Rama captured her arms and drew her closer. She braced her palms against his chest and stared up at him worriedly. “I’m not … not a Di-ore.”
Rama stared at her for a long moment and grinned broadly. “I knew that the very moment you sang the first time, dear heart.”
Embarrassment and dismay flickered through her. She frowned at him. “I was that bad?”
His lips twitched. “You were very good—but not as someone who had studied the arts and practiced for many years.”
“They sent me ….”
He nodded. “I know. I had a long talk with Governor Brunswick upon my arrival—in part to settle on matters pertaining to the alliance of our two realms and in part … to settle matters of the heart.”
Lauren felt like crying—mostly because she felt like she’d betrayed his trust and would never have the chance of it again.
He cupped her face in one hand, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I fell in love with you in spite of all the doubts and suspicions I had and I have no regrets that I did, but … I hope that I will have your complete loyalty, Lauren.”
He didn’t say she would lose his love if he didn’t. He didn’t have to. It hurt to think she was going to have to work to gain his trust, but at least she knew he cared enough to give her the chance. “You have it now … and all my love.”
He pulled her close and just held her for many moments.
Nothing had every felt better than to be wrapped up in him.
“We really don’t need to sign the colony contract. We can just have the traditional ceremony of your people,” Lauren said. “I’d just … well, I’d love it if my family could be there. My parents, at least.”
Rama pulled away to study her. “I am anxious, but certainly your family should be. They are here?”
Lauren bit her lip. “Uh … actually, no. They’re back home. But I’ve been saving to bring them out since I got here—at least for a visit. And, well they aren’t crazy about the transport, but I think they’d be willing to come for this. Especially if they know they’ll be grandparents before long ….”
Rama stared at her blankly for several moments. “Grandparents?”
Lauren gaped at him. “Uh oh.”
Rama looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be amused or angry. “Uh oh? When were you planning on telling me?”
Lauren blinked at him. “When the time was right?”
“This seems like a good time.”
She studied him soberly for a long moment. “Surprise! You’re going to be a daddy!”
The End.
The following are two short excerpts from two of Kaitlyn O’Connor’s recent releases: 7588
The Chronicles of Nardyl III:
Embraced by Darkness
By
Kaitlyn O’Connor
( c ) copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, January 2018
Cover art by Jenny Dixon January 2018
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
“Look alive, people!” Captain Cheyenne Mortensen bellowed before it occurred to her that she’d already put her helmet on and secured it and she’d just deafened everyone by yelling into her microphone. Ignoring her embarrassment, she struggled to maintain her professionalism as she commanded her crew. “The wormhole’s opening! Let’s try to maintain formation—and stay sharp! We don’t know what we might be up against when we hit the next world.”
Hopefully nothing.
“Intel says it’s clear, but we’re all familiar with Murphy’s law. Anything that can go wrong will.”
Because they weren’t packing enough supplies for a prolonged stay anywhere in between Earth and Nardyl and they also weren’t carrying nearly enough firepower or ammunition for a firefight.
They’d packed all they dared. She was carrying twenty pounds more than she’d ever been required to carry before and, despite months of training with the extra weight, none of them had managed to make the time for the jumps with more than a few seconds to spare.
According to her briefing, they would have just enough time to catch the next ‘shuttle’ to the next planet if they ran like hell. If anything prevented that leap, they were going to be stuck a full day cycle, at the very least, until the wormhole opened again going their way.
That meant trouble that could be multiplied down the line, as they hit the next planets, and things could very quickly reach a point of disaster in regards to their mission.
She struggled to dismiss that possibility.
According to the brass, this thing—this phenomena—had been thoroughly vetted—via unmanned probes, granted, but still studied exhaustively. They already knew the Saitren used it and, despite every effort to do so, they’d never found a vessel they’d used to make the jumps. They’d sent the probes in and brought them out again. They’d tested the atmosphere, gravity, temperature variations, and pressure—anything and everything that might present a problem with personnel and or equipment.
Every planet was conducive to the human condition. They’d found nothing to suggest there might be interference that would cause equipment or electronic failure.
No hostiles had been encountered—except those on the target planet, Nardyl.
It was their mission to change that—the hostiles part.
Trust the stupid bastards in charge to make a fucking mess of things and expect somebody else to clean up after them, she thought angrily!
She just hoped like hell they could avoid running into their guinea pig! Because she had serious doubts he’d forgotten what it was like being the ‘guest’ of the military.
It had been several years, granted, but a lifetime wouldn’t be enough if even half what she’d heard was true. It seemed doubtful he would ever forgive let alone forget or that it would in any way enhance their chances of success with the mission if they ran into him!
The alert on her wormhole detector gizmo went off, instantly capturing her attention and redirecting her mind to the task at hand.
