 by Bethany-Kris.jpg)
Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
When a meteor storm throws his ship off course, he’s forced to land on a planet of blue and green. His hopes that the strange land is uninhabited are dashed when its people take him hostage, but his thoughts of breaking free begin to change when he finds the woman he’s waited a lifetime for just outside his cell.
Selina has always waited for opportune times to sneak into her father’s library and steal away the books she’s not permitted to read under Earth’s new law. This trip will be unlike any other. Beyond the books, she finds an imprisoned alien. She can’t take her eyes away from him, because his eyes look at her like she belongs with him.
Or to him.
*
ZAWLA is book one in THE HALLANS series featuring a HEA, and no cliffhanger. TW for violence, torture, etc.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
“You have critical fuel reserves remaining,” the computerized voice says.
I stare at the screen, with its blinking warnings of low fuel, and telling me I’m off course. I growl at it as if it’s my ship’s fault that there’s no way I can return home now. Or that a meteor shower cast me off course as I exited a black hole meant to direct me back towards my home planet hours ago.
Hallalah, the motherland, seems an impossible journey now. This pitiful galaxy with its mostly uninhabitable planets and an angry, hot sun-star sucking them closer by the passing seconds makes it hard for me to imagine how I’ll find somewhere feasible to crash land.
Never mind, live.
“Shall I set a course for the nearest planet?” the voice asks.
I close my eyes, releasing a breath, and hoping it will take my frustration with it. It doesn’t help a bit. I need to figure out what to do and fast. Once my fuel runs out, the ship will start to shut down all functions. And if I have nowhere to land when that begins to happen, I’ll be stuck floating in space until someone finds me.
If someone finds me.
That’s not a good option, either.
I only have enough supplies to last a short while aboard my ship. It could have made the trip between the Star Valley and my home planet after finishing with the crew I left behind to tie up the semantics of shipping home our trade of Emululite for freshwater. We need the minerals in the Emululite to make fuel while the Big Greens—oh, they hate when you call them that—have suffered for a millennium on a poisoned planet with water that rots.
Alas, I’d be starving and freezing by the time anyone from my planet even thought to look for me. I’m not due back for a while, and wanting to surprise my kin by returning from my post early—with good news—I hadn’t informed anyone that I was on my way back in the first place.
The only one truly surprised now is me. That I’m in this situation. That I let myself be caught so unprepared. That I’m now left with no option but to land on the next planet I come across.
But since I have no choice, I open my eyes and begin to do what needs to be done if I want to survive.
“Bring the nearest sustainable planet up on the screen.”
Stars and darkness zoom by until the screen shows me a small planet. Mostly blue with patches of green here and there. Teachings that have been drilled into me all my life come to my mind in an instant.
Water is life. Honor the ground from which life grows.
Blue and green. Water and fertile land. What I need to survive is on this planet, but the presence of life-giving blue and greenery means the planet may already be inhabited. I can land there and use what time my ship has left running to send a beacon home. It will take a while to get here, as this is not any part of the galaxy that we have ever explored and the meteor shower exiting the hole threw me off, but at least I can survive while I wait for them.
When one travels through space at impossible speeds, things are rarely ever definite but most certainly finite.
That’s the one guarantee about the universe. It will go on forever. Meanwhile, I just have to survive until my kind finds me.
“Set a course to the planet.”
“Setting course.”
The ship revs up, speeding through the blue-black, star-speckled space now that it has somewhere to safely take me. I take control as we get closer, though, wanting to make sure this planet actually is safe before I land there. As we approach, I open the channels to pick up any signal that might be coming from the planet. Immediately, words pour through the speakers inside my control room. I can’t understand, but already I see the computer system analyzing whatever language is being spoken, and the screens zoom in on images of the planet appearing.