COWBOY ROMANCE: Justin (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 1) (103 page)

Chapter Two

Paran stood at the head of a conference table filled with Kahara’s sharpest leaders. They sat in the center of the first successful Kaharan settlement on Earth in centuries, a community populated with men, women, and children of both human and Kaharan decent who were generals, war heroes, doctors, and politicians. They had succeeded in the one goal every Kaharan man had shared since Impact. And yet, every morning, Paran awoke empty.

“Humans live a life complementary to ours…parallel…slower. They are just like us in many ways, hardly different. We can breed with them and produce viable offspring, a fact that many scientist would argue was grounds to consider us the same.”

He could sense the disdain in their jewel-like eyes. They didn’t like the idea of being like, compatible, even comparable to the species they had conquered.

He let that sit as he stared at the images he had prepared for them. “I know it’s unnerving, how outnumbered we are, and by a people that we cannot better in a significant way. But such is life and circumstance. We are on their planet. We must respect that—”

“Paran.”

There the commander sat at the other head of the table, his hair grown out to shoulder length, his body filled out, healthy. These were times of peace, and it showed. His biggest concern had changed from winning a war against an entire planet, protecting an entire race in space, to walking the human walk. “I sent you out there to observe them, not to become them.”

Paran set his jaw. Like any anthropologist, he knew that to understand another race, you had to get into their heads and let them get into yours. “Those two tasks are one in the same.” He added a small smile to take the edge off his words, but the commander remained uncomfortable.

They all were.

The commander leaned in, an aura of control about him. “If I’m going to send you out there to gather information that could save our lives, I have to know that I can trust you.”

“I’m insulted that your trust is even in question.” Paran advanced on him as a tingling sensation coursed through his veins. His heavy heart pumped thin, boiling blood through his body, his head filling with pressure. His deep eyes pierced those of the commander. He could feel his energy slipping out of him, the commander’s volition becoming his own.

The commander shook his head. “I don’t even know why I don’t sack you.”

Paran took a deep, steadying breath. “Because I am the best at what I do. To have anyone at my post would be a disservice to your people.” But even as he said this with his hypnotic voice, he knew it was nothing more than hot air, for he could feel the commander under his pull. Paran could plant ideas in his head, make him believe what he wanted him to. He even sometimes fancied that he was the true commander, because if he ever wanted anything done, all he had to do was get into the Kaharan’s head and make him believe his ideas were his own. Yet, he could never take over the commander in any permanent way. He loved his own job too much.

Paran let go of the Kaharan, watched him clear his throat.

The commander’s eyes circled and shifted from left to right, and even as he did this, Paran knew he was chasing his mind, wondering where it had gone.

Paran ended his lesson early, knowing that the men would have lost their focus after watching the commander challenge him. It was a difficult thing, holding the interest of a species that always believed themselves superior to those around them. How could he convince them that understanding the humans was the most important thing they could do?

Feeling exhausted from a morning of the metaphorical equivalent to beating at a stone wall, Paran retreated to his cottage, locking the doors. He detested the emptiness and the silence, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to seek out a person to fill it.

There was only one woman he could ever see himself with. A smile played at the edge of his lips as he summoned the image of her all those years ago in that bar with her stiff drink and her knowing smirk. She had made him feel like no other living creature could. Yet she had vanished without warning.

The energy of their bonde even told him she was somewhere in New England, alive and well.  But as hard as he looked, he couldn’t find her. How could he expect to, with nothing other than a first name and a memory?That second pulse that beat inside him, that life line that was all he had left of her, continued to make his heart throb. She was the only future he could ever hope for.

He stopped as soon as he had stepped over his threshold. Something had happened. He clenched his jaw shut, frozen, waiting again. There it was again, not a dream or a momentary hallucination. It was her harnessing her energy for the first time in nearly a decade. She had called on that part of herself that she shared with him, producing a signal both precise and magnificently large. What a beautiful moment.

He had found her.

Chapter Three

Evelyn winced at herself in the mirror. Three sets of hands covered her face and hair. It was the song and dance of preparing for an appearance on CNN. They always settled around her, manipulating her hair and makeup to make her look more like a woman or less like one, older or younger, smarter or more emotional, whatever suited the topic at hand. Being herself was never enough. Always a little too dry, a little too old, a little too much of a hothead, a little too intimidating.

“Not too much of the pink stuff.”

The blond with the bun at the top of her head and the dark red lipstick ducked her head, her well-groomed eyebrows rising to the top of her forehead. “You mean blush?”

