’s collar locked in his fists. “But how did you....?” He couldn’t have crossed that distance in the fleeting instant before the rocket struck.
Turk touched her cheek again. “What are you doing down here? You should be up in the city where it’s safe.”
“I thought you were in trouble,” she replied. “I had to help you.”
“I wasn’t in trouble. You’re the one who was in trouble. Take a look.” He helped her sit up and pointed. A wide crater yawned in the ground where she once stood next to the wall. “If I hadn’t knocked you away, it would have flattened you.”
Chris stared at the hole. He’d crossed the plain in a second and thrown her out of the path of the rockets. He’d saved her life when his own life was in danger.
He rubbed her arms and legs and massaged her shoulders and head. “Are you hurt? Are you okay?”
For once in her life, she relaxed into his touch. She would find shelter here and nowhere else. “I’m fine as long as I’m with you.”
He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Across the river among the trees, bands of Felsite went after lone Ursidreans and drove them back toward their cannons. The battle had turned. Renier pinned Donen’s arms to the ground with his knees and raised his heavy club to finish him off. What would become of these two factions when one Alpha killed another? They would continue in perpetual war for all eternity.
Chris closed her eyes and turned her face into Turk's shoulder. She couldn't watch this. “Let's get out of here.”
He didn't answer, but she felt him nod. They turned together, away from the battle and toward the dark. No lights blazed out there, beyond the city, beyond the inhabited part of the planet. The black forest called them home, and they would answer the call.
Without taking his arms away from her, Turk quickened his pace away from the city and the din of battle. Chris matched his stride, and when she looked up next, the blaze of rockets and the crash of weapons sounded weak and far away. A weight lifted off her shoulders, and her breath evened out.
At the top of the rise, they paused and surveyed the countryside all around. From up here, the lights of Melnili and the Ursidrean army dotted the black expanse of plain like fireflies in an enormous black night. They amounted to nothing in the overall scheme of things, and they didn't affect Chris and Turk at all. The farther they got from those lights, the more insignificant they beacme until they would blink out of existence altogether.
Turk took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. The first streaks of dawn struck his face, and he stared into her eyes with curious intensity. “Are you ready to go? I mean, are you ready to go down there?” He nodded toward the pass leading back to Lycaon territory.
Chris pulled herself up straight. “If I’m going anywhere. I’m going with you. I’ll go where you go.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Are you sure? You don’t belong with me if you don’t want to be on this planet.”
“You’re on this planet,” she replied. “That means I belong here, too. I belong with you.”
He frowned, but a clear light shone in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
“You don't want to leave Angondra anymore?” he asked.
Chris shook her head. “I thought I did, but when you left, I realized there was no point in me going back to Earth. I don't have anything on Earth to go back to that's as important to me as you are. If I went back, I would spend my life dreaming about you and wondering what might have been with you. I'll be much better off staying here and living those dreams in real life than searching for
a way to get away from them.”
“And Carmen?” he asked. “And all the other women? What about them? What if they want to get back to Earth? Don't you want to help them?”
“None of those women want to leave,” she replied. “No one wants to go back to Earth. What's the point of trying to help them do something they don't want to do?”
“They don’t want to leave their mates,” he told her. “Is that so hard to believe?”
Chris gazed toward the rising sun. “I had a picture of her in my mind. After Sasha died, I had this idea about the way she was when she found me at the crash site.I held that picture in front of my eyes all the way here, and even when I talked to Carmen. Sasha was my model, my hero, and she was dead. She died fighting back, and I was going to fight back, too, to make good on her sacrifice.”
He listened in silence.
“But that’s all gone now,” she murmured. “Sasha doesn’t want to go back to Earth.”
He inclined his head toward the west, and she fell in at his side. She slipped her hand into his, and they started across the plain toward the pass. The sun lightened the morning sky, and tiny creatures scattered before their feet through the waving grass. Chris lifted her face into the sunlight. Just over that hill, between the rocks and down the mountain, the trackless forest would swallow them up, and the canopy would hide their footprints.
Epilogue
Chris and Turk walked hand and hand through the forest, and Chris started to recognize the terrain. She'd passed this way when she first left the Lycaon village. She hung back until Turk stopped and regarded her. “Is anything wrong?”
Chris lifted her head to the pomontory rising above the trees. “Let's go up and take a look—just one last time.”
He frowned. “Who said anything about one last time? We can go wherever we like. You can go up there whenever the fancy strikes you.”
Chris tugged at his hand. “Come on. I want to see it.”
She strode up the slope and along the rocky outcropping to the summit. The vast expanse of Lycaon territory stretched out before her in a dark green carpet. The mountains far away separated the Lycaon from the Felsite and the sea.
Then Chris turned around and studied the flat country behind her. A dozen wisps of smoke rose out of the trees and mingled with the clouds. Chris's eyes widened. “There's the village.”
A smile touched Turk's lips. “Are you ready for this?”
Chris scanned the forest. “Maybe we could take a few more days before we go back.”
He raised his eyes and chuckled. “You are so transparent.”
She couldn't help but laugh. “It's pretty nice out here, just you and me, and I'm enjoying learning all your survival tricks. After we go back to the village, I'll want to go out into the forest to test myself every now and then.”
“Nothing's stopping you,” he replied. “If you like, I can follow you the way I did before, just to make sure you're all right.”
“That might be nice at the beginning,” she replied. “But later, I'll want to go alone, just to make sure I can really do it.”
He nodded. “As you wish.”
She drew closer and kissed him. “Let's not go back just yet. Let's spend a few more days out here alone.”
His arms snaked around her and crushed her against his body. “You don't have to ask me twice.”
