by Fiona Roarke
“Any more questions?” he asked, and genuinely seemed to want feedback.
“Should we stay together or split up once we get to Georgia?” Elise asked. She’d been the leader the last time the team went out.
Diesel narrowed his eyes. “That will be up to Stella, your mission’s team leader.”
Elise and Victoria stared at their teammate. “Stella is in charge?” they asked at the same time.
“Yes. I’m sorry that wasn’t clear up front. She is next in the rotation. Will that be a problem?”
“No,” they both hastened to answer, although they also cast questioning looks in Stella’s direction. It would be Stella’s first command of a serious mission. Good for her, Elise thought, knowing Stella wanted to prove herself to her cousin, Diesel.
Stella said with confidence, “We’ll assess the crash site when we get there to determine whether splitting up will be beneficial to the mission. If they are merely without communication ability, we’ll provide transport and help with any small salvage of critical equipment on their vessel before we hide it for the retrieval team.”
“Good plan,” Diesel said. “Check in on a regular basis. Set up the contact schedule with Cam before you go.”
“Yes, sir,” the women answered.
“Be vigilant in all you do during this mission. If the opportunity presents itself, do a full workup of the area. We’ve never explored this far beyond our watch photos of terrain. Also, work together, return safely and, above all else, keep on truckin’.”
The familiar phrase was something their people used when their kind went out into distant areas, much like earthlings said, “Hi and how’s it going? And safe travels.”
“Yes, sir,” they repeated.
“Dismissed.”
Elise couldn’t wait to get on the road for this new adventure. Perhaps she’d get her fondest wish, the chance to serve as bodyguard to one of the three on the way back to Alienn.
Chapter One
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In the woods, a few miles from Nocturne Falls
Elise carefully picked her way through the north Georgia forest, hoping this wasn’t a huge waste of her time. Hitching her backpack a little higher on her shoulder, she followed the footprints leading away from the crash site. The trail looked like it had gone right past the crashed spacecraft, but it was unclear if the footsteps had been there before the UFO came down or were made after. The team had arrived eight hours after the crash. Since the area and crash site hadn’t been swarming with humans, they calculated no one else had discovered it.
Stella told her to follow the tracks anyway, just to make sure. It was a fairly standard protocol, not only to check for survivors and/or prisoners on the loose, but also to ensure no pieces of spacecraft had been carried off by some passing human as souvenirs. Elise stuck to procedure and made her way through the sometimes dense foliage, marveling at the beautiful landscape.
Alpha-Prime was rather desolate in comparison to Earth’s lovely and varied scenery. Still, while she loved living and working in Alienn, Arkansas, she missed her home planet and her family on occasion. And never so much as when she had lots of quiet time to think about her past, such as that offered by picking through a quiet forest all alone.
After thirty minutes of walking, she caught the scent of wood smoke. Elise followed her nose through a patch of heavy brush taller than she was to the edge of an unexpected clearing.
She went from dodging limbs to the face to a wide, open space with a charming log cabin nestled against the far side of the clearing, pushed up against the forest’s edge.
Elise scanned the area with a piece of equipment from her pack to determine if any humans were nearby. The device registered no earthlings or non-Alpha humanoids within half a mile. However, the signal of one Alpha registered in the cabin. Which of the three crash victims was inside? She automatically patted her pockets, ensuring she knew exactly where her restraints and shackle device were located if she needed them. She also had a Defender, but it wouldn’t work on an Alpha, only humans. Her detection equipment didn’t distinguish between living and dead, so she hoped for the best and moved forward.
She skirted the edge of the forest, staying off the clearing floor in case of hidden traps, ever wary. If someone had carried an Alpha here, had it been against his will? Had someone merely been trying to help a wounded space traveler? With no information to guide her either way, she had to be prepared for the worst, whether it be from hostile earthlings or the Alpha prisoner unwilling to be taken back into custody.
