Ari’s eyebrows rose. Out of anything she could have started with, this is what she came up with? He shrugged. “I don’t think so.” He took a second to think about it. Nope, didn’t ring any bells. “Is that where you think I’m from?”
“Hmm, not directly.” Morgan took another sip from her cup. “So, I’d better start there.” She sat back. “The planet Akurn…”
“No, no, no. Wait just a minute.” Ari held up his hand. “If you’re going to tell me a story, you’ve got to begin it the right way.”
Morgan blinked with her mouth in a perfect moue.
Damn, that was sexy. All too soon, her pouty lips turned into a slight frown.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Yeah, now, that was better. When she got all serious and stern-like, her caramel skin took on an attractive darker hue and her golden-green eyes sparkled.
“You know. All the good stories start with, ‘Once upon a time…’”
“Oh, for the love of…”
He gave her an innocent, wide-eyed stare with exaggerated blinks.
“Okay, fine.” Her luscious lips curled in a miniature smirk. “Once upon a time—“ She gave him a mock glare. When he didn’t interrupt, she continued. ”—there was this rogue planet called Akurn.”
He nodded and sat back, lacing his hands across his flat belly.
“Just so you know, a rogue planet is an interstellar object of planetary mass that isn’t gravitationally bound to any star or brown dwarf system. Akurn was such a planet. When their own sun died, they devised a way to generate enough power in their core to create its own self-sustaining eco-system. But that took an enormous amount of energy the planet couldn’t create on its own. Especially since the planetary shield took an enormous amount of precious minerals like gold to keep it running. So they roamed the galaxy, plundering any system they deemed inferior to theirs to get what they wanted. Unfortunately, most systems didn’t survive.”
“Bummer,” Ari said. “I’m surprised no one tried to stop them.” The coffee was cool enough to enjoy a hearty gulp.
“You’d think so. But I’m not sure why…” She shook her head and glared at him. “Don’t interrupt. If I have to keep answering your questions, I’ll never get through this.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she put up a palm to stop him. “Ari, I mean it. Just sit there and be quiet.”
His cock twitched. See, sexy as all get-out when she got demanding and bossy like that. He grinned, lifting his cup to salute her to continue.
“Anyway—“ She eyed him, but sat back as if to get comfortable with her narrative. ”—Akurn ended up at the edge of the galaxy in a solar system with eight planets, three of them with all the natural resources they needed.” She sighed and took a sip from her cup. “To make a long story short, they got greedy in a civil war and ended up destroying one of those planets and decimating another one. Because of the horrific onslaught they generated in the solar system, Akurn became caught in the sun’s strong gravitational pull and became a prisoner of that system in an elliptical orbit around it that takes about 3,600 years to complete.”
“Now, that generated a huge problem for the war-loving race. They were desperate to find a way to replenish their dwindling supplies to keep their shields working. So, they sent a contingency of their top scientists to the remaining viable planet to mine the gold they had to have. To help with the dangerous hard work, those scientists did some illegal experimenting on the native population with various alien DNA they’d collected to create slaves.” Her head titled and looked him in the eye. “The name of the planet is now called Earth. Any of this sound familiar?”
Ari took a moment and finished his coffee as he considered her question. Putting the empty cup on the table, he shook his head. “Afraid not. That it?” He didn’t see how any of that applied to him.
Her laugh held no humor. “Hardly.” She held her cup in both hands, tapping her forefinger on the rim as she looked off into the distance. “The scientists were successful in creating human/alien hybrids they called the Titans. They were a nasty race of creatures that were immense in size and strength, coupled with almost unlimited psychic powers.” She chuckled. “It’s funny how their story has endured in human mythology over the years, depicting them as primordial gods who embodied different aspects of the natural world, regarded as one of the first divine rulers. Which was far from the truth. They were a violent race bent on total domination of the physical and the metaphysical realms. It was pure luck the scientists subdued then froze them into stasis in a place we call Tartarus, since they were impossible to kill.”
“Nothing is impossible to kill,” Ari stated, startling himself. Where did that notion come from?
“You’d think so, but no one has found out how to kill them yet.” Morgan tapped her finger against her lips with a faraway look before continuing. She glanced at him. “Once the Titans were out of the way, those dense scientists tried again. This time they created a smaller race known as theAdamou. Instead of being out-of-control maniacs, these hybrids were intelligent beyond belief. And, unknown to those clueless Akurns, theAdamoulearned at a very early age how to hide their psychic abilities.
The one thing the scientists didn’t count on was their monarchy discovering their illegal creations. Sub-Prince Murduk vowed to destroy what he called the abominations by any means necessary.“ Morgan shrugged. “What happened next is still not clear to me why he did it, but he melted most of the ice plates of the planet and created a massive worldwide flood.”
“Well, that sounded like a cesspool of stupid. Why destroy his planet’s only hope of getting the minerals and resources they needed to survive?” Ari lifted his foot to the edge of the table and pushed with his foot to rock back and forth. It helped him think.
Morgan shrugged. “I’m sure there’s more to this story, but I’m afraid I don’t know what it is.” She sipped her coffee and grimaced, putting the cup on the table. “What I do know is that the sub-Prince didn’t kill all theAdamouand rogue scientists like he thought. One of my distant ancestors, an Akurn by the name of Rummeh, took a huge contingent of fellow Akurns and several of the humans andAdamouto a safe place, the southernmost continent called Antarctica. Deep in the ice, they created a city called Aethralis. And that’s where I’m from.”
She looked away, lost in her narrative. “Now Aethralis has one purpose, and only one. Rummeh took on the responsibility for the violent Titans and created a civilization whose primary goal is to keep watch over them so they’d never get out. Those monsters threaten not only Earth, but life as this universe knows it. Fortunately, theAdamouhe surrounded himself with were all powerful psychics. Most of the humans who came with them left Aethralis to start their own civilizations, but some remained. As of today, pretty much all of the Aethralis citizens are powerful psychics, which are needed to contain the Titans.“ She frowned. “Unfortunately, lately their stronghold has been showing signs of weakening.”
Morgan sat back and mimicked his stance by leaning back with her laced hands across her taut stomach. “Now here’s where I come in. While I am a hybrid of human and alien DNA, my psychic abilities aren’t that strong compared to others. My only claim to fame is having xenoglossy. I can hear a language and speak it immediately.” She twirled her finger. “That’s why I can talk to the Ozevroc like a native.”
Ari frowned. “That doesn’t explain how you ended up here.”
“Yeah, well.” Her cheeks flushed, but she looked him in the eye. “Here’s what happened. An alien race called Zerin contacted me by taking me to their ship while I was sleeping. There they offered to enroll me in what they called an exchange so I could leave Earth and find a mate from the thousands of humanoid races in the galaxy suffering shortages of females.”
