Star’s Guardian: The Complete Series

By Odette C. Bell

To protect, is to change the course of history. Fail, though, and you’ll fall.
Grace Smith is about to fall, and there’s nothing that can stop her. She was destined to lose the sacred energy pumping in her veins since birth. The multiverse has always had a plan for her, and now that dark plan unfolds, one dead body at a time.
Grace is used to running from the dark forces hell-bent on murdering her, and she’s good at it. Then she runs into the one man she can’t escape. Alex Round, Supreme Outer Guardian. When he picks her up on a backwater planet by accident, he thinks she’s a pointless distraction. Then hell unravels, and the fabric of reality fractures with it. At its heart sits the one woman he must now protect, no matter what.
Can someone who has run her whole life stop still long enough to accept the help of the only man who can save her? Or will she tumble into the arms or danger and take the rest of the multiverse with her?
...
Star’s Guardian follows a runaway and a lieutenant fighting through secrets to save a lost universe. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Star’s Guardian: The Complete Series today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Star’s Guardian is the 1st Supreme Outer Guardian series. A massive, exciting, and heroic sci-fi world where the day is always saved and hearts are always won, each series can be read separately, so plunge in today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215773178

Book preview

Star's Guardian: The Complete Series

#1 From the Supreme Outer Guardians series

Odette C. Bell

Odette C Bell

www.odettecbell.com

Copyright

All characters in this publication are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Star's Guardian: The Complete Series

Copyright © 2022 Odette C Bell

Cover art stock photos licensed from Depositphotos.

Odette C Bell

www.odettecbell.com

Star's Guardian: The Complete Series Blurb

To protect, is to change the course of history. Fail, though, and you'll fall.

Grace Smith is about to fall, and there's nothing that can stop her. She was destined to lose the sacred energy pumping in her veins since birth. The multiverse has always had a plan for her, and now that dark plan unfolds, one dead body at a time.

Grace is used to running from the dark forces hell-bent on murdering her, and she's good at it. Then she runs into the one man she can't escape. Alex Round, Supreme Outer Guardian. When he picks her up on a backwater planet by accident, he thinks she's a pointless distraction. Then hell unravels, and the fabric of reality fractures with it. At its heart sits the one woman he must now protect, no matter what.

Can someone who has run her whole life stop still long enough to accept the help of the only man who can save her? Or will she tumble into the arms or danger and take the rest of the multiverse with her?

…

Star's Guardian follows a runaway and a lieutenant fighting through secrets to save a lost universe. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Star's Guardian: The Complete Series today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

Star's Guardian is the 1st Supreme Outer Guardian series. A massive, exciting, and heroic sci-fi world where the day is always saved and hearts are always won, each series can be read separately, so plunge in today.

Star's Guardian: The Complete Series

Title Page

Copyright

Blurb

Table of Contents

Star's Guardian Book One

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Star's Guardian Book Two

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Star's Guardian Book Three

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Star's Guardian Book Four

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Sample

Newsletter

About The Author

Reading Order

Guide

Front Matter

Start of Content

Back Matter

Star's Guardian Book One

Prologue

Run. Run and don’t look back.

My grandfather’s throaty roar split through the air just as a wooden beam split above me. The aching groan of it succumbing to the weight of the collapsing roof was like a bone snapping under the pounding of a hammer. Relentless. Unstoppable and deadly.

The glass strewn over the cracked floor cut my small, bare feet. I fell, tumbling down to my side. I shredded my knee open, and right in front of me, droplets of my shimmering special blood splattered over the cracking hospital floor.

Run, Grace, run, grandfather roared again. His voice hit a pitch I didn’t think I’d ever heard before. His tone practically spasmed through the air, chasing around every single particle of debris that surrounded me as the hospital collapsed under the weight of the attack.

I twisted my head around, short hair flaring over my face. I stared back at him.

I shouldn’t have. A waste of time. And in his books, that was criminal.

In some way, my grandfather had been teaching me about this moment since the day I was born. And now it was here.

But I was too young to carry through with my lessons yet. Everyone must make mistakes. But mine would be fatal. That beam above cracked. I’d never forget the sound of it as it ripped through the air, as it pounded into my sternum, as it shook into my jaw. For it was the sound of impending death, like a clock attached to Doom’s scythe as it shot for your throat. It never reached me. Out of nowhere, my grandfather ran to my side. He somehow sprinted through the debris, around a section of breaking wall, and over cracked holes in the floor. Then he was there, sweeping me up, his strong arms pinning my small form against his chest.

There, looking down at my face one last time. I watched light – the forbidden glow – chase around his irises. It outlined them, stark and defiant against the drab, chaotic brown and gray background of the hospital cracking under its own weight. The way he could look at me – how he carved me out of reality until it was just us, until the chase was far, far behind – always took my breath away. And it did so now – one last time.

You know the rules, Grace. The time is here. They found us, he said, voice cracking again.

I didn’t care about the hospital anymore. It, in many ways, had been made to break. All things crafted in the material world are ultimately there to fail. But not grandfather. He was my rock, the strongest point around which the rest of my universe spun. That universe was about to blink out one last time. He closed his eyes. The second I could no longer see his illuminated pupils was the second my fragile young form shook with the certainty of this horror.

Everything was about to end. Everything—

Somehow, as the floor beneath him cracked, he found the time to lift me up in his forever-strong arms and press his forehead against mine. "Whatever happens, remember the rules. The rules," he hissed.

His breath broke against my cheek, pushing the dust circling around me away until once more, I could look up into his face. His eyes were closed, likely never to open again. The brilliant and unique illumination of his eyes had been extinguished, and no one would be able to bring it back. Not even me with my so-called unique powers.

