The Alien's Blade: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Craving the Heveians Book 3), page 1
THE ALIEN'S BLADE
CRAVING THE HEVEIANS
BOOK 3
ELLA BLAKE
TABLE ROCK PUBLISHING, LLC
THE ALIEN’S BLADE: CRAVING THE HEVEIANS SERIES, BOOK 3
Copyright © 2023 Ella Blake
First ebook edition: June 2023
ASIN: B0C3BW72QZ
Stock Art: Depositphotos
Cover Design: Ella Blake
The characters and events portrayed in this book are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system is forbidden without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.
The scanning, uploading, transcription, and distribution of any part of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
CONTENTS
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
Epilogue
Also by Ella Blake
What’s worse than waking up from a hibernation cell fifty-two years after being abducted?
Nothing. No, wait—a wise-cracking alien hunk with a killer smile who doesn’t let me out of his sight, that’s what.
Wulfrex knows every inch of his massive space cruiser and makes it impossible for me to steal it. When I try to “borrow” one of his shuttles to get home to Earth, I find myself outsmarted by him again and accidentally pulled into a mission with far-reaching implications I could never have foreseen.
The beautiful human female makes my fangs and, eh, other things, ache. I know more about power converters and fusion drives than females, and Dani doesn’t want to be anyone’s mate—especially mine. Worse, she’s an assassin, determined to get off our ship no matter what. Even if it means stealing aboard my shuttle as I embark on a dangerous rescue mission. She’s capable with a blaster and hoards her secrets, but I will claim her heart.

This is book 3 in the Craving the Heveians series. I write what I love to read, so there is always consent and a HEA. Enjoy!
CHAPTER 1
Dani
I thought I knew what it felt like to wake up. I had done it many times, and not always from sleep. I’d woken up from concussions, comas, from being drugged, and once, memorably, from being held upside down for too long. Waking up from those things feels distinctly different, like flavors of ice cream, but whatever I was waking up from now, was new for me.
I lay on something soft, in an inky-black place as enveloping as a fathomless sea. I couldn’t move, not even to open my eyes. Everything was heavy and warm. Reality was far, far away, except for the nagging sense that I wasn’t sinking in that sea, but floating towards the surface. Part of me was afraid of that surface. Like I said, this awakening was nothing I’d felt before. The more consciousness that returned, the more afraid I became. What happened to me? What fresh hell would I wake up to?
There was light on the other side of my eyelids. I was beginning to see colors and shapes streak through the gray of my closed eyes, rather than black. I still couldn’t open my eyes or move.
I tried to stitch together the last thing I remembered, but my memories were as fragmented and incomplete as my consciousness. I remembered how I felt though, and it wasn’t good. The sour taste of regret, and feeling wrong about something I had done, made me want to retreat from that surface that was now not far above me. Soon, I would wake up from this strange sleep. I would face what was on the surface of this water, just as I’d faced every other horror in my life. And there were plenty.
This was the life of an assassin. I had been trained to expect nothing less.
Male voices drifted in, ending the silence. They moved around me and spoke a language I didn’t even recognize. Feeling started to return in my hands and toes in the form of tingling. I could feel my face. The surface below me was warm, but the air above was a little cooler. I flexed my fingers and felt a soft sheet over me.
Devices hummed in the background. My mind raced for an explanation. I was in a hospital or a lab facility. There were no other reasonable explanations.
One of the males came closer. His voice was slightly gravelly and deep. The language he spoke didn’t remind me of any Earth languages. Suddenly, a strange feeling of vertigo flowed through me, along with a sharp pain in the back of my head. I heard air hiss through my teeth, even though I still did not have full control over my body.
And then, miraculously, I could understand him.
“Is it on yet?” asked the male closest to me, to another one, farther away.
“Yes,” replied the other male. “Her consciousness is returning. It’s safe now to turn it on.”
“If you’d done it sooner, we might have been able to talk her out of this.”
“It’s not safe to activate a newly installed translation device on an unconscious and cryogenically frozen patient, Wulfrex. I told you this.”
The male closest to me—who had to be Wulfrex?—grunted. “If you can hear me, move something.”
I assumed he was talking to me. I couldn’t play dead forever, but I didn’t know who these people were, or if they were dangerous or not. They knew I was awake. I gathered my courage and opened my eyes. And immediately wished I hadn’t.
The individual gazing down at me was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I thought I had to still be drugged. I managed to shake my head a little. This couldn’t be real. The person was male, yes, and had the general physical shape of a human, but he was not human. His skin was a smooth, slate gray with the slightest sheen to it. Long, wavy hair hung past his shoulders in a dark shade of blue. His eyes were a sharp contrast with his hair. They were light blue and had the slitted pupils of a cat. He was taller than most human males, at well over six feet tall, and massively muscled.
