Found

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Evangeline Anderson on Smashwords

Brides of the Kindred

Book 4:Found

Copyright © 2011 by Evangeline Anderson

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Author’s Note #1—
Again
with the piracy—I keep the prices on my Kindred books low so no one
will have to steal them. So please don’t. And if you see anyone who
is, please send me a link at
[email protected]
and let me know about it. E-book piracy is a real and growing
threat. If it isn’t stopped authors like me won’t be able to make a
living doing what we love the most—writing hot new books to share
with you, our readers.

Thank you so much for your kindness and
honesty.

Author’s Note #2—
This is
the fourth book in the Brides of the Kindred series. I recommend
that you read Claimed, Hunted, and Sought before starting
Found.

Hugs and Happy Reading to you all!

Evangeline Anderson

Lauren Jakes was bored.

Although how it was possible to be bored when
she was a hundred light years from Earth on a strange planet in a
far off galaxy where no other human had ever set foot was beyond
her. By all rights she ought to be soaking in the exotic sights and
immersing herself in the fascinating alien culture. It was
certainly better than the tiny metal cell she’d been kept in on the
Scourge Fathership.

The Scourge were a menacing alien race which
had come to Earth searching for the one female they believed could
mate with their evil overlord, the AllFather. She and she alone
would be able to revitalize their race by bearing daughters. Lauren
was that female and she had been taken and held within their
immense ship for weeks.

While she was there, however, she’d made a
connection with Xairn. The huge alien with the burning red-on-black
eyes was the AllFather’s son, but he had severed his ties with both
his father and his race in order to free Lauren and take her home.
Of course, first they had to travel through a wormhole to another
galaxy in order to get their DNA modified which, according to
Xairn, was the only way they could go back to Earth safely. Lauren
wasn’t thrilled with that but if he said it was necessary, she
believed him. So she’d been prepared for danger and adventure and
excitement…but not for boredom.

Because in order to soak up exotic sights and
immerse herself in the alien culture, she would have to leave the
small silver Kindred spaceship where Xairn had left her. And the
enormous Scourge warrior had made it very,
very
clear before
he left that she wasn’t to do that. Sighing, Lauren remembered
their conversation…

“Under no circumstances should you step foot
outside the ship,” he told her sternly as he was about to leave
himself.

“Why?” Lauren looked out the viewscreen
apprehensively. Xairn had landed them in a dark alleyway in a city
he’d said was called
O’ah
but she could catch glimpses of
the street beyond which seemed to be the site of a busy
marketplace. “Are the native people dangerous or hostile?” she
asked.

“Anyplace is dangerous if you don’t know the
language and customs,” he replied obliquely. “I’ll be back in one
of your Earth standard days. Until then, stay in the ship and speak
to no one.”

“All right,” Lauren agreed. After everything
they’d been through together on the Fathership and the Scourge home
world, she trusted Xairn implicitly to keep her safe. Still… “I
know you’re going to find the uh, DNA, guy,” she said, looking up
at him. “But I still don’t understand why I just can’t come with
you. Wouldn’t that make it easier—save you a trip? After all, you
got me some decent clothes.”

She nodded down at the voluminous robe that
reminded her of the muumuus her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Goldman,
liked to wear back on Earth. It wasn’t very pretty, and the
silver-blue material it was made of was extremely scratchy, but it
covered her from neck to ankles which was all Xairn seemed to care
about. After the cloak he’d loaned her had been ruined, Lauren
hadn’t had a thing to wear but the thin towels she’d found in the
small ship’s bathroom—a fact that had seemed to bother the large
warrior greatly. So much so that the first thing he did when they
landed in
O’ah
was to go out and buy her the silver-blue
muumuu dress.

“It wouldn’t be safe for you to come. The
splicing quarter is too rough for a female like you,” Xairn
growled.

“What do you mean ‘a female like me?’” Lauren
put a hand on her hip and frowned at him. “Do I need to remind you
that I helped when we were fighting your father’s guards? I may not
be as strong as you but I’m not stupid, Xairn. If you give me a
weapon I can take care of myself. I won’t slow you down.”

“I didn’t mean that you were stupid or weak.”
He sighed and ran a hand over the thick, glossy black hair he kept
in a club at the nape of his neck. Lauren had been dying to see his
hair let down from the moment she’d met him. With his stern, proud
features he would have looked almost Native American if not for the
strange coloring of his skin and eyes.

“What
did
you mean then?” Lauren
demanded.

“Your kind has never been seen here. You’ll
be considered very…exotic.” His red-on-black eyes flickered over
the faint outline of her body under the voluminous muumuu, making
her feel warm all over. “Many males will want you.”

Lauren was getting exasperated. “Xairn, are
you trying to say I’m too
pretty
to go with you?”

“That word does not describe you accurately.”
He looked away from her, frowning. “It doesn’t do you justice.”