Granddad. No. I’m not ready. Don’t leave me alone, I screamed.

Somehow, his voice could be heard above the incessant shrieks of my wailing. Steady, calm, the kind of thing you could attach any sinking ship to, and it would drag it up from even the stormiest depths. The rules, he said, voice even deeper, louder than the destruction, greater and more forceful than every crack that ran through the walls and broke the floor beneath our feet. You stay on this planet as long as you can. You stay unless and until they arrive.

Fear – fear which had no business being in such a strong man’s tone – rippled through his voice. It sounded like a noose around his throat, and with every syllable, it tightened its crushing grip.

My whole body reacted to the word they, my shoulders collapsing in, my stomach sucking into a ball like somebody rolling with their hands over their head. I could only just keep my eyes open, the horror of what he described enough to send me into the deepest reaches of my mind. But even there, I could not find solace from them. Because they would chase. They had been born to chase, and I had been born to be chased.

Tears, which already marked my dusty cheeks, now drove channels through the muck. They reached my chin, trembled, and fell against my grandfather’s rumpled sleeves. With a grunt, he threw us over another cracked section of the hospital floor. He flung us around into another room. This was the physiotherapy area – or it had been once. There was a pool right in the middle. Now I watched as the glass ceiling above fell into it. It cracked then hailed down. It could’ve almost been beautiful, were it not for the high-pitched shrieking that accompanied it one second later.

My back pulsed with nerves. My spine stretched. My teeth clenched. Horror, horror the likes of which no entity in the universe should ever experience – beset me all at once. It crunched into the pit of my stomach in a wave and climbed my back. It reached my mouth, clenched my teeth shut, then finally got to my eyes. They spasmed even wider open as my grandfather looked down. He still managed to seem calm, calm even as the world around him cracked and my future shattered with it. You stay on this planet for as long as you can unless they hunt you. If they hunt you—

I will find any means to get away.

That’s it, he said, even managing a proud smile. It barely touched his lips. It was only a suggestion, this fleeting glimpse. And when it was done, so was he.

That shriek from before became louder. It bounced off the walls, knowing exactly how to use matter to amplify itself. It seemed to create a vortex all around me. I went to close my eyes, to shut down, but grandfather would not let me. He had not sacrificed everything to keep me safe only to lose me now.

But he had more to give, didn’t he? He’d give it right in front of my eyes. As that realization struck me, my finger spasmed out. I tried to grab his gnarled, wrinkle-lined face one last time, tried to look into his eyes and accept what he’d been to me and what I was about to lose. It didn’t matter.

The end was here.

I thought all of the glass above the pool had broken already. I was wrong. There was another almighty crack. It sounded like lightning – a thousand bolts all stringing together, all appearing right by your ear, half a second before they would lance into your chest in the most lethal of blows. A black shape, small and fleeting at first, fell into the pool. Water splashed up everywhere, high enough that it looked as if a tank had fallen from the sky. My grandfather spun.

With one last look down into my eyes, with one last longing smile that told me he wished this could’ve been different, he threw me to the side. Rubble had collected around the doorway. Half of it had collapsed, but I could crawl through.

I could crawl through and save myself. Because my grandfather was about to offer himself as the last sacrifice.

Run, Grace, run, he bellowed. Do not look back. Remember your mark. Show no one. And trust even fewer.

Fewer than no one might not sound like a logical statement. It was to my grandfather. It was a testament to the fact we had no one to trust and never had in this wide universe. We were the hunted. They were the hunters. And I was about to lose the only other person who’d ever been at my side. From now on, I’d be alone. Alone with a target on my head. Or should I say my hand?

It twitched up just as more dust hailed down from above. It already coated my face. There was no point in tilting my chin up and staring at the ceiling, no point in doing anything other than giving my right palm a brief glance. And there I saw the mark, hidden to all but those who knew what to look for. A circle with a square in the middle.

Unless you had a keen interest in palmistry, you’d never note it. Even then, you might think it was just a curious collection of wrinkles but nothing more. To me, it was the reason for all of this. And critically, the reason for the loss I would incur seconds from now.

The creature pulled itself out of the pool with a wet splash. Fragments of glass covered it, and water dripped off its strong form in rivers. It slid around its clawed feet as it took one prominent step forward. It didn’t say anything and didn’t have to. It looked like an extended, strong version of the aliens I’d grown up watching on TV for most of my life – accentuated, barbaric versions of wild animals. But even they could not capture the true intelligence in this creature’s eyes. As its yellow pinprick pupils sliced off my grandfather and locked onto me, my back froze, my lungs stopped, and my heart tried to ram out of my mouth.

The hunt is over, it said in a voice entirely calm and entirely opposite from the grotesque form it possessed. It was like having dinner with a fine gentleman from hundreds of years ago. One who wished to run his claws over your throat and end it once and for all.

The alien blinked once then returned its attention back to my grandfather. He grunted, threw himself forward, and twisted his head around one last time. I saw that illumination blazing in his gaze, saw the need and desire to keep me safe no matter what. But then, something else. This grain of knowing. This dot of pure understanding. He’d always told me I acted so much older than my years, always told me that I had the unique ability to look after myself.

And now I’d have to use it.

Grandfather, I screamed until my throat felt as if the lining would be stripped, burnt, and crushed.

Run. This is it. This was always going to be it. Run and buy yourself one last chance. He grunted and threw himself at the alien. It was just as it extended its claws toward his throat.

I turned. Turned as my heart withered. Turned as the last drop of love and trust I’d ever had died in my chest. Turned and ran.

Grandfather was about to give his life up for me. Because this was my destiny. Because running… running would be the only thing I would ever know.

