The Vilka's Mate: Scifi Alien Romance (Shifters of Kladuu Book 2) Read online

  She became so turned around thanks to his antics that by the time the morning light grew strong enough through the trees to finally make her sweat, she had no idea if they were even moving away from the mountain pass anymore. Without the sun to look up toward, she couldn’t orient herself, and this planet’s sun might not even rise in the same direction as Earth’s. The jungle felt like one massive maze. Gerrit’s wolf became the shivering compass needle she struggled to follow.

  She got the distinct impression he was using her as bait.

  Sweat coated the back of her flight suit so it stuck to her back. Her bandaged injuries weren’t stiff though, and she clung to that bit of positive news as her tongue dried in her mouth and her throat ached for water. But she turned her thoughts to that mindless, empty place she’d forged during basic training and trekked after Gerrit’s furry tail, stopping only when she temporarily lost him.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed before they finally stopped. She looked up, swaying dizzily, and glanced around. He’d brought them to a stream of clear water which tumbled over pebbles and swirled across tiny moss-covered waterfalls.

  Jude dumped Gerrit’s clothes and dropped to her knees beside the water. She scooped out handfuls of water, slurping it down until her belly strained and her tongue didn’t feel like sandpaper anymore.

  When she sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth, Gerrit said, “We’ve lost them for now.”

  She squeaked, nearly falling face-first into the water.

  Jumping to her feet, she spun around. Gerrit stood behind her, dressed in his pants and boots—and she was totally not disappointed he wasn’t naked.

  At her surprise, he cocked a brow.

  “How did you change so fast?” she asked, pressing a hand over her thundering heart.

  She thought a vague hint of a smirk played across his expression, but she couldn’t be sure. “Into my clothes?”

  “No,” she said, biting off the word. She waved a hand at him. “How did you change back out of your wolf thing, form, whatever?”

  “Our second form is our Vilkan form, not wolf. That’s an Earthen term. I can shift within seconds. Did you get enough water? We won’t be stopping again until nightfall.”

  “Yeah. I’m all right.” If she drank any more she might puke. She glanced at him up and down, so used to following his silver tail that she struggled to adapt to his human form, especially in his tight pants and bare bronzed chest. Had he always looked so muscular? His eyes so brightly colored and light? “Um, did you get enough?” she asked when she realized she’d been staring for a beat too long at him.

  “I drank while I waited for you to catch up.”

  She scowled. “Asshole.”

  “Let’s go.” He turned away, but she was sure she saw him roll his eyes.

  Jude had never considered herself the chatty type. Her sister was far more sociable and outgoing. But while hiking through the jungle with her feet squelching in her boots and blisters forming between her toes, Jude found the silence unbearable. Gerrit seemed perfectly content to never say a word, and it was driving her insane.

  “How far away from the Hylan base are we?”

  Up ahead, he grunted and ducked under a low-hanging limb. “It’ll seem much farther if you start asking that.”

  Jude made a face at his back, but at least, since she was walking behind him, she could stare at his ass flexing beneath the material of his pants without worrying about him catching her. “Okay,” she said when it seemed he had no intention of answering her question. “But how far?”

  He sighed, and she took offense at the disgruntled sound. “Another day.”

  “Holy shit! Are you serious?” Jude screeched to a halt.

  He paused, holding back a fern for her to pass by without getting slapped in the face. “Is that a real question or just one of your inexplicable outbursts?”

  “Yes, it’s a question! An entire day? Are you insane?” She jabbed her finger toward the sky. “We’re going to be hunted by those things for another freaking day?”

  Gerrit let the fern whip back into place. “No, I’m not insane. And yes, we will be hunted by the Draqon patrols every step of the way, so please, by all means, yell a little louder.”

  Jude grumbled under her breath, but she followed him before he could move too far ahead. The only sign of his annoyance was the fact that he didn’t hold back nearly as many leaves for her, which Jude considered a win. At least he wasn’t using her as bait anymore. She figured she could risk a few more questions. “So, are they shifters too?”

  Without glancing back, he asked, “Who?”

  “The flying lizard things.”

  “They’re Draqons, and yes, they are.”

  Jude chewed on that information for a while. She hated herself for her curiosity, but she couldn’t resist. “Did I see women on their backs?”

  “Their mates ride them in battle.”

  Jude’s mouth fell open. “That’s amazing!”

  Gerrit recoiled like she’d struck him across the back of the head. He whirled around. “It’s completely barbaric,” he spat out like he couldn’t believe Jude would think anything else. “Mates should never be endangered on purpose.”

  Jude stopped in her tracks with a scowl. “You’re barbaric. You think women can’t fight?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Mates should be valued, not sent into battle.”

  “Right,” she said, drawing out the word, finally understanding.

  His eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “You’re one of those guys.”

  Gerrit’s spine straightened. “I’m not just one of those ‘guys.’ I’m Alpha.”

  Jude snorted. “Exactly my point.”