“Your family won't worry about you, will they?” she asked.
He let her go, and they gazed down at those whispers of smoke again. “Don't go back to village until you're ready. I'll stay out here with you as long as you want, but once we go back there, you have to be ready for everything that means. You have to be ready to take your place in the pack, and you have to be ready to mate with an Alpha. Do you understand what that means?”
Chris nodded. She couldn't take her eyes off those trails of smoke. The village scene played out in front of her eyes. “We have to be ready to take over if anything happens to Caleb.”
“And that means any child of ours could become Alpha after me,” he told her. “The pack will want to get to know you. They'll want to touch you and smell you, and they'll never stop asking, every time they see you, when you're going to get pregnant.”
Chris snorted. “That's got to be hard.”
He nodded. “She had an especially hard time since she had no family before the pack. She wanted to run away from them every time they came around to get to know her. She wanted to be alone with Caleb the way you want to be alone with me.”
Chris shook her head. “I don't want to be alone with you to get away from them. I want to be alone with you for you—for you and me.”
He swept her up in his arms, and his lips crushed against her mouth. Then he peeked into her face. “Can you keep a secret?”
She cocked her head. “What?”
“The pack won't bother Marissa again,” he told her. “She's pregnant.”
Chris's eyes flew open. “What? Really? That's….” She broke off.
He nodded. “Her children will become Alphas after Caleb. If anything happens to him while the children are young, I'll take over and help Marissa raise them to take over after me.” He hesitated. “There is a good chance, if everyone lives long, healthy lives, our own children won't ever become Alpha. Could you handle that?”
Chris looked back down into the valley. All those political dramas remained so far away. As long as she and Turk stayed outside the village, they didn't even exist. “I wouldn't mind at all if our children never became Alpha. I'd almost prefer if they didn't, so they could live normal lives.”
He nodded. “They'll grow up to be warriors, anyway.”
“The boys will,” she countered.
He shook his head. “The girls can become warriors, too, if they want to. Anyone can become a warrior or a scout to protect their pack.”
Chris smiled at him. “I can handle it. I can handle anything that happens now.”
He kissed her again. “You'll be fine.”
Chris took his hand, and they started down the hill. “I already am.”
( The End )
Please see next page for a FREE copy of your EXCLUSIVE book!
Get Your EXCLUSIVE & FREE Copy of
“TAKEN FOR THE ALIEN PRINCE”
www.AlienRomanceBooks.com
GET YOUR FREE PERSONAL COPY NOW!
Taken for the Alien Prince PREVIEW
Chapter One
Layla could only remember running. She was barefoot and the ground beneath her feet was cold and damp, sticks and rocks occasionally digging into the soft flesh and low brush clawing at her as if trying to stop her. Everything around her was hazy. The color seemed to have washed out of the world and left behind only shades of brown and rust and grey. She felt like she was running through water, moving slowly no matter how hard she fought to go faster.
Chilling air whipped at her face and she felt the first few stinging raindrops of a storm cut at her skin. She didn't know where she was going or how she had gotten there, and as she ran, the trees seemed to blur and blend into one another, making it impossible for her to orient herself.
She knew they were coming after her. She could feel and hear their heavy footsteps even in the thick, muting air and feel their presence getting closer. They seemed to be everywhere even though she couldn't see them as she ran. The oppressive feeling of them was getting more intense, but she had to keep running. She didn't know where she was running, but her feet wouldn't stop. Her mind and her fear wouldn't let them.
She thought she could be getting away. She might have a chance to get out of the woods and find her way back home – only, she couldn't remember what home was or where she may be able to find it. All she could do was run.
A cold, sharp breath invaded her lungs as she turned around a massive tree. The hard, choking pressure of a hand on her neck cut off the breath and she felt the ground beneath her feet disappear as the hand lifted her up. There was a moment of consuming terror and then the world around her t
urned to streaks of black and grey. Then there was nothing.
What could have been hours or days later, Layla became aware again. She kept her eyes closed as consciousness slowly rose through her body and she felt every inch become awake and present. Her muscles ached with the type of depth that came from intense exhaustion and long exposure to cold. The air around her, however, felt warm and damp. She was lying on her back and could feel something hard beneath her like a slab of stone. A tingling sensation flowed through her body and she tried to move her arms, only to find that they were lashed to the stone beneath her with rough lengths of rope. She tried to move her legs, but they were also secured to the stone beneath her.
She kept her eyes closed, terrified of what she may see if she opened them, and tried to remember what happened before she was running through the woods. No matter how hard she thought about it, however, Layla couldn't come up with anything except running. Her feet still felt chilled and stung from the forest floor, but she had no sense of how much time had passed since whatever had grabbed her and lifted her away.
Taking a long breath to steel herself, she let her eyes slowly slide open. As her eyelids opened and she lifted her head, the first thing she saw was the horizon. It glowed a vibrant shade of green as what looked like a deeply purple sun melted out of sight. She looked above her and saw a low grey ceiling as if she was in a small room. Confusion joined the fear that pumped through her as she tried to process what could be happening to her.
Suddenly she was aware of a presence in the space with her. She could feel someone near her, but she couldn't turn her head enough to look. She wanted to speak, but couldn't bring any sounds forward. The feeling of the presence shifted and she felt someone walking around from behind her head to pause at her side. She looked up at him and felt her breath catch in her throat. The man standing beside her was startlingly beautiful and she felt so immediately drawn to him she briefly forgot her fear. He gazed down at her with eyes the color of honey. The flicker of a torch above his head and the glow from the sinking sun showed streaks of bright, clear blue through the shimmering, melting color.
Crashed on Alien Planet: A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance Page 9