Forgotten (67 page)

Kerov Volx is
a Battalion Commander in the Tarkien Army. He loves his job and if
his love life isn't anything more than satisfactory, well… he can
deal with it. His only problem is that he has Switch Kindred
DNA—that is, his people used to be able to trade bodies with their
bonded mates. But in Tarkinian society, Switching or Trading is now
an offense punishable by death. So imagine Kerov's panic when an
invader suddenly takes over his body…

Frankie has no idea what's going on. She only knows she went
to sleep in her own bed and woke up in the body of a huge, virile,
alien warrior. Now she's expected to live his life—or risk getting
both of them killed. Even worse, Kerov is now in control of
her
body too, and the condition appears
to be permanent.

Can Frankie
and Kerov Trade back into their own bodies before it's too late for
both of them? Or have they been forever…Switched?

Brides of the Kindred 17: Switched

Chapter One

On Thursday morning,
Frankie woke up in her own body.

Not that waking up
in her own body was unusual—not at that point, anyway. And Frankie
had no idea of knowing how unusual it would soon become. All she
knew was that she’d hit snooze one too many times and now she was
running late.

“
Crap,” she muttered as she glanced at the clock on her phone
and bolted out of bed. She barely had time for a shower—a super
fast one—if she hurried. There was going to be no time to wash her
hair though, which meant she was going to be fighting frizz all
day, especially if the humidity was high. And since she lived in
Tampa, Florida, the humidity was
always
high.

As the hot water
poured over her body, she tried to wake up. Why had she kept
hitting the snooze button anyway? Oh right—it was the dream she’d
been having. It was almost like a story and she’d wanted to see how
it ended.

As she washed, she
tried to remember the details. Recalling the dream was surprisingly
easy. Most dreams started to fade the moment you woke up but this
one was staying with her.

It
was about a guy—a really tall guy,
she thought, splashing the hot water in her face
and reaching for her favorite pink grapefruit shower
gel.

Normally the only
man she dreamed about was her ex, Carlos, and those were mostly
nightmares. Nightmares that she was still stuck in her dead-end
marriage with no job, no prospects, and nothing but a life of
endless childbearing and housework ahead of her. Not to mention a
husband who didn’t appreciate her or think she was capable of
anything else. But the man in her dreams had looked nothing like
Carlos.

He
had short blond hair—or at least, it was really light brown. And
those eyes—
she
shivered. His eyes had been a pale shade of gray Frankie had never
seen before. So pale they were almost white but with a solid black
ring around the irises that made him look scarily intense. In
fact,
everything
about him was intense. In her dream, he’d been barking orders
at a bunch of other guys. All were tall and lean, dressed in some
kind of uniform and they shouted back in unison when he asked them
questions.

Weird,
Frankie thought.
Like some kind of Army recruitment film or something.
Except the uniform her
dream guy was wearing wasn’t like anything from any branch of the
Armed Forces that Frankie had ever seen. It was scarlet with
accents of gold and the trousers that went with it were black with
a scarlet stripe running up the sides. Tall black boots completed
the outfit.

He’d been barking
orders and marching up and down the line of warriors or soldiers or
whatever they were and then the tall, blond man with the scary gray
eyes had turned his head and…

“
And he looked
right at me,”
Frankie whispered to herself. She shook her head, trying to
get rid of the image. “Don’t be crazy, Frankie—it was only a
dream,” she muttered to herself, getting out of the shower. She
wrapped a towel around herself and wiped steam off the mirror. A
woman with black hair and big brown eyes looked back at her as she
reached for her toothbrush.

Frankie—who had been
christened Francesca Benita Hermosa Rodriguez— came from a big,
traditional Latin family. She was the fourth of seven children,
three girls and four boys. Her two sisters, Alma and Carita, were
married and had six kids between them. Her two older brothers,
Julio and Dominic were also married and of the two younger ones,
Tomas was engaged and Aurelio was dating a girl seriously—the
family expected him to propose to at any time.

It was enough to
make you sick.

Not that Frankie had
anything against marriage and family and commitment—she had tried
it herself, after all. Her whole family had expected her to marry
her high school sweetheart and so that was what she had done. And
then she’d spent a miserable five years cooking and cleaning up
after him, putting up with him the nights he came home drunk and
abusive, and trying to be happy because this was the way life was
supposed to be, right?

“
Wrong,” Frankie said aloud to herself. “That wasn’t me—wasn’t
the life I wanted.”

She often thought that if it wasn’t for her best friend, Lacy,
she never would have made it. Lacy was the only one who saw how
miserable she was—and she’d been the one to encourage Frankie to
take some college classes and provided her with a steady supply of
birth control for which Frankie was eternally grateful. Not that
she didn’t want kids eventually, but it had only taken her a couple
of months with Carlos to know she didn’t want
his
kids and having children would have compounded
an already bad situation.

Despite being
miserable, Frankie had stuck out the marriage for five long years
because she didn’t want to disappoint her parents. Finally, though,
she couldn’t take it anymore. When she told her family that she was
filing for divorce, her extremely Catholic grandmother had fainted
dramatically and her father had disowned her.

That had been
hard—maybe the hardest thing she’d ever gone through. But Frankie
was strong—a lot stronger than she’d given herself credit for. She
made a new life for herself, going to college full time to get a
degree in Women’s Studies. Eventually she hoped to get a PhD and
teach but for now, she was just trying to get her Masters Degree
without taking on too many student loans.