Chapter 1

Grace, years later

Yes, ma’am, I said, voice calm – using that note I’d perfected over the past two years of working for this woman. A voice that said no matter what you threw at me, I’d pick it up. Because I was hired help, and that’s all I was good for.

Alessandra Large strutted around in a tiny silver dress in front of a full-length mirror set up at the back of her room. Pure, beautiful sunshine streamed in behind her. It illuminated her startling slim figure. But here and there, if you paid attention, maybe you could still see the scars and puncture wounds from all that plastic surgery and all those fillers.

Beauty, after all, is rarely natural. Not when money can buy it so easily.

Get the other one. She gestured toward me dismissively with a flick of her long, bony hand.

I walked over to one of her antique French dressers. She hadn’t told me exactly which necklace to pick, so I selected the first I saw.

Not that one, she snarled, lips moving hard over her teeth. The rubies. Pick the rubies. Why do I put up with you again?

I selected the correct necklace and brought it over to her. She snatched it up. She looked at me. So it wasn’t a rhetorical question, then? I had to fall down to the vocal equivalent of my knee and point out how superior she was in comparison to me. I’m not sure why you put up with me. But you’re very generous, I said, using that same tone. Every second of every day I used that tone. Because every second of every day, I channeled my grandfather in the hopes he could get me through just another week. Another week of hell on this planet.

A planet I didn’t come from, a place I didn’t belong, and one that only reminded me of my grandfather’s aching loss.

I almost shed a tear. Instead, I pretended to have digestive complaints. I kept a hand on my stomach and cleared my throat.

Alessandra just looked at me, her perfect nose rumpling. You’re not going to spew, are you? That’s the last thing I need to put up with from you. We must pick the right dress. I just have this feeling, she smoothed a hand down her chest, that something incredible will happen to me tonight.

I looked at her. Incredible? She would attend another expensive party funded by her father and his questionable business practices. There, she would consume God knows what. The other socialites in this city would fawn over her. And the sun of this planet would keep spinning. And meanwhile… meanwhile, far beyond, the real universe would wait. Or should I say the multiverse?

I had so much forbidden knowledge bouncing around in my head that sometimes it almost slipped out. As she spun around once more, pressing a new dress against her achingly slim form, my gaze darted off her shoulder and over to the sky.

I was safe here. Safe, but so much of me longed for the forbidden beyond—

Why do you always look at the sky like that? It’s very boring, she muttered.

I’m staring at the multi— I began. I stopped and stood up straight with a twitch.

There was a knock at the door – one that thankfully distracted Alessandra at just the right moment.

Alessandra stood closer. So close that all she had to do was twist her hand out to open it. She still looked at me pointedly.

I walked over. I had an impression of who it was before I answered. It would be Walter. Another one of her suitors. One with an edge. Most men who went after Alessandra were there either for a trophy wife or a life-long extended business deal.

I opened the door to a handsome man. Handsome by this planet’s standards. He had a perfect angular jaw, sharp eyes, too. That wasn’t to mention anything of his build. While most people in this rich community had fake muscles, the kind created by overly repetitious exercises, his physique suggested all-around activity. Someone, in other words, who knew exactly how to use his body and would not shrug back from a fight.

All these assessments happened quickly. They always did with me. It was a part of my brain I could not and would not shut off.

Walter, unlike most of Alessandra’s suitors, looked at me. Once.

His eyes didn’t stray down my plain figure. They just snapped up and stared into my eyes for one single, sharp second. Then he streamed right past like a photon from the sun.

Alessandra bit her lip obviously, the plush, red-painted flesh moving like someone squeezing velvet. What are you doing here? Can’t you tell I’m getting dressed?

She was fully clothed. Or at least had been. She’d surreptitiously unzipped her dress when he’d come in. She turned, showing off her lean back.

Walter gave the exact kind of smile she wanted. And inside… inside, a little part of me withered again.

I stood there, close to her jewelry, staring out of the window, wondering what was happening out there. Wondering… and longing. I could find another planet. Another place where I’d be safe, where no one would ever track me down. But I would still be running.

I brought you a present, Walter said, voice deep, tone overly resonant like a preacher commanding an audience from his pulpit.

I’d already told you I was a keen observer – yet another gift my grandfather had given me before he’d sacrificed his life for me.

Using it now, my gaze sharpened as it darted over Walter. He pressed a hand along the light gray fabric of his chinos, then, in a diving motion like a cormorant plucking a fish from the depths, grasped something up. It was nothing more than a slim jewelry box. It didn’t look as if it came from one of the expensive boutiques in town. If I was any judge, it contained a bracelet. But there was no brand, and there was—

What is it? Immediately, without being asked, Alessandra snatched it up. She purred at him, one perfect eyebrow arched. You shouldn’t have.

He leaned forward on the tips of his expensive loafers and plucked the box back, fingers stiff. Shouldn’t have what? I’m showing you something, not giving it to you – yet.

That caught her attention. In Alessandra’s world, if she wanted something, it was hers. She always got exactly what she desired.

Something dragged my attention off the view from the window, though usually nothing could. Dragged it off and onto that box like I was secured in the tailwind of a powerful spaceship.

My eyes twitched open, then open a fraction further. My breathing stopped. My stomach sucked in with a twitch. I hadn’t felt like this – hadn’t felt like this since my grandfather died.

I—

Walter took a step back. It was either for dramatic effect or to give Alessandra a better view. Though that didn’t make sense. She stood right in front of him. But it meant I could see what was in the box with a perfect, uninterrupted view. Meant I couldn’t… couldn’t get away as he opened the lid. The hinges creaked. I saw a flash of soft black velvet, as dark as starless space. And finally, a glimmering bracelet.

