Alien Romance: Hunter: Space Commander's Fated Mate (Space Beasts Book 3)

HUNTER

SPACE COMMANDER’S FATED MATE

ALYSSA EZRA

Copyright 201
6
by Alyssa Ezra

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced

in any way whatsoever, without written permission

from the author, except in case of brief

quotations embodied in critical reviews

and articles.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any

character, person, living or dead, events, place or

organizations is purely coincidental. The author does not

have any control over and does not assume any responsibility

for third party websites or their content.

First edition, 2016

DESCRIPTION

Juliet Moore is a college student looking to get away from her boring life on Earth and finally do something interesting. She gets more than she bargains for when her space shuttle crashes on an unidentified planet, leaving her as the lone survivor.

Stuck on a strange planet full of people and things that want to kill her, Juliet quickly finds a savior in Zalgar Torgu, a commander who has run away from his own demons. She finds herself drawn to the attractive and strong alien, and as time passes, Juliet begins to fall for him.

Faced with a decision, Juliet has to decide whether she wants to go back to her boring life, playing it safe, or if she’s ready to play dangerous with Zalgar.

Chapter One
 

Juliet drummed her fingers against the arm of her seat, staring at the dark expanse of space as her ship sped by. She could feel eyes on her as people filed to and from their seats. Unlike them, Juliet didn’t seek out others’ company for the long ride.

There were old couples celebrating their 50th anniversaries talking to newlyweds on their honeymoons, parents commiserating with one another as their children conversed excitedly about their favorite shows and games. One or two passengers stuck to themselves, older people basking in their newly retired status. But they didn’t stick out as much as Juliet did.
 

At 23 years old, she was everything that a woman wanted to be in her youth. With long, blonde hair that fell down her back in gentle waves, blue eyes, and voluptuous curves, Juliet couldn’t have looked even more beautiful if it wasn’t for the expression on her face. Her pink lips were set in a frown, a wrinkle between her eyebrows from furrowing them together. She seemed tense, on edge.
 

It wasn’t the sight of what she was supposed to be: a free college student taking time off to explore the universe and herself. 
 

You never have any fun. You never smile, Juliet. Sometimes, I wonder if you’re even human
. She remembered the look on her boyfriend’s face when he told her that. He’d looked so desperate, begging her to show some spunk, anything at all. Juliet resented him for that look, for making her feel like something was wrong with her. She remembered acting controlled and collected just to spite him.
I’m sorry you feel that way, Simon. I thought we were both having fun
.
 

But if she was being honest, she knew she wasn’t. Simon was clingy, and his definition of a relationship was much different from hers. He always had to be around her, always had to see her, and grew upset quickly if Juliet wanted to spend even a little bit of time to herself and just herself. Still, it was a relationship she’d grown comfortable in, and after a year of dating, he broke up with her, convinced she didn’t feel as strongly as he did. Juliet didn’t fight him, and that was when she realized that Simon was right.
 

To spite him some more, she decided to prove that she could have fun, that she could be spontaneous and laugh and be human. It was what started the trip to Varuna, a dwarf planet located outside of Earth’s solar system.

It was part of an internship that she scored through her school, taking a year off abroad, and it had perfect timing, allowing Juliet to run away from her break-up, from the looks of pity from her friends, and from the disappointment she could feel coming off her parents for single fact that she was taking time off from her classes.
 

“I just can’t wait until I get to the lab,” the blonde muttered to herself, leaning back into her chair and closing her eyes. The lab was where she could really relax. Everything was so simple there, where she could just focus on equations and measurements. No one wanted her there to hold their hand through it or talk to them.

Normally, scientists kept to themselves, only ever speaking about the project they had together. And this one was a fascinating one, life-changing. As a dwarf planet so far away from the sun, Juliet would be using her knowledge with biology to help start an artificial ecosystem for people to thrive on Varuna.
 

With her eyes closed, she imagined all that she would do: the incredible breakthroughs, the approving nods from her superiors, and the smiles of settlers now able to make something of themselves with new beginnings. Just like her.
 

A jolt interrupted her daydreams, Juliet sitting straight up with a gasp. The ship was shaking, and the other passengers scrambled back to their seats, desperately clawing at their seatbelts for safety. Children cried out of fear with parents shushing them or yelling at them to keep quiet.
 

