Sneak Peek at Her Alien Spymaster

Chapter One

Skye ran as fast as she could manage, which wasn’t nearly as fast as she would have liked. The ice and snow on the ground made it impossible to reach anything close to her top speed, but the added difficulty almost made up for it. She’d come out here to burn off some energy and try to find some semblance of calm, but despite the solitude and silence of the wintery woods, she couldn’t find even a moment’s peace. All she could think about was the threat to Haven colony… her home.

The worst part wasn’t the fact there was a threat. She was a fraxxing cyborg after all. She was designed from the DNA up for combat, but she had no idea how to fight against an enemy she couldn’t even see. Something was sickening every Vardarian in Haven, and none of them knew if it would spread to the other species that called the colony home.

 Nothing about the illness made any sense. The Vardarians were born with cutting edge nanotech that gave them a number of advantages, including accelerated healing and the ability to cleanse their systems of any toxins or viruses. The cyborgs all carried a different kind of nanotech, which they called medi-bots, that provided the same benefits. So why were the Vardarians the only ones getting sick? And why hadn’t any of the humans been infected? Most of them hadn’t been given the medi-bot treatment yet. They should have been the first to fall ill.

Skye snarled in frustration and increased her pace. Two strides later, her foot hit an icy patch. She skidded, cursed, and caught hold of a tree to prevent herself from falling ass over afterburner.

“Don’t get cocky,” she muttered her herself. “Or in this case, don’t get emotional. Emotions get you just as dead as cockiness.” Then she winced. She’d just butchered one of the cyborgs’ favorite mottos. Good thing none of them were around to hear what she’d said, or she would never hear the end of it. That was the problem with having cyborgs as friends and family… they never forgot a damned thing and were more than happy to bring up choice tidbits at the most annoying moments.

It’s a good thing she loved the rowdy group of survivors who had made it off Reamus Station. If she didn’t, she’d have dropped-kicked most of them out an airlock by now.

Once her mind and body both were balanced again, she set off at a slower pace. She enjoyed the stark beauty of the woods when it was blanketed by fluffy frozen water, but the way sound behaved in this environment intrigued her and held her attention.

The crunch and squeak of snow beneath her boots was sharp and immediate. Every exhalation seemed louder than normal, punctuated by the puffs of vapor that accompanied each breath. Other sounds were muffled by the blanket of snow. The wind blowing through the trees and the creak of branches were harder to detect despite her enhanced senses.

She let her mind wander, chasing after stray thoughts until she finally outran her worries, at least for a little while. She’d needed this.

After another few kilometers, she circled back, breaking a new trail instead of following her previous tracks. Her new route would eventually take her to the bridge that linked the two sides of the colony, but it also took her through one of her favorite spots, a wide meadow with a stream running through it. It had been covered in soft green and blue grass with wildflowers the first time she’d seen it. Now, it looked very different. The wind had blown the snow into drifts that looked like frozen waves, piling it up against the trunks of trees along the far side of the field. She saw tracks here and there, most of them from small animals, but something larger had been through here since the last snowfall.

She jogged over and looked at the prints, trying to discern what might have made them. Striker would know, but she didn’t want to disturb the big, somewhat grumpy cyborg. They were friends now, but she’d been wary of him at one time. She understood him better now, but that didn’t mean she was ready to call him on their internal channels and have a chat about the tracks left by the local wildlife.

Besides, the antisocial cyborg usually had his channels switched off. “What Maggie sees in him I will never understand. When I’m ready to settle down, I’ll find someone cheerful, all charm and sass. Yeah.” She glanced up at the sky. “That comment was not a request for said male to arrive just yet. I’m still enjoying my freedom, thank you very much.”

It was a habit she’d picked up from the human colonists. Most of them believed in one higher being or another, and all of them seemed to look up when they were communicating with them.

She stayed in the field long enough to enjoy the tranquility and capture a few images of the tracks with her onboard optics. Given their size, it had to be either a ghost cat or a kopaki. Both were large predators that had developed a taste for the colony’s assorted species of livestock. She’d have to let the rangers know what she’d seen. They’d take care of it once the more immediate crisis was over.

