Then my head shot up as I realized I hadn’t heard anything about Commander Venay. “Commander Croso, any word on Commander Venay? Did he make it?” I walked over to where the Commander and Captain were looking at images on their desktop screens.
“Yes, he had taken another squad, and they were further out from the enemy ship than your Captain was. He has some injuries, but no one was seriously hurt. Zelan’s team took the brunt of the explosion. They all have some injuries, and two of his warriors are dead. They will be here within the next ten minutes if you want to go and wait for them in the hangar.
“Thank you Commander. Yes. I will go wait for them there. Has anyone told Paris yet?”
“No, I assumed Venay would comm her” the Captain replied.
I smiled and ran towards the hanger bay. On the way I comm’d Paris, and she had just spoken to Commander Venay. He was just fine. She was on her way to meet me.
When they landed Paris and I were both there waiting for our men. I was bouncing on my feet by the time Zelan walked out. He didn’t look good. He was covered in soot, blood, and who knew what else. But I didn’t care.
I ran into his arms and almost knocked him to the ground with my enthusiasm. I kissed him, not caring that his lips were dirty. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me back. I could taste the acidic ash that was on his lips.
“Zelan, I am so glad you are okay!” I exclaimed as I pulled back from him. “What happened? Why were there so many bugs there? I saw on the monitors in the control room. How could they have had so many bodies? That makes no sense, not after we killed at least a thousand of them last week.”
“Natalie, my love. I am so glad to see you! I will answer your questions later. First I need a shower, and then I have to take care of my men. Will you go back to my apartment and wait for me?” He took my hands in his and kissed them.
“Yes, of course I will wait for you there. Hurry up.” I looked over at Paris and Commander Venay. “Commander, it is good to see you are alright as well. I am sorry for the losses, but very glad so many of you made it back safely.”
He put his arm around Paris. “Thank you Natalie. I will see you first thing tomorrow in the office. Zelan, you got the debrief?”
“Yes, Sir. I have told the men to shower than meet me in the control room, and we will debrief tonight before going home.”
“Good, get a good night’s sleep. You did great today. I am honored to call you one of my best warriors. It was very brave of you to order the missile strike before you got out of the line of fire.” The Commander nodded to Zelan and walked away. Paris waved to me as they left.
“I can’t believe you did that. How could you take a chance like that? You almost got blown up with those bugs. I never would have forgiven you if you had.” I hugged him close to me.
He sighed and rubbed my back, then whispered in my ear, “It is good to see you care so much.” He kissed my ear, and then slowly kissed his way down my neck but stopped when he got to my shirt collar. “I will see you in a few hours.” He kissed my cheek quickly and walked away.
“Oh, I am in trouble.” I whispered to myself. That man was a heart attack waiting to happen. I rubbed the pain in my chest as I turned and walked to his apartment. Once I was outside, I noticed how dirty I was and turned toward my barracks so I could shower and put on clean clothes while I waited for him to get done.
Chapter 17
I was so exhausted from the stress and the adrenaline rush that I fell asleep in Zelan’s chair. He picked me up and brought me to his bed when he came in. “Hey, sorry I fell asleep. Is everyone going to be okay?”
“Yes, other than the two warriors I lost today, everyone else is fine. A few needed attention from the doctor, but nothing big.” He kissed my forehead after he laid down next to me. “I really need you right now. Would you mind sleeping here with me tonight? I promise I will behave.” His smile wasn’t his usual one, and he pulsed blue. I could feel his sadness.
“Of course, I could use your arms around me right about now.” I leaned up and gave him a quick kiss on the lips before turning so that we were spooning. He put one arm under my neck and the other was resting comfortably around my torso. It felt really good to be in his arms like this.
“Zelan, what happened? How did they have so many mutants? Do that many travel in their ships?” I didn’t see them all, but I did overhear one of the warriors counting on the screens. He said it had to be over one hundred and fifty bugs that he could see, and who knew how many more were in the ship.
“I didn’t see it, but Commander Venay saw a pile of Z’Girguan’s. They are indigenous to this planet and look similar to your lions, I think. It is believed that the Zateelians are using those animals to reproduce.” He nuzzled my neck before continuing.
“We knew they could use other warm blooded animals as hosts but did not realize that they had already discovered the Z’Girguan’s were compatible. I was hoping that none of the animals here would be so well-matched. Not all will be.” He kissed my forehead, and then he laid back down. After a few minutes I could hear him start to breathe a bit heavier. He must have been utterly exhausted.
