Exile's Adored Read online

  EXILE’S ADORED

  ALIEN MATES: PLANET EXILE

  KATE RUDOLPH

  CONTENTS

  About Exile’s Adored

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  What’s to read next: Synnr’s Saint

  Also by Kate Rudolph

  About Kate Rudolph

  ABOUT EXILE’S ADORED

  Help isn’t coming.

  When Carise wakes up on an alien planet running is her only chance at escape, even if being caught means death.

  She’d rather die than face whatever her captors plan to do to her.

  Guerran is no safe place for healing and every moment is fear. Until Jaek, a gentle giant of an alien, makes himself her protector. But when their fragile bond is tested, Carise knows she must find strength within herself to become brave enough to survive Guerran.

  This time she won’t let herself be taken. And she’s not leaving her mate behind.

  * * *

  Keep in touch!

  * * *

  Get a free bonus epilogue featuring Carise and Jaek delivered straight to your inbox by clicking this link: Sign up now!

  * * *

  Ready to give audio a try? Get a free audiobook here!

  PROLOGUE

  Seven Years Ago

  Jaek ran for all he was worth, each step putting him further away from the market and the scene of his crime. He just had to make it past the walled gardens and into the village yard and the guards would give up.

  They always had before.

  Ishyr’s stomach had rumbled all night, and the boy had choked back any tears his hunger brought on. But he was a child and he couldn’t completely hide his pain. And he shouldn’t have needed to.

  Jaek didn’t have coin for bread, but he was big and faster than he looked.

  Unfortunately, his height also marked him out. The guards knew to look for him by now, and they’d been ready the second his hands closed over the loaf of stale bread. The cry had gone up and instinct had him running before he realized they were yelling at him.

  Jaek’s heart beat madly and he couldn’t catch a full breath. Dots danced in front of his eyes, and if it weren’t for the energy of Krudare that flowed through everyone all the time, he would have already fainted.

  He had to make it to the village. The guards had to give up.

  A uniformed figure stepped in front of him and Jaek skidded to a stop, almost dropping the bread he’d stolen. Jaek looked desperately for a way around the guard, but the man was big and blocking his path. The street narrowed right here and if he turned to go backwards, he’d run into the guards who’d been chasing him.

  He was trapped.

  “Hand it over,” the guard demanded. He clutched a cudgel and patted the blunt end against his hand, a not-so-subtle threat. “Come on, boy, give it up. You’ve been caught.”

  Jaek’s shoulders slumped. If he didn’t get home, the kids would go hungry for another night. Or one of them would try and steal. That was Jaek’s job. He took the risks so his young friends didn’t have to. They’d all banded together. The streets were hard on orphans, especially the young ones.

  Jaek was twenty now, he was old enough to keep them safe.

  And old enough for the guards of Krudare to see him as a threat. This wasn’t his first time being caught.

  If they dragged him before a magistrate, he’d be exiled.

  The kids could die. They would have to fend for themselves.

  Jaek couldn’t let that happen.

  With the memory of Ishyr’s hunger pangs ringing in his head, Jaek took a deep breath and centered himself. He had to escape. He had to get back.

  “There now,” said the guard. “Come with me.”

  Jaek charged. The guard wasn’t expecting it, and he grunted as Jaek impacted with him, taking them both to the ground. Jaek might have been young, but he was big, even for a Kru’dari. He had several inches on the guard and he’d been growing muscles faster than he could alter his clothes to fit his new bulk.

  He was big, but the guard was skilled. He elbowed Jaek and kicked, sending him flying back. Jaek was lucky to roll out of it and spring back to his feet. He’d assaulted a guard. There was no getting around that. If he didn’t get away, they’d exile him for sure.

  They clashed again and Jaek let his worries fall to the side. A strange sense of calm washed over him as he fell into the violence of the encounter. Blood bloomed on the guard’s face, and it was almost a shock that Jaek’s fists had caused it.

  Another punch had the guard slumping over unconscious.

  That had been almost easy.

  Jaek wanted to throw up.

  He bent to pick up the fallen bread. He had to get away before the guard woke up. If he could run fast enough, maybe they wouldn’t find him.

  But they’d be looking for him.

  He had to leave the city.

  Thoughts whirred through his head, but Jaek couldn’t get caught up in them. The bread was a bit squished, but that didn’t matter. The kids would eat tonight.

  He turned to head toward the village, and that was his undoing. He heard a yell of warning before bright light flashed and a shot of blaster fire hit him square in the back.

  He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  1

  Present Day

  Carise Fletcher woke up.

  Unfortunately.

