Copyright 2017 by Forever Fantasies Publishing - All rights reserved.
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Kyla Dean is not a woman to be messed with. She’s been a spitfire her whole life and being a New York City Police Officer has only honed both her skills and her attitude. Hot on the trail of a dangerous thief, she finds a little more than she bargained for when she falls into a different world…
Khaytab has a handsome king and a strict set of rules about a woman’s place.
Kyla isn’t terribly impressed with either one.
Unfortunately, she needs the king’s help in tracing down the one person who can get her back home. The only way she will be able to track down this thief is to pretend to be a man and go undetected, but her cop instincts come out as she stops an attack on the king.
Impressed, the king now assigns her to be his personal guard, but how long can Kyla hide her real identity from the him? In Khaytab, a female impersonating a man would be put to immediate death.
The favor to the king puts her in his good graces, but, is there more than respect in the long glances he gives her?
Will he find out who she really is before she can track down the thief who has her only way home back to the safety of her world?
Realm Shifters:
Entire Series
By: Forever Fantasies Publishing
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Table Of Contents
Realm Shifters: Undercover Mate, Book 1
Realm Shifters: Wordly Matings, Book 2
Realm Shifters: Revolutions, Book 3
Realm Shifters: New Beginnings, Book 4
About The Author
BONUS STORIES
Sample Of New Release Mating Mermen: An Unexpected Tail
Realm Shifter: Undercover Mate
Book 1
“Admiring the new award?”
She had been. “Shut up, Danny,” Kyla said, jerking her attention back to her desk.
Her new partner, Danny Isaacson, sat down on the other side and grinned at her. “Come on, I’d be staring a hole in it too. It’s a big deal.”
She grinned. “It’s only been given out twice before.”
“It’s not every day that the New York police department takes down a drug ring of that size,” he said. “That’s why I was glad to get assigned to you.”
“Planning to ride my coattails?” she asked, arching one eyebrow.
His grin widened. “All the way to the top, Officer Dean.”
She laughed and stood up. “Then we’d better hit the beat, Officer Isaacson.”
As they got into the car, Kyla glanced at the man beside her. He was handsome and clean cut, her usual type right down to the friendly smile. She never got involved with anyone at work, but if she had, Danny Isaacson would probably have been first on her list. He was new, not just to her precinct, but to the city and state too.
It would have been easy for most cops to write off the Georgia boy as a backwoods yokel just looking for some big city action, but he’d already impressed almost everyone he met by being a shrewd judge of character and a great person to have at your back. So far, she’d had no complaints about her new partner. The fact that he complimented her every move probably helped.
The radio suddenly squawked with feedback and then the dispatcher's voice came on. “Alarm went off at the university. Building 5, room 623.”
Danny picked up. “Unit 47 responding.”
“I wonder what’s going on?” he asked as Kyla made a left turn and headed for the university.
“Sometimes the academic types get a little forgetful. We’ve answered calls there before.” She shot him a smile. “No need to get worried, Officer Isaacson.”
He opened his door as she parked the car. “I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to have to dive in front of a bullet for you tonight.”
Kyla adjusted her uniform casually. “Right. It’s way more likely to be the other way around.”
They walked through the dark halls without speaking until they came to the correct room number. When she pushed the door open, a strange smell made Kyla wrinkle her nose. Danny drew his gun.
“Blood,” he whispered and she realized that he was right. So this wasn’t going to be a simple “absent minded professor” call after all.
She stepped into the room and instantly saw the cause of the smell. A young woman in a lab coat was lying on the floor. From the uncomfortable angle of her body, Kyla knew that she was either dead or close to it. Danny knelt down and pressed his fingers to the side of the woman’s neck. Kyla saw his jaw tighten and her heart dropped. So she was dead.
A shadow moved in the corner of her eye and she spun to face it. The shadow wavered and then a man burst out of the corner of the room, running for the desk.
“Freeze!” Kyla shouted, yanking her gun up.
The man grabbed something off of the desk and vaulted over it, running for the window. Kyla swore and dove after him. She grabbed the rough fabric of his shirt just as he jumped. Wind blew her hair back and she heard Danny’s hoarse shout. Then she heard nothing at all for a few seconds.
Kyla landed with a gasp of pain. She felt the man squirm away and tried to get to her knees, but her head was spinning so much that she couldn’t even sit up. Was it from the fall? They’d been pretty high up. She should have been in even more pain. She heard the murderer running away and tried again to get up. This time she did make it to her knees.
The landscape spun around her and it looked nothing like New York City. Were those mountains in the distance? She pressed her hands to her head and tried to hold back a surge of nausea. Maybe it was better not to try and focus just yet.