I looked back over my shoulder, and he appeared to be asleep already. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep either.
The next morning he woke me up with a kiss to my neck. I smiled as the remnants of a wonderful dream went through my mind. We had married, and I was pregnant with our third child. What a dream to wake up remembering. My body was screaming for me to accept my fate and mate with this wonderful, alien man.
I turned around so that I was facing him. “Good morning. How did you sleep?”
“It was strange. I had a dream where we were mated and you were pregnant with our third child. I want that vision to come true, Natalie. No pressure, but if I agreed to stay here, would you become my mate?”
Could it be true? Are we supposed to be together? After yesterday and almost losing him, I knew I couldn’t let him go. Plus, this shared dream makes me believe that he really is my true mate.
I leaned in and kissed him good and hard, not caring about morning breath. He rolled me onto my back and leaned his body over the top of mine. He put most of his weight on one of his arms, and let his other hand roam over my body. I opened my lips to accept him, and he bit my lower lip before giving me what I wanted.
My hands were roaming over his shirtless back. I could feel the ripples in his muscles and it turned me on even more. He pulled back, breathing heavily. “Does that mean, ‘yes’?”
I took a moment to get a good, deep breath. “Yes, if you can get assigned here, I will marry you as soon as possible.” He kissed me again, and it was at least an hour before we got out of bed.
That afternoon when we had lunch, Zelan told me that the Commander granted his request to stay. “I think that due to the Zateelian issue, it will take longer than the next four months to eradicate the bugs. This settlement is going to need fully trained warriors to stay here for some time to come.”
“I wonder if Earth’s pesticides would work on the tiny, mutant cockroaches. Next time someone goes there, they should pick up a bunch of cockroach spray. We could regularly spray the area surrounding the settlement if it works. I doubt it would work on the grown ones, but maybe on the newly hatched it would?”
“Hmm, it’s worth a try. Maybe when the Commander’s new ship arrives, he can find a way to go to Earth before heading off to war.”
That just might work for Paris’ plan too. Maybe she could start working on a way to get volunteers to come out here so that the V’Zenians could stop abducting humans.
“So, this means we can really get married? Can we have Commander Venay perform the ceremony for us? I know that Croso is in charge here, but since we know Venay so much better, I would like for him to do it. What do you think?”
He smiled, “I take it this means you have given it more thought since this morning in bed?”
My cheeks heated and I looked down at my plate and whi
spered, “I want to continue what we started this morning, but not until we are married. I saved myself for my future husband all these years and I want to wait until our official mating before we go further. Are you okay with that?” This made me nervous.
Ben was fine waiting, but now I know it was because he never cared much for me. Zelan, on the other hand, was very obvious in his feelings for me. It took him over an hour to turn his red pulsing veins back to purple this morning.
He reached out for my hand. “Natalie, I told you I would wait, and I meant it. But that doesn’t mean that I want to put off our ceremony now that you have agreed. How about we see if Commander Venay can perform our ceremony sometime this week?”
My heart started beating very quickly with anticipation. “Yes, as soon as possible would be great. Now that you are permanently assigned here, there is nothing to stop us.” I took a deep breath and felt my eyes tear up a bit.
This was what I wanted. That dream was shared between the both of us for a reason. I am meant for this life and don’t want to put it off any longer.
There are still issues I need to work through, but Zelan is not going to be involved in the slave trade. I can use my position here to help advance this settlement, and maybe even one day we can show the President how much humans can give back when we are free and not burdened with the yoke of slavery.
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I leaned in for a kiss and started to plan my wedding. Paris was going to be so excited! I hoped she would be my maid of honor.
Once we have dealt with this cockroach infestation, we could re-focus on ways to stop slavery. Hopefully one day soon, we could even open up discussion with the leaders of Earth and get some trading set up between the two species. There were so many positive options moving forward. I had a permanent smile the rest of the day.
Epilogue
It only took us two days to put together our mating ceremony. The entire settlement was very excited about it. Some thought it was the perfect way to try and move forward from our losses.
“Paris, I am so nervous! Was it like this for you?” She had to be nervous on her mating day, right?