Her sphincter tightened a little more with nerves as she jerked the device up to study the readout.
The wormhole was opening, alright, and she was fucking standing at the edge of the hole!
Oh my god!
She whipped a look back toward her squad even as she felt the pull.
“Here!” she bellowed. “Now, soldiers!”
She didn’t have the chance to see if they followed orders or moved quickly enough. She was snatched into the whirlpool. Every alarm on her special suit went off as the suction threatened to rip it off of her.
She didn’t want to think what the stress was doing to her body, but her monitor was screaming in her ears fit to deafen her.
Like she needed a fucking alarm to tell her what was happening to her!
Unfortunately, she couldn’t reach the damn control to shut it off!
She stopped abruptly enough to knock the breath from her. Fortunately, she’d had her training drummed into her until she was running on autopilot. She bounded up, glanced around to see how many—if any—of her squad was still with her and then dashed toward the hole that was opening a few yards away.
Delayed by shock, when her scan of her squad finally caught up with brain function she realized with a great deal of relief that she still had her full squad with her as she made the second jump.
Hopefully, they would still be with her when she got to the alien world they’d targeted. Arriving all by her lonesome wasn’t a possibility she wanted to think about.
* * * *
Damien knew he had no one to blame but himself, but that just pissed him off more since he couldn’t actually kick his own ass for doing something regrettably stupid.
Again.
And
then compounding that by doing something else stupid.
He was going to have the hangover from hell when he sobered up.
And he was probably going to be nursing it in the brig.
He supposed that was punishment enough and totally deserved.
He should have called the Private on it the moment he’d produced the case of brew and the cards for a game of chance instead of joining his squad members in ‘blowing off a little steam’.
Thereby compounding the trouble he’d already gotten himself in to.
But how the hell was he supposed to know that the female that had been giving him come hither looks was the general’s woman? She damned sure didn’t act like a claimed female!
Of course, there were a lot who didn’t these days—because they didn’t feel it. So many had lost their first mate—their true mate in the great dying. And the survivors had had to pick up their lives and go on.
They were willing, needful of finding a new mate, but that didn’t make it a true mating, didn’t mean they were truly bound.
And, unfortunately, when it wasn’t a true mating bond the female might or might not be able to remain loyal to their new mate.
He supposed it was pointing that out to General Niger that had cost him his rank since he hadn’t succeeded in plowing her furrows. He’d been caught before he’d actually managed that.
He’d lost the damned ranking he’d just earned back—busted all the way down to sergeant—the first time he’d been demoted below officer!—and been sent off on this shit detail to boot!
As if half pay wasn’t punishment enough, gods damn it!
Of course he could’ve been stuck with something far worse—and had been plenty of times. They still sent ‘clean up details’ out every week. These days remains were discovered far less frequently than in the years past and they were typically skeletal and usually unidentifiable, but it did something to a person to work around that for very long.
It had fucked him up even worse than his parents had, he thought derisively.
Well, he thought philosophically, it was at least an hour before their relief was due to show. Maybe he had time to sober up and could avoid visiting the brig again … so soon?
He studied the bottle in his hand thoughtfully for a moment and saw that it was still almost half full. Shrugging inwardly, he lifted the opening to his mouth and downed half of what was left in one long swig.
He couldn’t afford to waste good brew on sergeant’s pay, he thought morosely.
Maybe just one more sip and he’d toss it?
Unfortunately, he’d just lifted the fucking thing to his mouth again when an ungodly racket abruptly cut loose. He jerked in response and sloshed the shit all down the front of his uniform, eliminating any possibility of evading detection and avoiding a new stint in the damned brig!
Then, he was really pissed off!
* * * *
There was a detachment of soldiers waiting when the wormhole spat Cheyenne out like an over-chewed piece of jerky, slamming her against the ground for the umpteenth frigging time since they’d been sucked into the wormhole on Earth.
Cheyenne was beyond punch drunk.
She had a vague notion that she’d arrived at her destination, but she didn’t have the energy left to bound up and race to another opening anyway.
She’d hit her limit.
If she wasn’t where she was supposed to be … well, she was going to have to rest before she could try anything else.
She literally saw stars as she closed her eyes in an attempt to stop her head from spinning.
She supposed she might have been in worse shape if not for the specialized pressure suit the government had had made for the trip, but it was hard to say since she hadn’t tried the trip without one.
And she damned sure didn’t want to!
But then again, they were carrying nearly a hundred pounds of gear and supplies on their backs. Luckily, it had only taken a fairly short sprint to get from one opening to the next, otherwise she was convinced she simply wouldn’t have made it.
Certainly not in one go.
She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have been better off to chance a fire fight on any or all of the other planets just to ‘rest up’ before taking the next jump.