Evelyn’s hand flew up, her pride speaking for her. “I’m not interested in looking like a twenty-year-old that lost a fight with her makeup drawer.”

The woman winced. It was only as she dropped the brush and backed up that Evelyn realized she had insulted her.

An older woman was on her hair, catching all the stray strands with a flat iron and laying them down. “Get back here, Jess. We don’t have time for your feelings. Line her eyes.”

As Jess stepped in front of Evelyn, there was a knock on the door, followed by the sound of it being yanked open. “March? There’s a call for you.” The young woman, dressed all in black, jabbed a landline at her.

Evelyn nearly swatted it away. “No, thank you. I have to prepare.”

“It’s Boston Preparatory Academy.”

Evelyn froze. This was just what she needed. She had used her energy to manipulate him just the night before. When he was born, she had promised herself she would never make him her subject, but she couldn’t help herself. His questions were dangerous to the both of them. She just wanted him to be happy in his ignorance and not consume himself with finding the truth.

She was at her wit’s end and completely at a lost for how to stop it or change it or control it. The worst part was that she had felt him push back. That lost look in his wet eyes. She knew it well, because she had seen it in her own the first time she had used her powers. He now knew what he was capable of, so it was only a matter of time before she got a call exactly like this one.

She didn’t need an explanation. She knew she had to get home to her Pelyn. She caught a cab and then the train, and in two hours she was in Boston, staring at a bewildered headmistress with the sound of her son’s quick breathing in her right ear.

“Pelyn got into a fight with another student.” The woman cupped her hands over a stack of paperwork Evelyn knew could have been nothing other than Pelyn’s records, which would have shown no former signs of insubordination.

“I don’t understand.” Evelyn didn’t want to believe it.

The woman turned toward her son, nudging her head at him. “Go on and tell your side of the story.”

Evelyn watched his throat bobbed with a gulp. He looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. He was exhausted, out of anger, out of his spent powers.

She wanted to cry.

“Everyone deserves a turn on the swings.” It was an empty voice.

A chill ran up Evelyn’s spine.

The headmistress shifted nervously in her seat, her stray strand of hair quivering because she couldn’t figure out why the temperature had suddenly dropped ten degrees in her office. “Tell her what you did.”

Pelyn opened his mouth and shut it twice without letting a single word escape his lips. The problem was that he had no idea what he had done. Evelyn could just imagine the confusion running through his head. She had felt it herself not too long ago.

The headmistress set her jaw. “He gave another student a bloody nose.”

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. She had no idea it could be that serious. Her son had surprised her with his strength. “P-Pelyn.” She knew she had to perform for this woman. “You have to apologize to him. You know violence is never the answer.”

Pelyn glanced at her for a short second before looking away. She could tell that he had already tried to defend himself before. He hadn’t touched the boy. He didn’t know what had happened and neither did Evelyn. She had no idea what his powers were, but the danger in exploring them kept her from delving deeper into that. But it had done him no good.

Evelyn wondered at how she could have run from this for so long without thinking that it would ever catch up with her.

Pelyn was so tired that he had fallen asleep by the time she was pulling up into her driveway. She cut the engine and hoisted him into her arms like he was the baby she always wished he could stay.

But when she struggled to open her front door and step over the threshold, she noticed something strange. She could feel
him
for the first time in nearly a decade. Evelyn’s heart dropped. Goosebumps sprouted on the surface of her skin.

She dropped Pelyn on the couch as gently as she could manage. Then shoved the stray lock of hair behind her ear. She scanned her small living room, the breakfast area, the messy kitchen. Things had been tampered with, picked up and put down, shifted ever so slightly.

Just take a deep breath.

But Evelyn was already hyperventilating, and she still couldn’t grab ahold of herself. Pelyn hadn’t moved since she had put him down, and she knew that as soon as he woke up, he would drown her in questions.

Oh God.

“Show yourself.” But a part of her knew he wasn’t there anymore. He would have gone to whatever hotel he had rented and stayed there, waiting it out for the perfect moment. She hated the anticipation. She hated that she missed him, and yet she wished he would stop existing and get out of her head and stop pulling her. And yet, something told her that wishing for that was like wishing for a miracle.

Chapter Four

Evelyn’s eyes flashed open the next morning to the sound of something rustling around in her backyard. It was a small movement, something any human would have missed.

