Roran

By Clarissa Lake

Passionate romance combines with science fiction adventure.

After the Sargans bombed his world and abducted the survivors, Roran sets out to locate his missing family. Instead he finds Becca Clayton, abducted by the Chavilians, about to be sold on the Sargan auction block as a slave.

He immediately recognizes she's his soulmate. But rescuing her means taking her with him on a dangerous mission that could get them both killed.

Emotionally wounded by their situations, they indulge in the sizzling attraction between them even though they are barely acquainted. It lets them forget the pain for a while, and the physical intimacy promotes their bonding.

As their feelings grow, Roran worries. There is nothing he fears more than losing Becca. Can he keep them alive so they can make a life together?

Contains explicit, adult love scenes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clarissa Lake
• Release date: Jul 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005573683

Clarissa Lake

Clarissa Lake grew up watching Star Trek and reading Marvel Comics. She attended science fiction and fantasy conventions where she met many well-known science fiction authors and attended their readings and discussion panels. They included SciFi greats Anne McCaffery, CJ Cherry, George RR Martin, Ben Bova, Timothy Zahn, Frederik Pohl, Orson Scot Card.After years of fruitless efforts to get her books published traditionally, she discovered Kindle Direct Publishing and became an Indie author-publisher.While she loves science fiction, she always thought there should be more romance, so she started writing it hot and steamy.

Book preview

RORAN

FARSEEK WARRIORS BOOK 3

Clarissa Lake

Cover and Text Copyright © 2020, 2024

by Christine Myers, writing as Clarissa Lake

All Rights Reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

RORAN /Clarissa Lake – 2nd ed.

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Epilogue I

Bonus Epilogue II

About the Author

Books By Christine Myers, a.k.a. Clarissa Lake

Prologue

Becca Clayton could hardly believe she was finally at the beach, spending the week at her boss’s cottage on the ocean. The dead of winter in the middle of Pennsylvania brought too much snow with short, gloomy days and long, cold nights. She was glad to exchange that for blue sky and sunshine. The last few weeks at work had been stressful, mainly because they were short-handed for nurses due to illness. It was the middle of the flu season, so Becca had worked more double shifts than she ever wanted.

Becca loved being a nurse. It was all she had ever dreamed of as a child, and she was good at it. It was also hard work. But now she was at the beach and had it all to herself. She had carried the old wooden chaise lounge to the beach facing the ocean. Although it was a bit heavy, she managed. Becca returned for the umbrella and her beach bag with the book she had been reading. Setting up the umbrella, she kept her white beach shirt over her blue bikini.

She was a little leery about swimming in the ocean alone, and it probably wasn’t warm enough for swimming. Sitting at the beach, watching the waves roll in under a sunny blue sky, inhaling the salty sea air, was cathartic.

Becca didn’t mind coming here all by herself. In truth, she had been getting burned out from working so many hours. She needed time alone to regroup. Her friend and boss, Nancy Peters, could see what was happening to her and suggested she take her upcoming vacation at Nancy’s family cottage.

The fact that it was relatively isolated and Becca would have it all to herself was too enticing to pass up. Nancy assured her that it would be completely safe.

No call lights, buzzers, or monitor alarms were going off. No patients were calling from their rooms… Just sitting in the sunshine with a good book all by herself was what she needed. Watching the waves come in and recede, Becca felt a sense of calm stealing through her. With a blissful sigh, she picked up her book and read the romance adventure she had picked for her vacation.

She had started reading it on the plane, turning back the corner of the thick paperback where she had left off. She opened the book and started to read the story that took her to the Amazon jungles of South America.

It wasn’t that the book was so dull. The overwork of the past few weeks caused Becca’s eyes to droop, and soon she fell asleep.

Becca Clayton gasped and blinked against the blinding white light shining in her eyes. Tremors shook her body in waves. Her head was throbbing with every beat of her heart. What the hell? Still trying to focus against the bright light overhead, she felt a sting against her neck preceded by a soft hiss.

Try to stay calm, someone said in a gravelly voice. You will feel better in a few micro spans.

The light hurts my eyes, she murmured shakily.

We’re almost done here, the same gravelly voice said, but she couldn’t see his face against the bright light. A hand slid behind her head, lifting it, while the other slid something behind her neck. Then it closed around her neck, pressing a little too tightly against her throat.

Too tight, she rasped.

Swallow.

Becca did, and after a moment, it seemed to expand. There came a whoosh sound and soft footfalls.

The attendants will take you to the holding chamber.

As he helped her sit up, she realized she was naked. The attendants were doe-eyed creatures with budding horns sticking up from the top of their foreheads. Becca shook her head and blinked in disbelief, whimpering as two four-fingered hands closed around her upper arms.

No, wait! Who are you? Where are you taking me?

Do not resist, and we will not hurt you. You are now a slave of the Sargus Empire on the planet Ideshan.

No, no, no, no, no, I’m not. Slavery is illegal.

Not here. One of the horned men said.

Becca struggled, trying to wrench her arms free from their grip. This couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare; she just needed to wake up. Aliens weren’t real. Those stories about them coming to Earth and stealing people weren’t real. None of it was real. She continued to fight them, crying hysterically.

Suddenly, excruciating pain surged up and down her spine and through her skull. Her muscles seized, and her body shook. Becca couldn’t breathe or even make a sound. When the pain stopped, she gasped several times but made no resistance as the two aliens urged her to stand. She didn’t remember anything, unable to string two thoughts together for a long time after that.

Chapter One

Roran Sovaktu stopped in the corridor outside Deeto Brantu’s office on Bekket Space Station. He already had the bad news that his boyhood friend was dead. He was murdered less than a rotation before Roran got back.