“We’ve encountered some hostile activity, ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot said over the intercom. Female space attendants in their tight, purple uniforms calmly went to each row. Juliet only had a moment to admire their sense of balance, never once stumbling despite the violent tremors. “Just hang on tight. We’ll be out of their reach shortly and will make a stop at the nearest spaceport for repairs. We appreciate your patience.”
 

But no one was really being patient, not even Juliet. The blonde looked out her window, ignoring the space attendant standing behind her and giving out instructions that she couldn’t quite hear. Juliet watched three ships whiz by. They were sleek black, fashioned like a jet. They moved so fast and blended in so well that they could only be seen by the orange flames bursting from the thrusters. Whoever they were, they didn’t look like friends of the Alliance, part of the intergalactic peace treaty signed by over 400 inhabited planets.
 

“Are they pirates?” Juliet asked numbly, her fingers pressing against the glass of the window.
 

“We’re not sure, ma’am,” the attendant replied, impatience beginning to color her tone, “We need to keep you away from the window until we can avert them. And I’ll need you to put on the space gear.”
 

Juliet turned around, their eyes meeting. The irritation was very clearly there in the woman’s eyes. She looked the same as Juliet’s age, young, but the control she had in the situation made her seem older. Was that how Juliet looked to her friends and family, to her ex-boyfriend? Completely detached from her surroundings? It was a little more badass than they made it out to seem, if it was.

“M'am, the gear-“
 

“Sorry,” Juliet apologized, grabbing the helmet and forcing it on over her head. It locked over the suit that everyone wore while on the spaceship in case of emergencies like this. Lifting her back from her seat, she unbuckled just long enough to put a breath tank on, then strapped back on.

Juliet hated to think of being torn away from the ship and drifting into space as a lone body. The darkness was endless, and it could take the next ship days to find her, even with the tracking device in her suit, if they found her at all.

The stewardess gave a sigh of relief now that she had Juliet taken care of and moved on to the remaining passengers. The blonde watched through the glass visor of her helmet, needing to see the ships. She was never one to sit back and stay in ignorant bliss. Juliet had to know what was going on, and from the gentle shushing and placating tones of the staff aboard the ship, she guessed she wouldn’t be getting any from them.
 

“Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot said over the intercom.
His voice sounds more tense than it did during the last announcement
, Juliet thought,
Or is that just me? It’s not just me, is it?
“We’re only thirty minutes from the next station, and we can hold them off-“
 

Whatever guess the pilot had for how long they could last against the attackers, it was wrong. Juliet only had a second to realize that one of the ships had fallen behind, all of them so good at blending in that it was hard to see that there was one missing.

She had one more second to process the high pitched sound of that ship letting loose fire on the ship, and only a half second to understand that the booming was of the tail of her ship being blasted.
 

She felt the heat and the loss of gravity before the screams.
 

Chapter Two
 

When Juliet woke, there was only one comforting thing, and that was the feeling of ground beneath her body. Her shoulders and thighs screamed in pain from the emergency straps, which self-deployed if the suit recognized it was reaching a new atmosphere, preventing the wearer from falling to their death. She knew they saved her life, yes, but Juliet knew there was going to be bruises from where the straps wrapped around her body to encase her and protect her from the environment.
 

The thing she was most surprised was the eerie quiet of it all. There was no crying, no screams or howls of pain. Juliet slowly got to her feet, looking at the people around her. But there was no one. Juliet fell back to her knees as the pain in her thighs overwhelmed her, leaving her gasping. “Shit,” she breathed, her eyes squeezing shut, “Where is everyone?” Where am I?
 

One thing was for certain, Juliet had to find someone, preferably a person who worked with law enforcement, though she’d take any local helping her. The blonde looked up, trying to find any evidence of a large city being nearby.

She was in the middle of a field though, with tall, yellow grass, and trees all in green hues on the outer edge. They towered over her and the grass, blocking the possibility of getting any sort of view. Juliet had to get past the trees. She just didn’t know if she could walk very much.
 

It still didn’t stop her from trying. After four attempts and taking off her heavy space suit, Juliet finally accepted that she wasn’t going to be able to walk comfortably, and at least not quickly enough to get out of the grass. Using the army-crawl method, she was able to gain a couple of yards out of the center, but not by much.

