Metal Wolf

by Lauren Esker

  And then everything snapped back into focus, and she was looking at two bright lights, one blue, one reddish.

  Those are stars, she thought, blinking to clear her blurry vision. No, suns. We're in another solar system, looking at other suns.

  Her grip on the back of the seat was all that kept her upright.

  "Sarah, are you okay?" Rei asked, his voice sharpening. "Some people get sick their first jump."

  "I'm fine," she managed to say. Her eyes were fixed on the viewport. Alien suns. Another solar system. The constellations still looked disconcertingly like the ones she knew. "Where are we?"

  "I was about to ask the same question," Jeren growled.

  "We're in an uninhabited system, the nearest one to your planet. The jump drive needs to recharge between jumps, and I didn't want to completely deplete it in case we had to move again in a hurry." Rei pulled his hands out of the mechanical cradles and shook them as if the fingers hurt. "We can spend a little time here, check the ship for spaceworthiness, and figure out somewhere safe we can drop Jeren off. Is that acceptable?"

  "I don't care about safe," Jeren growled.

  "I think he meant safe for us, you lunatic," Sarah told him. Alpha Centauri, she thought, boggled. We're at Alpha Centauri. I can't believe it.

  Jeren shook his shaggy mane. "I'm going to my quarters. Wake me up when something interesting happens."

  Sarah peeked down the hall after he stalked out, to see where he'd decided "his quarters" were. He was just vanishing into the cabin as far from theirs as he could get, all the way down at the end of the hall. Looked like the desire for privacy was mutual.

  "I can't wait 'til we drop that guy off."

  "Very soon now." Rei put an arm around her, and she leaned into him. "How are you handling your first space flight?"

  "Excited. Nervous. A little sad." She smiled up at him. "Mostly excited. Not sick at all."

  "Excellent. I've locked down the ship. Jeren won't be able to do anything, at least not without pilot-capable cuffs and pilot mods in his head."

  "So we're safe." She grimaced. "Ish. I think I'd better go check on Mouser and make sure she got through the jump okay. After that ... can we fly around a little and explore?"

  "Explore? There's not much to see. This system has some planets, but none support life."

  "Show me those, then." She squeezed him tight. "I want to see it all. I want to see everything. And then we can start looking for your friends."

  "It'll be dangerous," Rei warned her. "If Lyr's still alive, he'll be with the Galatean fleet. We aren't going to be able to get close in a stolen ship without setting off a hundred alarms. It might not even be possible—"

  "Rei, until a week ago, I thought we Earth humans were alone in the universe. Until a day ago, I thought I would spend my entire life on the planet I was born on. Until ten minutes ago, I'd never set foot in another solar system besides my own." She looked up at his beloved face, all its familiar planes and curves limned with the light of two alien suns. "I don't think there is any such thing as impossible anymore. Not when I'm with you."

  Rei started to say something, then let out his breath on a long sigh, and just held her, hanging here in the void of space, while all around them the stars moved in a slow, solemn dance as old as time.

  Epilogue

  ___

  T HEY'D BEEN GONE for a month. Sometimes it felt longer. Sometimes it felt like no time at all had passed.

  Gary kept busy. Truth be told, he was enjoying having the place to himself. Oh, the house was a little lonely at night. He'd gotten himself a new barn cat, a mean little tomcat the Mullers were getting rid of, and he'd also gotten a dog by accident. There was this box of black Lab-mix puppies outside the feed store with a teenage kid selling them for twenty bucks each, and somehow he ended up walking off with the first dog he'd had since before Maggie got sick.

  You just went on with life. That's what you did. And life was pretty darn okay.

  He was watching TV on the couch, the new puppy sleeping on a pillow by his feet, when there was a sudden knock at the door.

  Gary heaved himself up with the help of a cane. He thought about going to get the shotgun, which he kept handy these days, then decided not to. If it was the feds, having a gun wouldn't do anything but risk getting his own fool ass shot. He knew they were still hanging around; all the business out at the lake was gone, along with the helicopters, but in a small town like this, you noticed strange faces. Oh yeah, they were still around. But they were leaving him alone so far. For that, he supposed he had Rhodes to thank.

  He didn't have a single regret about any of it. He hoped Sarah and her boy were having fun out there in the wide, wide universe. Hoped he'd get an outer-space phone call from them one of these days, hoped like anything, hoped she'd find a way to cure his bad back too. But if none of that happened, well, that was life.

  You watched your kids grow up and fly away; every parent had to. Your job, if you did it right, was not to keep them around forever, but to make sure they had the skills to fly fast and high. And Sarah was flying faster and higher than anyone he'd ever known, so yeah, he and Maggie had done all right.

  He might get a little sad sometimes, might be a little lonely, but he had no regrets.

  He cracked open the door. Under the porch light stood a slim, dark young man with a scruffy shock of curly hair, exhausted-looking, his eyes blue-shadowed behind his wire-rimmed glasses, looking as if he hadn't slept in weeks. Gary had never seen him before in his life.

  "Yeah?" Gary said. "Help you?"

