She stole a life to save her own. He’s the only warrior who knows her secret.
Ariel is a brilliant engineer trapped in the wrong body. After four years of exile on a planet that treats women as property, she makes a desperate choice: she steals the identity of a high-ranking human officer to find her way home.
Now aboard the starship Zoastra, Ariel must play the part of a woman she doesn’t know—and a wife to a man she’s never met. But there is one obstacle she didn’t count on: Major Cross.
A surly, honorable security officer with a dark past, Cross is the only one who senses the truth behind her stolen eyes. As an ancient enemy—the mysterious Grays—begins a campaign of galactic destruction, Ariel and Cross must form a fragile alliance.
In a world where a single touch can bond souls for life, Ariel is caught between her mission to reclaim her true self and a forbidden connection with the man who was supposed to be her enemy.
One ship. Two identities. A love that could bridge the stars or destroy them all.
Read Chapter 1
I’m going to have to steal someone else’s body to get out of here.
“Ariel, are you listening?”
Ariel Transcender stared dumbfounded at the mother superior of her prison, a/k/a Aulnale School for Orphans. “Yes, mistress.”
She had no idea what had happened, though she pasted a fake simpering smile of appreciation on her face.
Ms. Rochelle walked away.
A few minutes later, Ariel looked out the window again, tuning out Rochelle’s mind-numbing lecture on what was proper behavior when near a man. The boarding home on this planet gave the stupidest lectures of the galaxy. Her lips curled into a sneer. Women were not excited to be bound to men.
Could I do this to someone else? Do I have any other choice?
Lenchena, the teenage girl who’d stolen her adult body and taken off on Ariel’s ship, needed to be found. And Ariel refused to listen to the daily drivel about always listening to a man.
No longer on her planet, Grinocx, she did her best to understand this planet’s culture. Order made sense, but the Sheratons never made sense. Her gaze wandered to the well-manicured lawn designed for ostentatious parties. Not paying attention, Ariel’s mind still picked up a few phrases in the lecture, please a man, be agreeable, and do whatever is asked with a smile, floated in the air.
Rochelle’s voice became animated as she told them, “Ferula can be used on your future husband to ensure he finds completion even if you are too tired to perform your duties. However, with your husband, do this sparingly or else he’ll find you a lazy wife.”
Ariel blinked after that statement. Another grueling lecture on pointless marriage and sex. Blah, blah, blah. Her people, Grinders, didn’t believe in love and mated only to reproduce. Being stuck on Sheraton where the women dressed in long dresses, caring for homes with neatly cut green grass, and doing nothing more exciting than watching the pink dawns, while the men held careers in outer space, had never been her plan.
Was she really sitting in a lecture on how to please the male species? She rolled her eyes. Seriously? No, she refused to listen to this nonsense. The words ‘ladies never say no’ reverberated behind her back and made her face pucker.
Ariel schooled her features, pretending to listen to the school master, Ms. Rochelle. The woman had no heart. No one had listened to Ariel when she had cried for days and days that some young teenager had switched bodies with her, trapping her in this alien hell. Rochelle had dragged her back to school, and kept her under lock and key.
Hope became fleeting after that, while the years ticked past. For the past four years, she’d been training at the all-girls school for orphans on how to be a proper maid and housewife.
The twenty-five years of her life training to be an engineer, then serving on the starship Tygra, then the sistership Thrycer, had been stolen.
Now that this body was almost of marriageable age, Ms. Rochelle, cursed schoolteacher, paraded Ariel out of the orphanage to find her a match. Every week or special event needing service, Ariel had on the job training with heavy supervision, pointing out Ariel’s light pink hair and ability to be a serviceable wife to a workingman. Pink hair girls are sweethearts. Yeah right. That lowlife bottom-feeding insect, Lenchena, had stolen her body and her life.
Ariel had stopped complaining years ago because it got her nowhere. She was on her own and needed to find a way out of this body and back to her ship. With the almost age of marriage upon her, it was now or never. Then Ariel was going to find that little twit who stole her body and make her pay for stranding her on this backward planet.
“In a few weeks Ariel will be leaving us. Heading toward marriage with Massimo?” Ms. Rochelle’s voice pulled her back into the lecture.