  She didn’t move. She didn’t open her eyes. She gave no indication to whoever was watching that anything about her state had changed. Her breathing was even, and she tried not to be relieved that the air around her was fresher than normal.

  They weren’t on the ship anymore.

  What kind of hell planet had she landed on?

  It wasn’t the first. Or even the third. Back then, she’d had some sort of hope that one day she might be rescued. But she was on the wrong side of the galaxy, so far from home that no one could ever find her.

  Kenzie.

  Her sister’s name whispered through her mind, and she shoved it away. Kenzie was back on Earth. Or maybe still working on that colony. Did she even know Carise was gone?

  It didn’t matter.

  She could hear sleeping people, but nothing sounded like a guard, so she risked cracking her eyes open. She was on the floor with a person beside her, and her back faced open space. Carise wanted to turn over and see what was behind her, but she couldn’t risk moving, not yet.

  How long had she been asleep? Her last memory was a laboratory that had been all bright lights and white surfaces.

  Now she seemed to be in a warehouse.

  She’d gotten used to losing time, to going to sleep in one place, on one planet, and waking up somewhere completely different. The first time it had happened, she’d cried for hours. Now she just wondered how much this place was going to suck.

  Her eyes adjusted to the dim light and Carise moved carefully, looking around while making it look like she was only stretching. Nothing stopped her from sitting up. There were no cries of warning, no curses or crude promises from a guard.

  She counted three other people on the ground beside her, and they looked human shaped. One of them had blue skin, but the other two could have been from Earth; one was light brown like her, the other pale white and a bit blotchy. Hopefully they weren’t on a desert planet—that skin looked like it would burn fast.

  The three people were sleeping soundly, probably drugged. Carise’s brain was fuzzy around the edges, so she’d probably been drugged as well. Whoever was keeping them must have assumed they’d sleep with no need for guards. The three on the ground slept like the dead. They wouldn’t wake anytime soon.

  Carise could escape.

  The thought was barely a whisper at first. She’d tried to escape before. It only led to pain and blood. But this time, something felt different. No one was watching her. She could spot a door with light peeking out from under it.

  The worst they could do was kill her. How bad would that be?

  She had nothing to lose. That thought itself set her free before she even stood up. So what if they struck her down? She’d been in chains for years by now. At least in death they couldn’t torture her anymore.

  Carise had to run. This could be her last, her only chance.

  She stopped thinking, stopped doubting. And she didn’t move with caution. There were no guards that she could see, but if there was some invisible camera watching overhead, she didn’t want to give her observers extra time to react.

  She sprang to her feet and ran for the door, crashing into it with bone rattling force. It was locked. Of course it was, but it shuddered under her weight. Carise reared back and banged into it again, and this time something gave. Two swift kicks were enough to pry open a hole big enough for her to slip thro
ugh.

  She saw the sky overhead. The air around her was dusty, but she was outside. She darted down the street, sure that someone would send up a call to stop her, but it was silent behind her. No one looked her way as she ran.

  It was daylight out, but the sun was setting. Eventually she slowed down to take in her surroundings.

  This wasn’t Earth, that was for certain. Even in daylight she could see this planet’s fat moon hanging in the sky, too big and bright to be the moon of home. The buildings seemed to be constructed from a combination of wood, mud, and brick. They looked sturdy enough, but some were falling down in disrepair.

  She could hear people talking, a cacophony of what should have been unfamiliar voices and languages. But one of her captors had fitted her with a universal translator. Now there wasn’t a language in the galaxy that Carise couldn’t understand. There was a hollow feeling in Carise’s heart as she thought of that. She’d worked so hard to learn Spanish in school, and now it was like that work was for nothing.

  Not the point.

  The few people milling around on the street were taller than average humans. She’d guess between six and a half and seven and a half feet tall. At five-four, she felt like a shrimp.

  No, not five-four anymore. One of those damned experiments had lengthened her legs and torso by at least three inches. She’d probably be taller than Kenzie now.

  She bit back a gasp of pain at the thought of her sister. Not the time. She still wasn’t safe.

  If she could ever be safe.

  Other than their height and bodybuilder-esque musculature, the aliens on the street didn’t have other non-human features. Maybe they were all hiding tentacles under their clothes or they could spit venom, but she wouldn’t know that until it was too late.

  Where was she? Was it somehow possible that she’d been dragged forward in time to an Earth where the humans had grown huge? Or maybe she was in some other dimension?

  But no, this was just a regular planet in a regular galaxy. Evolution was tricky, and a lot of aliens looked weirdly alike. She knew that.

  The drugs were still making her head fuzzy.

