Determined Hope: Shifting Alliances, #2

By Severine Wolfe

He is determined to have his mate. She is determined to find her way home and to never trust anyone again. Both must determine to change their minds and expectations to find a world they can both live in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severine Wolfe
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370721405

Book preview

Science Fiction Romance

Determined Hope

Copyright © 2017 by Severine Wolfe

First E-Book Published March 2017

Cover design by Melody Simmons

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the author.

All characters, places, and events in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations are strictly coincidental.

License Statement

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

He was determined to find his bond mate and make her love him...

Having come home to help save his friend and try to find his bond mate, Sailosh was close to giving up when he chanced to catch a glimpse of her. That one look, that momentary glance brought out his mating instinct and he despairs of ever finding her. Then he captures after she’s broken into his house.

Irina was not having an easy time. She’d gone to Lake Baikal to come to terms with her grandfather’s death and commune with nature when she’s abducted and taken away from her entire life with no hope of return, but she’s determined to make it back to Earth and her life. But, her immediate needs include food and shelter, and possibly a bath.

They both must come to terms with the reality of the other and learn to trust their hearts.

Dedication

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I dedicate this book to my husband, keeper of my heart, as he willingly sat through countless dinners theorizing on propulsion systems and modes of deep space travel. We may disagree on Rare Earth Theory and/or The Drake Equation. I’m still trying to convince him that it truly does make sense. You cannot have life without a moon.

Chapter One

The gossip at the Security Forces office was off the charts bizarre. My partner’s brother had died the day before, and he was found living in an unregistered apartment with a woman to whom he was not in an official union. It was the gossip of the day among the Security Forces on Selu, my father’s repressive and cold homeworld. It was a world that no longer held any curiosity or answers for me. The only reason I’d stayed this long was trying to figure out how to get my partner, Hadok, to leave with me. I’d begun my exit strategy weeks ago, and had, in fact, just finished filling out my exit paperwork. I was done with Security Forces on Selu.

I hated leaving Hadok here, especially now, but I could no longer stomach this world or its people.

Hey, Sailosh, you seen Hadok?

I turned and looked at one of the street unit’s men hailing me. I knew him but could not remember his name. It figured that I would suddenly become everyone’s buddy when my partner was going through hell. Could the man not just live with his societal shame and be left alone? Yet another reason to hate this damned world. I would never admit it to my parents, but this world made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I could easily understand why my father dropped everything to follow my mother home to Olyg.

I just shook my head at the guy and moved on to my rented transport. I needed to head up to the space station and turn in my weapons and gear, and then I’d head over to Hadok’s place to give him the news. This would crush him, along with what he was now going through. Hadok had his own place. I had stayed in the barracks while stationed on Selu. It wasn’t as if I was getting any action here. Sex outside marriage was forbidden, so I was left to my own devices or off-planet pleasure houses if I wanted to satisfy my natural needs.

I had been sure that I didn’t like Selu after about five minutes planetside, so I’d never bothered to find a place of my own and made trips home to work on my house as often as I could. The trip took a day on a transport, but longer in a shuttle. Jump gates could only throw you so far through space and that all depended on the size of your craft.

I’d been with Hadok since I’d graduated from the Accord Security Forces Academy and we’d slogged through war and tactical operations throughout our sector of the galaxy until I decided I wanted to see Selu and then we’d both come here. It was odd, Hadok had grown up here, I was genetically tied to the people here, and yet you could not have picked two more out of place beings. I grinned and opened the door to my transport. I was going to ask Hadok to come with me and never return to this place. He did not need to be a part of this cultural suicide his world seemed determined to commit. There was so much life in my friend and partner, and he rarely let it show. I’d seen it in our years working off-planet, but since we’d come back a few years ago, it had been ruthlessly shut down.

I went and turned in my stuff to the Security Forces administrative station in orbit around Selu and then called Hadok to let him know I was on my way. He sounded resigned, and I don’t know, depressed, which was something I feared for him. He’d already been through so much shit from his people, this was likely to push him over the edge of what he should be expected to endure. I worried for him.

Traffic was light for the time of day, and I made good time getting over to his apartment. He looked bad when I walked into his place. It’s the look males get when kicked in the balls. He looked like the last illusion had been destroyed in his world, and I imagine with his brother, Fragard, having been found to be keeping a mistress on the planet was the last thing for him. His brother was held up as the example of the perfect Selusian male. He could breed, Hadok could not.

The problem with this whole place was that they were taught from birth to hide their emotions, to hide what they felt, to hide everything. As a result, they had the weirdest underworld I had ever witnessed, and I swam in weird waters, so it was saying something that I considered them the oddest I had seen. For Hadok to be showing me this much was really saying something about his mental state.

He motioned me into his meager living space and scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked like hell, unshaven, his hair, usually so neat and trim, looked as if he’d spent hours running his hands through it and trying to tear it out. It was standing on end for the most part.

I need to show you something, Sailosh, he said and gestured to the chair, and he flopped back down on the small couch that took up nearly his entire living space. He handed me his personal comm unit. And, I need you to keep quiet about it.

So, it’s true! He did have a mistress planetside! I said it before I could stop myself. Hadok grimaced.

The tale he told me was possibly the worst thing I’d ever heard, and we’d both worked in war zones. My brain was working quickly, trying to find all the angles we could play to get clear of it, but I just kept spiraling back to my best friend’s brother being a rapist and kidnapper. The fool had not only kidnapped and raped females, but he had also brought one back here for some reason.

I need you to look at these... I cannot... Hadok paled and shook his head. I’m going to go out and get us something to eat." With that, he quickly left his place, and I was left staring at the comm unit and the data crystal.

I can admit now, what I saw made me want to throw up, scream, rage and then kill someone. I come from a culture that is fiercely protective of females and children. Watching Fragard brutalize a female snapped something within me and I was murderous. I could feel liquid run down my face and knew that I’d passed some line from which I could never return. What I had seen had fired up my Olyg genetic tendency to protect, and I felt a compulsion to find who was doing this and eradicate them. I knew it was Fragard and that he was already dead, but my head kept telling me it went deeper than one deranged Selusian.

I looked up from the last video when Hadok came back, and I removed the data crystal and held it out to him and explained that he needed to watch it. I had heard the tone of his voice when he spoke of the female, and it became tender. I’m not sure what either of us was feeling at that moment, but I knew that we had to save her.

Hadok took the crystal to his sleeping chamber, and I sat down with the other crystals and began watching them and silently simmering.

I can say now that I wish I’d never seen even one of the recordings. I wish that I had never seen what was done to the Earth female that Fragard had brought back to Selu. If I could, even now, I would have them scrubbed from my memory. But that is not how reality works and I dealt with reality, even if everyone on my father’s home planet denied it.

No wonder Hadok looked like hell. No one could know this and not be sickened to the depths of their souls. On Selu, a male hitting a female was a crime punishable by death, because the males were so much larger and more muscular than the females. There was not much chance of a female surviving a blow from a male. The fact that this one female had survived the blows and lived through the forced breedings was something of a miracle to my way of thinking and proof of the hardiness of her race.

She was from Earth; a world I was not familiar with since it was protected by the Accord and I was not likely to ever meet someone from there or hadn’t been until Fragard had ripped everything apart. People from Earth didn’t even speak the same language, and they warred with themselves rather than expend their resources wisely in exploring their star system. They’d been discovered decades ago when an Explorer class ship had discovered one of their spacecraft. It was of such a crude construction, something our schoolchildren made for fun, that it had been taken out of that quadrant so that it would not attract unaligned worlds who might exploit the planet and its people. An observation outpost was set up on the