Shifter Planet

by D. B. Reynolds

  She pushed away with a cry, falling to the ground and cradling her head in both hands as she tried to make it stop spinning. Huddled at the foot of the great tree, she fought to keep from throwing up, even as she was laughing with delight like a crazy person. Tears of pain and joy filled her eyes to overflowing, dripping down her cheeks and soaking into the leaf-covered ground.

  “Are you sick?”

  Amanda jerked upright and stared over her shoulder. Through a blur of tears, she saw the Ardrigh’s guard staring down at her, the same one who’d been watching her so intently. He was a big man; at several inches over six feet, he was just slightly taller than the other two locals had been, and probably close to three hundred pounds of pure, gorgeous muscle. The severe way his black hair was tied back made his sharp cheekbones and almost pretty mouth stand in stark contrast to one another.

  But it was his eyes that drew her attention, that sucked away her breath, and made her want to stare. She hadn’t noticed their color in the sunlight of the landing field. Here in the shadows under the trees…they were pure molten gold, surrounded by thick, black lashes. They were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen, definitely not the human norm. And they were currently regarding her with a hostility that belied his concerned question.

  She forced her emotions under control. She was supposed to be a professional, one of the fleet’s best. “I’m fine. It’s…” She waved a hand around to indicate the forest. “I don’t drop to a planet all that often, and this forest is so beautiful.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” he said, staring at her with such focused attention that it bordered on something sexual.

  Her entire body flushed with pleasure, but she managed to keep her voice only slightly breathy when she asked, “Why not?”

  He stared at her a moment longer. Long enough that the blatant desire in his eyes faded into puzzlement, and finally disappeared altogether behind a wall so blank that Amanda couldn’t be sure they’d ever shared that moment of intense heat.

  He straightened to his full height, his posture as unyielding as his expression when he growled, “Because it’s not safe. Your advance team must have warned you of this.”

  Amanda almost interrupted him to disagree. It was perfectly safe out here now. There’d been a whole pack of some monkey-like things earlier—now they were long gone, and there was nothing in the immediate vicinity that posed any threat to her at all. She opened her mouth to tell him so. And shut it just as quickly.

  Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to admit that the trees were talking to her. She knew very little about these people or their culture. They might be human—okay, they obviously were mostly human—but humans did all sorts of horrible things to each other. For all she knew, they burned people like her at the stake on this planet.

  “You should go back with the others,” he was saying, his voice cool and reserved. “I think the Ardrigh has plans to invite several of you to dinner at the palace this evening.” He gave her a quick once-over, though he was careful to avoid meeting her eyes. “You’ll want to change clothes first.”

  Well, well, sexy and insulting. Who could resist?

  “Really, de Mendoza,” a new voice drawled. “You’ll give our visitor a bad impression of us.” Amanda looked up to find the other guard, the blond one, strolling in from between the trees. She took the opportunity to stand up, using the tree for balance, and had to stifle a laugh at the little rush of warmth beneath her hand when she touched the rough bark. The new arrival was watching her, his gaze traveling up and down her body in a blatant appraisal, which had Mr. Sexy—whose name was obviously de Mendoza—bristling in disapproval. She held out her hand.

  “Amanda Sumner,” she said.

  Unlike de Mendoza, Blondie had no difficulty smiling, a slow, lazy grin that lit up his already handsome face. He bowed slightly before taking her hand.

  “Fionn Ignacio Martyn, at your service,” he said. He straightened, giving de Mendoza a sideways look. “I apologize for my fellow guildsman, Amanda, but he’s right. The forest is no place to wander alone. The rest of Harp is far more welcoming to visitors, and may I say that I think your presence will be a lovely addition to the evening’s festivities, no matter what you wear.”

  De Mendoza snorted his opinion of Fionn’s blatant flattery, and some perverse part of Amanda, still stinging from his comment about her clothes, decided to get a little of her own back. Giving Fionn an appraisal every bit as bold as the one he’d given her, she asked, “Will you be there?”