It appeared to be gold. It wasn’t. It looked like it had a pearl in the middle. It didn’t. The gold and pearl were created by sophisticated holographic devices. And the bracelet was an alien communication module.

I knew all of this, knew it like you knew your own name. Understood it like you felt the bonds of family. And the effect of that knowledge was like a 10-ton punch. I gasped.

I shot over. It was just as Alessandra did the same. Something activated her greed. I doubted she knew what the bracelet was. It was just the glimmer of that gold and the opalescent allure of the pearl’s lustrous nacre. It was just the fact that it was something shiny she didn’t yet own but thought she should. For me, it was so much more.

An alien communication device like that could be picked up on a planet like this. The only reason I was safe here was that it was too far away from my enemies for anyone to bother coming here. But a device like that could be scanned from afar, and it could bring the wrong kind of attention to this backwater world and right up to my door.

My grandfather had died to kill that assassin long before the rest could find me. Now….

I snatched the bracelet up just before Alessandra could.

Walter looked mildly surprised, his lips twitching half a centimeter open. Alessandra shrieked. What are you doing?

Just as my fingers closed around the device, I could breathe again, but barely. My back shook, and no matter how hard I tried to convince my throat to expand for every breath, it simply would not be convinced.

The horror of losing my grandfather rushed back in. Then lining up behind that, the terror of every single time we’d run together. I’d never moved homes without him. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

If I so much as set foot in space on any form of alien technology, they’d find me anyway. They—

I couldn’t think, couldn’t move, just stood there, fingers tightening around the device, head spinning, mouth filling with that iron tinge it does when you’ve been struck hard in the mouth.

Give it back to me, Alessandra shrieked. She shot toward me. She had long nails, just as fake as they were hard. She also had no compunctions whatsoever about using them to tear through her opposition.

She grabbed my wrist and twisted them in. They cut me, lacerating my flesh as effectively as somebody picking up a food grater and running it down my tongue.

Blood leaked out. It was just as red and ordinary as the blood of most people on this planet. For now.

She tried to snatch the device back.

I would not let her.

With one hand on her chest, I shoved, pushing her back with ease. It was a slight move, half of what I could do. I wasn’t like my grandfather, hadn’t been trained, and even if I had been trained, I simply didn’t have his raw abilities. I was still stronger than Alessandra. A point I proved as she toppled over and fell onto her butt with a thwack. All the while, Walter stood there. Walter with the trained form, Walter with the gargantuan shoulders. And Walter with the slightest smile I’d ever seen.

Finally my breath came back to me, my brain, too.

I… I had to get out of here. If a device like this was now on this planet, someone must’ve brought it. Which meant there were aliens here. Which meant there could be other technology that could attract more aliens. It wouldn’t take long for me to be scanned. It was… it was over.

I turned.

What is she doing? Stop her, Alessandra shrieked.

Nobody could and nobody would.

The door was already open.

I reached it and flung myself out of it as fast as I could, losing one of my shoes as I careened around the corner into the wide, well-lit corridor. I ran along the carpet so fast, it tore a hole through my thick black stockings and rubbed my flesh raw beneath.

Alessandra sprinted into the corridor behind me. She’s a thief. Stop her, she bellowed.

Her piercing voice echoed through the mansion. We weren’t alone. Most of the other staff I passed were just plain shocked, though. I was the quiet, meek one – the only maid who could actually put up with Alessandra. They’d know I didn’t have the balls to be a thief and didn’t try to stop me.

But some of Alessandra’s father’s friends were here. One worked for the Army. A man most happy to procure personal financial favors to fatten his meager paycheck. As he spun out of the room to my left, he launched toward me.

I saw his every movement, timed them, and read them perfectly. The second he pushed back onto his left foot to strike out, I pushed into a roll. I came up on the other side of him, near the stairs. I flung myself down them, two at a time. And with every step I took, I could feel my old life crumbling behind me. This was a replay of what’d happened in that hospital.

I couldn’t go back. And with every single aching gut-punching breath, the world I knew was crumbling away.

I might’ve hated working here, might’ve despised every single second I’d spent in Alessandra’s presence. But it’d been safe. And the future would not be.

I closed my eyes, perfectly capable of running with them shut. I reached the final step and rolled off it.

The massive red-painted front door stood right in front of me. It opened, a delivery guy with a parcel over his shoulder appearing right in front of me.

I spun past him fast enough, the wind of my movement blew his blue cap off his head. I reached the outside world. I looked up at the sun. Clouds were starting to cover it.

Appropriate. If history was anything to go by, they would soon flood into my life and cover it whole. They’d plunge me into darkness. But there I would not stay. For there, the shadows would come alive.

Chapter 2

Alex Round, Supreme Outer Guardian, aboard the First Primary Guardian Station located between the fabric of the multiverse

I sat in the briefing, itchy. Itchy all over. No, I wasn’t suffering some unique multidimensional skin disease. Nor was my Peacekeeper armor acting up. This was the kind of deep itchiness you only ever got when the brain moved far beyond the body’s current constraints.

I wasn’t trying to pull my skin off. I just wanted to get back out there and make a difference.

My last mission had seen me save an entire universe from a wave of world-swallowing darkness. I couldn’t say I’d done it single-handedly, but I’d still played a major part. For the several months since then… I’d been on missions, sure. But nothing the same as this. Nothing that’d pushed me to the same limits, nothing that’d given me the same freedom.

I twisted around uncomfortably in my seat, trying hard not to sigh.