The smell of smoke was starting to fill the air. Juliet looked behind her, checking to make sure the damage from the crash hadn’t lit the grass on fire yet. That was the last thing she needed when she could hardly move. There was a thick plume of smoke rising from the accident, but so far, she couldn’t see any flames. Letting out a sigh of relief, she turned her head forward to keep going forward.
 

And she would have, had she not turned to look straight at the tip of a bow and arrow.
 

Juliet gasped, going cross-eyed as they focused on how sharp the tip of the arrow was. Someone was speaking to her in a language she didn’t know, but she couldn’t look at their face. The voice became more demanding, yelling at her. It was deep, like a man’s.
 

Trying her best not to shake, she calmly said, “I’m looking for help. I come in peace… Do you speak any English?”
 

The attacker spoke again in a broken language that sounded harsh on their lips.
I’ll take that as a no, then
, she thought to herself. The person with the bow and arrow seemed to be angry by her silence, or her speaking a foreign tongue, or a combination of the two. Either way, Juliet’s eyes squeezed shut as she heard the bowstring begin to tighten, the arrow being pulled back even tighter.
 

“Move left!”
 

The voice was coming from her right. She had no idea who it belonged to, but there was the fact that it was in English, and that was good enough for her. Swiftly, Juliet rolled on her stomach to her left. She didn’t hesitate.

She stood up, ignoring the searing pain in her thighs, and quickly limped her way around to find cover. All she could find, though, were the trees on the outer circle of the meadow. Juliet ran as fast as she could, as fast as she ever had before. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins.

As soon as she got to the outer edge, the blonde dove into a bush. The small branches stuck out at her and scraped at her skin, but she didn’t even feel it.
Through the leaves, Juliet watched the scene before her, finally getting to see her attacker and her savior’s faces. The person with the bow and arrows looked to be male, and obviously not human. His features were too sharp and his complexion green. His eyes were like almonds, but inhumanly large. They reminded Juliet of old Japanese manga, how they were the primary feature of the face. The way he moved was lithe, quick.
 

Meanwhile, the person who had yelled at her was almost a complete opposite in fighting technique. He had two large blades, one in each hand. He was more muscular, and as such, he moved slower, but with more strength.

He shared similarities in appearance with his opponent, but at the same time, there was something recognizable in him, something human. His eyes were smaller, more like hers, but there was still that almond shape to them, and his skin was only tinged with green. With his tan, it came off as more of an olive color.
 

Juliet watched, mesmerized by the fight, her chest pounding. They were both beautiful fighters, the smaller one graceful, like a ballerina. But she desperately needed the other to win, and there was something special about his fighting style, something that made her appreciate his even more. Her attacker was a scrapper, it was clear.

He was used to getting away and being quick, much like how he attacked her out of nowhere. For the man saving her, though, fighting seemed to be an art to him, a passion. He was patient, careful, watching every move. Juliet’s eyes widened when he found his opportunity.
 

The attacker was too impressed with himself and his own fighting skills. He spun forward with an arrow in his fist, ready to stab and slice, but his opponent accounted for that. Quickly, he ducked, dodging the arrow and used both of his blades to cut deep gashes at the knees. The bowman howled in pain and crumpled to his feet, his legs unable to support his entire weight now.

Even from a distance, Juliet saw the smirk on the hunter’s face. Because he had to be a hunter, she decided. His dark hair was tied up in a small bun to keep out of the way, and his clothes looked to be made from homemade leathers and furs.

The other person, the bowman, was dressed similarly, but clearly in rags, not enough leather to ever be considered armor. And the way he stalked about his prey now, who was writhing on the ground. He was a predator.
And that scared Juliet. What’s going to happen when he has his first prize?
 

She didn’t look away when the hunter closed in on the bowman. She looked on as he knelt down beside him, threw one blade off to the side, and plunged the other deep into his throat. Blood spurted out, a dark, almost black color.

Juliet let out a sigh of relief, until she remembered that that could very well be her in the next few minutes. Or even seconds. She had less fighting skills than the bowman and probably wouldn’t even last half the time.
 

When the hunter picked back up his blade, wiping the blood off the one that delivered the final blow, she saw him look up, searching for her. This was her chance, and she had to take it. Her legs were still in pain from the straps of her suit, and she wouldn’t be able to move very fast.

