Dark Side Of The Moon (BBW Paranormal Were-Bear Shifter Sci-Fi Romance) (11 page)

“Did
you...am I...” Her voice was thick, the words sticking in her throat.
“Drugged?”

His
brows came together and he stopped in the doorway. “No. You are exhausted, Max.
That is all.” He moved toward her and she shrank back, but then his expression
smoothed out, his lips curving into a smile. She wasn’t exactly reassured, but
some of her panic eased.

“No
harm will come to you, Max. I give you my promise. From now until the end of
your days, you are under my protection.” He reached out, setting one hand on
her arm. “You are my responsibility. You may not think of yourself as my
mate—yet—but I do.”

It
took a moment for her sluggish mind to take in his words, and to let them sink
in. A stubborn part of her refused to trust him, trust what he said, yet a
bigger part of her wanted to believe him, needed to believe him, if she was
going to maintain her sanity. If she was going to survive in this strange, new
world.

Nodding,
she held out his hand. He hesitated, and then took her hand. They stepped
through the doorway, and he led her down a short hall and through another
doorway. This room held a cot with blankets. She stumbled past Taso,
practically falling onto the bed. It was hard, the blanket scratchy, but at the
moment it was heaven. Taso said something, but his words were lost to her as
she was swept away into a deep sleep.

She
came awake suddenly, completely. And for a blinding moment she had no idea
where she was. Then it all came back, just as suddenly: Taso...the crash of the
first ship...being taken from the lobby of the modeling agency. And now she was
on Taso’s personal ship—she really couldn’t think of it as a space ship, no
matter how hard she tried. They had crashed before. Maybe they were crashing
again.

The
door opened as she was trying to get her stiffened limbs to cooperate enough to
stand. Taso stuck his head around the corner. Expecting the worst, she was
surprised to see him smiling.

“We
are home.” He extended his hand. “My home. And I hope you will think of it as
yours someday.”

She
let him pull her up, her legs full of pins and needles. “How long was I
asleep?”

“The
better part of the journey...eighteen hours or more.”

“You’re
kidding? And you swear you didn’t drug me with that food?”

His
brow furrowed, but he still kept the smile on his face, even if it faded a
little. “I did not. It was exhaustion and the aftereffects of the drugs the
mercenaries gave you. They needed to use more than they have in the past.
Apparently...” His smile widened again. “You fought them quite hard.”

Shaking
her legs, she followed him into the narrow hall. “What did you expect? Some
strange men grab me, I’m going to put up a fight. It happens all the time in
New York. But it’s never been aliens before.”

They
went down the narrow hall toward what looked like a hatch on an airplane. It
whooshed open, admitting a wash of gray light. Even though it was dim, she
blinked, realizing how dark it was in the cabin, the hallway. Taso stepped out
through the opening, and her steps faltered. She hadn’t thought much about what
this would be like, stepping out into his world. He looked human; would his
world look like Earth?

Tentatively,
she ducked through the opening, focusing on the short set of metal steps that
led to hard-packed dirt, shieling her eyes with her hand. The air was warm and
dry, not unpleasant. Once her feet hit the ground, she looked up.

The
ship seemed to be sitting on the top of a high area of ground. Maybe it was the
equivalent of a heli-pad on top of a New York skyscraper. Gray clouds hovered
low, obscuring whatever sky was overhead. In the distance she saw trees,
something that looked like pines, conical, deep green, but with strange,
branching tips. Yet there was something else odd about them, but before she
could quite put her finger on it, Taso took her by the elbow.

“Come.
This way.”

He
led her toward the edge of the hard-packed area, to what looked like the edge
of a cliff. He stopped, turning to her.

“This...”
With a flourish he pointed to what was below. “This is my province.”

Spread
out below them was a city, clusters of buildings of all sizes, streets winding
through in complex patterns. She could see people walking, tiny spots of dark
movements on the gray streets. For a moment, she wondered if they were bears,
or people. Or both.