“How are you feeling?” the enormous gray alien man asked.
I opened my mouth to reply something—I had no idea what—but all that came out was a rusty croak.
The male—Wulfrex—surprised me with a broad smile. An even line of white teeth flashed, along with a pair of long and sharp canines, vampire style. “You’ll be all right,” he said lightly. “Just have to wait for the rest of the cryogenic chemicals to leave your body.”
Cryogenics? That was why I felt so strange when returning to consciousness. I had never been cryogenically frozen before, but if what he was saying was true, something horrible had happened to me. Panic sent a rush of adrenaline and strength through my tingling body, and I surged up from the bed. Or at least I tried to.
The surface I lay on was extremely soft and warm, and my efforts to sit upright were awkward and flailing as the squishy gel foam drew me back down into its warmth. I managed to lever myself to seated, and tried to get up, only to be wrapped in a set of massive arms that held me firmly in place. Muscles on top of muscles flexed against my upper body, and a gruff voice said in my ear, “Calm down, now. Nothing is going to hurt you here.”
I couldn’t fight him. His bulk engulfed the top of my body. I felt thick calluses on my skin above the sheet. It was rare that I felt this small compared to another.
“W-who are you?” I croaked.
He eased back, allowing me to sit on my own. “I am Wulfrex, and over there is Jorok, your doctor.”
Doctor? Panic still rang cold and electric through my veins. But I stared calmly up at Wulfrex and schooled my reactions. No training had ever prepared me for this. “Why am I here?” My voice sounded thick, like my tongue was three sizes too big.
Wulfrex scratched the back of his head and looked down at me with a shrug. “We found you in your hibernation pod in a freighter’s storage unit and brought you here. Not the easiest waking you up. How you got there…” He grinned again. “That’s a mystery. What’s your name, little female?”
“Dani. Dani Ling,” I replied before thinking. It was my real name, or at least the only true one I knew. I blamed my befuddled state for not giving him an alias.
“And do you have any idea who put you in a cryogenically frozen state?”
I frowned up at him. “No. Last thing I remember, I was…” I cut myself off with a shake of my head. No. Stop, stop. I would not speak another word about it. “I don’t remember much at all.”
“So you don’t know who she is?”
He nodded to something on my left. I turned my head to see another bed like mine, narrow and white, with a woman lying in it. She was also covered up to her shoulders in a sheet. At first, she looked dead, but horribly, I did recognize her. I stared in shock at the woman’s face.
She lived. Of course, she lived. But only because I had spared her life, unlike that of her partner.
And now she was here with me, wherever here was. I blinked and turned away, using all of my willpower to school my features into a neutral expression as I shook my head and shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know her.”
Wulfrex’s eyes flickered. “A pity,” he said. “We’re having a difficult time waking her up.”
I swallowed thickly. “Oh? That’s a shame.” That was a goddamn blessing if I ever heard one. As soon as that woman woke up, I was done for. On my wrist, I found a solid silver bracelet, snug enough to hug my skin, but loose enough for it to not be uncomfortable. “What’s this?” I asked. “A tracking device?”
Wulfrex looked amused. “It’s a vitals tracker.” He nodded toward the dark-haired male who sat at his console about ten feet away. “So Jorok can monitor your bodily functions.”
I stared at him. “So it is a tracker.”
“Of your internal organs, yes.” He was maddeningly calm, and the humor twinkling in his blue eyes was irritating. “But if you’re thinking of running, you won’t get far. Not that your legs are up for it, anyway.”
My panic bumped up a notch. “Where am I?” On Earth, hopefully. As soon as I could get out of here, I could get to one of my safe houses and slip into a new identity.
“You are on a Heveian space cruiser in the Inrex quadrant of the galaxy.” He had the grace to look a little bit apologetic. “I’m sorry to say, we’re very far away from Earth. The only way out is through the air lock and that route, I would not advise.”
I ignored most of his ramble. “The what quadrant?”
“Inrex. It doesn’t surprise me that you haven’t heard of it. There’s nothing really here.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
“Because we are on a mission to rescue one of our own from a location here. Also, the freighter you were found on was destined for this location.”
“And what are you, exactly?”
“We are from the planet Heveia.”
I winced. “So…you’re aliens?”
“A little harsh, don’t you think?” He quirked one blue eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen an alien before?”
I shook my head. “Not in person. It’s only been twelve years since the rift opened and visitors from other planets began arriving.”
“Twelve years, eh?” His eyes sharpened. “What year is it, Dani?”
