by Laney Kaye
CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR
- ESCAPE –
(A Sci-Fi Alien Romance, Book 1)
Herc & Maya
Laney Kaye
&
Christina Wilder
Other books by Laney Kaye & Christina Wilder
CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR
ESCAPE
ENGAGE
ENSNARE
ENDINGS
Other books by Christina Wilder
MY BIG FAT POMPEII ROMANCE
Legally Blonde meets Gladiator in this
romantic comedy with a historical twist
DRAGON MATED
A Steamy, Funny Novella Series
December, 2018
CAPTURED BY A DRAGON
HUNTED BY A DRAGON
CLAIMED BY A DRAGON
Other books by Laney Kaye
THE LURE OF THE MER: HOOK
THE LURE OF THE MER: LINE
Erotic novella series from
The Wild Rose Press, Spring 2019
CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR: ESCAPE
Copyright © 2018 Christina Wilder & Laney Kaye
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles or reviews. This book
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events,
and incidents are a product of the
Author’s imagination. Any resemblance to an actual person,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ASIN: B07HDNPQXN
Acknowledgements
For Taylor, who cheerleads and chastises with equal enthusiasm.
With special thanks to Anne Raven, Elena, Lindsay Landgraf Hess, and Lacie Thorne for their unblushing input and advice, and with gratitude to all my critique partners, whether they worked on this story or others.
~ Laney
Thanks to my husband and family, who’ve never stopped believing I could do this. Your encouragement means the world to me.
To my critique partners, who offer solid advice, laughter, and endless support. I couldn’t have done this without you, ladies. And to all the other authors whose words I’ve studied. You’ve shown me how to better my craft and take my writing to the next level.
~ Christina
Cover design by Black Canvas
Herc:
A cat shifter mercenary—gun, fangs, and claws for hire—doesn't fall for a pretty little human. It's cost the Regime big-time to have me and my guys hunt down the Resistance fighters skulking in caves spread across this gods-forsaken planet. My sole focus here is this deployment.
Until Maya touches me, igniting the first phase of a bondmate.
But it doesn't matter how freakin' sweet she is. How sexy. No way in all seven hells will I complete the three bonds. As long as I don't kiss her, we won't hit second base. And I'll be damn sure to keep my hands off her incredible body, because having sex with her would bring on bond three, linking our souls for eternity.
Problem is, now it's not just my life that's in danger. My heart is in all kinds of trouble.
Maya:
Herc must believe I'm nothing more than a nurse working for the Regime. If he finds out I've infiltrated the military compound to rescue my imprisoned sister, my life's in danger.
He may be the hottest guy I've ever seen—shifter or man—but I refuse to bond with someone who's hunting my people into extinction.
Now that my mission's accomplished, I can flee into the desert. He'll never find me once I'm hidden in the Resistance stronghold. Problem is, Herc's hot on my heels. If he catches me, will he return me to the Regime? Or does he have his own--very personal--plan for me instead?
Hooking up with me will ruin Herc's career and make him an enemy of his own people. But if he hands me over to the firing squad, the bullets won't need to hit my heart to shatter me into a billion pieces.
Chapter One
Herc
“O kay, Catboy, you going to hightail it over and check it out?”
A dozen grunted words, and my Commanding Officer, Smithton, proved he was an idiot. Not that the last six weeks hadn’t provided him ample opportunity, which the stupid bastard had greedily seized, but his persistent ignorance reinforced his lack of interest in learning anything of the Felidaekin cat shifters. Damn funny, given the money his government had invested in transporting the five of us from Aaidar to help them.
Fact was, if he wanted one of us to race across the scorched, barren earth between the rocky outcrop we currently occupied and the one he apparently felt we should claim, any idiot knew to call on Khal. Cheetahs the swiftest land animals, a Cheetahkin shifter was no different. Khal would hit seventy clicks an hour in four seconds, meaning he’d be tucked in behind the new outcrop, snug as a lion in a lair, before the hostiles even brought arms to bear.
Though I thought I had myself under control, my hackles must’ve risen, because I caught the shake of Jag’s head, his black hair ruffling in the breeze he created. The only damn breeze on this hellish planet. Gods knew what the Glians found to fight over in this giant sandbox. I thought I’d been posted pretty much everywhere, seen everything. But this was the first time I’d been stuck somewhere with not a single green tree or blade of grass, as far as the eye could see. Even a Ligerkin eye.
“Cool it, Herc,” Jag muttered, the frequency so low it’d register only as a warning growl to the soldiers with us. The Jaguarkin’s caution was invaluable to our team, especially considering how often I needed to be reminded to chill when dealing with Glians. Well, this Glian in particular.
Along with the other three cat shifters— Khal, Leo, and Spike—Jag had served under me for more than eight years, earning him the right to use my birth-name. But, with anything more than four syllables apparently unpronounceable for the Glians, we’d adopted nicknames for this mission. Besides, we had more anonymity this way. And anonymity is a rare and luxurious commodity when you’ve been sold for muscle.