That thought shattered her moment of peace. “I’d take a pack of ghost cats over this damned bug. At least then I’d have something to hit.”

She was halfway back when River pinged her over their shared channel. “Skye, I’ve got an update.”

“I’m listening.”

“I heard from Maggie. Since the council can’t get anything done, we’re going a different way. I’m rounding up everyone here and taking them to the Bar None. Meet you there?”

It was the best news she’d heard in days. “I’m already running. Let’s see who gets there first.”

Skye turned and took off at the fastest speed she could manage. She had no chance of beating River and the others to the bar, but she wouldn’t be far behind them. They were going to do something, and that was all she needed to know.

*

At this time of day, the bridge was usually humming with activity. Haven’s citizens should be socializing and shopping at the various vendors and market stalls that lined the street, linking the two sides of the colony. Today, though, it was silent and empty. All the shops and stalls were shuttered, and the only sound she heard was the rush of water beneath her feet and the occasional crash as chunks of ice slammed into each other.

She was well onto the bridge before she heard voices. It was no surprise they came from the Bar None. The meeting must be underway already. Good.

She spotted River’s vehicle parked nearby. A quick scan showed the engine hadn’t started cooling yet. She wasn’t far behind them. She knocked the snow from her boots and opened the door. A rush of warm, richly scented air wafted by as she stepped into one of the most comfortable places she knew.

The building wasn’t even a year old yet, but somehow this place already felt older and more broken in. Entering the bar was like slipping into her favorite pair of boots. She’d barely crossed the threshold when everyone else erupted into excited cheers.

Hope bloomed, and she raised her voice to be heard above the others. “Does this mean we have a plan?”

The only male present rose from his seat. She recognized him immediately and wondered what the fraxx he was doing here. The prince’s spymaster was dour and distrustful, especially when it came to the non-Vardarian citizens of Haven.

She expected him to say something to dampen the mood or point out something they’d all overlooked. Instead, his golden skin lost most of its luster and he crashed to the floor.

Shit.

Phaedra was at his side in a second, concern shadowing her normally sunny expression. “You stubborn fraxxing, idiot. You didn’t tell me you were sick, too.”

Well, that explained what the spymaster was doing here. He didn’t have much love for humans, but Phaedra was the prince’s mate. She was also stubborn, impulsive, and resistant to authority. Since her bodyguards weren’t present, Yardan had come himself. Phaedra must have loved that.

Yardan waved everyone off. “I’m not sick. I just got up too fast.”

Skye scanned him. He had an elevated temperature, a rapid pulse, and several other indicators of illness.

Stubborn fraxxing idiot indeed, she thought and walked over to help him up. She hadn’t intended to do that, but she was halfway there before she even realized she was moving.

He glared at her for a few seconds, just long enough for her to wonder if he’d refuse her assistance, but then he took her hand in his and tried to pull himself up.

Skye saw him struggling and simply lifted him off the floor, using her enhanced strength to get him on his feet. That’s when it hit her… a subtle rush of warmth and desire. Oh fraxx, no. Him? Now? This couldn’t be the sharhal. Surely she’d been close enough to him before today… Her mind raced as she accessed her memory, cross-referencing every time she’d encountered the spymaster or his anrik. Wait. Did he even have one? She checked his wrist for the scar that every other Vardarian male wore with pride. His skin was smooth. No scar. No anrik. No blood-brother to journey through life with. That meant if this was what she thought it was, she wouldn’t be the filling in a sexy male sandwich. Pity.

By the time she’d worked through that, though, her memory crosscheck confirmed that the two of them had never been inside the few times they’d attended at the same functions, and they’d never been introduced.

Typical. Her mahoyen had been here all along, and she’d never crossed paths with him until today. She managed a sidelong look at him as he leaned against her. His hair and beard were both dark and closely trimmed, framing a handsome face with a strong jaw and green eyes that glittered with intelligence edged in ice.

Grumpy but good looking—she could work with that.

She draped one of his well-muscled arms over her shoulders and caught him around his waist with the other. “I got you,” she told him as she drew his hard body in close to her side.