  9

  Gerrit

  Fear and guilt rolled off Jude’s skin to mingle with the deeper, spicier scent coming from the bite on her shoulder. It was healing well and would be fully recovered soon, but it smelled too strongly. The combined scents, along with her own natural fragrance, was a cocktail that swirled in the air around Gerrit’s face and sent his thoughts scattering. He could barely focus on making sure they weren’t being tracked, much less keep on the alert for Katu clan members hunting them.

  The Katu were the slinking black panther shifters who liked to spring silently through the trees above their prey. When the moment was right, they’d pounce, sailing through the air, and slice their claws across the neck, severing the spine and paralyzing their victim while they fed on their guts.

  Katu members liked kidneys the best. They said it made their fur gleam.

  Not that Gerrit could listen close enough to hear their claws clicking through the limbs above him. Not with Jude and her endless stream of questions or her clomping, stomping footfalls.

  And that scent.

  He couldn’t run far enough or fast enough to get away from it.

  “—just don’t understand why you think they’re not up there. I mean, how can you tell? I can’t even see the sky.”

  Gerrit raked a hand through his short hair. “I listen. You should try it.”

  His back burned beneath her glare. She was cagey and combative, fiery and fierce. She didn’t let him off the hook, not when she still needed answers. He couldn’t escape her or that damn scent.

  Worse, much worse, he was starting to wonder if he even wanted to anymore.

  He’d been elated when she chose to come with him, a completely unexpected response. He should have been annoyed, especially because she was only going to try to make a run for her ship. He never should have given her a choice. Now, he’d doomed not only himself, but also her if he couldn’t get them to the Hylan base safely.

  Tension turned his collarbones into fire pokers against his skin.

  Jude had been saying something else. He hadn’t heard. “—reptiles are nocturnal too. And I’m assuming those dragons are reptiles—”

  “Draqons.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Vera isn’t like
this,” Gerrit muttered, mostly to himself, but Jude caught the words.

  “Who’s Vera?”

  “A human woman mated to my Beta. She never argues this much.”

  A few steps farther and Gerrit realized Jude wasn’t following him anymore. He spun around, thinking he’d find her with her spine torn in half and a Katu on her back. Instead, she was staring at him with the strangest, most dangerous expression he’d ever seen.

  A shiver kissed down his spine.

  Her dark brows inched up her tanned face as she stared him down. A slow smile tugged at her lips, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It was like an Arakid spinning silk around prey caught in its web, knowing it had just caught dinner.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Jude said in a voice that dripped honey. “Were you expecting some damsel to crash onto your planet? Were you waiting to rescue her? Maybe I should stay here while you go sniff around for some other quieter, more compliant woman who needs you to swoop in and save her. Because if you think that’s me, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  Gerrit’s body flashed cold with anger. “I do not bark,” he growled. The tone had sent many a Vilka cowering with their tail tucked between their legs, but Vera only smirked at him, compelling him to add, “Especially at trees.”

  Jude marched up to him, her boots crackling with moisture and likely giving her countless blisters, though she hadn’t complained once. Her chest bumped against his, and the awareness that her breasts were pressed up against him dried his mouth.

  He frowned.

  She craned her neck back and glared up at him. “You look like the barking type to me. Trust me, I know from my time in flight school. And you”—she poked his chest—“are a barker.”

  He snatched her hand away from his chest. When she tried to jerk away from his hold with a hiss, he tugged her forward, making her stumble against him. He found he liked her off balance, with a breathless gasp on her lips and her eyes wide, and pressed so tight against him he could wrap both arms around her.

  For once, she stared at him like the predator he was and not as her glorified escort through the jungle. “Do you know how many things out here can kill you?” He tightened his grip on her hand as she tried to regain her balance. “Thousands. And you, a human woman? Your kind is rare on this planet. Many clans move through this jungle far more silently and faster than I do and they would pay a high price for flesh like yours.” He dragged his gaze down her body, slender and muscular, wiry and lithe. He’d meant to scare her with the glance, but he only managed to make his cock stir.

  She ripped her hand from his. “You’d sell me? You’re really that much of an asshole?”

  “I’m the asshole who found you before they did and didn’t rape or eat you, so maybe instead of treating me like one of them, you should consider being nicer.”

  Rubbing her knuckles, she scowled at him. “Flesh trading isn’t legal within the Intergalactic Alliance of Planets and Lifeforms.”

  “Too bad Kladuu isn’t a member of any such alliance.” He spun on his heels and took off into the jungle. A beat later, he heard her follow. She kept closer now.

  “This planet is really undiscovered? I mean I guess it has to be, but I just assumed it was someplace I hadn’t heard of because I didn’t have clearance. But no one knows about it? And you said it is called Kladuu?”

  It was the interest in her voice that undid him. The excitement trembling in the back of her throat. The thrill of discovery. Yes, she was a Falconer all right, and dangerous beyond measure. He whirled around and grabbed her upper arms, almost wrenching her off her feet.

  “Kladuu,” he growled down at her, his mouth inches from hers, “isn’t for you. This planet is ours. Our relics are ours. Our minerals are ours. This land is ours. You humans think you can stumble upon every rock, moon, and planet out there in your galaxy and take it. You think you’re entitled because you have every other alien race cowering from you. But that’s just fear. That’s not respect. And one day, you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  For a second, fear flashed in her brown eyes. Then he caught the flicker of that dangerous smile on her lips before her knee slammed into his crotch.