Paris chuckled and hugged me, but not too tight as I was wearing my wedding dress. The seamstresses here worked overtime getting me a beautiful, white gown to wear. “Yes, I was nervous, and also so excited that I put my nerves aside in order to enjoy the day.”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll try that. Zelan said we can go away for a couple of days once the bugs are destroyed. I am bummed that we don’t get a proper honeymoon right now. I guess that is how you feel too?”
“Yes, but I know that when we do go away, it will be perfect. I wouldn’t want to leave right now, not when there are so many unknowns on this planet. It would be even worse if Venay was called back as soon as we got there. I’ll wait.” She shrugged her shoulders as she walked around me checking my dress and hair.
“Paris, thank you for being my maid of honor. No one else could have taken on this role.”
“Natalie, I am honored to be chosen as your maid of honor. I think Venay is also honored to be the one who performs your ceremony. Technically, it should be Commander Croso, since he is the colony leader. But, I think he understands. He might even enjoy just sitting there and watching for a change.” She smoothed a few strands of hair away from my face.
“I think you’re perfect. Are you ready?” She walked over and picked up my bouquet.
“Yes, I am. Clarissa sure was sweet to put this hibiscus bouquet together for me, wasn’t she?” I smelled the beautiful flowers in my hand and thought back to a family trip to Hawaii. For one brief moment, I was sad that my parents couldn’t be here for this moment. But I wasn’t going to let it ruin my day. I thought back to Zelan and all of the wonderful things he has done for me and just knew…it was going to be a perfect day and a perfect marriage.
Paris led me to the door that would open up to my wonderful new beginning.
Acknowledgements
I have to thank you to my editor! Rebecca Reddell worked extremely hard on this manuscript with me. She gave me so many ideas to make this a better book! I complained for three days. That is how long it took me to get through her edits and re-writes! Normally, it’s a one day process. But, I believe that the book is so much better for it!
My beta readers are awesome!!! I have two who returned and added a new one too. Thank you so much to Leo Roars, Dawnya Goode, and Angela Weiner. You guys did a great job catching anything that made it past all of the edits and re-writes! This is a much cleaner manuscript because of your efforts!
My cover is gorgeous! It was a pre-made cover by Victoria Cooper. She had given it the name Worlds Collide, which was a sign to me as I was considering Worlds Entwined to be the book 2 name, or something like that. So I kept Worlds Collide as the book 2 name, and made book 3 Worlds Entwined! And I think that those names really represent the books quite well too!
A special shout out to my peeps in the 20BooksTo50K group! You all rock!!! Thank you all so much for your help and support!
Author’s Notes
I have had such a blast writing this series so far! It started out as a fantasy about me getting abducted. Of course, it was after I read my first Sci-fi romance book. In my vision, I was Paris. Worlds Collide is an extension of that fantasy. Worlds Entwined (book 3) will be a culmination of that dream! This has been going so well, and so much fun, that I will most likely continue to the story past book 3. I have some ideas about what I am going to do. I hope you like them! It will be all new characters, but we will see our favorites from time to time.
I can’t wait to hear what you have to say about this book! I read all of the reviews on Amazon and have been so happy with what I have read! Even the low starred reviews are good to read. They show me where I need to improve. An editor and other authors can help me a lot, but it is the reader’s opinions that are the most important. So keep providing me with your reviews! Maybe one day I will have enough to try for a BookBub deal!
Next up for me are two short stories. One is a prequel to Worlds Away and will be in an anthology come December! I can’t wait for you to read that! Join my mailing list and I will let you know when it comes out. It will be exclusive to the anthology, so you won’t be able to get it anywhere else.
After that is a Christmas prequel story for another December anthology! Then I will follow that up with a Christmas story that I can’t wait to share with everyone! Keep an eye out on my blog, FB, Twitter, or just join my mailing list!
And of course, Worlds Entwined will be out later this year if I can get it written in time! Now you have to join my mailing list! LOL
If you want to make sure you hear about the latest and greatest, sign up for my newsletter at: http://jlhendricksauthor.com/newsletter/ I will only send out a few e-mails a month. I hate spam and lots of e-mails from others, so why would I do that to you? I won’t. And I will never sell your address either. I will however, do cover reveals, snippets of new books and giveaways or promos in the newsletter, some of which will only be available to newsletter subscribers.
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Worlds Collide: Sci-fi Adventure/Romance (Alpha Alien Abduction Tale Book 2) Page 15
