To Touch a Warrior (4 page)

He looked back at Hannah’s wide, panicked eyes. And for the first time in longer than he could remember, he was afraid.

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Chapter One

Hannah beat her fist against the door one more time. “Let me out! I demand to speak to my father! You can’t imprison me this way!” She’d been in this holding cell for nearly an hour.
At least they’ve left me alone. What are they doing to Liam?

Finally, she heard a key in the lock. Dean Sufters opened the door and calmly walked in, her high heels clicking on the tile.

“He didn’t do it.” Hannah forced herself to keep her voice level. Even though she wanted nothing more than to scream in Dean Sufters’s face.

The older woman stared at her with concern she knew was feigned. And gestured for her to sit at the tiny interrogation table.Hannah took a seat, and Dean Sufters sat across from her, folding her hands on the table gracefully.

“Miss Stowe. There’s no need to worry about any of this. The Keltair is being questioned, that’s all.”

Hannah moved her chair back. The dean flinched at the horrible squealing sound as the metal chair scraped the white tile. Hannah stood and placed her hands on the table in front of her, leaning in. “He’s the reason I’m alive right now, so if I don’t get some answers, I’ll be calling my father. Fleet Admiral Stowe, remember? And I guarantee you don’t want me to do that.”

For the first time in this thirty-minute discussion, Dean Sufters looked nervous. She smoothed the sides of her short, perfectly sculpted hair in ananxious gesture. “Please, sit down. The whole academy is still in lockdown. Even if I wasn’t suspicious of the Keltair, he’d need to stay exactly where he is until it’s deemed safe.”

Her answer just wasn’t good enough.

“I want to remind you,” Hannah’s lip curled as she spoke. “The Keltairs aren’t our enemies anymore. And Liam’s presence here only helps to strengthen our alliance.So if—“

The dean stood up to match my height. “Little girl—” she started, her tone condescending.

Like hell Hannah was going to let her finish. “You’ve got two minutes to free Liam, then I contact my father.”

Her mouth snapped shut, even as she raised her chin.

They glared at each other for a long minute.

The dean’s assistant, Stevril, opened the door to our tiny questioning room and closed it behind him before speaking. “The Keltair ship has left the atmosphere and is being pursued in space. The whole of the Turonga’s fleet has taken to the skies, but there are no signs of other enemy ships. The emperor has degraded the threat levelfrom a code red to a code orange.”

And that’s when it hitHannah. Both the dean and the people of this planet thought they were facing an all-out war with the Keltairs again. Their extreme reaction suddenly made sense to her. If the warlike aliens had decided to break the treaty, and Turonga was simply the first planet in their path of destruction, the loss of life here would likely be immense. Earth had allowed their most prestigious Starflight Academy to be built here because it was considered so safe at the moment, but no one could guarantee they’dbe safe indefinitely from the wrath of such violent people.

“How much of the school was destroyed?” Hannah asked.

Stevril wrinkled his piglike nose, turning his gaze from Hannah back to the dean. “Shall I take the school out of lockdown?”

“Yes,” she answered, and then after a moment of hesitation, “What did they destroy?”

He looked at Hannah again with his arrogant stare, his dusty orange skin darkening with his changing mood.

Stupid Purtos. The creatures were organized and fiercely loyal, which is why they often assisted powerful people, but their lack of flexibility was a downfall. Hadn’t he picked up on the dean’s reaction to the young cadet? Did he have any idea that Hannah’s father could destroy his career and his life with one interplanetary call?

“This is
Fleet Admiral Stowe’s
daughter,” the dean explained slowly. “You may speak openly in front of her…because I’m sure she’ll know everything we do by the end of this.”

Hannah was far too satisfied by the raw panic that came over his wide face.

“Nothing was destroyed. I mean, the roof took a lot of damage, but they didn’t fire at anything else.”

The dean frowned, and Hannah’s own mind started to turn over what that might mean. “Then what was the point of all that? Was someone just trying to cause problems between our races again?”

Dean Sufters shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. They could’ve attacked the outside of the academy and risked much less.”

Hannah sat back down, rubbing her chin.
They just attacked the roof?How pointless…

“How many people knew you were on the roof tonight?” the dean asked, and their gazes met.

Hannah didn’t want to tell her that only Liam knew. The dean hardly needed more fuel to add to the fire of her racism. Especially when Hannah knew in her heart the sexy alien had nothing to do with any of this. He’d been on the roof, too. And he didn’t even know her real name.

“There’s security monitoring on nearly every inch of this place.” Hannah raised her brow. “Any person on your staff would’ve seen us going to the roof. And, if you weren’t careful with my identity, one of your untrustworthy staff members could’ve passed off the information.”

Her blue eyes widened, and Stevril’s orange face went a shade paler.

“We kept your real name off every document and file,” she asserted.

Hannah crossedher arms in front of her chest. “My father will want to investigate, just to be sure. I hope you understand. If this academy can’t keep such a small thing private, he’ll have to ask himself if he and the president might need to make some changes.”

She and Stevrilexchanged a panicked glance. The deep lines in her face looked even deeper as she leaned forward. “There’s no need for that. I will personally conduct a full investigation into this. You and your father don’t need to worry yourselves about it.”

Hannah stood again, looking down at them. “Perhaps. But first, take me to Liam Fallow. After such a traumatic event, and your failure to keep me safe here, I’ll need someone I trust to seek emotional comfort from.”

The dean hesitated.

“Or perhaps I’ll just seek that reassurance from my father. Although…the last time I was in danger from negligence, he fired an entire ship’s crew.”

Dean Sufters was on her feet in an instant. “I’ll take you there. Stevril, end the lockdown. Make an announcement that the threat is gone, but that all students should remain in their rooms until further notification.”

He gaveHannah one last frightened look, then headed out of the room.

The dean visibly swallowed, and Hannah saw the frustration burning not so subtly in her eyes.
It must cut through her like a Keltair blade to have some wealthy, powerful brat ordering her about like a servant.
Usually she was above using her father’s name to get what she wanted, but since witnessing their treatment of him on the roof, she was afraid of what they were doing to Liam. Being a student of an ambassador should’ve offered him protection from being tortured. But the prejudice against his race still ran deep among most humans.

“We’ll go,” the older woman said, very slowly, “but keep in mind that we only did what we had to do in order to protect the students of this academy.”

The air rushed out of Hannah’s lungs, and she grabbed the back of the chair. A Turongan constrictor snake seemed to squeeze her stomach. “What did you do to him?”

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About the Author

Immortal Angel has lived a hundred lifetimes all in one. She’s a mother, a sister, a daughter, a wife, and a best friend. She’s traveled the real world, enjoying what our three-dimensional reality has to offer. She’s hiked the stairs inside the Eiffel Tower. She’s watched a Shakespearean play in a grassy clearing outside of Cambridge, and she’s ridden a ferry to Ireland. In Australia, she cuddled koalas, in China, she cuddled pandas, and in the Middle East, she cuddled camels. And every time she opened a book, she entered a world beyond this one, one where the only limits were her imagination.

So many lifetimes of adventures have inspired her to reach beyond this planet to the stars above and to worlds rooted in fantasy. Her romances in space are meant to take her readers on their own adventures, imagining new and exciting place. With hot men. And maybe a few sexy aliens too.