He shot her a disgruntled look. “Apparently. Damned females shouldn’t be that strong. And I’m fine.”

Phaedra chimed in before Skye could. “He’s not close to fine. Can you help me get him home?”

A moment ago all she wanted was to take on the threat to Haven and find a way to help her adopted home. Strange how quickly things could change. She glanced at Yardan and then nodded. If she was right and they were destined to be mates, she would go with him. Besides, Phaedra would need help running things while both of her mates were down with whatever the fraxx this plague was. “You can fill me in on what’s happening on the way.”

“Suki, grab our coats. Will you?” Phaedra asked one of the human colonists. Then she picked up Yardan’s heavy cloak from the back of his chair and managed to toss it over his shoulders. Phae was too short to place it carefully, so Skye took a moment to adjust it before helping the spymaster outside.

Skye kept expecting him to say something about the sharhal. The Vardarian should be feeling the effects even more than she was. So why hadn’t he said anything? She’d been prepared for the possibility that she’d end up mated to a Vardarian. From what she’d seen, it wasn’t so bad. Hell, it was probably better this way. Dating wasn’t something the survivors of Reamus Station knew much about. She’d enjoyed a few no-strings-attached encounters here in Haven, but that wasn’t the same.

She glanced over at Yardan again. All his attention was on Phaedra, walking a few steps ahead of them. Just her fraxxing luck. She finally met her destined mate, and he was too sick to notice her.

Once he was healthy, things would be different. They had to be. Otherwise, she was in trouble. Once triggered, the Vardarian mating fever couldn’t be stopped. Either she’d wind up mated or she’d lose herself to madness and death.

She knew which option she’d prefer. The rest was up to Yardan.

***

Ready for more? Her Alien Spymaster releases August 9th. PREORDER NOW

Marked For Strife is here!

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime… now she’s just trying to stay alive.

Rissa can’t believe her luck. She won an all-expenses paid trip on a luxury matchmaking cruise. She’s not looking for love, but a few weeks of five-star pampering while seeing the galaxy sounds perfect… until it all goes wrong.

Abandoning ship wasn’t on her itinerary, and neither is the growly but oh-so-sexy alien who is half convinced she’s the enemy, and utterly certain she’s his. She’s got a list of the reasons they’re wrong for each other, but when they’re together, everything just feels right.

Crash landing on a prison planet may not be the vacation she dreamed of, but it might turn out to be the best “worst” day of her life.

**Buckle up. This sci-fi romance contains an alien with fur, fangs, horns, and a very possessive attitude when it comes to the woman he’s claimed for his own.

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Sneak Peek at Marked for Strife

Chapter One

Rissa checked the timer and grunted. She still had ten minutes to go, fifteen if she was serious about burning off that extra slice of cake she’d indulged in before bed. The food on this cruise was the best she’d ever had, and it was worth every extra minute of sweat to enjoy it while she could. In a few more weeks she’d be back to her normal life, where food, water, and even air were carefully rationed commodities.

 Life on a space station wasn’t easy, but it was the only life she’d ever known. If her number hadn’t come up in the annual lottery, she might have spent her entire life on Nanu station. She’d have missed out on discovering the glorious indulgences of spending an entire day at a spa, eating every meal from an endless buffet, and sleeping in a bed the size of a standard living cubby back home.

She also would have gone her whole life not knowing how mind-twistingly terrifying planets were. Not the planets themselves but all the things that came with them—toxic plants, dangerous animals, the inescapable pull of gravity, and worst of all, open sky. Just the thought of it made her miss her footing and nearly stumble off the treadmill.

“That’s it. I’m done for the day.” She kept hold of the rail with one hand as she slowed the machine down to a gentle walk. At least no one was around to see her nearly fall on her face. A few weeks ago, it would have been thronging with fit, trim women obsessed about every ounce of body fat and running on the treadmills as if all the demons of hell were chasing them with ice cream sundaes and extra fudge sauce… and now she wanted ice cream slathered in ribbons of warm, gooey chocolate and caramel.

