Solan's Mate: A SciFi Shifter Romance (The Last Alphas of Thracos Book 1) Read online

  SOLAN’S MATE

  THE LAST ALPHAS OF THRACOS BOOK 1

  MARINA MADDIX

  AUBREY ROSE

  CONTENTS

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Meet the Authors

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  She doesn’t need his protection and he doesn’t need the distraction of her luscious curves. Except they’re both wrong…

  SIENNA

  I hate my life. So do all the other genetically inferior orphans at the Training Center. How much worse could it get than forced diets, grueling exercise and gene therapy designed to tame our curves?

  As it turns out, so much worse.

  When I discover that I’ve been sold as a sex slave, I’m horrified. When I find out that my two best friends are meant to suffer the same fate, my fear changes to anger. I’d do anything to save my ‘sisters’, even if it means facing down the most terrifying monster on this Godforsaken planet.

  SOLAN

  I love my tribe. As wolf shifters, we’re at the top of Thracos’ food chain, but if we don’t find a solution to our fertility problem, we’ll die out with a whimper instead of a roar.

  As the alpha, it’s all on me to find the answer.

  When three alien colonists crash land in our forest, I can’t help wondering if they hold the key to our survival. I also can’t help being drawn to their beautiful leader. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a mate. But Sienna’s need to protect her sisters is strong, so when it clashes with her need for me, I’m left with one burning question:

  Who will she choose?

  CHAPTER ONE

  SIENNA

  “IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times…but now it’s all over!”

  Arlynn lifted her bottle of orange juice, speaking in a voice that was only half-hushed.

  “To the three Musketeers! May we go forth and, uh…prosper and stuff.”

  “Great speech,” Natalie hissed, rolling her eyes from her post at the doorway. “Could you be any more dramatic? Or louder?”

  “Aren’t you just Miss Congeniality?”

  Arlynn hurled a snack bag of pretzels at Natalie’s head. Natalie swatted it away, and one of the other girls fell off her bunk trying to catch it. The first-year orphans burst into giggles.

  “Alright, cut it out, ladies,” I whispered as loudly as I dared, darting a glance over to the door. “Thank you for the toast, Arlynn. To us!”

  “To us!”

  “To the graduates!”

  The girls around us lifted their smuggled snacks and drinks into the air for the toast.

  What were we actually celebrating? I thought, as everyone tried to cheer quietly. The end of this chapter, but the beginning of…what?

  As though she could read my mind, Natalie leaned over to me.

  “You haven’t received your mission specs yet either, have you?”

  I shook my head and popped a yogurt-covered raisin into my mouth, chewing it absently. We’d spent the past month hoarding the extra snacks away from the guards’ watchful eyes, but now that the time had come to leave, I found I wasn’t hungry.

  “Nope. I wonder when they’ll give it to us. Aren’t you anxious to find out?”

  “I’ll be sent to a research station,” Natalie said confidently, leaning against the doorframe. Her long blonde hair flipped over her shoulder as she turned to check the hallway again. “That much is obvious.”

  “Yeah, but where?”

  She shrugged.

  “Doesn’t matter. A research lab is a research lab, no matter which planet. The only difference will be the gravitational coefficient.”

  I stifled the urge to sigh. Natalie was practical to a fault and, even though she was right, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering about the details of my mission.

  Every orphan was sent away from the Training Center when they turned twenty-one. And while I was thrilled to be getting away from the strict diet and gene therapy regimens, I worried about what would replace them. At least I was here with people I loved. It was a prison, but it was a prison I knew.

  “Are you two talking about your missions?” Arlynn asked, bouncing up to us.

  “Shh!” Natalie hissed.

  “Sorry,” Arlynn said in a voice that was only a few notches lower. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I haven’t heard anything yet.” I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment. “What if I’m sent out of the star system? I won’t even be able to call you guys.”

  “There’s still interstellar com,” Natalie said.

  “Text coms won’t be the same. I’ll miss hearing your voice chewing me out for being irrational,” Arlynn said, slinging her arm around Natalie’s shoulders and planting a loud kiss on her cheek.

  Natalie couldn’t help but smile a bit through her scowl, her blue eyes shining with moisture she’d never admit to. “And you won’t be able to look down on me anymore.”

  Even though we were all big girls, Natalie was a head taller than either Arlynn or me…or any other orphan in the Center, for that matter. Sometimes we joked that she came from a race of Nordic giants. If she wasn’t always hunched over a lab table, she would easily be taller than most of the guards as well. Maybe that was why she hunched.

  “I think I’m going to be sent on a secret seductive spy mission on one of the moons,” Arlynn continued. “Tooibas, probably.”

  “Is that what your tea leaves told you?” Natalie teased.

  “Maybe. Maybe I’ll find my parents there.”

  The room quieted down as a few of the girls overheard what we were talking about. As abandoned gene-rejects, we were all given the title of ‘orphan’ when we arrived at the Training Center. It wasn’t that our parents had died, though — it was that they had rejected us completely. Handed us over to the state for gene reconditioning, diet, and physical modification. Given us up for good.