Elise made it to the back corner of the log house. She took visual inventory of the single small window and no door along the back wall of the structure. No easy egress there.
She was grateful for the skills she’d learned in her year of RMG prep. Thinking about her studies brought unwanted memories of her parents and their supreme disappointment that she didn’t want to live the life they expected. It also reminded her of the flash of pleasure she’d felt from a certain handshake with the irresistible man she foolishly carried a torch for. She pushed both intruding thoughts aside and focused on her mission.
Moving cautiously around the side of the cabin, she noted only one other small window at eye level. Opaque curtains hid any view of the interior. She made her way slowly to the front of the benign-seeming home. Flower-filled planters perched beneath windows on either side of a wooden front door with a fragrant pine wreath hung at eye level.
She surveyed the clearing once more before knocking lightly on the door. “Hello?” With the quiet woods and clearing at her back, it sounded like a shout.
Elise waited a respectable ten seconds and did it again. Nothing.
She tried the knob. The door opened as if it had been waiting for her to show up and enter. Huh. Elise pushed the door open with one hand, the other on her Defender, just in case. The room inside looked large and dim despite the glow from a fire in the fireplace. She stepped across the threshold. “Hello?” she said once more. “I’m looking for my friend. I’m coming inside, okay?” She took another step into the room.
Once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she noted two things. One, there was a very long table a few feet away from the hearth. And two, a large, familiar-looking man dressed in a Royal Magistrate Guard uniform rested atop the table, though his face was turned away from her.
Elise looked over her shoulder and out at the quiet clearing, listening hard for any humans trying to sneak up. Nothing. She closed the door and approached the prone man. His uniform was bloodied, tattered and torn, but she could see the soft rise and fall of his chest, so he was breathing. Unconscious, not dead. She exhaled the breath she’d held in relief. She scanned her eyes over him, checking for further injuries.
An especially large rip on his left uniform shoulder revealed a wicked scar on his upper arm shaped like a lightning bolt. Shock ripped through her as she identified it. Someone had put a crude splint on his right leg from ankle to knee. Broken? Sprained? Unclear.
She took two more steps, edging closer to the man she recognized by that singular scar alone.
Riker Phoenix.
The man she’d left Alpha-Prime to get away from. The prospect of a lifetime of seeing him in his perfect life with his beautiful, rich wife on every media outlet on the planet had been too disheartening and distasteful to contemplate.
Even unconscious in a ripped-up uniform, he was the most gorgeous and perfect man who would never be hers. Not on this planet or back home. She swallowed hard, shook off her romantic feelings and forced a more professional attitude.
What were the odds of Riker showing up here on Earth? Well, she had heard once that he always wanted to come to Alpha-Prime’s Earth colony and explore. The memory of where she’d heard that tidbit slid into her mind with scandalous heat, warming her cheeks in an instant. She forcefully shoved that thought out of her head and focused on the here and now.
Of the occupant list, pilot, prisoner and guard, he must be the transport’s
guard. Surely he wasn’t the prisoner, although she knew back on Alpha-Prime the same couldn’t be said in general about his younger brother, Draeken Phoenix. By all accounts the brothers were close, but Draeken had experienced more than one incident of wrong place, wrong time with a side order of dodgy friends.
Elise moved closer until she stood over him. She snapped her finger near his ear. “Riker,” she said softly. Nothing. His steady breathing didn’t change.
She lowered her face to his. “Riker,” she tried again, louder. Nothing. He smelled great, which was surprising given all he’d obviously been through. She’d noticed that about him the moment she’d shaken his hand in that long-ago graduation line. He had an amazing scent, an amazing voice and an amazing body—another memory she shoved hard to the back burner.
She put her head on his chest, unable to resist checking to ensure his heart was still beating. Tha-thud. Tha-thud. Tha-thud. Steady as a rock.
Elise lifted her head, the scent of him deeply embedded inside her lungs. She studied his face, most especially his mouth, unable to look away from his beautifully shaped lips.
