Wray
By M.K. Eidem
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my family for all their support during this exciting time of my life. I couldn’t have done it without you. I’d also like to thank all my friends that have been there for me, answering questions and helping guide me, Judy, Susan, Sally, Julie, Reece, Fern, Beth and Narelle. Thanks ladies!
Science Fiction Romance
Wray: Tornians Series
M.K. Eidem
Copyright © 2014 by Michelle K. Eidem
First E-Book Publication August 2014
Smashwords Edition
Cover Design by Judy Bullard
All rights reserved: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission
All characters, places and events in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events, locale, or organizations is strictly coincidental.
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Synopsis
Emperor Wray Vasteri was the ruler of the Tornian Empire. His House has ruled the Empire ever since the great infection, which struck over five hundred years ago and he feared he would be the last. The number of compatible females was dwindling faster than anyone knew. If they could not find compatible females soon, their entire civilization would cease to exist. It was the reason he agreed to meet with Liron, the Emperor of the Kaliszian Empire in Kaliszian space. It was the only reason they had crossed paths with a Ganglian ship leaving Tornian space, and it was the only reason that the small female was discovered. Could she be what they had been searching for?
Wray found himself drawn to the small female he’d found beaten and abused on the Ganglian ship. She resembled a Tornian female, but was much smaller. Could she be what he had been searching for?
Kim Teel has had a hard life, at least she thought she had, until her parents were suddenly killed and then her sister and brother in law disappeared. At nineteen, she realized she’d been protected from all of life’s hardships. She had been cared for and loved her entire life had come to expect it. She was terribly spoiled. Determined to change her ways, Kim went looking for her sister, only to be captured by the Ganglians and it was then she learned what happened to the ‘unprotected’ females of the universe.
Wray and Kim are both doing the same thing, trying to survive. But what they find is that there are more important things than just survival. And once they learn that, the universe changes forever.
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
Additional Books
Prologue
The Tornian sun shone down brightly, nurturing the lush gardens of House Torino. A gentle breeze blew, carrying the fragrance of freshly blooming flowers with it. Birds circled and sang to the females on the patio.
Kim noticed none of it; her attention captured by her daughter nursing at her breast. It had been nearly three months since she presented Destiny and Kim was still in awe that this precious creature had come from her.
‘She is so beautiful.’ Kim thought, running her knuckle along the soft skin of Destiny’s chubby cheek. She’d inherited her manno’s beautiful bronze skin along with his thick black hair. Only when the sun struck it, were the red highlights she had inherited from her mother, seen.
Destiny was pure Vasteri… until she opened her eyes and gazed up at her mother with Kim’s own eyes. Wray had been ecstatic when her eyes changed from the Vasteri gray she had at her presentation to Kim’s green eyes.
At first, Kim had been worried that Wray would be upset, but she should have known better. Already Wray’s tiny daughter had the Emperor of all the Civilized Universes wrapped around her tiny finger. When she smiled at her manno, his chest would puff up twice its normal size but when she cried... he would turn panicked eyes to Kim and call for the Healer.
Every male that came into contact with her reacted the same way, not that Wray ever allowed many near his daughter. Already he was the overprotective manno, and Kim couldn’t imagine what it would be like when Destiny became a teenager.
Smiling softly down at her daughter, Kim let her thoughts drift back to when she had been a teenager… to how her life had changed.
Chapter One
Kim lay still on the cold floor of the cabinet where stinky bastard had stuffed her, the inky blackness pressing against her. How had her life come to this? Sure, she had done some stupid things in her life, been rotten to her older sister, hadn't appreciated her parents until they were gone but really, did that mean she deserved this? With the numbing cold seeping deep into her bones, she was ready to give up and thought back over her short life.
She had been a typical kid, demanding, selfish, taking for granted all those things her parents had provided. The car, the cell phone, the bed, the food, the warmth. Oh God! What she wouldn't give to be warm just one more time.
A drunk driver, on a perfect summer day, had taken it all away. Her parents had died, and he had walked away without a scratch. Sixteen and an orphan. Her older sister Jennifer had tried to fill in but Kim would have none of it. Jennifer had always been the good daughter, the perfect child.
"Why can't you be more like Jennifer?" Her mother would say.
"Jennifer would never have done that." Her dad would tell her.
Not that she had ever been neglected or abused. Oh, she thought she had, when they had taken away her cell phone or not given her gas money. She knew better now; actually, she had known it for quite a while, but it had taken this to really drive the point home.