“Err . . .” Massimo, with his hovercraft, became convenient transportation to leave the school with permission, but marriage? The boy dreamed of owning a restaurant with a pretty wife. She’d find a way off the planet, when she wasn’t being observed or offered for marriage to every low level non-space going man on this planet. Time ticked fast now.
“Ariel is lucky to have found a man so interested in her beauty, he can overlook her status.”
Ariel’s mouth tightened and she lowered her head to hide her scowl. No. Massimo was a child, too. Getting her body back from the child thief, Lenchena, mattered far more. This body was now strong. Away from the ever-watchful teacher, she’d have her chance for escape at one of the upcoming diplomatic events where she’d be a maid or serve others dinner. Plus, Sheratons mated for life, something Ariel refused to believe in. But in order not to draw attention to herself, she played along. “Um, yes. I am.”
A group of male soldiers marched past the closed door of the school room. The females in the class twisted around to catch a glimpse of them. Ariel didn’t join her classmates in staring and drooling at the opposite sex.
Pathetic.
Why did these aliens keep males and females separate until marriage? The customs of this world never ceased to amaze her. The teacher taught the virgin teenagers to expect women to fall into orgasm whenever a man’s hand grazed her body. Seriously? Had they never had sex before? In her memory, sex hadn’t been that all-encompassing.
For the past four years she’d been stuck in this body, living through alien teenage hormones. The sexually denied tightness irritated her body, and her mind longed to be back working on a single engine design. On the Thrycer, she’d run a top design engine room, winning numerous awards for ingenuity on a space ship. Then she’d joined the boarding party to Sheraton, being told the planet was a relaxing and safe tranquil spa. Lies.
If Ariel let them, these alien hormones would dull her reaction time in the girl’s leftover body that held her consciousness. She’d managed to keep slim and fit with exercise as she bided her time until she found a way to her freedom, and got her body and life back. When she finished this, she’d fix everything. She’d force the girl who stole from her to return with the borrowed body to make the final switch and right everything.
The teenager—whoever Lenchena was—had traded places with Ariel, and taken off on Ariel’s ship, in her body. It had taken a lot of searching but Ariel had finally found out how, and at the first opportunity she’d get off this shipplanet. For four years no one believed what had happened to her. Being stuck at the orphanage, away from all civilization hadn’t helped.
At least marriageable age meant interactions with others to find a mate. This meant Ariel had her chance now.
Closing her eyes, she let her mind relax. Her journey from twenty-five to a fourteen-year-old in the span of a day had been rough and her imprisonment in this body needed to end before the threat of no escape became a reality, thanks to rumors of sex bonding people. Gulping, she clenched her fists under her desk. This body turned eighteen soon, and adulthood beckoned. Glancing at the clouds, she vowed to find a way out of this nightmare. Drastic measures needed to be taken to get her body back. Tension built in her back, a frown embedded on her face. This planet and their weird ways would soon be behind her. She rolled her shoulders to release the tension.
Listening to the school teacher drone on about the sex ritual rubbed her skin raw. No one experienced the pure fantasy Rochelle claimed mating did for the soul. She reviewed her plan in her head to ensure her escape wasn’t thwarted. The back of the spine was the perfect spot for the body switch, though less than one out of every three billion Sheratons had this power, if that many. She learned that in a book she’d found a few months earlier that explained how body switching occurred. If it was to be believed, Ariel’s fingers could return her life back. Just her luck the girl massaging her back had that unique power discussed in the occult history of the planet. It took her years to find the answer on how to reverse this. Ariel’s host body had the means.
To keep her blood level low, Ariel let her eyes fade into her fantasy world. Lenchena in her stolen body, in engineering, cowering in a corner when Ariel strolled in to confront her, then using her fingers to steal her life back. Snapping back from her fantasy, she took notes. Everything had a purpose. Move forward with her plan, find the female who did this, and set everything straight. Staying in tip-top shape meant constant movement, but when the time came, she needed to be like the engines she once loved to work on. Engines had purpose and drive and precision. A genuine smile grew on her face, while she tasted home. Her mouth watered for victory. Precise movement in timed order would bring her life back. Being back on the Thrycer remained her dream, and she’d see that world again, through her own eyes.
Fingers crossed, she turned her attention back to the teacher. Hopefully, whoever’s body she stole would understand she needed to fix this upset in the universe.