He found Deeto sitting at his desk in the superintendent’s office of the space station. Deeto sat, rubbing his temples as though his head ached. He looked up as Roran entered.

I didn’t even want to tell you this, let alone spring it on you the moment you dock your spaceship here. Deeto paused and sighed ruefully. The security cameras outside Haemeg’s flat didn’t record their faces. However, the hidden cameras within Haemeg’s flat did. It showed everything, and it was awful. Are you sure you want to see this?

Of course, I don’t want to see it, but I think I have to if I’m going to figure out who and why they did this, Roran grumbled.

Deeto gestured to the chair in front of his desk, and Roran dropped his tall, muscular body into it. He turned the chair slightly so that he could see the virtual screen that his handler called up.

Three powerfully built humanoid males arrived at the door to Haemag’s flat. As Deeto had said, they turned their heads so that the security camera could not capture their faces. The door opened, and Haemeg gestured for them to enter and appeared to have a welcoming smile. It seemed clear that he knew them and apparently did not fear them.

Haemeg was dressed in his bathrobe as he went to the bar, turning his back on the three men.

Their visit seemed friendly at first as Haemeg took out glasses to pour drinks. His attention had waned for just a micro span. Somehow, it seemed that Haemeg’s sixth sense alerted him that he was about to be attacked. As the three converged on him, he whirled with a bottle he’d brought out to pour from and smashed it into the head of the first attacker.

Haemeg fought them valiantly holding his own for quite some time before one of them hit him in the head with a piece of furniture. That’s when the other two grabbed him. The third man beat Haemeg with his fists up and down his body and in his face.

When the puncher grew tired, he took the other man’s place to hold Haemeg up for their abuse. The other man took out a small dagger and started stabbing Haemeg. After the dagger man got tired the other two men let him fall to the floor where they kicked him and stomped on his back then let dagger man stab him some more.

Roran swore under his breath. He could hardly believe his eyes as they continued to abuse Haemeg’s lifeless body. Thank the Maker; he was unconscious for all this. What the fuck did he ever do to them? They are just playing with him when he is probably already dead.

Deeto said, they clearly came to kill Haemeg, and they didn’t waste any time getting down to it. I’ve been running facial recognition since this happened. Why don’t you go look at the scene and see if anything jumps out at you?

I wonder who Haemeg pissed off for them to go at him like that. Haemeg is a nice guy---was a nice guy. People usually liked him.

I can’t imagine. It’s going to be hard to identify them because they closely resemble each other. It almost looks like a hate crime. I doubt that the computer will find them even if it can determine their species, but I will give it a try.

I don’t recognize the species, said Roran. They were probably paid assassins. Even if I find the three of them, I don’t know if I can trace them back to whoever ordered them to kill Haemeg. But, if I do, I will end them.

Roran and Haemeg not only went back to their rookie days with Consortium Intelligence, they went further back than that because they had both served in the Farseek Brigade fighting against the Sargus Empire. They were from the same town on Farseek and played together as children. He considered Haemeg, his best friend.

At Haemeg Posartu’s flat the door was open and could see a couple of station security officers walking around. He stood watching them, hands on his hips, as they recorded their findings. Nothing had been cleaned up yet because he could smell Haemag’s blood. He had clearance to enter, but he needed a moment to prepare himself to see what he expected to see. There was blood spatter on the wall, the sofa, and small puddles dispersed over the floor. He knew seeing the body would drive home the fact that Haemeg was dead.

Roran finally stepped inside the flat. The security officers nodded, and one of them gestured at the blood-spattered sofa. Haemeg’s body lay face down behind it, his bloody feet visible at the end. They hadn’t covered the body yet, leaving it for Roran to examine it just as they found it. He already knew what he would see.

Haemeg was tortured and murdered. Roran drew in a long breath and let it out, preparing himself to look at the body of his friend and fellow covert agent of the Transtellar Consortium. Together, they had run a smuggling operation out of the space station as cover for spying on the Sargan Empire. Something big was going down, but Roran didn’t figure it out until he got the news that Sargus Empire battleships bombed Farseek to ruin.

That made no more sense than Haemeg lying dead across the room in a pool of his own blood. The Sargans had just signed the peace treaty after ten star-spans of war. Border skirmishes were expected, but Farseek was deep inside the Consortium sectors, a five-hundred-year-old agricultural colony. But it made sense to someone, and he could only guess that was why Haemeg was murdered.

With a rueful sigh, Roran crossed the few steps to the sofa. If he didn’t know this was Haemeg, he might not have recognized him. He had been beaten almost beyond recognition. Assessing the many cuts and stab wounds on top of the beating, Roran guessed they were trying to get something out of him. It was more than a simple assassination. It looked more like revenge.

Roran shook his head. He and Haemeg had made lots of enemies along the way. For all he knew, whoever killed Haemeg would come after him next. Pulling on a pair of exam gloves, he hunkered down to examine his friend’s body only to see if there were any clues as to who killed him.

He turned over the body, and it was a mass of cuts and bruises, and his face so swollen and bloody he could barely see the resemblance to his friend. But there was no real evidence to help determine who did this. Deeto Brantu said the security vids show that Haemeg let them in, but they knew how to avoid the camera from seeing their faces.

Roran could hardly reconcile the body in front of him with his memory of his friend. For a moment, he felt a blinding stab of grief, and it almost took his breath away as memories flash through his mind of all the things they had done together. It would be clichéd to say they were like brothers, but their friendship was all that and more.

Haemeg had pulled his ass out of danger more times than he could remember. He only wished that he had been there when Haemeg needed his help. Roran couldn’t let himself feel the pain of loss now, or he wouldn’t be able to do his job.

Finally, Roran stood and stalked out of