The Creeping Moss

By Alyce Caswell

Lorne Lavine has adored his goddess ever since she saved his life and saw him as he truly was, so when she appears decades later wanting to recruit him as her bodyguard, he is unable to refuse. His time at the Galactic Law Enforcement Agency has prepared him for any fight — but not for the feelings she stirs inside him. The feelings no mortal should have.

Renaei, the goddess of tundra, trusts only one man with her life and that’s Lorne — but even she must admit that’s not the reason she chose him to protect her. She is desperate for a companion, an equal, someone to love her instead of worshipping her from afar. But will Lorne ever be able to see her as a woman instead of an untouchable goddess?

A trans romance (F/FTM) novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alyce Caswell
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780648162698

Alyce Caswell

Alyce Caswell, when she isn't buried in a book or drinking her way through a giant pot of tea, is a keen writer of fantasy and science fiction. Her space opera family saga, The Galactic Pantheon Series, has been released digitally through various retailers.

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The Creeping Moss

by Alyce Caswell

Copyright © 2019 Alyce Caswell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover design by Hampton Lamoureux, TS95 Studios © 2019

ISBN: 978 0 6481626 9 8 (EPUB)

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

About the Author

Also by Alyce Caswell

CHAPTER ONE

Lorne Lavine, formerly a major in the Galactic Law Enforcement Agency (GLEA for short), pulled down on the hardlight bar of his weights machine until he felt the dual pinch beneath his shoulder blades. He held that position for several seconds, breathing slowly, and then let the bar tug his arms up above his head. The next time he brought the strip of hardlight down to his thudding heart, he grimaced from annoyance instead of pain.

His head was all over the place. He couldn’t focus.

Lorne released the bar, causing it to thrum angrily as it bounced back into place, and hunched forward on the padded seat, contemplating the sunrise bleeding its way across the horizon.

A red dawn. It should be considered a warning — so said the many ancient tales that humans continued to tell each other. But Old Earth, where those first red dawns had been observed by Lorne’s species, had been destroyed millennia ago. Red dawns here meant it was just the start of another fifteen-hour day.

Lorne lived on Velde, a planet buried beneath dense cloud cover for eleven months out of each Old Earth year. Most days only red light made it through. Today, however, the atmospheric blanket shielding him from the nearest star was thinner than usual, a promise of better light. He wouldn’t need to sit by the UV lamps this evening if he went outside. Lorne had lost his tan since coming back to Velde and he intended to work on it. At least his wavy brunette hair still had its blond highlights. That was something.

Maybe he should pull on some shoes and try to outrun this feeling…whatever it was.

Lorne dragged air into his lungs and then spat it back out again. The plexiglass dividing him from this red dawn could be set to opaque or even midnight black, but he preferred his workout sessions to be surrounded by natural serenity.

He wasn’t feeling particularly serene right now.

The lonely clumps of grass outside shivered as a breeze wafted over them, the only sign of movement in a field studded with scarred and moss-strewn rocks. The mountains in the distance were capped with gleaming bronze snow and remained unmoving, unbending.

Very few large species of fauna existed up here on the endless plateaus. Usually it was as empty as a desert out there. Sometimes, if he was lucky, Lorne would spot a herd of imported muskoxen, descendants of the beasts that had roamed Old Earth.

He should have been used to the quiet by now, but today it felt different.

Someone — or something — was coming.

Lorne hissed out some choice curse words that he’d learned during his service to the Creator God and tapped two fingers to his scarred temple, where a chip had been housed underneath the skin until three Old Earth months ago. The specialised tech had made him, in slang terms, a ‘Chipper’ — someone who was capable of sensing and manipulating the energy of the Creator God’s universe. While he’d been at the Agency, Lorne had used his chip to create defensive forcefields and to locate nearby lifeforms.

He felt naked and vulnerable without the chip. Anyone could sneak up on him now. He’d never sense them coming.

So why did he feel a presence?

‘Hardlight deactivate,’ Lorne snapped as he jumped off the seat.

The bar on his weights machine blinked out of existence. Cursing once more, he grabbed his coat and left the room. The coat’s fur lining sealed in around his loose workout clothes at the touch of a button, but it was nowhere near as snug as the voice-activated boots he shoved his feet into. Lorne unclipped his preferred lasgun from its mount and hefted the weapon, a heavy model that required two hands to hold, and felt his shoulder ache in protest.

He gritted his teeth. It had been too long since he’d been in the field. Too long since he’d had to take on galactic criminals. Too long since he’d dug the chip out of his own temple rather than wait for the Agency to carefully remove it for him.

The door slid aside at his barked command. Cold air immediately rushed him like a stream of lasgun bolts. Unrelenting, it struck his face and swept over his lips, trying to steal the breath from his lungs.

He refused to let it.

Lorne caught his reflection in the plexiglass when he turned to make sure the door had shut behind him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shaved and it showed. Despite this, he smiled. The dark stubble had suited him ever since he’d first started growing facial hair. He liked the way it strengthened his jaw and how it never transformed into a wild beard, no matter how long he left it.

Disgusted with his vanity, Lorne shook his head and shifted his attention back to his surroundings, wary of the encompassing silence. He took a step down from the verandah and cast his hazel eyes across the horizon.

‘Where are you, you little shit?’ he muttered. ‘Or are you that phantom sensation the Agency’s medical personnel warned me about?’

‘Well, I can be everywhere at once, if I choose to be,’ a feminine-sounding voice answered him. ‘But for the purposes of our conversation, I am right behind you.’

Lorne spun around and fired off a shot before he was even aware of his finger tensing on the trigger. A horrified gasp peeled his lips apart. Had he just killed someone?

But the intruder remained right where she was, amusement written over her