Alien Intent (Captured by Aliens Book 3) (15 page)

Orichal
Matrix

Celestinos
Mothership

The bank
of screens flashed images of the Anehtar, Chalcydon and the crowd of angered
men gathered before the palace. Limited surveillance of the distant colony had
proved their reign’s fallibility. It irked him that their carefully constructed
slave colony had fallen out of place before they could return to collect the
ore that rightfully belonged to his people. The fools should have never
abandoned their rule over the slave colony in favor of richer planets. Just
because they’d been worshipped as gods once before did not mean that blind
faith and fear would forever hold sway among the colonists and incur their
wishes in spite of a lack of visibility and control.

Inath
grunted. His emperor would have his head were he to discover this knowledge,
and Inath had no intention of parting ways with his neck. He was left to clean
a mess not of his own making.

The
faster ships he’d sent should have taken care of the problem without needing
him to intercede except to collect their intended mother lode of chalcedonite
for his own planet. The previous crews failed, miserably. Disgusted by the
images, Inath Kauldor waved his hands and the screens turned dark. He’d had to
divert his path, and only the distance from his home planet had thus far saved
him from discovery by the emperor. It mattered not that he’d had no control
over events—someone would pay with their life.

Damn the
speed of the behemoth he traveled in!

“I want
the traitor’s head placed before my feet. Is that understood, Vakar?” Inath
said to the man bowed before him.

Vakar’s
long tail swayed, indicating nervousness or displeasure, though he did not dare
raise his head and face the wrath of his ruler. “It will be done, my liege. Is
there anything else you desire?”

Inath
scowled. “If there was, I would have commanded it. The damage is done. The
element of surprise has been taken from us. You may stand and face me, Vakar.
Do not grovel. It is unbecoming of my best bounty hunter.”

Vakar
stood and clasped a fist against his chest, nodding. “Their forces are weakened
by the virus we intercepted.”

“Do not
remind me of our population control failures. The virus was to take more of the
men, not all of the women. We still face a battle when we arrive, and thanks to
those damned Lamians, Chalcydon is armed with the latest in weaponry—bought
with
our
own ore. The irony!”

He cringed,
wishing he had said nothing at all. His tail flicked on the end. “By your leave
then. We will seek out and find the thief who dared warn the Chalcydon Empire
of our impending arrival.”

“See
that you are successful, or do not return to the mothership. Your welcome here
will be your last. For now, I must bear the undesirable duty of planning our
invasion and the removal of King Anadaru.”

The End

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Other titles by Jaide Fox:

Mating Heat 1: Mating Rights (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Mating Heat 2: Bear Trapped (Interracial Fantasy Romance—Coming
Soon)

Beastmen of Shadowmere 1: Marked by the Beast (Interracial
Fantasy Romance)

Beastmen of Shadowmere 2: Seduced by the Beast (Interracial
Fantasy Romance)

Beastmen of Shadowmere 3: Conquered by the Beast (Interracial
Fantasy Romance)

Dark Lords 1: Captured by the Dark Lord (Dark Fantasy
Romance)

Dark Lords 2: Seized by the Vampire Lord (Dark Fantasy Romance)

Dark Lords 3: Ensnared by the Dream Lord (Dark Fantasy
Romance)

Captured by Aliens 1: Alien’s Captive (Interracial Futuristic
Romance)

Captured by Aliens 2: Alien Insurgence (Interracial
Futuristic Romance)

Captured by Aliens 3: Alien Intent (Interracial Futuristic
Romance)

Captured by Aliens 4: Alien Resistance (Interracial
Futuristic Romance—Coming late 2015)

Interstellar Mayhem 1: StarCaught (Futuristic Romance)

Interstellar Mayhem 2: StarRomped (Futuristic Romance)

Pleasure Masters 1: Ravaged (Futuristic Romance)

Pleasure Masters 2: Dominated (Futuristic Romance)

Pleasure Masters 3: Mastered (Futuristic Romance)

PleasureBot (Futuristic Romance)

Trained for Pleasure (Futuristic Romance)

Archangel (Futuristic Romance)

Summoner’s Captive (Dark Fantasy Romance)

Earth Girls Aren’t Easy (Interracial Futuristic Romance)

His Forbidden Fruit (Interracial Fantasy Romance)

Renegade (Futuristic Romance--in TAMING THE ALPHA Box Set)

SUPER READERS NEEDED!