As she lay panting for breath, waiting for her head to stop spinning, the soldiers she’d gotten a glimpse of approached them. She opened her eyes when something that felt a lot like the barrel of a gun prodded her in the center of her chest.
The being standing over her set off a deluge of shock. It cascaded over and through her like a frigid tsunami. Her brain took a ‘snapshot’ of him without really taking note of any details—huge, angry red, and … really big … and demonic looking.
His bat-like wings were slightly arched in a way that cast a shadow over her and seemed somehow threatening although she couldn’t have said why.
She was in the right place, alright.
It was a struggle to summon the language she’d ‘mastered’ after spending hours and hours reviewing the videos and working at it.
“Peace!” she managed finally. “We are a peace mission!”
He crouched beside her and removed her rifle from nerveless fingers, tossing it away. Shouldering the weapon he’d had dug into her chest, he felt her up all over and removed her utility knife, the pistol she’d tucked into her boot, the bayonet for the rifle he’d already tossed away, and a ten inch hunting/gutting knife.
The weapons formed a small pile a couple of yards behind him.
He met her gaze with a narrow-eyed one. “Peace?”
She felt her face heating with discomfort. “Yeah, well we didn’t know what we might encounter before we got here.”
His expression was patently disbelieving.
“I’m carrying a diplomatic pouch that I was ordered to hand over to your … uh … leader.”
He stood up and motioned for her to stand. “Remove the helmet.”
Cheyenne’s belly knotted. She’d recovered enough presence of mind to experience a dilemma.
If she removed the helmet, there would be no possibility of pressurizing the suit again for an escape … or attempted escape she amended when she’d given her captor another once over.
She didn’t think she could outrun him on her best day and this was definitely not one of those.
But if she didn’t take the helmet off she was going to find it hard to convince these … truly terrifying aliens that she hadn’t come to make war. She really had come on a peaceful mission.
She didn’t have a choice, she realized very quickly.
“Soldiers—remove your helmets,” she ordered her squad as she reached up to depressurize her suit and then unlocked her own and removed it.
It was no great surprise to discover her hair had come loose during the trip. Traveling through the wormholes was like diving into a washing machine.
But it was disconcerting, though, that her hair, filled with static electricity, immediately swarmed around her like a live thing, blinding her.
She jerked her head to sling it out of her eyes and discovered the alien soldier who’d captured her was staring at her as if she’d brained him with something.
That was when it dawned on her that he was actually exceptionally handsome—as in very nicely sculpted features—she just hadn’t noticed it immediately because she’d been distracted by the demonic glare he’d bent upon her, the angry red skin, the horns, the seven foot mountain of flesh, and the bat wings.
* * * *
“They look like anjels!” one of his squad members gasped.
That hadn’t actually crossed Damien’s mind, but it was a good point! Grabbing the shoulder of her suit—it was a female!—he dragged her around to have a look.
No wings.
He’d noticed that already—sort of.
Actually, he’d been so transfixed by her face he’d only been peripherally aware that something was missing that he would’ve expected to see given her coloring�
��a cool, creamy white, her hair a pale gold, eyes the color of the sky—traits exclusive to their enemies, the anjels.
He dragged her backpack off and ran a hand over her back. There was no sign she’d ever had wings—not that he could imagine any sane anjel cutting them off—and it took no more than a glance to assure him none of them had wings.
“Take this off,” he said, gesturing to the suit she was wearing.
She hesitated, but then opened the front closure and peeled the thing off.
She had more clothing under that. Feeling more than a little exasperated, he told her to lift the tunic in the back.
His cock leapt to attention when he’d gotten a good view of her pale skin, completely distracting him from the hunt for any indication of wings. There was none and he didn’t have to touch her to verify that, but he couldn’t resist the chance to examine her skin with his fingertips.
It was warm, not cool as it looked like it would be, and more smooth and silky than anything he had ever touched or could imagine.
She hadn’t maimed herself or been maimed.
She’d been born without wings.
Besides he reminded himself as he gathered his scattered wits, they’d arrived through the wormhole and he couldn’t recall any incident when the anjels had arrived in their territory through a wormhole—nothing even remotely current, anyway.
“These two don’t look like anjels,” one of the other men contradicted the first, drawing Damien’s attention. “I’ve never seen skin this color.”
And if he’d been stunned by the first one’s appearance, the two Mich pointed out sent him reeling!
He didn’t actually shove their leader out of the way to get a closer look, but, then again, he wasn’t completely steady on his feet either or particularly agile at the moment. Truthfully, he didn’t notice he’d butted her out of the way until he finished examining the dark skinned females—one a pale brown and the other almost as black as the night—and looked around for her.
The Nine Realms of the Uti I: Warrior Prince Page 15