I gave Jag a brief nod and glanced across him to where Khal lay prone in the red sand, cheek resting on his rifle stock, though his golden eyes were fixed on me. Despite being in the human form common to the descendants of Earth who inhabited this system, the black grease strip we’d each smeared beneath our eyes to cut the desert glare made him seem on the verge of transitioning, the dark teardrops of his feline form always one of the first points to manifest.
He blinked slowly, patiently waiting for direction, though I could sense his inner tension, his muscles coiled, ready to spring. I held up one hand, palm out, to still him. “Wait up, man.” Sure, he could run faster than the wind, but that didn’t mean I was about to take the idea of sending one of my guys out there lightly.
I kept my eyes on the desert, counting the spines on a far-distant cava bush. Facing the C.O. would just piss me off more. “Any reason to head out, Commander? The insurgents are on the run, they’ll show themselves soon enough. We can wait them out.” Smithton’s battle decisions were questionable, and several times I’d been left with the impression that we were expendable. It seemed he found maximum opportunity to use our shifting talents, even when they weren’t necessary, as though he took a perverse—or perverted—interest in watching us shift, despite the pain the change necessarily caused.
The hostiles, as the Glians termed them, though we rarely saw anything but defensive behavior and a few minor skirmishes, had been on the run since before we arrived, but HQ was keen to take them all down. Well, not so much take them down as have us parcel up and deliver them. More than one wing of our compound was off limits to the Felidaekin, but there were buildings on the eastern side that no
ne of us would approach, either under orders or dare. The stench of pain and death oozed thick from that side of the complex, and we’d taken to turning up the entertainment coms in our communal room to drown out the inhuman screams. Though turning up the music didn’t do much for a liger shifter, considering I could hear a twig break a mile away.
Not that I’d needed to hunt too many twigs.
Thing was, the screams from the compound might’ve been inhuman, but the screamers weren’t. We’d see them, once a week or so, taken from cells in the eastern quadrant and marched, cuffed and hooded, to the interrogation chambers. There was something bad—no, wrong—going on there. If I wasn’t under direct government orders, I’d take my crew and make for home.
I stroked my hand along my Teyraus assault rifle, tapped the magazine. Fitted with a scope and night-sight, neither of which I’d ever need, I’d far rather take out this last cell with our bullets than haul them in for questioning. I didn’t condone taunting prey.
Hostiles, that is.
Only the damn Glians stooped to torture. Well, them and housecats.
As Smithton didn’t reply, I flipped to my back, facing the C.O. and struggling to control the disgusted curl of my upper lip. It’d turn to a fully-fledged snarl in an instant if I allowed it.
Smithton sat well back from where we lay in the dirt, obscured by boulders and the odd, scrubby, thorn-covered bush. He’d wedged his skinny carcass into a rocky crevice, obviously where he deemed it safer. He flapped a hand toward the desert expanse, his other hand fastidiously dusting at his camos. “It’s what you’re hired for. I haven’t got all damn day.”
The other Glians in our squad were okay, as far as Glians went. This one, though. He should’ve been cast out of the litter at birth. I kept my eyes on him, getting a buzz from how uncomfortable he always looked when I spoke. I guess, if I wanted, I could’ve lightened the deep rumble of my voice, made it sound a little more Glian-friendly. A bit less powerful. But why the hell should I? To appease this piece of crap, who thought the volume of his yelled commands equated to authority? Hell, I could control my men with the lowest growl. And, if I wanted, I could make myself heard five clicks away. This excuse-for-a-man knew nothing about authority.
The Cheetahkin’s gaze still on me, I lifted my chin at him. “Khal, you up for hitting that outcrop?”
Smithton snapped upright, almost thrusting from the safety of his nook. “I ordered you to go.”
“Ordered?” I allowed the snarl into my tone, now. Sure, he was technically my C.O., according to the paperwork, but damn it, he was Glian. No way in all seven hells would a Glian ever rule me. “Sounded more like a polite request. Khal has the necessary abilities.”
“Thought you were all supposed to have abilities?” Smithton tried his own version of a snarl, so close to a whine I could feel Leo’s massive body shaking with suppressed laughter on the other side of me.
I scratched at my chest, deliberately lazy. “My understanding is that we’re employed because all of our abilities are superior to yours—to Glians.” So, I was being an ass, but the C.O. had yanked my tail one too many times. Sure, we were being well paid for the op, the mission statement making it clear that the primary intent was for the Glian government to assess our fighting techniques, yet Smithton rarely unleashed us.
Not that he didn’t use us. Hell, over the last six weeks we’d barely had a day off, we were regularly thrust into dirty, dangerous ops, used to sniff out and clean up every last renegade who’d fallen foul of their spurious laws. But killing? Well, that had to be done the politically-acceptable way, which is to say, using dirty bombs, chemical warfare and, when it really came down to it, my beloved Teyraus. But as for getting our fangs dirty? Rarely. Instead, orders were to bring in the insurgents for questioning. Yeah, that’s what they called whatever the hell was going on over the other side of the compound. Questioning.
Khal shucked his uniform, leaving the camos in an untidy pile on the sand, and then tossed his head, the change coming over him swiftly.
