AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
On the outskirts of the moon city Azadi, deep under the lunar surface. Less than thirty days before the rogue planet Akurn reaches invasion range of Earth.
Jelena’s heart thundered so hard she almost missed what Katsuki said next. A single bead of sweat rolled down her back as she massaged her fist over her chest. Not go? Not be a part of saving the life of the man who was everything to her? No, they couldn’t do that to her. Not now.
“Honestly Jelena, it’s for your own good.”
For her own good? Oh, for Goddess’s sake. She was thirty-one years old. Childhood was long ago and she didn’t need to be told what she could or couldn’t do. Her foster mother acted as if Jelena would screw up the most important thing in her life.
Face heated, Jelena crossed her arms. “You know, without me, none of you would be going anywhere.” After all, she was the one who found the abandoned spaceship. She was the one who scraped together all the needed parts to get the damn thing up and running. It wasn’t her less-than-supportive foster parents who did that. Freaking controlling, overprotective...
Katsuki’s bright-yellow skin flushed dark gold as her singular neon-turquoise eyes narrowed. “It’s not that we don’t want you with us, but we can’t take the chance you’ll endanger everything with the way you’ve been acting lately.” Her brilliant gaze slipped to the treacherous Akurn male beside her.
He stood with an identical mulish expression.
Why was Katsuki looking at him for support? She’d never needed it before.
“Admit it. Lately you’ve been a little, um—” Katsuki coughed. ”—ah, overly hungry.” A hard frown. “And I, for one, don’t want to end up too weak to carry out our mission because you took too much from me.”
Jelena scoffed. “As if that would happen. I don’t know why my appetite has increased, but I swear I’ve got complete control of myself and can abstain whenever I have to.” She nodded to their eggplant-colored companion, Qhasheik, who was half buried under the control panel of the spaceship cockpit, fixing Goddess knew what.
The skintight shorts he wore didn’t hide his muscular legs as they twitched when he moved his hidden upper body.
“Besides, since I can’t take his nasty-ass blood, he’d protect you.” She shuddered. She hadn’t taken his blood since she was a child, for good reason. The one time he’d allowed her to take a bite, he turned out to be immune to her enthrallment and couldn’t avoid the pain she caused. The whole effort wasn’t worth it. His blood was bitter and left her empty.
“Well, you don’t have to be mean about it.” Qhasheik’s voice was muffled. The Ibbin twisted under the panel as he jerked something with a grunt. “Not my fault I can’t be part of the buffet.” He yanked, then let out a yelp.
Scooting from under his workstation, he cussed under his breath and examined a line of thick, white blood oozing from the side of his forefinger. He waved his injured digit at them. Glaring through his eyes of deep red, he brought his finger to his mouth and sucked. The healing properties in his saliva would seal the wound fast enough.
Then he wouldn’t have anything to whine about.
With a satisfied smirk, he checked his healed skin, then flicked a glance at her. “I don’t understand your problem with Jelena, Katsuki. She’s crazy strong, can mesmerize people to do what she wants, and don’t forget her talent for freezing anything or anyone that pisses her off.” He snorted. “Besides, you know as well as I do, she’ll end up on the ship no matter what we do or say.”
He narrowed a stare in Jelena’s direction. “The thing that keeps me up at night is she’ll do something stupid when she finally meets that obsession of hers.”
“Dammit, Qhasheik. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Trust the jerk to bring out the underlying reason they didn’t want her to go. And it had nothing to do with her increasing need for blood. It had everything to do with finding the love of her life. All it took was one look at Amil-Shamash, a.k.a. Sychar, the leader of the WOTA—Warriors of the Abandoned, the rebel force on Akurn—and her heart was lost.
The man was, without a doubt, the sexiest male in the entire galaxy. He was the only one for her and she was the only woman who was destined to be his life mate. She’d be right beside him when he led the Akurns out from under the oppressive regime of sub–Prince Murduk. Yeah, she could see it now...
Qhasheik, the moron, had the audacity to chuckle.
She clenched her hands to stop from grabbing the curling black horns at the top of his head to shake some sense into him.
The gray hairless limb, the lingnee, that ran between his horns and reached the middle of his back, twitched. It was a separate appendage he could use to block her.
Not that she’d put herself in the position to let that happen.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about, and so do you.” Qhasheik scoffed before he scooted back under the navigation console.
At least with him half hidden, she wouldn’t have to look at his smirking mug as she made her case to the other two.
“Jelena, this is going to be a delicate mission. Sychar is too important for us to lose focus for even one moment. We’re going into the heart of a violent rebellion, and we don’t have time for you to be distracted by your obsession with him.” Abiditan crossed his arms with his lips pursed. “Plus, Katsuki is right. Since your need for blood has increased, keeping you at full strength might drain us too much. While we don’t mind giving you what you need...”
“Speak for yourself.”
Qhasheik’s mumble wasn’t hard to hear, even with him banging on something.