Frankie finished brushing her teeth and rinsed, taking a final
look at herself in the mirror. Whoever had lived in this apartment
before her must have been tall—she had to stand on her tiptoes to
see more than just her face. Of course, they wouldn’t have to
be
very
tall to be taller than
her.

She was a stubby
five foot four with what her friend Lacy charitably called, “a
juicy caboose.” To put it bluntly—she had a big butt. Frankie often
thought she looked completely unremarkable from the waist up—she
had B-cup breasts that were nicely shaped and perky enough. But
from the waist down, her child-bearing hips and big behind got lots
of looks and some outright stares if she didn’t dress to minimize
her flaws.

“
Not that it’s a flaw,” Frankie told herself sternly, as she
dried the body part in question and pulled on some clothes. “It’s
part of me—part of my heritage.” Still, she couldn’t help feeling
self-conscious about her ass whenever she went out wearing anything
form fitting like yoga pants.

She finished
toweling off and pulled on a plain khaki skirt and a blue blouse.
The outfit would do for her morning class, as well as her shift at
work later on. A glance at the clock told her she was still running
late. She knew her sisters who lived across town were already up
and seeing their older kids off to school and her brothers were
probably at work. None of them understood her need to go back to
school and change her whole existence. Her mother was still hoping
she might get back together with Carlos—Frankie knew because her
mom had been inviting her ex to family suppers on the weekends.

“
Mira,
Mom,
it’s not going to happen,” she’d told her mother. “Carlos and I are
never getting back together so please just stop inviting
him.”

“
You were so perfect together in school,
mi hija.”
Her mother had looked at her reproachfully.
“And I know Carlos still loves you.” She had nodded at Carlos, who
sat at the end of the table making sad eyes in Frankie’s
direction.

Frankie had been unable to contain her surge of irritation.
“What he loved was being my boss—running my life,” she told to her
mother under her breath. “But I don’t want anyone else running my
life. It’s
my
life—so
let me live it. I want to try new things—to experience the world on
my own terms and be open to anything—
anything at all.”

If
only she had known that her wish was soon to be granted—and
not
in the way that she’d
imagined.

But for now, she was blissfully ignorant. She hummed as she
grabbed a mango-kiwi-chia seed smoothie she’d whipped up the night
before from the fridge. Frankie was a strict vegetarian—another
change she’d made as soon as she got away from Carlos. She wasn’t a
vegan or anything extreme—she just didn’t eat meat. She felt better
and healthier and
lighter
somehow, even though her new diet earned her many concerned
looks from her mother and grandmother when she went home for family
dinners.

“
But don’t you want any
puerco asado
? Just try a
little
piece,” her mother would wheedle.

“
I
made your favorite
chicharones
,”
her abuela would say. She was still deeply disapproving of
Frankie’s divorced status and lit a candle for her daily in church,
praying to the Blessed Virgin that her granddaughter would see
sense and come back to her rightful husband.

“
No thank you, mom,
abuelita,”
Frankie always said, giving her grandmother a kiss on
the cheek. “I feel healthier when I don’t eat meat. But I’d love
more rice, please.”

Her grandmother
always shook her head but she couldn’t argue that Frankie was
wasting away. Despite her vegetarian diet and regular exercise,
Frankie’s J-Lo booty stuck stubbornly with her and refused to
melt—which seemed really unfair. Neither of her sisters had such a
big butt, even after having multiple children apiece.

Not that she needed
to be like her sisters, Frankie reminded herself as she got into
her ancient Honda Civic and started it up. She’d tried that for
years—now it was time to embrace her own identity and get
comfortable inside her own skin.

It was a short drive
from her crappy apartment in the Carlton Arms complex to the USF
campus. Living on campus itself was too expensive. Though she had
to take loans to cover her classes and books, Frankie tried her
best to pay her own living expenses. This meant living in a less
than safe part of town and working a series of crappy jobs, even
though students in the Masters programs were encouraged to focus
exclusively on their studies.

She didn’t usually
mind her apartment—it might look ugly on the outside but inside
Frankie had transformed the tiny space into a neat, pretty little
nest. However, the crappy job thing was beginning to get her down.
If only there were enough TA positions to go around! But it seemed
like every professor on campus already had all the help they
needed. Which meant that Frankie was stuck doing time in retail,
working at Victoria’s Secret in the University Square mall. In
fact, she had a shift right after her morning class, Women in
Modern Literature.

Frankie sighed when
she thought of it. She was sure some of her fellow Women’s Studies
students would scoff at her for working in a place that glorified
the objectification and sexualization of women’s bodies. But at the
time she’d taken the job, she’d been desperate to get away from
Carlos and make it on her own. Victoria’s Secret was the only place
that was hiring so Frankie had applied. Now she was stuck selling
overpriced panties and bras—at least until she completed her two
hundred hour yoga certification.

Soon,
she
promised herself, bouncing up the stairs of the Humanities
building.
Soon
I’ll be out of there for good.
In fact, her final test was coming up in two days and
she was trying to get in as many classes between now and then as
she could, both to practice and to calm her nerves. The two hundred
hour certification was enough to teach in most studios but Sheila,
the owner of the Lotus Pond where Frankie took her teacher
training, was very particular. She had a test that was legendary
for being tough to pass. But Frankie knew she was ready. If she
could only pass, Sheila had promised she could teach several
beginner’s classes a week to start out.

“
Focus on your breathing,”
Frankie imagined herself telling her students.
“Feel the breath flow in
and out of you…breath is life…breathe into any tight spaces and as
you exhale, rid yourself of anything that does not serve
you…”

“
Oh, Francesca—I was hoping to see you here this
morning.”