  Fionn laughed out loud. “Yes, indeed. I will most certainly be at my father’s little get-together this evening.”

  Amanda joined his laughter. “Then so will I.” But it was de Mendoza’s golden eyes she met when she said it.

  Amanda slumped against the lift wall, stifling a groan as her body protested too many days of too little sleep. She’d been riding an adrenaline high ever since they’d taken up orbit around Harp, but that high had peaked to a painful intensity with today’s discovery that she, apparently, could commune with trees. At least on Harp.

  And what the fuck was that about? Her first thought had been that it was a hallucinogenic in the air, possibly a spore cast off by the trees themselves. Although that couldn’t explain why she was the only one who experienced it. Or rather, the only one from the ship.

  There was no doubt in her mind that de Mendoza and Fionn had both known exactly what was happening to her and why. And that they were determined to keep her from exploring it any further. The two men had entirely different ways of trying to control her—de Mendoza’s stern bossiness compared to Fionn’s charm. Their end goal, however, was exactly the same. They wanted her out of the forest and, ultimately, off the planet as soon as possible.

  What were they afraid she’d discover if she stayed? Neither of them understood that trying to keep her from doing something was like throwing down the proverbial gauntlet. It was a challenge, and she could never resist a challenge.

  She thought about the two men. Fionn Martyn was the Ardrigh’s son. Did that make him the heir apparent? Was the position even inherited? Fionn had let that piece of information drop casually, and she was sure he’d done it on purpose. He’d wanted her to know, either hoping to impress her, or… Well, there was no or. She knew guys like Fionn. They were handsome, charming, and easygoing—at least on the outside—and they needed to hustle every woman they met. His charm wouldn’t keep her from what she wanted to do on Harp, though if she’d been looking for a casual fling, sex with Fionn Martyn would certainly have been no hardship. It wasn’t Fionn who was occupying her thoughts, however. For some reason, her mind kept returning to de Mendoza. Did the man even have a first name? He hadn’t shared it, whatever it was. And he hadn’t been particularly friendly or charming.

  And yet, there’d been that flash of something when their eyes had first met, an almost physical snap of energy. She just knew that if they’d touched at that moment, it would have crackled between them like a wild electrical charge. He’d felt it, too. No matter how thoroughly he’d shuttered it over. He’d seemed almost angry after that. As if the very possibility that he was attracted to her pissed him off for some reason.

  Amanda scoffed at her own reflection in the lift doors. So what if she’d felt a surge of desire for the man? His ego needed to be knocked back a measure. She wasn’t exactly drooling over the idea of a relationship with him either. Broody bastard.

  The lift doors opened and she headed down the wide corridor to the three-room suite she shared with her mother, which was far more comfortable than anything Amanda could have secured on her own.

  She stuck her thumb into the biometric entry lock, and slipped through the door before it fully opened. From the main room of the suite came the gentle clink of crystal and silver and the low timbre of a man’s voice, followed by her mother’s soft laughter. Her mother was home, and she had company.

  This wasn’t unusual. Elise Sumner was an intelligent and beautiful woman, and she freq
uently had friends over. Occasionally that meant a single male friend, although she’d never dated any one man for very long. The two of them rarely discussed Amanda’s father, but his presence, or absence thereof, was a constant in their lives nonetheless.

  Since she felt like crap, and figured she probably looked like it too, she skipped the social niceties and went directly to her own room, thankful for a layout that permitted her to slip in discreetly. Stripping off her clothes, she thought wistfully of a long, hot shower followed by several hours’ sleep, but there wasn’t time. She’d have to settle for a short, tepid shower and a stimulant tab.

  Without warning, her door whisked open and her mother stood there. Completely ignoring Amanda’s half-clothed state, she zoomed right in on the vicious bruise left over from her sparring bout with Angelito. “What happened to your leg, sweetling?”

