Stranded, hunted, and unsure who to trust. A sci-fi romance where survival means choosing your enemies—wisely. Book 2 in the Spark Series.

Who do you trust, your friends or your enemies?

When Xera is stranded on a desert planet with a hostile crew and a cadre of murdering aliens, her friends aren’t who she thinks they are. As the translator, she’s the only one who can forge a truce. As the only woman, she’s the prize they lust for, and when her captain turns on her, she’s going to need the help of her enemies to escape his wrath.

Because on this inhospitable world, the warlike Scorpio are her only chance. Looking into the fiery eyes of their handsome leader, Xera saw raw heat; a reaction she knew her fellow humans would despise. A future with Commander Ryven was…something to consider. But first they had to survive.

A hot, but not explicit, space romance novel.

Readers are saying:

“Romeo and Juliet love story in outer space.”
“This book was so much more than expected!”
“Starts off with a bang and keeps on going. A lot of edge of your seat action. The female lead is was no shrinking violet and her prince is an action hero.”
“This was the perfect mix of action & adventure. The heroine was absolutely kick-ass!”
“The world building was great & the science was believable.” 
“Excellent read! Kept me hooked. Very well written.” 
“5 out of 5 stars. Awesome story! Couldn't stop reading!”
“Love the character detail and politic undertones. Have already purchased the next one!” 
“Exceptional!

 

✨Read a Sample now:

 

CHAPTER 1

“Looks like they want to talk.”

Xera’s gaze followed the engineer’s to the cadre of silent aliens. The shifting tones of their black and gray uniforms made them hard to focus on, almost as if the cloth itself repelled the eye. She didn’t see any wounded among them, but they’d probably left their injured aboard ship.

She wiped at some ooze above her left eye, smiling grimly as her black and tan uniform sleeve came away smudged with blood. Two ships had crash landed on this planet, crippled from the battle they’d just fought, but Xera’s craft had done more crash than land. Her crew’s casualties were heavy, and they were down to less than twenty able-bodied personnel. She counted sixteen men in the enemy group.

“Why don’t they do something? They’re just standing there,” the engineer, Cort, muttered. Stocky, more comfortable with machines than men, he gazed at the aliens with distrust.

The captain of Xera’s group said nothing, just stood there in a sweat. She knew better than to mistake the fierce frown on his face for courage under fire. The man was a coward.

“Captain Khan? Do you want to talk to them?” Cort persisted.

Captain Khan’s bulldog face contorted with rage. Vietnamese, with a round head and meaty body, he’d clearly worked his way to the top by intimidation and bluff. It certainly hadn’t been because of his massive intelligence. “Shut your mouth, Cort! I’m still captain here.” He looked back at the aliens for a long moment then gestured to one of his officers. “Genson. Go see what they want.”

Genson gave him a wild look. “Sir, perhaps the translator…”

Xera, the translator, braced herself.

Captain Khan sent her a scathing look. The two of them had butted heads often enough that he didn’t trust her to slide under his thumb on command. Those he couldn’t dominate, he pushed to the side as useless. “You’re an officer; they’ll recognize that. Get moving.”

Xera looked away to hide her disgust. Genson didn’t know a word of Scorpio, which she had been learning for the past two years since graduating from the academy. Whenever the Galactic Explorers uploaded new findings on the language and customs of the race known as Scorpio, she’d been on top of it. So little was known about the alien race, and she’d been fascinated. Unfortunately, the GE didn’t share her curiosity; or at least not her professional reasons for it. It hadn’t taken long for Xera to realize her employer was a planet-hungry entity bent first and foremost on keeping the worlds it discovered under its control. In the Scorpio, they’d found a powerful race intent on maintaining their liberty and the privacy of their territory.

The humans had named the Scorpio for their home planet’s position in the sky, in the belly of the human constellation of the same name, but also because of the alien race’s stinging reprisals. Scorpio were known to shoot first and not bother with questions. Everything known of Scorpio language and customs had been decoded from damaged ships and survivors of small clashes. The fates of these captured prisoners rarely came up, though the GE maintained that they were traded back to their people in return for certain concessions. The two groups weren’t involved in a full-scale war yet, thanks to the Interplanetary Council’s diplomatic intervention, but this little skirmish might change all that.

Not that the IC had much control over the GE’s actions, no matter their official position as peacekeepers. Officially a forum for government representatives from different planets to work toward peace and harmony, it lacked the funds and support to accomplish much. The governments and cultures involved rarely agreed on anything for long, which made it ineffectual in controlling conglomerates like the GE.

Genson walked reluctantly across the dun sand, probably swearing to himself with every step. He halted about two paces from the leader and spoke. The leader shot him.

Xera’s group jumped and pointed their guns at the aliens, who looked back at them with arrogant unconcern. A few bursts of gunfire bounced harmlessly off some unseen force field. The Scorpios made no move to return fire.