Juliet almost didn’t want to get up at all, remembering the struggle to even get as far as the bush she was in. But she had to, before he actually found her. Forcing herself to her feet, Juliet turned and ran straight. She dodged the trees as best as she could. Her limp was already slowing her down, and she hated to add the trees in as another obstacle.
 

“Hey!” the man called, spotting her just before she disappeared into the trees. It was enough for him to at least head in the right direction. “Get back here!”
 

Juliet only looked back for a second, seeing that he was now running towards her. She cried out, more afraid of him than she had been of the guy, and tried to pick up speed, even veering to the right to surprise and hopefully lose him.
 

“I’m not going to hurt you!” he yelled out to her, and Juliet’s stomach began to churn when she realized that he sounded closer than before.
 

This time, when she looked back, she tripped on a root that she’d missed in her panic. Juliet yelped, falling to the ground with a thud. Her elbows and hands were skinned, and she could feel warm blood beginning to run down her lower leg, just above her foot, from where the root cut into her skin. She was in pain and out of breath.

Her legs were bruised and ached, her lungs burned, and the adrenaline rush was quickly boiling down to pure fear and dread, her mind starting to wonder if she ever really would escape him, if she would get to go back home to her friends and family, or if she would die here in the woods at the hands of some alien.
 

She felt someone grab the back of her shirt. Juliet gasped at the large hand, the man pulling her up to her feet and against his chest in a tight grip. It prevented her from moving at all, though Juliet still tried. “Thought you were looking for peace,” the man said, his voice a deep rumble. She shivered at how close he was.
 

“Just leave me alone! I just want to get to the city. I won’t tell them you killed that guy, I swear.” Juliet didn’t know if she meant it. After all, should she really let a murderer walk around? But if it was what the guy was worried about, if he didn’t want her talking, she would tell him what he wanted to hear. “We can both be on our way.”
 

“The city?” he repeated, “You’re far from the city. Are you from that crash over there?” The man nodded in the direction of where they’d just come from, not that Juliet knew. Too distracted with the chase, she’d lost all sense of direction. But she assumed that was what he meant, nodding weakly.
 

“They’ll know I’m gone,” she warned him, “They have record that I was on that space shuttle, and when they don’t find me, they’ll come looking. Please… Just point me in the right direction, and I can make my way to the city. They won’t know anything that happened here.”
 

The man laughed. If he wasn’t a stranger, if she wasn’t afraid of him killing her, Juliet might think his smile charming. He had a dimple on his left cheek, just one, and Juliet resisted the urge to touch it. There was something in his eyes when he looked at her, a hunger… It both scared and intrigued her. “The city doesn’t care about Dwynlins. They might give me a reward for killing one.”
 

Dwynlins
? Juliet had never heard the term before, and she was sure that she would have by now. She studied her vacation planet pretty seriously, especially since it was a work study. Juliet refused to be the least prepared out of them all. Not to mention, studying for it had been a great distraction from her break-up. “Where am I?” she asked suddenly, “What planet?”
 

He frowned. “Tell me where your ship is from.”
 

“I asked you first,” she replied, raising an eyebrow.
 

“I asked second. And I could always just snap your neck if you want to be difficult.”
 

His eyes didn’t look upset or angry, like he wanted to kill her. And he didn’t have that predatory smirk on his face like he did when he was stalking his fallen bowman. Juliet had a feeling that he wasn’t truly threatening her, at least not right now. Just reminding her that she had no power or say-so in this conversation.
 

She pressed her lips together firmly, then sighed. “Earth.”
 

There was a moment of silence between them. Juliet stared into his eyes, trying to catch what he was thinking. She realized, while staring, that his eyes were a shade of purple, lilac. She’d never seen that on a person, except for when they wore contacts. Determined not to get distracted, Juliet tried to focus on what his eyes were saying, but they really weren’t saying a lot. Besides the fact that he was indeed thinking about something, almost calculating.
 

And then, suddenly, he yanked her up, throwing Juliet over his shoulders. He kept one arm tightly around her legs to keep her from kicking, the other around her waist. “What are you doing?!” she cried, trying to squirm and twist her way out of his grip, but he was too strong. It wasn’t happening. “Let me go!”
 

“You’re coming with me, earthling,” he said simply, “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
But she didn’t listen. “Where are we going?!” Juliet demanded. He didn’t keep his word, never answering any of her questions. She still had no idea what planet she was on, let alone where she was headed to right now.
 

“Somewhere no one else is going to find you.”