She’s a brilliant scientist trying to right the wrongs of her research. He’s the soldier her theories transformed into a beast.Marrying a suitable Royal is a small price to pay for my father’s approval. My fiancé is a good man even if his touch doesn’t evoke my desire. We have science in common and that will have to be enough.
Just as I’ve resigned myself to a lifetime of ordinary, an incident on my fiancé’s science vessel throws me off course and into the arms of a beastly tornado of a male. With my heart pounding for the first time in my life, I’m suddenly not so sure that ordinary will do at all.
Ryker
The Royals have held me captive for too long. Experimenting on me. Shaping me into a monstrous beast. Not any longer. The time to be free is now, and my captors will pay. I have vengeance on my mind, and nothing can stand between me and my goal.
Then I turn a corner on the ship where I’ve been held captive and I see her. Suddenly it’s not vengeance I’m after, it’s her that I need to claim as mine. Kidnapping my tormentor’s fiancée would mean a lifetime of fugitivity for me and my men. Yet, one kiss from Ray and I know that I’m captive once more.
Ryker
I burst into Bay Six. My only thought was to destroy Lord Garreth. There the skinny little prick was. He was in the cockpit of a pod.
Somehow he was escaping me!
I charged towards the small craft. But I was too late. It was already lifting off.
Refusing to admit defeat, I leapt for it. My right hand glanced off the belly of the pod. The smooth metal protested as I dug into it with my claws.
I tried to hold on, but my grip wasn’t enough. He was getting away. I landed in a crouch on the metal floors with a sickening thud. Throwing my head back, I roared my disbelief, my fury, my hatred at the man.
There was a part of my brain, likely the part he tinkered with to make stronger, faster, indestructible, that told me I could follow him out the airlock and into space. The sane part of me knew I wouldn’t survive. That sane part listened to the vengeance in me that said my death would be worth it if I could take him down with me.
But the airlock was already closing. Not even my altered strength could open it in time. He got away. I had failed. Again.
A deafening roar rose within me. When I let it loose, it shattered the room. The high pitched squeal of glass breaking filled my ears. But something in the shriek stole my voice from me.
Looking down, I saw that there was something at my feet. Something trying to scuttle away like a crab. It was a small female, or maybe she just looked small compared to me. Most humans did. For several long seconds I took her in.
The long brown hair had escaped its braid. The soft tendrils that framed a delicate face. The shapely legs that ended in small feet. The narrow waist that flared out into ample hips.
My gaze went up and down, left and right. I roamed her body in exactly the way I wanted to touch her, needed to touch her. Everywhere at once.
Mine.
The word rang loud in my head. It silenced the red hot rage that had been there only a moment before. I gave my head a shake. I must be going mad. Or madder than I had already been.
Mine, my altered mind insisted. Something inside me clawed at my guts, and the cage of my heart, insisting it was true.
Her blue eyes looked up at me wide and terrified. That’s when I knew I must have said the word out loud.
She tried to scramble away. But she was trapped. The stem of the impractical shoes on her feet were caught in the metal grate. If she kept struggling and kicking out, she would hurt herself further.
Without thinking, I crouched down. She didn’t scream this time. No, she did something far worse.
Her lips began to tremble. Wetness pooled at her eyes. Tears began to spill as the sobs broke from her heart-shaped mouth.
I had faced down armies of cyborgs. I had killed men with my own bare hands. I had watched and listened as my brothers and friends were tortured and tormented. None of that compared to the gut-wrenching feeling that tied me up in knots at the sound of her cries.
How could she not know that I would never hurt her?
How could she not know that even her cries caused pain in my heart?
How could she not know that my hands would do anything, everything, to keep her safe and warm?
I reached out for her, and that’s when I remembered why she could not know these things.
My hands were scarred. Scaled. Monstrous.
I didn’t know what I was capable of. Only because the old me wouldn’t have harmed her; it didn’t mean the new beastly me wouldn’t.
She’s trying to remember her past. He’s trying to forget his. Their futures are on a collision course.
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Great cover.
ReplyDeletecool cover
ReplyDeleteLove the cover.
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