by Ravyn Wilde
Promised ~
To the Alien
Out of THIS World Book 4
By Ravyn Wilde
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Copyright
PROMISED ~ TO THE ALIEN Copyright © 2019 Ravyn Wilde
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously. The publisher and author(s) acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks, service marks and wordmarks mentioned in this book.
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Edited by DWebster
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
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Dedication
TO MY CHILDREN AND grandchildren. Always tell your stories and keep your love of reading. I think it was my greatest gift to you. That and love.
Prologue
FALCON TOOK THE FIRST breath of air he’d had in a very long time. He reveled in the oxygen filling his lungs, in the flush of warm and cold air over his flesh. He sighed, thrilled and excited to be awakened after centuries of rest. This was his fourth, no fifth awakening.
It had been so long this time. Several hundred years had passed while he lay waiting. In this suspended state he lost track of the swiftly passing time, but he could feel the weight of the knowledge waiting within the universal consciousness for him to absorb the worlds’ changes into his mind and soul. There was a flicker of movement as the air pulsed and shifted, then joined around him. He was becoming.
And while he always had hope that his Keeper would accept him, this time was different. The hope became flaming anticipation, just because in the last few years several of his fellow Guardians had mated and stayed with their Keepers. Some were already having children and working together to protect the entirety of the planets and their dimensions.
These Guardians had imparted their wisdom and the stories of their success, so any who were awakened during this time could learn from their triumphs.
He listened with rapt attention and then played the session again so he might commit to memory the victorious Guardians’ pearls of wisdom.
Some of those pearls were downright scandalous. It seems times had changed, and the women could often be the aggressor. Their Keepers were no longer so steeped in a religion that they would run screaming for a priest or someone to slay the man they thought was a demon, as had happened too often in the past.
Falcon winced. One time he’d barely made it back to stasis alive. Having been nearly beaten to death by a mob of tavern goers roused by his shocked and somewhat vicious Keeper. She joined in, finding a stick to help impart pain on his body.
He was happy to know he wouldn’t have to deal with that. He could only hope and pray to the gods and goddesses throughout the universe that his Keeper would accept him as easily as Hawken and Talon’s mates. He would think long and hard on his strategy and adapt it to this advice.
Once he felt he had this new time and plan figured out, he concentrated on the crimes of the creatures he’d been awoken to find. There had been a breach. A tear in the fabric that kept the dimensions divided—someone had crossed over and now presented a threat to all worlds.
A Guardian was needed. He really hoped with the help of this information from former unmated Guardians that he would find his Keeper and she would accept him. And for the first time, they could face the threat together as a Guardian pair.
His brain and body started working again. Instead of a broad feeling of knowing—of events passing—he was once again a sentient being with magnificent sensations rushing over his newly revived flesh. The wind and sun caressed and teased his naked body and brought him to full awareness.
His eyes opened and he felt the sensual pull of his Keeper’s soul. She may not know it yet, but she was waiting for him. Their worlds needed a Guardian pair and this time he would not fail to secure her acceptance of him.
If a Guardian failed in this all-important task of uniting with their Keeper, they were released from service and guided back into a trans-state. Their physical bodies would return to the void. He truly had to believe that it wouldn’t happen this time. He didn’t think he could go through this again in a few hundred years.
Throughout his long years of rest, Falcon had been set apart from the physical reality of the universe yet kept aware of passing time and all the changes in the world. This period of rest may be longer than others he was forced to endure, yet he hadn’t felt this awake and alive before. He had to believe that meant it was his time to succeed.
As the wind passed over his slowly forming body, a whisper of feeling tempted and then sparked his awakening and so much more. A hunger for his mate. The small light of awareness grew within and he delighted in the knowledge that his Keeper’s soul called to him, prompting his rebirth and pushing him to hurry.
The purpose he had been created for began to burn within his soul. Danger walked somewhere in the universe and in order to stop it, he needed his Keeper.
He hoped he would be granted at least a few days to find her, assess the situation and put his plan in place.
He would need every second. Because once again, the soul of his Keeper had found its place on Earth’s first realm. For every Guardian, that made claiming their Keeper extremely difficult.
In all the dimensions on all the planets and throughout space, earthlings were the only beings who believed they were alone in the universe. As far as they were concerned there was no life on other planets. Not to mention the interdimensional realms didn’t exist for them.
Those who inhabited Earth believed that a humanoid frame was the only evolved lifeform. Anything but a homo sapiens body type meant there wasn’t a creative and worthwhile brain. Everything else but humans...were animals.