The
entire thing was surrounded by a wall that stretched as far as she could see in
each direction, those parapets he’d mentioned spaced evenly on the wall. The
whole city, the wall, everything held such a brutal, primal beauty. She wanted
to find a place and time, an age, a label that would help her mind get a grip
on what she was looking at. Medieval England set inside the Great Wall of
China. Some of the dissonance in her mind calmed down, but when she looked off
to the distance, it hit her: what was off about the trees. They were too tall. They
had to be thousands of feet tall, and what? Miles away? It took her breath
away, that realization. And completely blew her mind.

“What
do you think?” Taso tugged her elbow. “Tell me...”

“I
don’t have any words yet. I’m still trying to take it all in.” She was still
looking at the trees, trying to comprehend how something so familiar could be
so vastly different from what she knew.

“That
is where we are going.”

She
dragged her eyes away from the distant trees to where he pointed.

“Oh...”
The building was somewhere between a fairy tale castle and a fortress. There
were tall thin towers and turrets, all in pale stone that caught what little
light there was, making it look like the stone held light in its depths.

But
below the ivory stone was dark gray rock, the buildings thick and square,
topped by walls that must have been yards wide. The whole thing dwarfed the
rest of the city, casting a huge shadow over much of what lay below it.

“How...how
do we get down there?” From here she couldn’t see any way down from the sheer
cliff. Just looking down gave her vertigo and she took a step back from the
unguarded edge. But it was mesmerizing, beyond fantasy.

“There
is a passage...this way.” He took her hand, but she couldn’t t turn away from
the edge. Behind them, she could hear a few men moving, the Clank of metal. But
her eyes were still fixed on the building below them. “What do you think?”

“I
can say I’ve never seen anything like it before. Even in New York...”

“You
will have to tell me about your city. But we should go. I feel exposed up here.
Even though we have guards.”

“Right.
Okay.” With one last look she let him lead her away from the edge. Behind the
ship was a wall, carved out of the rock, with a metal door that looked like it
had been attacked more than once. A guard stood to the side, bowing his head
slightly as they approached. He tugged the door, and it opened with a screech
of unoiled hinges. She winced.

“No
chance of anyone sneaking in with that sound, right?”

Taso
glanced down at her, smiled. “One way of looking at it. Or we just don’t notice
any longer.”

The
passage behind the door was pitch black, but someone lit what looked like a
flashlight. At least the beam of white light it gave looked like a flashlight.
She thought bears had fairly bad eyesight, but maybe here it was different,
that they could see in the dark, as humans and as bears. Or maybe everyone on
this planet could see in the dark, and it was just her eyesight that was bad.

“Watch
your step.”

The
passage was really no more than a landing, and the light in front of her dipped
down suddenly, almost disappearing. Taso still held her hand, and she gripped
him tightly, disoriented in the darkness. She tugged him into stopping.

“You
don’t have a light I could have? I’m lost here.”

“Bensi,
give that here.”

A
small metal box appeared in front of her. She gripped the handle with her free
hand. The box hummed slightly, giving off a slight warmth, but the light was
clear and even, and she could see the stone steps heading down to a landing,
then disappearing around a corner. They looked like they were carved out of
living rock, the sides and ceiling and walls made of the same material.

Taso
let her go ahead of him, with a guard several steps below. She walked
carefully, feeling her way as much as seeing it. There were no handrails, and
she still felt a little clumsy and stiff.

They
seemed to go down forever. The landing she could see turned out to be the first
of many. The air around her gradually cooled, grew damp, until her hands and
nose got cold. She lifted the light, amazed she could see her breath. It
startled her that she didn’t feel the cold on her body. The clothes, the armor,
must have some kind of insulating ability. She was just as comfortable here as
she’d been on the scorching planet with the alien, or on the ship, or outside.

“Here...”

She
looked up, startled. There was another door, smaller, set in the stone. It
opened quietly, and she decided it probably didn’t matter if the one way back
at the top of the stairs screeched. No one would hear it down here.

This
door had a lock and the guard—Bensi, she thought—knocked. It seemed archaic,
for a society that had developed space travel. There were noises on the other
side, then the sound of metal on metal, and the door swung open. If nothing
else, she’d learned this was a world of Clanking metal.