Which was irrelevant. Fastian, who sat beside me, flashed his bright blue eyes toward me. He came from a specific alien race capable of interacting with complex energy fields. He was hardly a psychic by normal standards, but he could still read your emotional energy system better than most. He arched one eyebrow. The briefing is not over, he mouthed at me.

I just smiled. All teeth and all bored on the inside.

Bored… yeah, you heard that right. Bored. I, Alex Round, was a soldier for the Supreme Outer Guardians. And we Guardians… sit back and strap in to listen to a tale you likely wouldn’t believe.

We were assets tasked with protecting the multiverse. That didn’t mean we stopped every war, prevented every death, and shepherded every single civilization into a golden age. Of course it didn’t. But it meant we stopped what we could, prevented universes from consuming each other, and largely kept the peace.

Did we ever fail? Often. But did we succeed? Enough that the failures didn’t derail our greater mission.

I’d once been an ordinary human myself, but I’d ‘punched up,’ reached the Guardians, and accepted when they’d recruited me. But who cared about my backstory? Who cared about anything right now other than getting out there and going on another mission?

I fidgeted in my seat again, incapable of getting comfortable when my body wanted action.

Commander Frost stood at the front of the room, leading the briefing. Head of our chapter of the Guardians, she was a soldier unmatched, not just in our neck of the multiverse, but in every dimension, if you asked me. She had a stare capable of stopping even the most malignant enemy in its tracks. She’d been on so many missions, I didn’t think there was a single thing in the universes she hadn’t seen. That meant two things. She wasn’t easily surprised. And she knew how to read you like an open book.

She opened her mouth to give us a report on the latest issues aboard our station. She half closed her lips. Yes, Alex? she asked in a voice somehow emotionless yet seemingly possessing every emotion there was just under the surface. It was a voice, in other words, full of a promise. She could and would react to whatever would come next proportionally. She was like a soldier with every single weapon at her disposal. But first, she had to find out the threat.

I straightened. Sorry, sir.

Sorry for what? You have paid little attention during this briefing, despite the fact a number of curious crimes have occurred on the station recently.

I had two options. Pull my head in and stop interrupting her – the smart option; or just tell her the truth – the dumb option.

Once upon a time, I would’ve never taken the second route. But though I was only just coming to terms with it, my last adventure had changed me. I have itchy feet, sir, I answered from the bottom of my soul. I can’t help feeling what’s happening out there is more important than a handful of petty thefts and disappearances.

Itchy feet was a tame way to describe this. When you get your first taste of really making a difference, of saving a freaking universe, it becomes addictive. It’s like a new path, one you once glimpsed up a mountain but could never reach. Now it was right in front of you and all you had to do was take the first step. But to do that, someone else had to send you on your way.

You believe the details of this station’s security are unimportant, do you? she enquired in an even tone.

I pressed my tongue against my closed lips. Absolutely not. I appreciate the station is at the forefront of our continued efforts to keep the multiverse safe. It’s just—

You’d rather be out there.

She didn’t need to explain the word there. Not to anyone in this room. Not to anyone on the station. She wasn’t talking about the starless space stretching all around us. She meant the multiverse. Every universe out there. Even the upper levels we technically weren’t allowed to venture to. All of it and everything.

As Guardians, we had the technology to enter any single universe and leave it, all in the blink of an eye.

With our Peacekeepers – semi-intelligent energy sources that gave us power and kept us safe, no matter what situations we faced – we were like gods. Though that word had a specific meaning around here.

Yes, sir, I decided to answer honestly.

She stared straight at me now. She stood at the front of the room behind a tall blue lectern-like item of furniture.

I said lectern-like. It was of modular construction that could change into a desk, into a gun, into a house if you saw fit. Most of the technology aboard this station could alter as anyone pleased.

Frost, however, was decidedly old-school. When something had a form, she rarely changed it. She focused her energy not on what she could make right in front of her, not on what she could do in the immediate future, but on what could be done beyond. We have several new recruits here, Lieutenant Round. They all have itchy feet. But perhaps you can tell them why it is a misbegotten concept to believe that the real work happens out there and not here. She swept her left hand to the side, indicating space beyond. The left side of this room had windows. Or at least viewing portals. Or should I call them mere separations? When it came to discussing the technology of the Guardian stations, you needed to widen your view, often beyond science to the fantastic. These stations, in many ways, were gifts from gods.

Now, what was my point, again? Oh yes, Frost had just invited me to stand up in front of this briefing, which did indeed contain new recruits, and tell everyone why I was wrong.

I cleared my throat and rose off my chair. These stations are the center of our domain, the heart—

Of everything we do, Frost spoke over me, either not liking my introduction, or no longer needing to hammer her point home with my embarrassment. "If something were to ever happen to the stations, everything we do would cease. Our good work would be unwound."

That worked on me. It’d work on anyone.

It was too easy as a Guardian to think I was at the top and no one could tear me down. Wrong. On every level. Powerful enemies existed in this multiverse, and they always would. If they ever got their hands on our stations, Frost was right. Everything we’d achieved would be unwound. The multiverse would no longer be protected, and existence as we all knew it would descend.

"We stand at the forefront of all wars, but also at the back. And yet we stand in the middle too. We stand everywhere," Frost said, slowing down her words, tilting her head back, and staring at each person in the room in turn. It might’ve only been for a few seconds, but that was irrelevant, because the quality of her attention made up for the limited duration. She could look at you and carve out everything until it was just the two of you. And as all the rest of matter crumbled away, insignificant in the path of her gaze, you’d appreciate her point. "If we Supreme Outer Guardians were to ever fall, there’d be no one to protect this multiverse from the dark forces within. Creation would descend again. So we will not fall," she said. It wasn’t a statement to bring hope, wasn’t even chest-punching. It was a fact. And the way she delivered it… even now, after all these years, it made my back straighten.