A popular Earth fairy tale popped into her head, where a charming prince came upon a sleeping beauty and kissed her awake. Elise looked over her shoulder, half expecting someone to return to the cabin at any second. All quiet. She looked back down at Riker’s tranquil face. His sculpted mouth called to her.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she pressed her lips to his. This might be her one and only chance to kiss him and she wanted it. Even motionless and unresponsive, kissing Riker sparked a familiar longing in her soul.
When she finally pulled away, mouth buzzing with pleasure, heart beating so fast it was a wonder it stayed inside her chest, she had zero regrets.
Riker’s eyes opened. Elise didn’t move. He fixed his inscrutable electric blue gaze—the one he was famous, or possibly infamous, for—on her eyes, speeding her already swift heartbeat to double time. Did I just kiss him awake, fairy tale-style?
Elise stared back, realizing she’d been caught in the act, but still, she had zero regrets.
She waited for him to sit up and if not forcefully admonish her at least scold her for being so bold. He did neither of those things. His lips softened into a half-smile. Some of her tension eased away.
“Are you awake?” As she asked that, his eyes closed and the half-smile faded. It was obvious he’d gone back to sleep.
Elise went around to the other side of the table to check his leg and the splint, assessing his ability to walk out of here whenever he did wake up.
Two narrow flat boards the width of his leg formed the splint, attached at the ankle and knee and wrapped with a simple woven fabric to hold it in place. She smoothed her hand on his thigh above his knee. Pure muscle. Touching Riker wasn’t a chore. His leg didn’t look broken, but even a fine-line fracture would keep him off it for a while. She’d need some sort of conveyance to take him to the rendezvous point. The van the team had driven to the area was far too big to make it through the woods. She’d have to rent, buy or “appropriate” something else.
She moved to the head of the table and leaned down to Riker’s ear.
“I’ve got to find a vehicle to get you out of here, but I’ll be back as fast as I can. I promise.”
Elise pressed her lips to his once more. She got the shock of her life when Riker responded, quickly turning the kiss from a quick peck to a lingering and intimate lip-lock. The tip of his tongue slid electrically across her bottom lip and she shuddered in delight. She licked him in return, barely resisting the sincere desire to climb onto the table and straddle his prone body. After several seconds of wild passion and secret fantasies filling her brain, she ended the kiss and pulled back.
Riker’s eyes slowly opened again. His more focused gaze darted from her hair to her eyes and his brows furrowed. Had he expected to be kissing someone else? Oops. Time to go.
Chapter Two
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Riker Phoenix did his best to wake up from the sluggish, drowning slumber that kept dragging him down. Flashes of the disastrous dream he’d been having drove the urgency to shake off this extreme lethargy and escape to lucid reality. It felt like drowning in a liquid sand pit on Alpha-Prime. He searched endlessly for a way to pull himself out before being sucked to the center of the planet forever, only to be thrust into an entirely different scenario—a salaciously intimate kiss from a familiar near-stranger. He needed to wake up and stop dreaming.
He opened his eyes, taking what seemed like an enormous amount of energy to complete such a simple task, and couldn’t help but look for the woman with the sexy voice he would swear had tried to kiss him awake. Twice. His brain was obviously rattled from the crash. The green-eyed redhead was someone from his past, and this wasn’t the first time he’d dreamed about her.
Instead of past dreams, he saw wooden ceiling beams attached to log walls, not the crash site of a disabled spacecraft. He smelled wood smoke from somewhere close by. He felt a hard surface under his body instead of a bucket seat, and registered several aches and pains with surprise.
Across the room was a wooden door, presumably leading outside. Shafts of light spilled in from the cracks around the doorframe. They’d crashed in the night, but now it was light. How long had he been unconscious? Adding to his growing unease was the fact he had no idea where he was or how he’d gotten here.