Kyla stood up shakily and glanced behind her. The science wing of the university should have loomed there, but it didn’t. She was greeted by a long stretch of nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. There were some houses and streets, but none of them were familiar. A fine layer of sand coated everything and blew in on the dry wind, making her cough.
As she took a step, she stumbled, but she kept going. She had to figure out where she was, and the easiest way to do that was to head into the city. Sheer force of will kept her upright and stumbling along and she was well aware that she looked drunk.
She was near one of the houses when she heard something. A group of four men rounded the corner. They were laughing and speaking with each other, but they all wore some type of uniform. It was nothing like hers, but she did see a long curved sword at their sides. It was in the same place she wore her gun.
Kyla stood, wavering in her resolve to look for the local authorities. She hadn’t exactly expected them to carry swords. The door to the house she was leaning against suddenly opened up and she nearly fell in.
“I’m sorry!” she began, but someone covered her mouth.
“Don’t speak until they’ve passed!” A woman’s voice begged in her ear. “It will mean death for us both!”
Kyla heard the footsteps disappear around the corner and then pulled free. “What in the hell is going on here?” she demanded. “Who are you? Who are they? Where the fuck am I?”
The woman was shaking and pale. “What do you mean? They are the guard and they would have killed you for daring to dress as a man!”
“Daring to...” Kyla trailed o
ff, looking at the woman in front of her.
Her black hair was braided into a single, thick braid, which fell over one shoulder. Her golden eyes were wide with fear. She was wearing a long blue dress that covered her up to her neck and down to her ankles. It had a lovely pattern, but it all looked stifling in the desert-like heat that pervaded the atmosphere.
“Where am I?” Kyla asked again, lowering her voice this time.
“In the kingdom of Khaytab,” the woman said. “Under the Mountains of Remembrance.”
That didn’t tell Kyla a damn thing. She moved to look out the window and her knees buckled as a grey haze covered her vision.
******
When she woke up, there was a cool cloth over her forehead and the woman was placing a glass of water on the small table beside her. The room they were in now was dark and almost cool. The shades were drawn tightly and Kyla was glad that the woman had done that. In addition to not being seen, her headache wasn’t quite gone, even though the dizziness had finally stopped.
“You are awake,” the woman said in surprise. “Please, do not sit up yet,” she went on in alarm when Kyla started to push herself upright. “Here. Drink.”
“What is it?” Kyla asked suspiciously.
“It is only water. If you drink, I will answer your questions.”
Kyla took a sip and then another, longer, drink. The water was delicious. “Okay. Where am I?”
“You are in the kingdom of--”
Kyla held her hand up. “No. Am in still in America?” She doubted it, but who knew? Maybe it was some weird commune.
“America?”
The genuine confusion in the woman’s face told her that that was a negative.
“Earth?” she asked, her heart beginning to race.
Understanding dawned in the golden eyes. “Ah! I have heard of Earth. We used to go between our world and Earth.”
Kyla tried to take that in. She wasn’t on Earth. The woman might be messing with her, but everything she’d seen since grabbing hold of the man told her that the other woman wasn’t lying. This wasn’t Earth. And the man who had gotten away from her had the only way she knew of to get back home.
“How would I do that now?” she asked, sitting up on the chaise lounge and finishing her water quickly.
The woman looked at her. “I don’t know. I did not know it was possible until I saw you arrive. He may be the one who is known as Tulimad the Shadow. I have heard rumors that the Seeban army has found this new technology, and I suppose they have--”
“Seeban army?” That didn’t sound good at all.
“The man who arrived with you was Seeban.”
“How do you know?” Kyla asked.
“He was tattooed,” the woman said simply. “We are not allowed to do that.”
Kyla snorted at the mention of yet another pointless rule. “What are you allowed to do?”
The woman looked away and Kyla felt like a jerk.
“I’m sorry. And I didn’t get your name.”
“Afani. I am the wife of Khaza.”
“My name is Kyla Dean. Most people call me Kye.”
“Your husband is called Dean?”
“What? No. I’m not married.”
The two women looked at each other in confusion for a moment and then Afani smiled. “And everyone calls you Kyla? Is that not confusing for the other cats?”
“I don’t know anyone else named Kyla.” The confusion was back again. “Listen,” Kyla said, moving on. “I need to find the man I arrived here with. Where is Seeba?”
“You can’t go there,” Afani said, looking shocked. “They are our enemies. You would be killed for simply crossing the borders.”
Kyla wanted to scream, but she managed to tone it down. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take. That man murdered someone where I come from. She deserves justice and I have to go back home.”
“The only way to get there would be to speak with the king.”
“How do I speak with the king?”
“You can’t.”
Kyla gave a bitter laugh. “Did I fall into a Monty Python sketch? There has to be some way for me to speak with him if he’s the king!”