I glanced over to the recruits in the room. They straightened too. Even those more seasoned than I got keen looks in their eyes.

It is precisely because of this responsibility that we will all sit through what is perhaps ultimately a boring briefing on the activities of this station, she said, but trust me, she wasn’t admitting to anything by using the word boring.

She just put me back in my place. So back in my place, I sat in my chair. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, and I certainly did not tap my foot.

My gaze, however, did slide to the side, considering the starless view of space beyond.

Frost was right – always was. Here was where the action began and stopped. Here was where we protected everyone from. But out there—

Forest raised her voice as she mentioned an unsolved disappearance of a station trader. But an alarm shrieked out above her out of nowhere, the sound equivalent of a slap.

An alarm that got me right in the stomach, grabbed me around the face, and made me look forward, up and out.

The remit of the Guardians wasn’t just to keep the universes safe and separate. We had to look after the last of their kinds, too.

Throughout the universe, as great civilizations rose and died, as universes were born only to succumb to their own energy, creatures were created only to fall.

While we Guardians didn’t select an example from every single race, occasionally, we were told to preserve certain last-ones.

Frost spun.

I watched her flick through information that appeared in front of her face, courtesy of Allie, the station’s integrated semi-intelligent AI. "A new mission has arisen. Our assets embedded in one of the central universes have discovered a lost last-of-their-kind. Rare," she emphasized.

A lost last-of-their-kind. It might not make much sense to someone not steeped in the Guardian tradition. To me, it sharpened my appetite like a dog hearing the metal scrunch of a can opener at chow time.

The Guardians weren’t embedded in every single civilization in every single universe. Oftentimes, we didn’t know civilizations were crumbling. While we did have certain assets spread throughout certain universes, we couldn’t be everywhere at all times – we didn’t have the numbers.

While mostly our meager assets informed us of missions, they could also come from… let’s say higher up.

Reading between the lines, this mission was a mixture of both.

Which meant it was rare. Important, too. And just the challenge I’d needed for three months.

I was on my feet. I hadn’t noticed this, but I’d been the first to stand, long before everyone else.

While everyone else’s attention was on Frost, mine swung back to the starless view of space and the ceaseless adventure promised beyond.

I needed to pull my head in now and remind myself I was a senior lieutenant here. I needed to be an example to the rest. If I had any hope whatsoever of Frost selecting me for this mission, I had to appear at least marginally competent.

Maybe I did anyway. For maybe Frost saw something in my eyes. Alex, she said, voice vibrating with one word and one promise.

I swung my head around and looked at her. A grin marched across my lips. Kind of inappropriate. Who knew what this mission would entail? But the grin came with a promise. One that sank into my Peacekeeper as I ran through the door and out into the corridor, accepting the mission with actions, not words.

Information about this mission was soon downloaded to my armor. It appeared in front of my eyes, long lines of glowing, flitting illumination an untrained mind couldn’t read, let alone comprehend. I got it all, every detail.

Got it all and ran.

Finally my itchy feet would soon be appeased.

Or at least, that was the plan.

I didn’t believe in premonitions, never had and never would. There might be a version of the gods in this multiverse, but Fate wasn’t real to me.

Or it hadn’t been until this moment. For, as I sprinted to the hangar bay, expectation owning my every frantic movement, I should’ve paid more attention to the twitch in my stomach, to the exact tingle across the back of my skull.

It didn’t promise me fate. It promised me something fateful. Those are two very different things indeed.

I had no idea the multiverse was about to be opened like a house from old Earth, contents to be strewn across the ground, the once protective casing crushed to dust.

I had no idea that I and everyone around me would soon be pushed to the edge of a precipice.

I had no idea, and that’s why I ran, ran with a smile on my face toward the end.

Chapter 3

Grace

It was raining. So heavy, so unrelenting. It chased around me, pounded against my face, drove into my skin, and made me colder than the heat death of a universe. I shook. I’d shaken ever since stealing the communication device.

I hadn’t gotten far. What was the point?

I stood in the alley behind the mansion. Located on a cramped city block, it was an old hotel they’d refurbished just for one single family – and their army of long-suffering staff.

Maybe it was dumb to be here. The police would be called. They’d search the area.

I couldn’t move. Unstick my limbs, and I’d have to appreciate I had more than this mere city block to escape. I needed to get off this planet….

It meant scrounging the technology my grandfather had left for me, meant getting my head around how to get into space again. Then I’d have to select a new star system. And I—

I collapsed my head into my shaking hand. It was my right hand. Immediately I jerked my face back.

I stared at it – that mark. The one I could never wash off. The one I could never escape from. The one that had haunted me my entire life, and the one that’d haunt me up until death.

That one word shook through my broken resolve. Death.

I pressed my shoulders against the old, moldy, wet bricks behind me. The rain picked up, thunder crashing through the heavens above. As it lanced from cloud to cloud, its brilliant illumination like a torchlight searching for me through space, I heard my grandfather’s disembodied voice. Don’t think. Just move. Run.

That’s all I had to do.

I unstuck my back from the bricks.

I settled my gaze forward.

I’d find a way off this planet. There must be a ship out there. Yes, I could make it back to my grandfather’s vessel, but something told me not to. Maybe it had been discovered. Maybe it hadn’t. It was old technology, anyway. The universe would have moved on, as would have sensor tech.

If there was one thing I could not afford – it was to be scanned. They’d find me if I was scanned.

I shook. As the rain lashed down, I took my first step.

And that… that’s when I heard it.

A shriek. Far off, far above the lightning. Far off yet so freaking close, it could’ve reverberated through my heart.