  "Hi, my name is Neil Pradhan, and I'm looking for my wife," the stranger said in a soft voice with a trace of a British accent. "She disappeared in this area a few weeks ago. Her name is Anita. I have a photo, if you'd like to see it."

  Gary hesitated for only an instant. He understood all too well what this kid was going through. Watching Maggie die in the hospital had been torment, but having her vanish, never knowing her true fate, might have been worse.

  "Come in, son," he said gently, holding the door. "I'll put on a pot of coffee. We've got a lot to talk about."

  Warriors of Galatea will continue in

  Metal Dragon

  Stranded with a dragon!

  Meri is a single mom with grown kids and a young granddaughter. She's not supposed to be stranded on an alien planet full of vicious dinosaur-like wildlife... let alone with a tormented, silver-eyed dragon prince. He says he's rescuing her. He's definitely the only person who can protect her from this world's monsters. But there's no one to save her from her own wild heart ...

  As a slave to the Galatean Empire, Lyr lost everyone he ever loved, and walled up his heart in self-defense. He's not about to let anyone in, certainly not this Earth woman.

  But it's just the two of them. No one is going to know ...

  Coming Fall/Winter 2018!

  ***

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for reading Metal Wolf! This is the first in a new series of science fiction romances; in the next, Metal Dragon, we’ll find out what happened to Lyr after the battle that left Rei stranded on Earth. And some of Rei’s other septmates might not be as dead as he thought they were …

  I will still be working on the Shifter Agents books too.

  If you want to let me know what you thought of Metal Wolf (good or bad; I love hearing from readers!) you can leave a review on Amazon or email me: laureneskerwriter@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Facebook at laureneskerwriter or on Twitter as LaurenEsker.

  If you’d like to be notified of my new releases, you can sign up for my mailing list by clicking this link: https://www.subscribepage.com/LaurensList.

  ***

  About the Author

  Lauren Esker is a writer, graphic designer, and lifelong Alaskan. She lives with her husband and pets on the highway in a former gold-mining district, not far from Fairbanks, Alaska’s second-largest city. She also enjoys reading, hiking, gardening, and art. In the past she managed the
layout department at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (the local paper) and taught at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. She now writes full time. You can find her online at laurenesker.com.

  ***

  Also by Lauren Esker

  Shifter Agents Collection #1. Three exciting full-length paranormal romances! Contains Handcuffed to the Bear, Guard Wolf and Dragon’s Luck in a convenient boxed set.

  Handcuffed to the Bear – Shifter Agents #1. A bear-shifter ex-mercenary and a curvy lynx shifter searching for her best friend's killer are handcuffed together and hunted in the wilderness. Can they learn to rely on each other before their pasts, and their pursuers, catch up with them? Full-length romantic suspense novel.

  Guard Wolf – Shifter Agents #2. Avery is a lone werewolf without a pack; Nicole is a social worker trying to put her life back together after a personal disaster. When he shows up on her doorstep with a box of orphaned werewolf puppies and danger in pursuit, can two lonely people find the family they've been missing in each other? Full-length romantic suspense novel.

  Dragon’s Luck – Shifter Agents #3. Gecko shifter and infiltration expert Jen Cho teams up with sexy dragon-shifter gambler "Lucky" Lucado to win a high-stakes poker game. Now they're trapped on a cruise ship full of mobsters, mysterious enemy agents, and evil dragons, and it'll take all their wits and luck to get out of this alive! Full-length romantic suspense novel.

  Tiger in the Hot Zone – Shifter Agents #4. In her search for the truth about shifters, tell-all blogger Peri Moreland has been clashing with tiger shifter and SCB agent Noah Easton for years. Now she and Noah are on the run with an unstoppable assassin after them and a custom-made plague threatening the entire shifter world. Full-length romantic suspense novel.

  Keeping Her Pride – Ladies of the Pack #1. Lioness shifter Debi never dreamed she'd find love in the arms of a human; alpha real estate magnate Fletcher has had enough bad experiences with shifters to last a lifetime. Can two ambitious people overcome their pride and their prejudices to realize the only thing missing from their lives is each other? Full length paranormal romance novel.

  Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing - Can the big bad wolf and a sheep shifter have a happy ending? Curvy farm girl Julie Capshaw was always warned away from the wolf shifters next door, but Damon Wolfe is the motorcycle-riding, smoking hot alpha wolf of her dreams! This paranormal romance novel is a romantic comedy spiced with action and red-hot sex.

  ***

  Preview:

  Shifter Agents Boxed Set #1

  Three full length novels of paranormal romantic suspense in a convenient boxed set, free on Kindle Unlimited!

  Start reading now!

  Handcuffed to the Bear- Handcuffed together and hunted, they must rely on each other to survive!

  Sample:

  Better get up and get moving. Which means waking up Sleeping Beauty here.

  Casey rose to her knees and bent over her unexpected companion.

  By now her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, as much as they were going to. Her new handcuff buddy was a white guy with dark hair and broad, powerfully muscled shoulders. Even lying down, he was big. She didn't really want to think about how tall he'd be standing up.