She still had dessert on the brain when it all went to the hells in nine hypersonic handcarts. The deck beneath her feet shuddered, the hull creaking in ways that set Rissa’s teeth on edge. It was the sound of a ship in pain. She’d heard it plenty of times before, but that had been at the shipyard where she worked, surrounded by teams of professionals with everything they needed to put things right.

They weren’t anywhere near her shipyard right now. They were in open space, not the ideal location for their hyperdrive to fail… But that’s what was happening.

“Shit!” Training had her running for the engineering deck before she could think. It was instinctive, and she made it out the door of the gym and into the corridor before she remembered she wasn’t on duty. She wasn’t even a crewmember. She was a passenger, and she didn’t even have access to that part of the ship. She stopped running, automatically moving to press against the wall so she wasn’t blocking the corridor. With the drive down, they’d have dropped into normal space. That wasn’t a problem so long as they weren’t too close to a planet or a star.

Klaxons erupted, the noise almost drowning out the captain’s orders as she spoke over the ship-wide comms.

Rissa decoded the various alarms. Navigation and proximity alerts screamed as engine failure alarms wailed. Airtight doors slammed shut and locked. That shouldn’t happen. Not unless they were… Fuck.

The gym and other amenities were one deck below the passenger quarters, meaning the escape pods were in a different spot. She’d spent years working on ships like these. Hells, she’d even worked on this particular vessel, and she knew exactly where to go. The only other passenger she ran across was dressed in a spa robe and slippers, and she clearly didn’t have a clue what to do.

Rissa grabbed the younger woman by the arm and hustled her down the corridor. “This way,” she yelled so her words would carry over the alarms.

Hope shot her look of gratitude mixed in with a healthy dollop of fear. “What’s happening?” she called back.

The deck bucked beneath them, hard enough to make both of them stumble, but their hold on each other kept them on their feet.

“Bad shit. Maybe an attack.” It was impossible to convey much information over the noise, and they needed to move, not talk.

Hope’s eyes widened. “Attack?”

All Rissa’s worst fears were confirmed a second later. Another alarm wailed, drowning out all the others. The main lights winked out and were replaced by red strobe lights. Shit. It was time to go. The order to abandon ship had gone out.

“Come on! We need to go. Now!” Rissa knew they were running out of time. The ship was under massive stress, and she felt it twist and ripple beneath her feet. It was damaged, crippled, and fighting against a significant source of gravity… and it was losing.

They reached the evac station. The pod doors were all open and waiting. She pushed Hope to the nearest one.

“Sit down and put the harness on. That’s all you need to do. The rest is automatic. Just hang on, be smart, and don’t go too far from your pod.”

Hope gave her a tight, quick nod and ducked inside.

Rissa waited for three long seconds before moving to the next pod in the row. The first pod sealed before she got inside her own. Hope was as safe as Rissa could make her. The rest was up to her.

Once her own pod dropped free of the ship, Rissa got busy. No way would she sit back and let this thing pilot itself. That was fine for someone with no flight training, but she’d been fixing ships most of her life. That meant she knew how to fly them… more or less. Either way, this pod would crash. That’s what they were designed for. Her plan was to make sure it crashed as gently as possible.

*

“And this is why I prefer to fly myself.” Rissa looked around the clearing she’d chosen as her landing site. She and the pod were both in one piece, and the only damage she’d done to the area was a few scorch marks on the grass-covered ground.

She’d maintained the same trajectory the autopilot had determined. She didn’t want to wind up too far away from any other survivors. When rescue came, proximity might make the difference between going home and getting stuck here for the rest of her life. That was not going to happen.

It could turn out to be the nicest planet in existence, but it was still a planet. That meant weather, and animals, and an atmosphere that was only held in place by gravity. No domes, no containment units, and no barriers.

“It’s not natural,” she grumbled. “At least, not to me.” She didn’t do nature. The closest she’d come to it was the bio-dome at the heart of Nanu station, but that small area of carefully cultured trees and plants had about as much in common with this place as a candle flame had to a solar flare.