He sighed. Not wanting to get discouraged. Hawke and Talon had found their mates on Earth. They gave him advice that should work. To not delay. To allow his Keeper to see his natural body early and use his naked form to convince the woman that she belonged with him.
Showing off the body he was born with always got him into trouble before.
He shrugged. The two Guardians now had human earthlings for mates, they should know what they were talking about.
It had to work. He would follow their advice because if he failed to get his Keeper to accept him, he would have to return to a state of inertia. Then wait untold centuries until her next incarnation— and his opportunity to remain a Guardian was running out.
He sighed and let his soul expand, exc
ited to begin. Every time he came into being, he was given the knowledge of where his Keeper lived and who she was. In this life, the Keeper of his Tomorrows lived in the United States and her name was Makayla.
Chapter One
MAKAYLA WINCED AT THE bright light flashing through her window. She hadn’t been asleep that long. Had the girls gotten up early to go fishing? Or were the local boys back to bug the crap out of her?
Shit.
Since her parents—along with her aunt and uncle—had died in a car accident five years ago, Makayla had finished raising her sister and cousin on their small family ranch in Texas. With an early discharge from the army, she devoted herself to taking care of her then sixteen-year-old charges.
And while she’d never regretted it, the job hadn’t been easy. Both girls were freaking gorgeous.
For miles around the ranching community, they were the hottest thing out there. Between the two of them, they had won more beauty pageants than Makayla thought possible. Enough for each girl to pay for four years’ worth of college. Which had taken a big burden off of her shoulders.
They were home now on Christmas break. For the next couple of weeks Makayla could look forward to every single man between the ages of eighteen and forty trying to sneak onto her property to talk to the girls. They would come from miles around their little town, hide in the barn, climb the trellis on the house to get to the girls’ windows, and more. They’d been doing it for five years, why stop now?
Makayla groaned and rolled out of bed. It was warm enough tonight that she’d only put on a tee-shirt and booty shorts to sleep in. But she was covered enough for this.
Grabbing her father’s old shotgun, she knew that the first two shells were filled with rock salt. Every fool man within a hundred miles of this farm knew what the penalty would be if they tried to sneak on to the property and into one of the girls’ rooms. But that didn’t seem to stop anyone from trying.
She’d been warned by the local Sherriff to make sure they were caught in the act of breaking into the house or had already gotten in, or she would need to drag them over the damn threshold after she shot them. Even if the shells were filled with salt. Because a shotgun was legally considered a deadly weapon no matter what sort of ammunition it was loaded with.
If she shot at someone with a shotgun loaded with rock salt, she needed to make sure she was justified in taking that person’s life in self-defense. Otherwise, she might end up in prison. It’s a good thing they lived in Texas where the laws still allowed her to protect her damn property and family. Even if she had to be careful how she enforced her right to bear arms.
She went over to her window and looked outside, hoping to figure out where that light came from. Makayla blinked. And tried to get her eyes to work. Because obviously, something was wrong with her vision.
The light that woke her up came from several hovering floodlights. It looked like someone had put lights on a bunch of drones. In that bright light, she saw red-skinned men with long heads and four arms.
She frowned. Wondering if someone had created an elaborate production for the girls’ benefit. Or someone was filming a movie and they forgot to tell her they had rented the ranch. It looked a little like a sci-fi production. That was ridiculous, but not more than believing the sight below her was real.
She started to back away from the window to check with Kaitlyn or Lauren. Wondering if they knew anything about this.
When she heard her sister scream.
“Kaitlyn!” She spun around and charged out of her room on the main level of the old farmhouse and raced up the stairs. She skidded on the hall rug, through the open door of her sister's room, only to find it empty. She ran to the window and saw her sister’s body being lowered to the ground by another one of the four-armed freaks. What in the holy hell?
She wished now she had more than rock salt loaded in the gun. But she pointed and shot at one of the creatures beside her sister and when he went down in a heap, she trained her gun on another. But the damn things kept coming and now she saw they had Lauren on the ground too. Two of the creatures each picked up a girl and started running out past the barn.
Why the hell were they running back there? There wasn’t a road or any way to get vehicles behind the barn. So, what were they doing?
She had a bad feeling.
She whirled away from the window intending to chase them down and ran smack into another alien. He was lifting his arm, pointing a thin rod-like stick that her mind registered as a weapon. She ducked and without pausing, shifted the gun and shot him in the stomach.