  She started to reach for his shoulder, then pulled her hand back when she noticed a long scar across the shoulder blade, going down his back. What was that from, a knife? Now that she was looking more closely, scars marked his skin like a constellation of past violence. There was a long set of parallel stripes over his ribs that looked like claw marks, and a little puckered scar above his left hip where she was pretty sure a bullet had gone through.

  Great, she thought. So not only am I stuck in the woods with an enormous naked stranger, but he's the kind who gets into fights a lot. Really violent fights. Better and better.

  Casey sat back on her naked haunches and studied him. She wished her head would stop hurting, and that she had even the faintest clue who he was, or whether he was in league with the people who'd put her here.

  There were tattoos on his right arm, the one she was handcuffed to. Casey had a little ink on her ankle, a small rose, but this guy had quite a bit more. She gave the cuffs a tug, shifting his limp arm so she could see it better.

  The one on his forearm was a dark blur, and she had to tilt her head to make it out: an assault rifle and the word Defend.

  Army, maybe?

  Much more dramatic was the big, elaborate tattoo that covered his upper arm, wrapping around his shoulder. It was a snarling bear, standing rampant on its back legs. Grizzly, she thought.

  Between the grizzly tat and the claw scars, odds were pretty good he was a shifter like her. Wendy used to be able to say she could tell by the way people smelled, but Casey couldn't. Maybe she just hadn't spent enough time around her own kind to be able to.

  Thinking of Wendy made a little ripple travel across her skin, a shiver like the fur rising along the spine of her lynx form.

  What do I tell him about me?

  Play dumb, she decided. Play innocent victim until she figured out more about who he was and what he was doing here. Maybe someone who got into fights with people who had knives and guns would be a good ally ... if he didn't turn out to be an even more effective enemy.

  Guard Wolf- Can two lonely people find a home in each other?

  Sample:

  The werewolf puppies started howling, a high-pitched squeaky chorus. Agent Hollen winced.

  "They were doing that in the car, too," he said. "And wouldn't stay in their box."

  "Well, of course," Nicole said. "They're babies. They're cold, hungry, and scared. They don't understand being shoved into a box and ignored." She began mixing formula according to the instructions on the box, and used self-assurance to cover the fact that she hadn't actually done this very much. She did not often deal with extremely young children without a parent, nurse, or someone else better qualified to care for them than herself. Speaking of ... "Where are their parents? Do you know?"

  "No, like I said, they were found on the street. We don't know who the parents are. Yet," he added.

  "You had better stop that ankle-biter there." Nicole jerked her head at the kitchenette doorway.

  "Oh, for—"

  One of the puppies, the same ginger-colored one Nicole had caught climbing out of the box, was currently waddling for freedom as fast as she could. Hollen's longer legs overtook the puppy easily, even with his limp, and he hesitated briefly before scooping her up. Nicole watched out of the corner of her eye, but after a moment's awkwardness he cradled the puppy to his chest, tucking her blunt snout into the crook of his arm to shut out sensory input. The puppy settled down, nestling against him.

  He's naturally good at it, she thought, filling the bottles. He was awkward enough around these kids that she guessed he didn't have kids of his own, but he seemed to be able to intuit what to do with them, even lacking base knowledge to draw upon. Some people, when handed a child, were miserably inept. Agent Hollen seemed to be the sort of person who could understand and anticipate their needs without realizing he was doing so.

  Which was, she discovered, a remarkably attractive quality in a man.

  Dragon's Luck- A sexy gambler and a daredevil agent team up in a high-stakes poker game on a cruise ship full of enemies!

  Sample:

  He'd caught her attention the moment he walked in—and not for the reasons one might expect. There was certainly plenty about Lucky to catch the eye. His face was sharp and handsome: dark hair swept back from a high forehead, clean cheekbones and deep olive skin. And he knew he was good-looking. She could see it in his swagger, sense it in the way his green velvet jacket gaped to show a glimpse of the toned pectoral muscles rippling underneath his black silk shirt ...

  Green velvet jacket. Who wore something like that? It was like he deliberately wanted to look like a lounge lizard.

  No, none of that turned her head. Not in the slightest. The guy she'd heard the other gamblers address as Lucky Lucado caught he
r attention because he was a shifter, and shifters could always recognize each other. In fact, when he first stepped into the card room, she'd seen him pause, looking around, and held her small gecko body very still on the ceiling, heart pattering. Some shifters were more sensitive than others, and just her luck, he'd be aware enough to know she was in the room even without being able to see her. But as she waited and stilled and imagined herself part of the low ceiling tiles, he relaxed somewhat.

  She didn't know what he turned into, but he was definitely a shifter. There was no mistaking that flash of recognition.

  And if he was a shifter, then odds were good he was involved with the shifter drug trafficking ring she was on this boat to crack, which put him under the jurisdiction of the Special Crimes Bureau.

  And therefore, she was here to arrest him.

  Shifter Agents Boxed Set #1 - Start reading now!

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