Smithton cringed back into the upright slit of the rock like he was trying to crawl back up inside his mama. He squinted, mouth twisted as though Khal disgusted him. Six-and-a-half foot of well-muscled cheetah will do that to a scrawny little runt. I’d noted him do the same thing every time one of us changed. Like he didn’t want to look, but couldn’t bear to look away, both fascinated and repulsed by our ability. Had to wonder why the hells the government had even put him on this mission. Sure, on paper, he must have the necessaries, but the plain fact was, only an alpha can lead. And this dude didn’t have the balls.
“Time for a show, Khal.” Jag grinned over at Khal, exposing his incisors, and I knew he was jealous, twitching to shift, to unleash more than his fangs. Hell, I was too. Back home, there wasn’t much left to hunt. Unlike Glians, the Felidaekin had learned to live in comparative harmony. Sure, we still had a more than our fair quota of shit-stirrers and troublemakers, which made for a few jobs in law enforcement, where Jag had started out. But, generally speaking, we didn’t have racial violence. To find that, to get the thrill of the chase that our blood lusted for, we had to contract off-planet.
So here we were.
And, so far, this arid crap hole looked like being a bust.
“Terminal force?” Leo checked.
Khal growled, a rich rumble of anticipation. Crouched on all fours, muscles rippled across his shoulders as his claws dug into the rock, ready to give him the extra propulsion he needed to engage the starter-gate speed that’d see him on the other side of the plain before the dust had settled around us.
I shook my head. Back in the day, it wasn’t only a chase, it was always a hunt to kill. Which was good, it gave purpose to the effort. Now, though? Now it wasn’t socially acceptable. Sure, we were allowed to take down insurgents, but not the traditional way. “Scouting only. Numbers and positions.”
“Speak in goddamn Glian,” Smithton ground out behind us. Khal’s pointed ears flickered his way, but other than that, not one of us moved a muscle to acknowledge him. We knew from experience that if we faced forward, toward the hostiles, Smithton would stay well out of our way.
I settled my cheek against the stock of the Teyraus, sighting along the barrel, rather than use the scope. Even during the day, I could see perfectly, though at night my vision would be six times as good as the three Glian soldiers who’d mimicked my movements, lying low in the sand, ready to cover Khal’s mission. Without lifting my head, I grunted. “Go.”
I swear the word hadn’t drifted back to Smithton’s ears before Khal had cleared our dugout, tail streaming behind him as he bounded across the sand.
Focused low over my rifle, trying to ignore the urge to shift that pounded in my veins at the sight of Khal’s sudden freedom, I almost missed it; a tiny, metallic buzz, the pitch making it hard to pinpoint. The glimmer of light in my peripheral vision, the sun sparking off metal, snapped my gaze to the right.
Alongside me, Spike flicked his head, his ears twitching as he shifted, his dropped rifle clouding dust over his massive paws. Like all Pumakin, Spike could be a loose cannon, but he was sure as hell the guy you wanted shouldered up to you in a fight.
I narrowed my eyes on the glinting movement against a cloudless sky. “Hells! Drone!” A week ago, I wouldn’t have given a damn, beyond instructing the guys not to shift while we were being observed by the com-enabled data-relaying machines. Though our existence was rumored throughout the colonies, our presence on Glia didn’t need to be confirmed or advertised.
But last week we’d lost two men to a drone.
That was the other thing about Glians; they loved to fight dirty. Give them a computer monitor to watch, a keyboard to mash and a button to push, and they were all goddamn warriors.
And now they’d worked out how to arm the drones. With both lasers and bullets.
Dirt erupted in spumes around us. The whine and ping of ammo hitting rocks deceptively innocent, bullets ricocheted in a hail of s
harp, white sparks. Multiple heat-seeking lasers threw wild red trajectory arcs, dissecting the blue sky with great scars and slashes. The acrid, mineral stink of burning rock seared the back of my throat.
I flung an arm across Spike’s furred shoulders, yanking him back toward the ground—though, unless I shifted, even I’d not be able to move him.
His massive head swung toward me, surprise lighting his hazel eyes as a bullet found a meaty target. He grunted. Staggered, collapsing over his front paws.
Fuck. “Man down!” The bellow came out louder than I intended. I lurched to my knees, grabbing the med kit belted around my waist. Ripping apart the heavy-duty sclera fabric pouch and slapping a dressing onto Spike’s blood-soaked flank, I instinctively ducked as the harsh zip of torn air warned me the drone had switched firepower. “High-cal incoming!” I yelled, glancing up to make sure Khal had cleared the crossing. My gut clenched as he bit the dirt in a rolling flurry of sand. No way he’d been diving for cover, the damn machine had hit him, too.
This time I let loose a roar, the ground trembling beneath my feet, rocks shifting and tumbling from the outcrop sheltering us. With a toss of my head, I shifted, ignoring the pain that speared through me at the massive contortion to my body. At close to double my six-five frame, and five times the weight, taking on liger form wasn’t easy. But, as Ligerkin, I could knock that bastard clean out of the air.