The courts had forced her to stay with Jennifer and her husband, Todd until she turned eighteen, and she made life hell for all of them. So on her eighteenth birthday Kim let out all her anger and pain, spewing such hurtful words at her sister that even here, in this place, even with everything that had happened to her, it shamed her.
It had taken her nearly six months of living on her own, of believing she was an adult, to finally realize that she really was that spoiled rotten, selfish brat her brother-in-law had called her. She wasn’t the only one to lose their parents. Jennifer had too, but Jen hadn’t let it break her. Instead, she had tried to help Kim.
It was on that day that Kim grew up and straightened up. Life wasn’t fair. It wasn’t easy, but i
t was only as bad as you let it be. As you believed, it was. Her mom had always told her that, she just hadn’t believed her. She still had Jennifer and Todd, and she was going to do everything in her power to make them believe she had changed.
She had rushed over to their apartment wanting to apologize, to beg their forgiveness, but it was empty. A neighbor finally told her that they had gone on some ‘weekend warriors’ wilderness retreat with a group of Todd's old college buddies and wouldn’t be back until Monday. Kim hadn’t wanted to wait that long, so she called Jen’s cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail.
Kim had apologized. She had begged Jen to call her, telling her that she loved her and didn't want to lose the only family she had left... Jennifer never called back. It wasn't until no one from the “weekend warrior” group didn’t report to work on Monday that anyone got concerned.
A massive search had been completed in the area where they were supposed to have been, but the only thing they found was Jennifer's cell phone, with Kim's voicemail still on it, unheard.
How the fuck do a dozen people go missing?
Six months later, frustrated at the lack of results, Kim had trekked up that godforsaken mountain, to the spot where they had found Jen's phone. Why anyone would voluntarily go up there, Kim had no idea. She was a city girl through and through, wild meant the zoo and roughing it meant you had to use a port-a-potty at an outdoor music festival.
The flash of fur in the trees had startled her at first. What was it? Deer? Squirrel? She hadn't had a clue. Then there had been the strange hissing-clicking sound and finally the stench. Skunk! Ewww! As she backed away slowly, the stench had only grown stronger, turning she found... Bigfoot? No, not tall enough... that was her last thought before the creature raised its hairy fist and knocked her out.
Kim had woken up in a cold, dimly light room and had no clue where she was. When the door opened and the same hairy thing entered, she hadn't known what it wanted, couldn’t understand what it was hissing at her. She had found out quickly enough, though, when it had thrown her to the metal floor, used its claws to shred her clothes and proceeded to rape her.
She’d fought, oh God, how she had fought, but those stupid kickboxing/dancing/exercising videos hadn't done her any good. It only pissed the hissing bastard off when she finally managed to hit him in the nose. He had dug his claws in deeper then and seemed to smile when she screamed in pain.
Stinky bastard had continued to hurt her. He raped her so many times she’d lost count, sometimes he would let other hairy aliens watch, but they were never allowed to touch. One tried once, and stinky bastard gutted him in front of her.
It hadn’t taken her long to realize she was on some kind of an alien ship and that now she really was alone. No one on Earth was going to look for her. No one there was even going to care what happened to her. Her body was black, blue and bloody, and it couldn’t take anymore. It was time to give up.
Growls suddenly covered the hissing-clicking that had been growing louder and caught her attention for a moment. Growls, now that was something new. It reminded her of her dog, Warrior. Her parents had been promising her one for years and finally for her tenth birthday, she made them keep their promise.
They had gone to a public shelter that had recently broken up a puppy mill. It wasn’t one of the puppies that had captured her heart though. It had been the massive dog, hidden in the back, caged all by itself.
He was discovered at the same mill, and no one had known what to do with him. It seemed that the owners had been breeding fight dogs along with the Shih Tzu’s, and they’d been using Warrior to sire them. Warrior had been a hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle covered with dark fur, his growl was vicious and he had a mouth full of sharp teeth. Everyone had been terrified of him, everyone but Kim. Maybe it was because she had never been harmed in her life, maybe it was because of her age, but for some reason she just knew he would never hurt her. Before anyone could stop her, she had opened his cage, stepped inside and sat down, waiting for him to come to her.
The workers and her parents had gone crazy. They’d been sure he would attack and kill her. Instead, he'd growled and snarled at her, snapping his teeth. He would take two steps towards her then quickly backed away, his massive body quivering. When she'd held out her hand, he'd flinch, as if he expected her to strike him, when she hadn’t, he moved a little closer, sniffing her hand.