“A man you know would have to request an audience with him and then--”
“I don’t have time for that!” Kyla stood up, frustrated by the endless rules and regulations that only led in a circle. “Thanks for all your help. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”
Afani sprang to her feet too. “Wait! Please, you really can’t go out dressed like that!”
“I also really can’t fight in a dress,” Kyla said bluntly.
Afani wavered, tears in her eyes. “Oh, gods help me,” she whispered.
“Do you have an idea?” Kyla asked. For all her bravado, she really didn’t want to go out that door dressed like an outsider. Or try to infiltrate Seeba with such limited firepower.
“You can take my husband’s clothes. He is a member of the king’s guard. There is a speech in three days’ time. Go then, try to find my husband. And may the gods bless us all.”
******
Three days later, Kyla stood sweating in the late afternoon sun. She was slowly working her way through a crowd of thousands in an attempt to get closer to King Nameer. All the women who had come to hear his speech stood slightly behind the men they’d arrived with. The men, for the most part, ignored them. Their eyes were on the king. The women’s eyes were on the ground.
The closer Kyla maneuvered herself to the king, the more she could see how handsome he was. He was tall, even taller than the physically impressive guards that attended him. His voice was nice too, low and firm, with a hint of an accent that she couldn’t identify. Maybe it was just because he was royalty. She liked the way it stretched some of his words and put flavor in others.
His slow smile was charismatic and not marred by the scars she could see from where she stood now. One scar cut through his left eyebrow, the other through the right side of his upper lip. It looked almost like a long claw mark.
She looked at the guards behind him. As attractive as the king was, with his black hair and bright, intelligent green eyes, he wasn’t the one she wanted. She scanned each of the men in turn, trying to find the one who looked closest to Afani’s description.
The woman had said that her husband was tall, handsome, and that his smile was kind. All in all, it wasn’t a practical description. It was hindered even more by the fact that all the guards dressed alike, in black pants and dark blue shirts. They also all wore a piece of fabric over the lower part of their faces. It helped to keep from inhaling the sand, and it made things easier for Kyla to disguise herself, but it was extremely inconvenient when it came to picking one guard out of a hundred.
Her three days spent living as a man in Khaytab had convinced her that, no matter how much she hated it, Afani was right. There would be no way to get her plan moving without the king and there was no way to get to the king without involving his guard. It was frustrating to wait when all she wanted to do was get back to New York. What had Danny done when she disappeared out that window? Were they wasting department resources looking for her? Probably. She gritted her teeth, hating the society she’d fallen into more every moment she stayed there.
Something moved out of the corner of her eye and she was instantly alert. The man who had moved was dressed like a guard, but when he raised his arm she saw a snake tattoo curling up his forearm. He also had a gun in his hand. Kyla hadn’t seen any of that type of weaponry since she’d been here. Clearly no one else had either, because there were stares of curiosity, but no alarm as the man leveled the gun at the king.
None of the guards were close enough. Kyla leapt forward, pinning the man’s arms to his sides and shouting out for help. The man struggled and she gasped in pain when his knee caught her in the stomach. She held on though, locking her left arm around his neck and gripping it with her right, cutting off his air supply. Guards were running toward them now and the crowd was falli
ng back.
As the would be assassin went limp, a man with a silver crest embroidered on his shirt reached down and yanked him up. He shoved the unconscious man at two other guards.
“Take him to the cells,” he barked.
Then his vice grip encircled Kyla’s upper arm and he jerked her up too. His face was contorted in rage. It didn’t look like she was going to get a thank you.
“Who in the name of the gods are you?” he growled.
Kyla realized just at that moment that she hadn’t prepared an alias. She’s been so busy looking for someone that she could tell the truth to that she hadn’t bothered to create a lie.
“I...” she began, trying desperately to think of a believable name. “My name...my name is...”
“I don’t give a damn about that,” the man said, shaking her.
“You just asked!” she snapped, pulling herself free. She was going to have bruises on her arms.
He looked down at her, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. Kyla cleared her throat, trying to rough up her voice.
“And now I’m asking how you knew about this. Your rescue was very...fortuitous.”
“Someone had to do it,” she answered coldly.
Another voice spoke up. It was much more respectful than hers had been. “Darabin. This is the new guard.”
The man who’d been glaring at her turned to the newcomer. “You didn’t say that you had found someone, Khaza.”
Relief shot through Kyla as she looked at Khaza. His kind smile was nowhere in evidence, but his voice was controlled.
“This is Bidani. I had planned for him to begin tomorrow. It is only luck that he was here today.”
Darabin looked like he wanted to argue, but Kyla knew that there wasn’t much he could say.
“Bidani?” he finally sneered. “At least your name is as feminine as your stature. And you’ll not be exempt from training just because you had a lucky day.”
“Of course not,” Khaza said. “I will handle his training as I’ve handled the others.”
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