The clearing was covered in some kind of knee-high plant she thought might be called grass. A current of air moved the long blades of orange and gold, making them hiss and rustle. The sound made her uneasy, though she didn’t know why.

She kept her eyes on the ground with most of her focus on her feet. That way she couldn’t see the sky at all, which helped… a little. She needed to retrieve the emergency supplies stored in the pod and drag them over to the tree line. Under the trees, everything was in shadow, and that meant she’d have another layer between her and the open air.

The trees were strange and nothing like the ones she’d seen in the biosphere. They were the wrong color for one thing. Those trees had been green and blue, but these were very different. Reds and oranges mostly, with a few flashes of golden yellow. The trunks were massive things, gnarled and twisted into thick towers that rose far into the air.

She caught herself looking up, squawked in horror, and dropped her eyes back to the ground again. Vertigo hit, and the next thing she knew, she was on her hands and knees as the world spun around her. She squeezed her eyes shut and dug her fingers into the grass as if that was the only thing stopping her from flying off into space.

When the spinning stopped, she didn’t open her eyes right away. She just stayed where she was and tried not to throw up. “I fucking hate planets,” she groaned as she waited for the queasiness to subside. Once it had, she hauled herself to her feet and made her way back to the pod. She had shit to do, and the faster she got it done, the sooner she’d be inside her emergency shelter. She needed a roof over her head as quickly as possible.

She dragged everything over to the edge of the clearing and arranged the carton with the emergency shelter so the entrance pointed toward the forest. She followed the instructions printed on the side, doing a sweep to make sure the area was clear of rocks and other debris that might puncture the shelter once she activated it. Then she leaned down and pressed the large button below the instructions. First she heard an explosive whoosh followed by a loud, prolonged hiss of air, and then the shelter inflated. It expanded away from her position, just the way it was supposed to.

Once that was done, she lugged a second container inside, sealed the doorway, and sat down on the floor with a sigh of relief. Yellow had never been her favorite color, but right now the garish Day-Glo shelter was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Now she just had to make herself as comfortable as possible and wait for rescue. Surely that wouldn’t take long. Humans weren’t signatories to the Galactic Legion’s Unified Agreement, but they were recognized as sentient lifeforms. Anyone who heard the Bountiful Harvest’s distress beacon would be compelled to offer assistance. It was legion law.

That meant someone would come for them. In fact, they were probably already on their way.

Ready for more? Marked For Strife release May 17th. PREORDER NOW

It’s Release Day for Rett!

She thought they were on the same side. That mistake cost her everything… including her freedom.

Anya dedicated her life to the fight against the alien invaders who had conquered Earth. Now that fight is over. The rebellion failed, the enemy won, and she knows exactly who to blame. He was her lover, her friend, and a spy for the aliens. Worse. He’s one of them… and she’s his prisoner.

His mission was to spy on the enemy, not fall for one of them.

Find the rebels, infiltrate them, and send back intel that would break the rebellion. Those were his orders. But once he was inside, Rett discovered everything they thought they knew about the human rebels was wrong. The enemy was more dangerous than they expected. They were cunning, determined, and female… and one of them was his mate.

Claiming her isn’t permitted. Taking her prisoner might get him killed, but Rett won’t stop until he has what he wants… her.

This series contains hot, growly aliens on a mission to find their mates – and a group of women determined to free their planet… and themselves. 

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Marked For Mayhem is here!

Her last shot at love just crashed and burned… Literally.

 Bella signed up for the interplanetary courtship cruise hoping for travel, adventure, and maybe a chance at romance. Now she’s crash landed on a strange planet with no one around but a horned, alien hottie who showed up and laid claim to her gear, her ship… and her.

He’s too brash, too pushy, and much too young for her. He’s also not taking no for an answer…

This wasn’t the adventure she imagined, but it might just be the romance of a lifetime, if she can stay alive long enough to enjoy it.

**Buckle up. This sci-fi romance contains an alien with fur, fangs, horns, and a very possessive attitude when it comes to the woman he’s claimed for his own.

Grab your copy today: https://susanhayes.ca/book/marked-for-mayhem/

And if you missed the prequel – pick up Marked For Rage, too!