“Hold! Hold!” Captain Khan shouted, waving his hands. “We don’t want to provoke them.”

“But sir!” someone protested.

“I said hold it! Let me think.” His thoughts must have been rapid, and full of self-preservation, for he turned to Xera. “You. You’re the translator...you go talk to them.”

She looked at him for a moment. Voicing the thoughts in her head would get her thrown in the still-smoking brig. This wasn’t the first time he’d queered a deal then sent her in as translator to try and salvage it. Unable to quell a trace of mockery, she asked, “Any special messages for them, sir?”

Khan’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t screw this up, Harris-d, or I will bust you down to kitchen help. Find out what they want.”

“Yes, sir!” She gave him a jaunty salute and strode toward the alien line with her usual high energy. Fully expecting to die, she figured she might as well look good doing it.

As she got closer, though, her stride slowed in surprise. She hadn’t expected the leader to look so, well....

He was tall, his black hair cut close with military precision One of his ears was pierced with a golden starburst, and there was a hands-free communication set around his ear. This close, his uniform ceased shifting colors and remained dull, gray-black combat attire.

Coldly handsome, he had a strong face, a piercing expression. His eyes were what threw her, though. Three paces away from him, she could see his irises were flame orange, tinged with gold at the edges.

Brimstone eyes.

Genson’s body was in her way. She spared him a brief look, enough to see that he was very dead, then stepped around him, refusing to talk over his body. Since that brought her face to face with the man at the leader’s left, she raised her brows inquiringly and glanced between them.

The leader finally growled in the Scorpio tongue, “Why do you look at my second? I am the leader here.”

She adopted a polite expression and answered him in his language. “I don’t know your customs. It seems you kill those who speak to you first.” She contained a flash of rage at Genson’s death. Of course, her captain was as much to blame as this man. If he’d followed protocol and sent her in first, this might not have happened.

“I will not speak to an underling. Bring your captain back or don’t come at all.”

She inclined her head, then bent her knees and grabbed Genson’s wrists. He outweighed her by fifty pounds at least and was dead weight besides, but she managed to drag him twenty feet before some of the guys from her side broke ranks and ran to help. She would have liked to drop him right at Captain Khan’s feet, but knew she’d have to settle for letting the men help. By the look on Khan’s face as she walked up, she’d made her point anyway.

“Sir,” she drawled, adopting her mildest expression. “He won’t speak to underlings.”

Her captain’s face turned red. “He spoke to you!”

She shrugged. “That is what he said.” She could almost see Khan’s mind work: Stuck on a barren planet, half his crew dead, finite supplies and no way of knowing when or if they’d be rescued… They knew nothing about this place, except that the GEHQ wanted it. If the aliens were willing to make some kind of alliance, they needed to accept.

He stared at the Scorpio. “You’ll need to translate.”

At last, a sensible command. After all, she didn’t want to die, either. “Yes, sir!”

They crossed the sand halfway, then stood and waited. The alien leader and his second approached.

The leader glared at Khan. “What is your name and rank?”

Xera translated, then waited. Khan surprised her with a nudge when she didn’t volunteer the information in return. The word for captain escaped her, so she said haltingly, “He’s the leader of those in our ship, Captain Khan. My name is Lieutenant Xera Harris-d.”

“He has no other rank?”

She frowned over that, then asked her captain, “You don’t happen to be a prince or something among your own people, do you?”

Khan moved as if he’d like to hit her but thought better of it when he saw the alien leader tense. “Just ask him his name!”

She looked back at the Scorpio. “He asks your name.”

The alien didn’t look satisfied with this reply but said, “Commander Ryven Atarus, of the High Family.”

She passed this on, then spun out her captain’s curt, “What do they want?” to “Commander Atarus, you wished to speak to us?”

The Scorpio’s eyes narrowed. “This planet becomes a death trap after dark. There are nocturnal creatures here that would feed on all of us if we stay. The ships are not strong enough to safeguard anyone. The danger is great enough that we will ally with you long enough to reach shelter. If all go, some will survive.”

Captain Khan didn’t like that news. “What kind of creatures can get inside a closed ship? Solid steel should keep them out.”

“We need to seek shelter anyway, sir. If there is water where…”

“Your job is to translate,” Khan snarled at her. “Do it!”

Xera sighed and faced Atarus. “What kind of animals can get inside a sealed ship?”

The commander’s eyes traveled to their damaged spacecraft. “What’s left of that will not keep them out.”

She rather liked his tweaking Khan’s tail, but she needed an answer that would move her captain, so she guessed, “Small winged creatures, and very large animals...I’m not sure how to translate.”

Now Khan looked worried.

“We must leave now. If you are coming, come. If not, stay and die.” Commander Atarus walked away.