Do you love my futuristic
romances? Fantasy Romance? Or interracial love? I hope so. I’m looking for
Super Readers to review Advance Reading Copies of my books. It helps if you’ve
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more about the story of a character I hadn’t considered before, do let me know.

Here’s
an UNEDITED sneak peek from Mating Heat 2: Bear Trapped (Fantasy Romance),
Coming Soon:

Escaping
the town of Fangor required little effort and subterfuge on Kimber’s part.
Within the first few days after the attack on the city by rogue bears from the
Ursine clan, her people—the wolf clan—were too busy in the forest finding
suitably thick timber to replace the broken gates and ramparts that surrounded
the town. She’d escaped granting mating rights to a man unworthy of her.

Unlike
her friend, Mali, who’d found a love match worth envy with Jaxon, Kimber had
been unable to drum up enough interest in any of the available males in the
clan during the Moonlight Festival. Certainly there were handsome suitors, but
she wanted more than just a pretty face. She wanted a man who would value and
treasure her, as Mali had with Jaxon. She only had to observe them for a moment
to see that Jaxon adored Mali, and nothing less would do for her. Perhaps it
was wrong to desire such things. Her mama had told her to find someone she
could be friends with, which made little sense to her. What about passion and
lust? Why even bother mating at all if she could only muster lukewarm feelings
toward a mate?

She
wondered if her lack of interest could be pin-pointed to her lack of mating heat.
Kimber sighed heavily, hefting her belongings into a better position on her
back. Mali had invited her to travel with her and Jaxon to her parents’ home,
but that had been out of the question for Kimber. She had no interest in being
the odd wheel on that journey.

She
could return to her own home, but the image of disappointment on her family’s
faces was more than she could endure. With four small children still at home,
they’d struggled to gather a proper cache of clothing and supplies to send her
away with.  They would not want to know that she’d neglected choosing a partner
for something as silly as passion.

Winter
approached, leaving the valley floor cold, moist, and misty as the weather
settled over the land. Fangor was long behind her. What possessed her in this
madness to think she could live in the wild by herself until spring? Glancing
around with every step, she kept her eyes peeled for a suitable resting place
for the night. The days grew shorter and shorter, and she didn’t relish the
possibility that she would have to spend another frigid night under the stars
without a den.

She’d
never traveled this far north, however, and her ignorance of the area tempted
her to turn back, swallow her pride, and face her family’s crushed dreams of
her happily mated. Obviously, it was too far to walk to the coast—which was her
original, poorly planned idea. Mountains seemed to cover the land for miles,
reaching for the sky with jagged, rocky hands tipped in snow. Dried, brown
leaves coated the ground, and soon even that disappeared as spruce and pine
surged from hardened dirt.

This was
no place for a comfortable night’s rest. She stopped and looked up, hoping for
a depression against the wind. A dark shadow smudged the hill, and at first,
she thought it just a shadow from an outcrop of rock. She realized after
studying the spot for several minutes that it was a cave. A thrill raced
through her but she tamped it down before she could get too excited. It could
be occupied already, or not nearly big enough for her to sleep in.

Kimber
scaled the hill, ignoring the sounds of rocks and gravel tumbling down the
hillside as she struggled to the cave using roots for leverage when her thighs
screamed at the abuse. She felt like a mountain goat when she finally reached her
goal and stood victorious and out of breath at the entrance. The cave was
bigger up here, a full two feet higher than her head and broad enough she could
walk inside abreast of a companion.

Her keen
vision allowed her to look into the space shrouded in darkness by the deep
walls. A fire had once been kept in the mouth, evidenced by scattered ash and
small bits of charcoal. Further inside, she could see dead, dried spruce bows
where someone had once made a bed, but there was no sign of recent residence.
Kimber hefted her bag from her shoulders and sat it on the dirty cave floor.

Beyond
the dim shafts of light, the cave reached back another fifteen feet. There was
no one inside—it looked abandoned. “Hello?” she called, receiving no reply
except the scratch of leaves on rock as the wind howled through the walls.

“Kimber,
you’ve just found your new home,” she said to herself. “Time to go on a hunt
and get dinner for tonight.” The fact that she’d begun talking to herself
didn’t disturb her nearly as much as it had before. She guessed having a roof
over her head and a place to sit out the winter had given her more confidence
in her ability to rough it in the wild.

Kimber
peeled her long, red wool cloak off and followed it with her dress, dropping
both on top of her bag. Her first priority was to hunt dinner. Once that was
taken care of, she’d collect wood and clean up the space.