  Piercing pain lanced across his vision.

  He doubled over, gasping. She let him fall as she stepped back. His gaze locked on her boots, and he tasted the inkeel he’d caught them for lunch at the back of his throat. His balls, sundered into a million slivers of razor wire, ricocheted back up through his insides.

  At least, it felt like it.

  “Next time you want to scare me,” Jude said, crouching into his line of sight with that damning smile on her lips, “you should do a better job.” She reached over and pushed against his shoulder, sending him sprawling into a fetal position. “That is if you want children one day.”

  His growl was half-hearted at best. He was too busy cradling his aching balls.

  She was either going to get them killed, or he was going to throttle her in a fit of rage. He didn’t see any way in which they would make it out of this trek alive.

  She offered one of her long-fingered hands to help him up.

  He glared at it, still on his side. Of course, she was the type to knee him in the nuts then offer him a hand to stand back up with.

  And why, Blessed Avilku, did it turn him on?

  What the fuck was wrong with him?

  “I hate you,” he whisper-hissed. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. But he took her hand and tried not to whimper like a pup when he stood straight.

  “Maybe your planet is a secret,” she said while he renewed the fight to keep his lunch down, “and maybe you hate humans. That’s fine with me. I really don’t give a fuck. But I didn’t ask to crash through your wormhole and land on your planet. I didn’t ask for Warren or that Draqon or any of your men to die. I don’t want this. I just want to go home to my sister. I won’t say a word about this place. You won’t ever see my kind again. Just get me a ship. Got it?”

  She’d seen him and his men shift, and she was a trained Falconer. He didn’t believe for one second she wouldn’t tell anyone about Kladuu. But for the sake of his health, he grumbled, “Oh, I get it. Loud and clear.”

  “Good,” Jude stated, sneering at him with that pretty mouth of hers, “cause I won’t tell you again—”

  If he had to listen to her threaten him or his balls one more time, he was going to lose his mind. He had to shut her up. Just for a second. For one precious second of silence.

  Maybe he’d already lost his mind, because he grabbed her arm and jerked her to him. She fell against him with a little yelp, but he steadied her face with his other hand, his fingers holding her jaw as he locked his mouth over hers.

  He tasted her shocked exhalation against his tongue. She caught his bottom lip between her teeth, and it would have served him right to have it bitten in half for not thinking through his attempt to shut her up, but she nipped his lip with a growl at the back of her throat before opening her mouth to him.

  He deepened the kiss, lashing his arm around her waist and dragging his other hand through her hair to secure her face against his.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck to hold him to her just as tightly as he held her.

  For a delirious, world-tilting moment, he kissed her thoroughly, working his tongue against hers, swallowing her groan when his grip tightened in her hair. During that moment that stretched for eternity, he tasted the scent coming from her shoulder. It coated his tongue, and every instinct in his body, every cell that made him Kladian, roared to life.

  The sensation was so powerful, so all-consuming that when it crashed into him, he staggered back from her, gasping, his arm wrapped around his stomach.

  He felt a lurching, jerking pull deep within him. The tug he’d felt when he’d first smelled her beside her crashed ship was nothing compared to this. This was everything. It was more than he’d ever felt. More than he’d ever thought was possible to feel.

  He nearly went to
his knees.

  It was horrible. It was the worst feeling in the world.

  “—you okay?” Jude was asking. She took a step closer to him, her face creased with worry.

  He flung up a hand to stop her. “Did you,” he croaked, “feel that?”

  Her beautiful face scrunched up in thought. “What, I’m not that good of a kisser? What is it?”

  He jerked upright while she spoke. His mind went calm. Quiet. As silent as the jungle around him.

  The jungle was never quiet.

  A chill swept through him, overriding whatever he’d felt before.

  He heard the crack of leathery jaws stretching wide. It was the only warning he had.

  He launched himself at Jude. They collided with a bone-jarring hit and went tumbling into a dense array of foliage, showering themselves in dew. Right behind them, right where they’d stood, a spray of Draqon acid sizzled into the ground and splattered into the trees. Drops of it spattered against Gerrit, and he gasped from the sudden sharp pain, but he turned in time to shield Jude and himself from the worst of it.

  He rolled to his feet, fighting the instinct to shift, and hauled Jude upright.

  She was looking up, frozen, her eyes wide.

  A crack ripped through the jungle as the canopy split and wings beat the air above them, sending tree limbs splintering and mist rising through the air.

  His skin rippled. His Vilkan form stretched his canines into his bottom lip, his claws lengthening on his hands. But he couldn’t shift. Jude would never be able to keep up with him.

  He dove into the jungle as the Draqons swept into the hole they’d created in the canopy above them. Arrows thwacked into trees, missing them by inches. He swung back toward Jude, who was keeping pace with him, her long legs churning. He reached for her, ready to swing her into his arms.

  “I’m fine!” she shouted over the Draqons’ roars. “I can keep up! Just run!”