She
was ushered through the door into a room that she instantly recognized: a
locker room. There were men in various stages of undress and for a horrified moment
she wondered if, when they weren’t wearing armor, they were always naked. Would
she have to either wear armor or be naked as well? A few men—most, in
fact—looked at her with lingering gazes, a few with smiling.

But
then she looked past the half-dressed men and saw that some were wearing what
looked like regular clothes, tunics and pants that looked like cotton, soft
grays and blues, a few in dark charcoal black. There were only men, and she
turned to Taso.

“Are
there no women?”

“Not
here. This is a barracks, unmated males only. Women have a separate barracks.”

“Ah,
that explains the stares.”

He
nodded. The lingering gazes had turned into full-on stares. For a moment she
was back in Gus’s gym, irritation on the way to anger filling her, waiting for
one of them to nudge the guy next to him, make some half-whispered remark, and
then challenge her to a fight of some kind. She swallowed hard, but didn’t look
away.

He
shot her a side-long glance, with a hint of a smile. “You’d get the same
reaction in the female barracks.”

She
stared back at him.

“They
know perfection when they see it, both genders.” He leaned close, his lips by
her ear. “And they are jealous of me. All of them. Because you are with me.”

“You’re
kidding, right? Perfection...” He had to be joking. She turned to look up at
him. He looked inordinately pleased with himself, not the least bit upset that
other men were staring at his mate. He didn’t look like he wanted to punch them
for ogling her, or put a protective arm around her, claiming her as his.
Whatever her relationship was to him, it was clear to everyone there.  And
it was clear to her that he was very secure in however he felt toward her.

“Perfection.
Come...I want to show you your rooms...
our rooms
.” The last words were
whispered in her ear. She flushed hot for a moment, then turned away from the
men in the room, half expecting to hear more whispers and laughter as she
walked away. But there was none. They went back to doing whatever they had
been. She walked out in stunned silence.

Taso
was saying something, but she wasn’t paying attention. He turned back, and she
almost ran into him.

“What
is wrong? You look...we have a word, but I don’t know your word for it. It
means your world is no longer steady under your feet.”

“The
phrase turned upside down would work.” She tried to ease the expression on her
face,, out of stunned shock into something normal. Since they’d landed, her
forehead had been creased with wonder and confusion and bewilderment. It was
getting to the point where her face hurt.

“What
has turned your world upside down?” They were in a wider hallway, and he fell
in step beside her. “I realize this is all new, all different. Is there one
thing above others?”

“I’m
not sure you’d understand. It has to do with...” She tapped her chest and then
her head. “It has to do more with me than it does with your world. How I
think...how I see...” She shook her head. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“I
had a way of thinking about myself, how I saw myself in my world. And most of
that, it seems, was how I looked. How I looked to men, other women...” Her
words trailed off. How to explain ego to an alien? There was no way to do that.

“I
mean, I’ve always been happy with the way I look… at least since I became an
adult and learned not to care so much about how others looked at me. I like my
curves, my muscles. I love being a strong woman. But men…we talked about this.
They don’t know how to deal with me. Like you said, I think I do scare them somehow.
They were attracted to me, I guess… but didn’t know how to approach me, maybe.”

Taso
walked in silence beside her, hands clasped behind his back, head down. It
struck her that maybe he was really listening, trying to understand what she
was saying.

“So
when you call me perfect...that you see perfection, that those other men in the
barracks would see that too...it just feels different.” He made a questioning
sound. “I’m not perfect, I know that, but I’m not ashamed of who I am. I just
know that I don’t fit into the mold that others believe to be the idea of
beautiful. Does that make sense?” That was followed by a non-committal sound from
Taso that could have been agreement or not.

“It’s
not just that I’m on a different planet full of alien shifters. That’s hard enough
to wrap my head around…but all tied up in that is this...
interest
you
have in me, this personal interest. It’s confusing, and overwhelming. Very
overwhelming. In ways, it’s more confusing than seeing you shift, or seeing
those big trees outside. Or even this building.”

“You
were not appreciated in your world. That will be different here, different for
you.” He said that with such finality that she had no argument to offer him.