She felt
positively giddy as she crouched to the ground and allowed her beast to take
control, transforming her with practiced ease into the form of a sleek, silver
wolf.

***

Heavily
laden with thick wool skins, boar hide, and a bag stuffed with dried goods,
pots and pans, and everything else he could think of to sustain him until the
spring, Braeden lumbered up the familiar landscape to the winter cave he’d
hibernated in every winter since he was a young lad. Breathing heavily from the
burden and the accompanying sweat on his brow in spite of the plunging
temperature, he didn’t notice the small depressions in the ground leading up to
his cave until he was nearly upon it.

The
scent of a wolf and fresh blood tickled his sensitive nose. He paused only for
a moment before the blinding anger washed over his head and clouded his mind
with the ferocity to protect his territory. With an agility that defied his
enormous size, he bounded the final distance with two steps, landing in the
mouth of the cave with a roar that rattled his own ear drums as it reverberated
along the walls with deafening sound. No wolf was going to take his cave from him.
He didn’t give a damn about truces. This was his cave.

His bags
fell away as he bared his chest and shoulders and balled his hands into tight
fists, ready for a fight. He was brought up short in his fury by the sight of a
naked woman bent over a pile of clothing. Rich, dark skin imbued with reddish
tones and curved over an ample backside and gloriously rounded breasts stunned
him into stupefied silence. A lifeless boulder could not have been more frozen
than Braeden.

The
brown skinned woman stood and faced him, narrowing her eyes, unafraid and bold
and obviously lacking good sense or one: she should have screamed; two: she
should have run; three: she made no attempt to preserve her modesty.

She
bared perfect white teeth in a grin that made her brown eyes look deadly.

Braeden
realized his adrenaline has increased the blood flow from his brain to his
groin. That or the fact that he hadn’t seen a naked woman in years.

Somehow,
he kicked the stiff cogs of his brain back into rotation. He shook his head as
if slinging off a shroud. “Are ye daft?” he roared, diverting his attention
from her tits and the slit peeking from betwixt her legs up to her round face
and evil brownish black eyes. “This is my cave!”

“This is
my cave. I was here first,” she said through clenched teeth, lifting her chin
with bravado.

“Are you
daft? It’s mine. It’s been mine since I was a boy. Get out!” he roared again.

She
didn’t’ flinch and didn’t back down. For some reason, her lack of response
deflated his anger from a boil to a simmer. He stood there in the entrance,
trying to think of some way to grab her and throw her out without hurting her
or getting injured in the process. She looked lithe and small enough to slip
through his arms if she wanted.

“What’s
your name?” she asked.

“Braeden.”

“My name
is Kimber. Do you not know the wolf and ursine clans have made peace? Is that
why you feel safe in threatening me?”

He was
outraged! He frowned. “I’ve done no such thing. I would never harm a woman,
even a she-wolf like you,” he sneered.

“Coming
in here yelling at me to leave—I view that as a threat. Who do you think you
are puffing your chest up at me?”

She had
a talent for getting his ire up almost at once. “I’ve been wintering in this
cave for years.”

Kimber
narrowed her eyes and remained silent.

The
thought that he could just pick her up and pitch her out the opening occurred
to him, but more likely she would only change to a wolf the moment he stepped
closer and cause him bodily harm before he was forced to retreat or do the
unthinkable—hurt her defending himself. It was the truth that he’d never hurt a
woman before in his life, and he wasn’t about to start with her. Reluctantly,
he realized they were at an impasse which led him to something his mama had
taught him many years ago when dealing with his older brothers—sometimes the
only way to get peace is to let the meaner of the argument have their way. At
least until he could figure out a way around them. “I tell you what, you can
stay here for the night and leave in the morning. I won’t throw you out into
the cold. It’s too late in the day for that.”

She put
her hands on her hips. He noticed it made her breasts sit higher and her dark
nipples winked at him—in his mind, that is. The fluffy, black wool skin
covering his groin was his only protection from her noticing the raging hard
cock that seemed out for blood. Bastard serpent with a mind of his own! Braeden
shifted on his feet, waiting for her answer and subconsciously giving his groin
a massaging pinch to cut off the blood flow.

“That
won’t work for me. I’m staying here until the spring,” she finally said.

Anger
and outraged bubbled up inside him again. “The hell you are!”

“The
hell I’m not!”