  Carise was barefoot and feared that would be an issue soon. The road beneath her feet was made of dirt, and she was sure she’d step on something sharp before long. Her luck had to run out sometime. She wore a short, gray smock that looked a bit like a hospital gown and was made of the scratchiest fabric she’d ever felt, and she had a small, dark shawl that was the closest thing she had to a blanket. But at least she was clothed. She had a feeling running down these streets naked wouldn’t be a good idea.

  Her stomach growled. When was the last time she’d eaten? She had no idea. She didn’t know if she’d been in stasis for the journey here or if she’d merely been drugged. If she’d just woken from stasis, she’d need food soon; she’d learned that the hard way the first time she’d woken up under the control of strange aliens.

  She’d attempted a hunger strike and nearly died in agony.

  That made her path clear. She headed towards the group she could hear talking and hoped there would be shops or restaurants, or maybe a kind family who would take pity on a starving human. Or she could dumpster dive. Whatever it took to get food in her belly.

  She stepped on a sharp rock and winced. Yup. Her luck was running out.

  Carise walked slowly through an alley and saw tents set up in the street beyond it. There were a lot of the tall aliens walking around between the tents and tables, chatting and smiling.

  A market. Almost like home.

  Did they offer free samples?

  She had no idea if free samples were a universal concept across the galaxy, but she sent up a little prayer of hope that they were. She needed something to nibble on quickly. Her fingertips had gone numb, the first sign of stasis starvation. It only got worse after that.

  No one paid much attention to her, and she wasn’t the only woman in an ugly gray smock. She also wasn’t the only human, though humans were vastly outnumbered by the tall aliens. What were the aliens called?

  Food mattered more than terminology.

  Something hot and salty tickled her senses as Carise turned to where she could see meat sizzling on a grill. Her mouth watered and her stomach grumbled. On the table in front of the meat were an assortment of pastries that looked just as delicious as something she’d see in a shop in Paris.

  She could practically taste it.

  Could she beg for food? Would the alien at that stall take pity on her?

  Before she’d decided to move, her feet were walking that way. She stopped a few feet away and looked at the food, licking her lips and trying not to drool. The pastry had so many layers. It would be buttery and crunchy and deliciously savory. And the orange sauce next to it smelled tangy and tempting.

  The alien behind the stall turned his eyes on her and glared. A younger version of Carise would have reared back in fear, but her instincts had been damaged over the last few years.

  “You got coin?” he demanded, the words rough as bristles over her skin.

  Words caught in Carise’s throat and she tried to say something, but all that came out was a squeak.

  “No coin, no food.” He poked a finger down the street. “Leave.”

  The numbness was crawling up her forearms now. Soon she’d start shivering, her body losing its ability to regulate temperature. All she needed was a bite of food, just a few extra calories, to pause the process.

  But she wasn’t going to steal it. At least not from someone so clearly expecting it from her. She shuffled away and made it to the edge of the alien’s table, where she saw that one of those delicious pastries had fallen off the table and lay slightly squished on the ground.

  Her stomach growled.

  Carise looked over her shoulder. The alien wasn’t watching her. He couldn’t expect to sell that pastry. He’d basically thrown it away already.

  She stooped down and grabbed it and took a big bite.

  “Thief!”

  2

  Jaek hated the market. It was loud, crowded, and full of exiles looking for a fight. He stood out, inches taller than most of the Kru’dari around him, no matter how much he hunched. But his damned generator was on the verge of breakdown, and if he didn’t purchase parts, he’d be freezing come winter.

  He could have paid a runner to buy the parts, but he didn’t want the hassle of explaining exactly what he needed only for the boy to come back with the wrong material. No, in this case it was all on him.

  An older woman shoved him before continuing down the street, not bothering to apologize. Jaek tapped his money purse to make sure she hadn’t stolen his coin. But, no, she was no pickpocket, she was just rude.

  Maybe he should have asked Mad to go in his place. His best friend had no issue walking through the markets. He didn’t have memories of being hounded through the streets or scrambling for scraps.

  Jaek pushed them aside. Krudare was the past. He was never going home. Pardons for any exiles were rare, and for an unknown street rat, they didn’t exist. It was fine. He just had to get used to it.

  A headache threatened to bloom in the back of his head. He was low on energy. Back home it flowed through everything, a necessary part of life. Legend had it that Kru’dari died without access to the Fount, the source of energy on Krudare. Being cut off from the Fount was the special torture for exiles.

  There were ways to generate energy: fighting and fucking, mostly. It wasn’t the same, but it helped to sate the hunger that gnawed within them all. And Jaek hadn’t had a fight or a fuck in a while.

  But he wasn’t going to die from a few hunger pangs. Not today.