  Amanda was struck as always by Elise’s beauty…and by how utterly different the two of them were. Her mother was small and delicate, with rich brown eyes and black hair that turned her pale complexion into the most fragile porcelain. She was in her fifties, and thanks to the advances of modern science she would remain youthful in appearance well into her seventies. Youthful or not, however, she would always be beautiful.

  Amanda, on the other hand, took after the father she’d never known. She was nearly six feet tall, with blond hair, dark blue eyes, and golden-brown skin that even the sunless confines of the ship couldn’t reduce to anything less than a healthy glow. She was attractive enough—fit, graceful and athletic, which somehow, next to her mother, made her feel like a huge, clumsy thing. This was all in Amanda’s head, because her mother had never made her feel anything but beautiful and loved.

  “You’ve got company,” she said, arching an eyebrow.

  Elise smiled, seeing the comment for the distraction it was, or at least was trying to be.

  “A friend,” she dismissed. “Now, what happened to your leg?”

  Amanda grabbed a robe and slipped it on, trying to conceal the damaged appendage. “Nothing,” she said. She sat on the bed to avoid towering over her petite mother. “A sparring accident.”

  Elise frowned, but thankfully let it go with a simple, “You should ice it.” She wandered farther into the room, letting the door close behind her. “Randy tells me you’ll be spending considerable time down on that planet.”

  Every planet was “that planet” to Elise Sumner. She’d never forgiven Amanda’s father for choosing to remain rooted on his home planet rather than follow his pregnant lover back into space. He was perhaps the only man in history she hadn’t managed to win over to her view of the universe, and, apparently, the only one who’d ever really mattered.

  “I was down there with the science team most of the day, and I’ll be heading back in just under two hours,” she said with a glance at the clock on her bedside. “It’s a fancy reception of some kind, which means dress whites, so I really need to shower.”

  “What you need is several hours’ sleep.”

  “I know, but that’s not—” She frowned. “Randy?”

  “Admiral Leveque,” her mother said, brown eyes sparkling with mischief.

  Fantastic. She’s dating Leveque.

  “Don’t look at me like that. He’s a lovely man, quite intelligent. Besides, he’s an old friend.”

  Amanda’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. An old friend? Leveque? Since when?

  “Okay,” she said, drawing a deep breath that did little to erase the image of her mother and Randy. “I’m keeping you from your, um, guest, and I really do need to get in the shower. I’ll need to do something with my hair, and I’m not sure my dress uniform is—”

  “I could get you out of it, you know,” her mother said thoughtfully. “Not the party, that might be enjoyable, I mean the rest of it. Wandering around down there for days…in the dirt. I could get you reassigned shipside. The leg injury alone would be enough.”

  She didn’t even flinch, just gave her mother a quiet look. “It’s a lost colony, Mom.”

  “Yes,” Elise agreed archly, drawing out the word. “Nearly five hundred years lost and only one major settlement to show for it. One shudders at the genetic possibilities. You should advise the male members of your party to beware of friendly women bearing small specimen cups at this so-called party tonight.”

  She laughed. “I’ll tell them to be careful. Can I please shower now?”

  “Of course.” Her mom leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Big night,” she said, with wide eyes and a dramatic quiver of her slender shoulders. Then her eyes met Amanda’s in a moment of perfect sincerity. “Stay safe down there, my child.”

  “I will. And you enjoy your evening.”

  Elise pressed the door control and turned back to give Amanda a teasing look before stepping out of the room. “Oh, I will. In fact, I’ll see you there. Randy is taking me to the party.” Her delicate laughter drifted back as the door slid closed.

  She stared at the door for a few minutes and then shuddered. Her mother and Leveque. Fuck.

  Chapter Four

  The Planet Harp

  Rhodry Devlin de Mendoza stood in perfect stillness and surveyed the field, his eyes always moving, never resting for more than the space of a single breath. This wasn’t where he’d have preferred to be tonight, but Cristobal had given him little choice.