Kim had just looked into his dark gray eyes and seen the truth. He was scared. This massive dog was scared of her, scared that she would hurt him. She'd promised him then and there that he would be safe with her. Promised that he would never be hurt again. He'd licked her hand in response. When she'd petted him, he'd rolled onto his back, silently begging her to scratch his belly and that’s when she realized that was all he wanted... for someone to care for him, to see him, to love him, and Kim had.
Her parents had been at a loss at what to do. Warrior wasn’t the dog they had planned on. He was... well... huge but they couldn’t argue with what they had seen, for some reason Kim was supposed to have this dog. Kim hadn’t realized until just now how much her parents must have loved her to allow her to bring Warrior home.
For the next four years, Warrior never left her side. He slept in her bed. He laid on her feet at the dinner table and sat on the front steps, every day, rain or shine, waiting for her to come home from school. It was how he saved her. It was why he died.
One of the older kids in the neighborhood was showing off his new car and hadn’t seen the school bus stop sign. Warrior had jumped their fence and pushed her out of the way of a speeding car. He had died in her arms. She was the last thing he saw.
Was that Warrior she was hearing? She liked that. Her Warrior, coming to save her one last time. Blindly she reached out and weakly thumped the wall, letting him know where she was.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Wray tossed the map across his desk, and then leaned back in his chair running tired hands over his face. What a wasted trip. He had hoped that meeting with Liron, the Emperor of the Kaliszian Empire, would produce better results. The Kaliszians had been at war with the Ratak for over three years now. The Ratak were trying to claim several Kaliszian planets close to their border. Those planets were rich in mineral resources the Kaliszians desperately needed to support their civilization.
Since the great infection, many species have been on the brink of extinction, including the Tornian and Kaliszian civilizations but for different reasons. For the Kaliszians, the infection had targeted their ability to produce enough food to support their people. The majority of their food bearing plants had perished, and no transplanted vegetation would survive. Because of this, the Kaliszians were dependent on the Tornian Empire to feed their people, trading their vast supply of minerals for food.
For the Tornians it had affected their females, causing them to produce more and more males. It had been celebrated at first, for they were a warrior race, but it quickly became apparent that there was a problem. Now males outnumbered females, two hundred to one, and if breeding compatible females weren’t found soon, they would all die.
It was why he had such high hopes for this meeting. The Ratak Empire was on the far side of the Kaliszian Empire, and there were rumors that they had found a new species, one that might successfully breed with a Tornian warrior. Wray had hoped that because of the war Liron would know if these rumors were true. Liron had insinuated as much when he insisted that he and Wray met personally on matters of great importance. It was the only reason Wray had traveled this far outside his Empire.
After a great deal of hedging Liron had finally admitted he didn’t know if the rumors were true, that he had wanted to meet with Wray to discuss the difficulties he was having with Lord Reeve in maintaining a steady flow of food supplies for his people. Wray had barely controlled his rage at Liron’s deception, even though he understood it. He had wanted to gain Wray’s attention without alerting Lord Reeve.
Well, he had it and soo
n Lord Reeve would too. Wray would personally let Reeve know his displeasure at his handling of the Kaliszians. A steady supply of food was vital for both Empires, for without it, the Kaliszians would suffer and in return, they would stop the shipments of the power crystals the Tornians needed along with the jewels their females demanded.
The ringing of his comm pulled Wray from his dark thoughts.
“Yes?” He demanded.
“Sire, we’ve detected a Ganglian freighter leaving Tornian space.”
“Are we still in Kaliszian space?”
“Just barely.”
“Intercept, Captain.” Wray ordered and headed for the command center.
“Yes, sire.”
Wray hated the Ganglians. They had become a vicious species with no loyalty or honor. They lived off the pain of others. They thrived on it. They would capture smaller, weaker species, enslave and torture them. The males that survived were sold to work in the mines and the females… well the few that survived were sold to pleasure houses or private collectors.
It enraged Wray the way they mistreated females. Females were the most valuable resource in all the known universes. Even if they couldn’t save his race, they might be able to save another, for more than just the Tornians were looking for compatible females.
“Sire, they are refusing to stop, stating we have no authority.”
“Show them our ‘authority,' Captain.” Wray ordered striding into the command room.
“With pleasure, Majesty.” Captain Veron grinned at his Emperor. He was always ready for a good fight, not that the Ganglians would give them one. They were cowards.
Targeting the Ganglians engines, Veron sent off a shot and watched the freighter shudder before coming to a stop. “Authority shown, sire. Life support intact. We are preparing a shuttle for boarding.”