It was a shriek I would know from now until my deathbed, however short a time that would be. It was a shriek fear had baked into my body long ago at the moment of birth – the most primal memory my race had. It was a shriek that could and would end it all. And as soon as it split through the violent weather, I collapsed a hand over my mouth and shook back.

They were here. The Maws were here.

You might think that was a stupid name for a race. If you didn’t know what it meant, it was a fancy word for mouth. That’s what they were. And there was little point in describing them as anything other than how they functioned. They consumed. Anything they wanted, they swallowed and ripped apart. But there were certain things they wanted more than others, and I was at the top of their list.

The fear that’d swamped me when my grandfather died consumed me. It started as sparking tingles at the base of my spine as if somebody had damaged the nerves. Then they raced up to my mouth. My lips slid open in shock and pain.

The Maws’ screams… got louder.

They were here, and there was no time to get to a ship.

I was a goner.

I still managed to unsteadily jerk my feet forward.

Still managed to pretend I could run.

But there was nowhere to go.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My grandfather had taught me everything, but he hadn’t told me what to do if the Maws ever found me and I wasn’t close enough to a ship to get off this world. What was the point? A terrified voice at the back of my head said. Even if I got to a ship, they would instantly scan it and transport me away. Right into their mouths. Transport me away and consume me in one bloody snap.

It was that word, snap, that broke me out of my reverie. Another blast of lightning ricocheted out overhead. It was only the middle of the day, but the city was plunged into darkness, the cloak of clouds so thick, you could’ve hidden another universe under here.

With an unsteady step, I flung myself forward, but my bare feet slipped. I face-planted the wall to my side, even cut my cheek. In horror, I stared across as, for half a shimmering second, a single drop of my blood revealed who I was, the glimmer within so different from the red blood of the primary race on this planet, it was like a neon arrow pointing at me.

With shaking fingers, I smeared it off the wall, trying to blot it out of existence. I would’ve done the same to myself if I could. I couldn’t. And that scream was headed for me. Closer now. It had to be at the front of the mansion.

You would think the entire city would stop. I still heard the sound of cars, albeit slow and often skidding in this sudden downpour. But nobody was shrieking themselves. Nobody called the emergency services. There weren’t helicopters in the air as the army encountered aliens for the first time.

No one else could hear it. Only I could. I could hear it, and it could hear me. It was right around the corner, right—

Just as my fear hit the kind of crescendo that ought to be heard above the sound of an entire universe cracking in half, I heard a scream from the mansion itself.

The Maw… entered the mansion. It didn’t go around the block to get to me.

It….

My head creaked to the side. My eyes opened wide. I didn’t know what my expression was, and I didn’t care. It would be some form of horror. The same terror I’d expressed every single time I’d looked in the mirror since birth.

But a new one soon slid into place.

My grandfather had been a protector. Of me mostly, but of others too. He’d always stroked my head in the middle of the night whenever I’d risen from nightmares and told me we ran not just for ourselves, but for others. We ran to protect what the Maws destroyed. For we were different.

And it was in that difference we would find our salvation, even in the horror of our loss.

Those words sounded weak now. It’d been a long time since I’d dragged them from my aching memories. But now, while they should’ve rung hollowly, they rang loud and true. Louder than the lightning still cracking overhead, more powerful as they lanced through my thoughts, not just the cloak of slate-gray clouds.

There was a scream from the mansion. It was… Alessandra?

I’d heard her shriek so many times, I would need several thousand ledger books to recount them all. This was different. Primal, it bypassed every single nasty interaction we’d ever had and sank right down into my stomach then ricocheted up into my heart.

Run, the smart part of me said. But another tiny voice rose. Save her.

Even if the Maws weren’t going after me right now, they’d find me anyway. If I could at least try to save another….

I couldn’t finish that sentence. If I could at least try to save another, then… it meant I was a good person? It meant the Maws couldn’t ultimately win because I’d created a moment of safety for another – for however brief a time?

No more words.

I didn’t have the chance to think them. Another blood-curdling shriek echoed out above me only to be cut short.

I yanked my head up.

I had to get into the mansion now. I faced a sheer brick wall, but a dumpster stood to my side. And just above that, a window.

I didn’t think.

Thinking was so far beyond me, somebody must’ve frozen my brain just before I’d encountered the communication device.

The same communication device I regripped just as I sprang up the dumpster.

I might be stronger than the average inhabitant of this planet, but as I’d already said, I wasn’t trained.

I slid right off that dumpster and fell onto my ass in a deep puddle. I cut my knee again, but this time I didn’t stare down at the blood that splattered over the pavement. I launched up the dumpster one last time. With a guttural heave, I reached the window, climbing the bricks in a burst of adrenaline.

No bars protected the window. An ordinary person could never reach it. It was still thick triple-glazed glass.

Punch it with my knuckles, and I’d just break them. There was only one thing for it. I slipped the communication device over my knuckles then forced them forward in a flurry. I cracked the toughened glass in one move then punched again just as more lightning lanced overhead.

I reached the last pane, cracked through it, and finally pulled myself up.

I landed in a blast of wind and rain that caught my hair and sent it flying around my face.

The rain dashed into the cream carpet surrounding me, diluting the blood from my knee as it soaked across the pile.

I snapped my head up and sharpened my hearing. Now, that was a sense far beyond anything the inhabitants of this planet possessed. It was the reason I could hear the Maws screaming, the reason I always knew when someone was speaking about me, even from a block away, and the reason no one could ever creep up behind me.

Focusing that skill forward, I could hear three levels above.

Heavy footfall. More than that, aching muscles. And beyond? Claws. Long dark talons ripping through carpet, reaching down to the floorboards beyond and splitting them in two.