I furrowed my brow in concentration. I knew I might get this wrong, because the standard galactic timeframe was still new and not fully adopted. “I believe it’s 2–28C.”
Wulfrex’s brows rose. “Oh, my poor little human,” he said softly. “You have been in that pod for fifty-two years.”
CHAPTER 2
Wulfrex
She stared up at me with her mouth agape. Dark brown eyes didn’t blink as they held mine in stunned silence. “No,” she rasped.
“Yes, I’m afraid.”
“No.” Her eyes flickered around the room. “M-maybe I got the date wrong. Maybe I—”
“Dani, it makes sense. Jorok, over here, says that the type of hibernation you were put into was meant for long-term storage. You’re lucky centuries haven’t passed.”
I watched as denial, panic, and sheer horror overwhelmed her. She looked frantically to the door, to the woman in the other bed, and back to the door. Then she looked at me, as if sizing up the situation and gauging how to run. But the cool calculation didn’t last. Her fear overrode it all, and she lunged from the bed with a strangled cry.
Her feet hit the floor and her legs crumpled. Little thing wasn’t strong enough to go anywhere, yet. I gathered her into my arms before she could spill on the floor. “Easy, now,” I said as she weakly fought against my hold. There was no strength in her, but her hits landed on places where, if there were strength behind them, they would hurt—neck, nose, and groin, that last one she missed because I saw it coming and shifted out of the way.
“Put her back in the bed,” Jorok said. He was suddenly beside me. “She’s going to hurt herself.”
“Don’t you dare put me back there.” Frustration brimmed in Dani’s eyes as she glared at me. If she had a blaster in her hand, Jorok and I would be dead. “You’re the one who is going to be hurt,” she snarled.
Jorok shook his head, ignoring her fury. “I need to run more tests.”
“I’m thinking she won’t be amenable to that,” I murmured, holding down the furious, squirming female.
“Just hold her still,” he said.
I pulled her closer, feeling the frantic, uneven beat of her newly awakened heart. Her breaths came ragged and shallow as her lungs worked hard for the first time in decades. My arms tightened around Dani, locking her arms and legs and preventing her from further thrashing. “I am sorry about this,” I said in her ear. “But you must calm down.”
“I can’t stay here,” she whispered urgently. “You don’t understand. I—”
“There we go.” Jorok placed a silver disc on the side of Dani’s neck and she instantly went slack and unconscious in my arms.
“Ah, Jorok,” I said. “She just woke up. Did you have to put her back to sleep again?”
“Yes,” he replied, removing the metal disc and adjusting the vitals tracker on her wrist. “Her blood pressure was dangerously high. She’s still very fragile, Wulfrex. Her internal organs aren’t fully working yet. She could have a heart attack or a stroke in this state.”
I gently placed her in the bed and arranged her limbs. Her sheet had stayed mostly intact over her, but I did catch a glimpse of sweet golden skin and a luscious hip. I gently moved a thick lock of straight black hair off her face. “She’s pretty,” I commented.
Jorok raised one eyebrow as he set about adjusting her intravenous tubes. “If you’re looking for a mate, maybe choose one not quite as dangerous.”
I grinned at him. “You caught that too? This one knows how to fight,” I said, pleased. “Went right for my throat and balls.”
“I saw.” Jorok’s jaw tightened. “Be careful. I have a feeling this one has more going on than she seems.”
“What do you think she is?”
He carefully peeled back the sheet, keeping her breasts and sex covered. Humans were much more sensitive to revealing their bodies than Heveians. Even now, with the female unconscious, Jorok respected the human preferences. “Look.” He pointed to several puckered scars on her abdomen. Then, he covered them back up and uncovered her left leg, on which there was a jagged scar and more of those small puckers. “This is evidence of bullet wounds.”
“Bullet wounds?” My translator knew the word bullet, but there wasn’t a Heveian equivalent.
“Projectiles that humans shoot from weapons called ‘guns.’ Different from blasters or plasma flares. They’re quite primitive now, but they were a commonly used type of weapon on Earth before blasters and plasma flares were introduced from other species. She’s from the past, Wulfrex.” Jorok looked at me as if I should understand what he was saying.
But I didn’t. I shook my head. “So? She got into a scrape and someone shot her. Happens all the time.”
“To us, yes. Not to humans who live safe and stable lives on their home planet. Plus, these wounds are from different times,” he said. “I have gauged her age to be twenty-nine or thirty and for that age, her bones have sustained many breaks and countless microfractures, resulting in incredible strength. On her scans, I saw multiple procedures to repair tissue internally, and also to alter her appearance. Additionally—and this is the key—I removed a chip embedded in her breastbone that would have tracked her movements.” He crossed his arms. “This female did not live the life of an ordinary human female. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