She ripped the covers off her, sitting upright. “Paran,” she whispered. But then she froze. She knew it was him. After all, who else could it have been? But that was precisely what stopped her. It had been almost ten years. A thin tear streamed down her cheek as she thought this. He had searched for her for almost a decade. How romantic.

She swung her legs over the side of her bed and started dragging her feet. The sound had stopped, and when she finally made it to her back door, she saw him standing there. She let herself huff out a breath of disbelief.

Having heard her approach, he turned to face her, unleashing on her the full force of his essence. She stood her ground, feeling as if the longer she stood there, the deeper into the ground her feet sank. She couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He glowered at her, his head tilted ever so slightly to the right. “After all these years…”

Evelyn had felt that accusation coming, and the last thing she wanted was to stick around to hear it at its full force. “Don’t give me that.”

He advanced on her, one, deliberate step. Her heart thudded at the sound of it. She could feel his pull, the resistance in her head slowly being overrun by a desire to pounce on him right then and there. She wanted him back, wanted to pretend the last decade hadn’t happened, wanted to pretend that she had been brave enough not to run.

But it wasn’t like she had done it for no reason. She had needed to protect Pelyn from his true self—lest it bring him a life of confusion, of alienation—even if that meant lying to him and keeping him from his father.

He had come so close that less than a foot of air separated them. He still smelled the same. His bushy eyebrows furrowed, his eyes flowing like an angry ocean. “I could strangle you.” He lifted his hand quickly, with volition, but he let it hang there, afraid to touch her, afraid of what would happen.

Evelyn’s first instinct was to swat it away, but she didn’t, frightened that if she let herself touch him, she might not know how to let go. “So why haven’t you?”

His face softened, seeming to melt before her eyes. “You’ve made me out to be a villain all these years.”

Evelyn swallowed the lump in her throat. “Because you were. You let me believe you were human. You did this to me.” She gestured at her belly, at her gut, the very essence of her being. Ever since that night, she had not been the same Evelyn. She had been transformed into a woman who would never be content on her own, who would always have to deny herself what she really wanted: him.

“Stop lying to yourself. You knew what I was. Your mind is too powerful for you to have missed it.”

“But I didn’t know what would happen!”

“I asked you to come away with me! I begged you not to deny our bonde.”

“How could you have expected me to believe you?”

“I know you felt it!” His hand curled into a fist as his voice echoed out into the cloudy morning.

Evelyn wiped the fallen dew off her forehead, ignoring the chill that had seeped into her bones.

“I didn’t do this to you. I’m just as much of a victim as you are.”

“I want to believe you.” Evelyn had always sensed her super human identity, but she had been able to suppress it. She could always trick herself into believing she was just as normal as anyone around her. But everything had changed when he had entered her life. How could she not blame him?

“So believe me.” He advanced on her again, taking her wrists in each of his hands.

Evelyn gasped, her body throbbing for him.

“I fell in love with you that night.”

Her chest swelled, her eyes filling with tears.

“You and I, we’re not like the others. You must have known that growing up. You must have felt different. And what are the odds…. Me, a Kaharan in bar, researching. You, a half-blood doing…whatever it is humans do in a bar alone…. What are the odds that we would bonde?”

It took everything in Evelyn to rip herself out of his grip. She believed him. How could she not? There was something essential, something true, about the words coming out of his mouth. It was undeniable that she felt it deep within herself. But she couldn’t let him change her life, not for a second time. “You shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t want to be found. You know that.”

He grabbed her by her shoulders, holding her close to him, glaring into her eyes. “I can’t let you leave me again. I won’t let you shun me for another ten years. We have something you never could have with another human. I don’t exist without you, nor you without me. I won’t let you deny this any longer. I don’t know how you have thus far.”

Evelyn’s heart thudded in her chest. Her first instinct was to dismiss every word that came out of his mouth, but she knew she couldn’t.

He spoke to a deep part of her that no one else could reach, a part of her she hadn’t even known had existed before she met him, a part of her that had been calling to him for a decade. Her eyes burned with the promise of tears, because she couldn’t deny herself any longer. She could feel her resolve failing her.

“Mom?”

Evelyn saw Paran’s eyes cloud with confusion. He looked right past her at Pelyn, who stood at the edge of their lawn, his right fist rubbing a sleepy eye.

Her eyes shifted to Pelyn and then to Paran and back again. They had the same thick, dark hair, the same bone structure, the same posture, and the same vibrant blues eyes, the ones that looked like God himself had plucked two sapphires from deep within the earth and had shoved them into their eye sockets.

She could see that one recognized himself in the other.