Lauren found herself unexpectedly touched by
the oblique compliment. Up until a little while ago Xairn had
claimed to have no sexual urges at all toward her or anyone else.
Even now, when he had admitted to her that she had woken new and
unfamiliar emotions inside him, he still seemed hesitant and
uncertain about expressing those emotions. Lauren thought it was
because he’d never been given any love as a child—how could he
learn to show affection for anyone else when he’d never received
any himself? She was determined to work on that, to try and help
him as much as she could. But now wasn’t the time for a therapy
session.

“That’s very sweet of you, Xairn,” she said.
“But I’d still like to go with you.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand.
Your beauty makes you priceless here in
O’ah.
Any splicer
would give his left hand for a chance to replicate your flawless
skin and lovely eyes. I am only one male and there are gangs that
search for exotics. If they set on us all at once, I don’t know
that I could protect you.” He lifted his chin. “I would die trying,
of course. But that would be of little comfort to you if they
killed me and took you away to a stripping shed.”

“A
stripping
shed?” That sounded bad
to Lauren.

“A laboratory where candidates with good or
unusual DNA are rendered into their component parts for maximum
cloning potential.”

Lauren felt sick. “So they kill you and cut
you into little pieces?”

Xairn nodded. “Essentially. But that’s only
in the splicing district. Not here in the main part of
O’ah.
”

“But how do you know this…this splicer person
you’re looking for won’t want to do the same thing?” Lauren
demanded. “How do you know he won’t just kill me and strip me down
for parts like a stolen car?” She shivered at the thought.

“Because the DNA specialist I am searching
for is one I have had dealings with before. His name is Vrr and he
will not betray me.” Xairn reached out one large hand awkwardly as
though he wanted to comfort her somehow.

Lauren leaned toward him— after hearing about
the grisly things they did on this planet she needed all the
comfort she could get. “Xairn,” she whispered.

His long fingers almost brushed her cheek,
but then he drew back without touching her. His hand flexed into a
fist at his side. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,
Lauren,” he said in a low voice. “Planning it. I’ve wanted to get
away from my father almost my entire life. This is the only way to
get away from him forever—for either one of us. Only by changing
our DNA will we make it impossible for him to lock onto either of
us with the molecular transfer beam.”

Lauren shivered. “Was that the way he
kidnapped me in the first place?” She well remembered the way it
had felt to be turned into a million tiny pieces and sent flying
through the air. It was
not
a pleasant sensation at all.

Xairn nodded. “We have to alter ourselves
enough that he can never transport either of us again.”

“And you can do that?”

“The Alteration house can. I built the beam
for my father—I know exactly which sequences have to be altered in
order to make us untraceable and untransportable.”

She sighed. If Xairn really had been planning
his escape for as long as he said, then he must know what he was
doing. “All right,” she said at last. “I told you before that I
trusted you, Xairn, and I still do. But please…don’t take too
long.”

“No more than one of your Earth standard
days,” he promised, nodding. “Two at the very most.”

That had been three days ago…

Lauren frowned moodily and looked out the
front viewscreen at the busy alien marketplace. Though she didn’t
want to admit it to herself, it wasn’t boredom that was really
bothering her.

It was fear.

What if something happened to him? What if
he’s dead or hurt somewhere with no one to help him? What if he
never comes back?

She tried to push the troubling questions to
the back of her mind, but she could no longer manage it. Xairn was
gone and she was all alone on an alien planet a hundred lightyears
from home.

What was she going to do?

There was plenty of food, at least. The
Kindred ship was stocked with tiny food cubes which expanded into a
full sized meal when they were put in the rehydrator. Xairn had
showed her how to work the microwave-like machine before he left
and Lauren estimated there were hundreds of the sugar-cube sized
meals stored neatly in a cabinet at the back of the ship.

True, some of them were pretty strange—she’d
rehydrated one which contained what looked like a writhing nest of
worms. Lauren had thrown it away—she didn’t like to waste food but
there was no way she was eating anything alive. Just thinking of it
made her feel queasy. But the other meals seemed edible enough and
the portions were so large she could often eat an entire day off a
single cube—probably because they were intended for huge Kindred
warriors and not Earth females.

“So at least I won’t starve to death,” she
muttered, staring out the viewscreen some more. She wished Xairn
had parked a little closer to the entrance of the alley. The light
in
O’ah
was a dim, dusky violet which never got much
brighter than twilight on Earth. She could make out shapes in the
weak, purplish light but it was hard to tell for sure what the
alien inhabitants of the city looked like. Lauren wondered if they
were humanoid at all or something completely different—huge insects
maybe. Or amphibians or reptile-like creatures with claws or beaks
or—

“Stop it Lauren,” she told herself firmly.
“You’re just giving yourself the heebie-jeebies. So just stop right
n—”

Before she could finish the sentence
something hopped right in front of the viewscreen. Lauren let out a
startled squeak and nearly fell backwards off the black leather
seat she was sitting on. “What the—?”

There it was again. The thing hopped up,
obviously tying to get her attention on purpose. With one more hop,
it finally managed to scramble onto the nose section of the silver
Kindred ship. Then it stood up and waved its hands in the air…only
they were more like…

“Paws,” Lauren murmured to herself. She
pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart was beating like a drum
because she’d been certain at first that she was being attacked.
But now she wasn’t so sure.