I jolted forward.

The comms device slipped further down my wrist unconsciously, the innocuous grasp of the metal as smooth as a finger.

I reached the door and shouldered it open just as several confused staff members ran past, heading toward Alessandra’s scream, not away. I grabbed the shoulders of one woman I’d worked begrudgingly with for two years. Brusque, she loved to give me the worst tasks. Our past was irrelevant now. I looked deeply into her eyes as I spat from white lips, Get out of here now. Get out of here and take everyone with you.

I did it again, reaching the same pitch my grandfather had always used. Using the tone of someone designed to rule, not fall behind. And it worked.

She faltered, grabbed the wrist of one of the maids beside her, looked at me one last time, then ran without another word.

Maybe I wasn’t even worth a goodbye. Or she didn’t have the breath. I didn’t have it, either.

I threw myself up the stairs just as the storm got closer. Just as if someone reached in and controlled it.

My gaze flashed to the side, locking on one of the windows.

The clouds were thickest around the mansion, and now the lightning was so wild, even the bravest person wouldn’t venture close.

Why would the Maws be controlling the weather? They didn’t need to prevent the inhabitants of this planet from finding out about them. They didn’t care about things like that. They took what they wanted and destroyed the rest.

The weather was controlled nonetheless, and the closer it got to this building, the more the foundations shook with every blast of lightning. And the more it all shook my grandfather’s voice right out from the center of my soul. Run, he screamed at me. Just run and never look back.

My whole life I’d been doing that. It’d gotten me here. To now. To today. But the Maws were back. They might not be after me yet. That was ultimately irrelevant. They would find me soon.

There comes a time when you stop running. There comes a time when you start chasing instead, right?

Stupid, brave words. I reached the third floor. It was a mess. Glass had blown in from the windows at the end of the corridor. So much glass, it was like someone had multiplied it by 10. It brought me back to the day of my grandfather’s death with a sucker punch to the heart.

I thought I could see his cold face as the Maw wrapped its claws around his throat, knew I could see the light in his eyes finally extinguishing for the last time.

Then a scream shook out from the room beside me.

That army guy staggered out of the door. A deep chest wound marked his once pristine uniform, blood splattering the white ceremonial garb. A few droplets even dripped along his glittering row of medals.

They reflected the look in his eyes. One of total soul-destroying horror.

I could hear the clicking of clawed feet in the room beyond. That meant multiple Maws, not just one.

I grabbed the guy by the shoulder, spinning him around, dragging him from the direct line of sight of the door. He wasn’t the Maws’ target. They wouldn’t care if he left.

I shoved him toward the stairs with the top of my shoulder.

He just looked at me, shock crippling his features. "Aliens. Aliens—"

Are real, I muttered.

There was no punch behind my voice. I’d leave that for later.

His fingers groped for his holster. There was a gun in it.

A simple projectile weapon that fired chunks of metal at apparently fast speeds – for this planet, at least. In other words, nothing that could affect a Maw. I still snatched it off him, knowing the kind of trouble he’d bring if he fired it madly in this building. There could be collateral damage. Or he could just draw the ire of a Maw until it swallowed him whole.

I shoved him in the shoulder again, using most of my strength, and pushed him toward the stairs.

He tumbled down one, then seemed to get the picture on his own. Without even glancing my way, without attempting to do the brave thing and drag me with him, he ran.

He ran away… and I ran forward.

I heard Alessandra scream again. This time the pitch of her voice changed.

I knew her shriek – I’d already told you that. But it had a lighter quality now as if something had changed her voice – like a hand smearing away dirt to reveal a gem hidden beneath.

In a moment that defined me – because it would kill me – and in a moment emphasized by the wind as it shrieked through the broken window beside me, splattered my rain-swept hair over my face, and tried to drag my heart from my chest, I spun around the broken door. And there… there I saw a Maw.

It had Alessandra up by her throat. She….

Fear wrapped up in heart-destroying shock swept through my soul, up into my jaw, then back down into my stomach. Alessandra’s body had changed. Her slim form was now taller, her blond hair even whiter. Her eyes, once a startling blue, were now tinged with this deep purple as her skin shimmered this pearly white.

She was an alien, just like me. I’d never seen her race, but that was irrelevant.

We weren’t alone in the room. Walter was there. He should be dead – just the splattered remains of a soft fleshed race all over the walls and floor. He wasn’t, and he stood, one hand in his pocket, head angled to the side.

At the sight of me, a frown parted his lips.

I couldn’t take it in, couldn’t process anything quickly enough.

You’re back. You— he began, voice slow, lips like old cogs slowly turning up, one tooth at a time.

Get in, get out. That was the sum total of my plan. A plan that banged around in my skull, that shot into my jaw, that shrieked at me in every single language it knew that this couldn’t possibly work. But it was the only thing I had.

Squeezing my hand around the gun, I started to fire. I felt the shudder of the recoil pass up from my hands into my jaw. It was just a simple weapon, but it was the only thing I had.

The bullets dashed into the face and arm and neck of the Maw. They did nothing. They didn’t even initiate its sophisticated shield. It was like throwing water against a massive concrete wall and hoping its mere existence would crush it.

The Maw didn’t shriek in my face. Nor did it drop Alessandra.

This was useless. A waste of time. I—

Walter moved toward me. The Maw dragged Alessandra higher into the air. The lightning flashed beyond, even more violently than before. And the world just closed in.

I couldn’t save a single soul – couldn’t even save myself.

Maybe I didn’t have to.

Just as I fell to my knees, as the futility of this stupid sacrifice – and my entire life – came crashing down