  But Arlynn always insisted that there must have been another reason. Out of all of us, she was the only one who talked about her family like they were still out there, waiting for her.

  “Who wants to find their parents?” Natalie huffed.

  “I do.”

  “Then maybe you will,” I said, trying to smooth things over. I didn’t want our last night here to end in an argument. “I hope we all get the mission we want.”

  “Sienna, what about you?” Natalie asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Has Hank told you anything about where you’ll be sent?”

  “No! Why would he tell me anything?”

  My heart skipped a beat. I was glad for the topic change, but I wasn’t happy about the direction it had taken.

  “Because he totally secretly loves you,” Arlynn said, tilting her head and studying me with her piercing dark brown gaze. Her red-purple hair fell over her cheek.

  “He does not!”

  “I think he
’s attracted to you,” Natalie said. “Even though he’s not supposed to like our kind.”

  “Hush!” Blood rose hot to my cheeks. “I can’t believe you’re taking her side on this.”

  “Well, if you weren’t—”

  I didn’t get to hear the rest of Natalie’s sentence. Heavy footsteps rang down the steel hallway.

  “Hide everything,” Natalie hissed into the room.

  Everyone stuffed their snacks under the mattresses, in their pockets, wherever there was a hiding space. But we weren’t fast enough. As the guard stepped through the door, one of the younger girls spilled her package of dried carbo-nutes. Raylen gasped as the small spheres scattered everywhere on the floor.

  “What’s this?” the guard snarled. The others averted their eyes as he towered over Raylen.

  “It was my fault,” I said, stepping forward. “They’re my nutes. I saved an extra package, and I asked her if she wanted some.”

  “Shut up,” the guard said, shoving me aside and pulling Raylen up from the bunk by the front of her gray jumpsuit. “You. Come with me.”

  “But—”

  “Enough from you, orphan,” the guard said, shooting me a glare. “You know the rules. No extra snacks. No hoarding. No sharing. Especially not with this one. She’s fat enough as it is.”

  Raylen cried silently, her head tilted down to the floor as tears slid down her cheeks. I tried to give her a sympathetic look, but the guard yanked her to the door.

  “Everybody back to their bunks,” he said, a sadistic smirk on his face. “Early lights out tonight and an extra cardio workout tomorrow morning before breakfast.”

  A grumble ran through the room.

  “That’s not fair,” Arlynn cried. “It’s our last night here!”

  “Shh,” Natalie hissed, tugging on Arlynn’s elbow. “Do you want to get us in trouble?”

  “But—”

  A slap rang out, and Arlynn cowered back, holding her cheek, as the guard raised his hand again.

  “Quiet, or I’ll make sure you get sent into the wilds for your mission,” the guard said. “Do you want to be gobbled up by Wargs?”

  Arlynn opened her mouth to retort, but I shook my head once and she thankfully clamped her lips shut. If there was one thing she didn’t want, it was to end up outside the colony’s walls where the giant wolf-like monsters ran rampant and feral.

  I’d never seen a Warg in person, of course, but every Terran child heard tales of them their entire lives. They were ferocious and bloodthirsty, and didn’t think twice about devouring colonists when they ventured into their territory. Nobody who wanted to survive on Thracos took a step outside the walls without being heavily armed.

  Even then, they said that Wargs’ teeth could pierce tellurium armor, and their claws could rip apart steel mesh. Our only protection was the electric wall shielding the city’s border. Natalie sometimes remarked about how easily the Wargs could invade the colony if the power went out, until she realized she was scaring the younger girls.

  Hell, she scared me with that kind of talk.

  “Everyone out,” the guard said. “Now.”

  We fell into lockstep and marched down the hallway. Raylen’s roommates glanced back uneasily as the guard dragged her off. I ached with the thought that our secret going away party had ended in punishment. She would undoubtedly spend the rest of the night in forced exercise, and that was if the guard was feeling merciful. If he was in a bad mood, he might send her for an extra round of gene therapy.

  I shuddered as I thought about the way the steel clamps held my body in place during therapy. The gene replacement serum coursing through my veins. The changes forcing themselves into my starved body.

  They could call it rehabilitation, but we all knew it was torture. Punishment for not being perfect.

  “Sienna.”

  Hank’s whisper startled me, and I nearly cried out when his hand closed around my wrist. He pulled me out of line and into a recessed doorway. Arlynn’s gaze lingered over her shoulder at us until Natalie nudged her back into step.

  “Hank?” I looked up at his chiseled, pale face. He ran one hand over his buzzed blond hair, eyeing the hallway with suspicion before turning back to me. “What is it?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, his lips suddenly came down on mine, his body pushing me back into the metal door. Surprise mixed with desire as his mouth moved insistently over mine.

  He did want me!