His last memory was of being in the co-pilot’s seat of the doomed flight as Holden, the spacecraft’s pilot, barked orders and the alien ground got closer and closer.
A flash memory of long, wavy red hair framing a beautiful and expressive oval face with bright green eyes shot into his brain. Was that who brought me here? Maybe. Had she truly kissed him or was that a figment in his head? The image was likely the result of his bewildered brain playing tricks on him, as was the fact she looked like someone he knew. Must be his overactive imagination. He didn’t know very many people at the Earth colony.
And yet, he could swear he’d opened his eyes to see her obvious surprise. She’d smiled and spoken. He watched her lips move, but couldn’t remember her words, just the sound of her husky, sexy voice as he drifted back to sleep. The vision from earlier certainly wasn’t real. Just wishful thinking from a charming memory, intruding on a difficult situation. He’d drifted off again before waking alone.
More pertinent flashes of memory came rushing inside his mind, sidelining thoughts of the redheaded green-eyed beauty and her sultry voice. First and foremost, where were his two traveling companions? The mental image of his younger brother, Draeken, manacled in the small spacecraft for the journey to Galactic Gulag XkR-9, made him attempt to sit up—which was a big mistake, as he learned quickly. His vision went blurry and he flattened back onto the very solid surface beneath him, only barely keeping conscious.
He shook off the excessive fatigue once more and vowed to make it to a standing position with only willpower and audacity, if that was all he had. He forced himself to sit up slowly. Keeping his eyes closed seemed to help him remain conscious in the short term. He gritted his teeth when the throbbing pain in his leg flared without warning. Typically, his body healed faster. Perhaps Earth’s atmosphere had a negative impact on his self-healing abilities.
He thought he heard voices to his left. He turned toward the noise, but only saw blurry darkness. Space potatoes! He hated being under the weather or unable to move and function. The sound of voices returned, but only whispered, unintelligible words carried to his ears. Riker took a deep breath, held it and then released it leisurely, opening his eyes at the end of an eight count.
He lifted his head and saw five figures in hooded robes enter the room through the now partly open door, streaming even more light into the dim room of this cabin. Four of the figures wore gray, but the tallest figure, the one in the lead, wore vivid blueish purple. Did that color denote the leader?
The violet-robed figure moved closer as the other four remained near the door.
Slender hands moved to the hood, pulling it back and away from a woman’s face. He expected to see red hair, green eyes and an oval face with a beautiful smile.
He was wrong on every single account. The woman had icy blonde hair so white the locks practically had no color, highlighted with vivid, thick blue streaks. Her thin lips were painted a bold crimson, like a livid slash across her angular face, making her features seem especially harsh. His mouth dipped open in surprise.
“You’re awake,” she said in a throaty feminine voice, deeper in tone than the one he remembered from his earlier delusion. “Surprising. Then again, you are a rather larger subject than the ancient prophecy foretold. Still, I’m very pleased with your outward appearance.”
Her voice was certainly not the honey smooth sound of the green-eyed redhead from his dreams. Where is she? Or was she merely a figment of his imagination? He dreamed she kissed him. The pressure of her soft lips on his, stirring his mind and body right out of a deep slumber in a most charming way, had surprised him. Hadn’t she kissed him twice? Perhaps. That second time had been a deeper connection, more intimate and passionate. Even now his body threatened to respond to possibly this figment of his imagination.
Better to focus on the company at hand than dream about another woman.
“I am awake.” His voice was raspy with disuse. How long was I out? “Where am I?” He decided not to comment on her finding his outward appearance pleasing.
A feral smile shaped her thin red lips. “You are exactly where you are supposed to be.”
Great. A riddler.
Riker slid from the table, planting both boots on the wooden floor. One leg was fine, the other hurt a lot, the injury dead center in his shin. He hid his pain in a general grimace of attitude, crossing his arms as a show of strength, putting all of his weight on his “good” leg.