  His gaze slid to the big double doors leading to the main entrance hall, where the guests had been arriving all evening, from both Harp and the Earth ship. His focus sharpened at a flash of brilliant white, which turned out to be yet another high ranking fleet officer, with rows of colorful bits of ribbon on his chest, and the occasional flash of gold. This one had a blond woman on his arm. But she was a civilian, and she wasn’t Amanda Sumner.

  He cursed softly and looked deliberately away. He told himself he was only looking for her because of the unique threat she posed to Harp. He didn’t completely accept the idea that she could tap into the voice of Harp’s trees, yet if it was even a possibility, they had to keep an eye on her. She obviously hadn’t reported it to her superiors yet, but the more she learned, the more likely that she would. So, it was in all their interest to keep her away from the forest.

  Which was why his only interest in her was official.

  He found himself scanning the open doors again, and forced his attention to the growing crowd on the ballroom floor instead.

  “Who is she, Rhodi lad?”

  Rhodry gave his cousin Aidan a dark look. “Who’s who?”

  Aidan laughed. “Whatever fair lady you’ve set your heart on. Or is it only your balls that are set on her?”

  “Could you be more crude? Besides, I haven’t had time to meet a lady, fair or otherwise.”

  “That’s not what I heard. I heard you and Fionn were giving a certain blond Earther a tour of our very fine forest.”

  “Trying to keep her out of it, more accurately.”

  Aidan laughed, his blue eyes dancing with wicked amusement. Rhodry smiled in spite of himself. Cristobal hadn’t been happy to see his cousin at his side when he’d arrived in the city. He hadn’t seemed all that surprised either.

  The truth was that he’d mostly grown up in the Devlin household of his father’s family, and every one of his numerous Devlin cousins was like a brother to him. Except for Aidan. Aidan was more. They were night and day in looks—Aidan’s blue eyes to Rhodi’s gold, his blond hair to Rhodry’s midnight black. They’d been born only minutes apart and raised together, sharing a cradle and a wet nurse. They’d been inseparable from their first breath, and it was a fact of the Devlin household when they were children that where you found one, you’d find the other.

  “I’m thinking I might stay on in the city a bit,” Aidan was saying. “Some of these ladies are fairly fine.”

  “If you can stand the perfume.”

  Aidan laughed again. “Take them outside in the fresh air, and it’s not so bad.”

  Rhodry grunted. This was yet another way t
hey were opposites. Aidan had the Devlin charm and an eye for the ladies, which the ladies returned in full measure. He, on the other hand, had spent too many of his earliest years under the tutelage of his de Mendoza grandfather, who’d insisted a clan chief must exhibit a seriousness bordering on dour. He’d also convinced his young grandson that everyone—man or woman—would want something from him. So, while Rhodry garnered his share of feminine attention, he rarely returned the favor. It was too easy to see the ambition in their eyes, to wonder if they were after the clan chief, instead of the man.

  A new flash of white drew his gaze to the entrance again, and this time it stayed there. Amanda had finally arrived. She wore the same blindingly white uniform as the others, although it looked good on her, with the jacket cut to fit her very feminine curves, while still remaining properly military. Had he given it any thought, he might have hoped for a skirt and a glimpse of leg, but the tailored slacks certainly did justice to her firm thighs and nicely rounded ass.

  “That’s her, is it?”

  He glanced over and caught a very speculative look on his cousin’s face.

  “Don’t bother yourself, cousin.”

  Aidan grinned. “So that’s how it is. Excellent. I’ll have to introduce—”

  His words were interrupted as the doors at the opposite end of the ballroom opened and Cristobal appeared. There was no fanfare, it wasn’t the Harp way. It was curiosity that had every eye in the room swinging in that direction, not for the Ardrigh, but for the Earthers who accompanied him.

  “Well, now, there’s a beauty,” Aidan said appreciatively.

  He followed his cousin’s gaze to a small, dark woman, her petite figure shown to fine advantage by a deep coral dress that managed to hug her curves while still giving the appearance of modesty. She was lovely, but not to his taste. He preferred women who looked like they could walk the forest with him without screaming. Women like Amanda. Fuck!