  I’d noticed his glances passing over my body during training sessions, the way his tongue darted out to lick his lips when my baggy, gray workout shirts rode up and exposed my curves. He wasn’t supposed to find me attractive. I was genetically inferior, after all, or so they said. But I had always wondered…

  Now he took my hand and pressed a square of cold steel into my palm.

  “It’s my key card,” he whispered, breaking off the kiss as suddenly as he started it. “Come by after lights out. I’ll leave your door unlocked.”

  “Wh-why?”

  “I thought you might want to go out in style.” His lips curved into a smile, a sight so rare that it made my heart nearly burst with hope. “I’ll give you something to remember me by.”

  “Are you serious?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered. “Just come by as soon as you can. You want it, right?”

  “I, uh, sure. I mean, yes,” I sputtered. “Yes!”

  “Good. I can’t wait to take you for my own.”

  His smile disappeared and he checked the hallway again. Another guard had just turned the corner, his boot heels clacking against the metal floor.

  “Now get back to your quarters!” Hank yelled so fiercely that I almost believed it. But the metal key card in my hand was proof otherwise.

  Take me for his own. His own. He wanted me.

  Someone wanted me!

  I walked down the hallway with my head bowed, trying not to squeal with anticipation as I passed the other guard. Tomorrow I would be released from the Training Center, on my way to freedom.

  But tonight…

  A frisson of desire shivered my nerves. Tonight would set me free in a totally different way.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SOLAN

  “MAY the union of Urdrum and Yara bring generations of joy, love and, above all else, female offspring.”

  The crowd that had gathered in our forest’s ceremonial clearing murmured the usual appeal to our ancestors for girl babies to be born to our tribe. I couldn’t bring myself to utter the prayer again.

  They never granted our requests, no matter how often we called upon them for help. They weren’t listening. They’d abandoned us.

  A few of my tribesmen glanced in my direction, noting my silence. They probably wondered what their alpha knew that they didn’t. The last thing I wanted to do was take away their hope, so I lowered my head and whispered the prayer, the words bitter on my lips.

  “Grant us the gift of girls, oh elders of the Warg.”

  “Urdrum, your duty is to protect and be of service to your mate, Yara,” our tribe’s shaman, Binkor, droned on.

  A hard black ball settled in my stomach at the giddy grins plastered on the couple’s faces. They were so happy, and why shouldn’t they be? They’d found their fated mates, a rarity these days. “Yara, your duty…”

  I sensed Chorn’s approach a heartbeat before he sidled up next to me. My most trusted advisor had a knack for stealth, if not subtlety.

  “I still don’t understand why you didn’t claim her, Solan. She’s the most beautiful female we have left in the tribe, and as alpha you would have been well within your rights to take her as your mate.”

  “She wasn’t mine to claim, Chorn, you know that. Urdrum and Yara are fateds. Nothing can break that bond, and what kind of leader would I be if I tried?”

  Chorn placed a hand on my shoulder, a hard glint in his amber eyes. “Some are wondering that already, Solan.”

  That black pit in m
y stomach grew tenfold. It wasn’t lost on me that some in my tribe questioned my ability to lead. There would always be that element in any group, but lately the rumblings and whispers had grown louder.

  “What do you expect me to do about it, Chorn? Take a friend’s fated mate from him and live my entire life knowing her heart and soul belong to someone else?”

  “You’re a good man, Solan, but there aren’t many unmated females left in our tribe, if you haven’t noticed. An alpha your age should have a litter of whelps running around wreaking havoc, with more on the way.”

  I couldn’t stop a humorless chuff. “All male, no doubt. That’s the last thing we need.”

  “You don’t know that. Jorek’s getting closer to discovering the cause of our…drought.”

  “Not fast enough. If he doesn’t hurry up, it’ll be too late for us.”

  The fate of our tribe rested on figuring out why our female population had dwindled over the last few generations. As the alpha, I carried the weight of that responsibility. Everyone expected me to pull the solution out of thin air.

  “Any progress?” I finally asked.

  Chorn shook his head full of shaggy brown hair, as frustrated as we all were.

  “Really close, but he’s hit a wall. There’s some missing element that he can’t identify. He’s certain that’s the source of the problem, but it’s like trying to find a grain of reet on the forest floor in the pitch black. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, so how can he find it?”

  “Damn it!”

  Several ceremony guests shot dirty glances in my direction. When they saw it was me who cursed, they quickly turned away, but not before I noticed two or three rolling their eyes. Chorn saw it, too. He caught my eye again, his expression softening.

  Was that pity?

  “See? You need to do something, Solan. You need to take a mate and prove your dominance.”

  Anger bubbled up inside me. I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, and I certainly didn’t need a beta telling me I did. My closest friend or not, he needed to remember his place.

  Drawing my Warg out of my darkest depths — only a little — a low growl started in my chest. A quiet warning to my second that he was dangerously close to stepping over the line. Chorn snatched his hand from my shoulder and stood straighter, at attention.