His shot went wild, scorching a line over the wall behind her. He dropped to the floor and she jumped over him, flying down the stairs. The scorch marks and the scent of burnt sheetrock answered one thing for her. This wasn’t a joke or a movie. There were aliens or people dressed up like aliens trying to kidnap Kaitlyn and Lauren.
When she got to the open front door, she slowed down for a second and peaked outside so she wouldn’t expose her body in the doorway.
Her caution paid off when something sizzled by her. She looked up and frowned at the jagged burn mark in the door frame close to where her head had been just one second earlier.
Instead of playing cowboys and indians with the shooter, she stepped back and ran for the back of the house. She glanced up the stairs as she passed, realizing that the one she shot with salt could come down at any moment.
The trees and bushes had grown up around the back of the house, ultimately blocking a couple of the windows. The window in the office couldn’t be seen from anywhere in the ranch yard so it was the perfect place to escape the house.
Quietly she opened the window and moved over the edge. She turned around and lowered the window so it wouldn’t attract attention to where she exited. She rolled out into the bush and crawled to the end of the wall.
She saw a few of the four-armed red aliens who were dressed in beige jumpsuits, pointing weapons at the front of the house. Eventually, the one dressed in blue that she shot upstairs with the salt, stumbled off the end of the porch and called to another to come help him.
She had to get to the barn. Once there, she could get behind it and see what they were doing with the girls.
The one she’d shot and the one who was helping him started to walk around the house. Mikayla scooted back a bit and hugged the wall.
They stopped while the one in beige looked around and asked, “Do you think she could be outside?”
The one she shot snarled, “Get me to the ship. My chest hurts. The old one shot me with something that stings like acid. I don’t care where she is. I’m going to make that Zylan creep pay extra for this.”
The other one laughed. “At least it didn’t kill you. This test of the translator has been successful. It is good to know that they work as we will need them when the captives wake up. I can understand all that you say and hear it in the earth's words. We were told the girls were not guarded.”
The first one said, “No male is here to guard the breeders. Just an old woman past childbearing years with a weapon that doesn’t kill us. The two we’ve taken to the ship are young enough to train and can be loaded with the rest. The earthman did not lie, these two women are prime samples of this planet. We need to get them back to Brac. He will pay us well for all the earth women we’ve collected. Let’s go. We don’t need to waste our time looking for the other. The old one is worth little. She can shoot us all she wants. It’s just a sting.”
In stunned silence Makayla watched the red furry men turn from the house and walk to the barn. They were crazy. She stood up and peeked around the corner. No one else was in sight. She raised the gun to her shoulder and smirked. Her daddy’s old 12-gauge shotgun held five shells. The first two were rock salt for a warning. She aimed and shot both men through the back, one after the other. Aiming directly over where a human heart would be.
That should do more than sting.
The last three shells in her gun were double-aught bucks
hot. If these four-armed creatures weren’t dead, it was only because their hearts were located somewhere else. Her mind shied away from that thought. Could they be wearing costumes?
She ran toward the barn, aware she only had one shell left in the shotgun. But long ago she’d stashed ammunition in several places around the farm and she would get more.
When she was a few feet from the barn, someone yelled at her to stop and she heard feet pounding in her direction. Another alien said to just shoot her and make her forget. She turned to the side of the barn and just before she slipped around the side, they hit her arm with some type of electric current. Instantly it made that side of her body numb and she felt dizzy.
Makayla stumbled and as fast as she could move, she dropped into one of her old hidey holes. But her balance was off, and she couldn’t control her arm, so she fell in the hole too fast. The pain in her leg was instant. She ignored it for the moment and ducked out of sight. Even with one arm almost useless, she quickly covered her head and went completely still. She let her breathing go shallow and waited.
On her second breath, she heard several of the creatures run around the side of the barn. They kept running several feet past her and then stopped.
She kept her breathing slow and quiet. Makayla had slid down into the old root cellar. It hadn’t been used for food storage since her great grandmother’s time. But generations of children had used it for a playhouse, an imaginary bomb shelter, and probably even a hideout from aliens.
She had used the jumping slide maneuver a hundred times, admittedly when she was a lot younger. Her body still fit into the small, dirt-packed space, but there’d been something on the ground that caused her to stumble and fall. Makayla had heard something snap. More, she felt it. She was pretty sure a bone in her leg broke. She wanted to cry but she clamped her teeth together and took quiet breaths.
