The Siren's Call (Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance) (FORCED TO SERVE)
Read The Siren's Call (Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance) (FORCED TO SERVE) Online
Authors: Donna McDonald
Tags: #General Fiction
The Siren’s Call
Book Three of the
Forced To Serve
Series
by
Donna McDonald
* * * * *
Copyright 2012 by Donna McDonald
Cover by LFD Designs for Authors
Edited by Toby Minton and Karen Lawson
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should delete it from your device and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author/publisher.
This book contains content that may not be suitable for young readers 17 and under.
Acknowledgements
I just had to mention that this was my first book cover with a couple on it. I had great fun helping design it. So I wanted to say a special thank-you to
LFD Designs for Authors
for the amazing work.
Thanks also to my editor T Minton for helping me keep my on-planet and off-planet scenes straight. Without you, this entire world might not exist. Or at least it would be a lot more confusing.
Thanks to my proofreader K Lawson for her clean-up efforts, and her comments about a genre she might never have read if not for helping me. This book is even better because of you.
Also thanks to
Cassie Lawson
and
Michelle Dull
for winning the “Help me name the ship” contest. My readers are so great I have no words to describe them.
Note to readers
Thanks for all the emails, messages, and tweets I received asking for this book. You seemed just as anxious as I was to find out what happened to the captured Sirens. It meant a lot to me to know that you were having as much fun reading and following this series as I was having writing it.
I hope you enjoy the continuing saga of the Liberator’s crew, including their adventures and misadventures. I’m already working on the next book and having a blast.
Happy Reading! ~ Donna McDonald
Chapter 1
“Did you let me do that?” Gwen demanded, glaring down at the female splayed out on the mat at her feet.
“We’ve been fighting for weeks. Have I not thrown you down enough for you to know I would never willing let you best me?” Ania demanded back, reaching up a hand. “Stop glaring and help me up.”
Gwen snorted, still unable to believe she’d truly put the new and now more robust version of Ania down on the mat. She yanked the female to her feet, barely exerting any effort. Getting stronger was just one of many changes she had discovered happening to her body since the mating cord to Dorian had been completed.
“You and I both know damn well I’m not that good yet. So if you didn’t let me toss your ass, how the hell did it happen then?” Gwen demanded. Her promise to talk more respectfully to her trainer, teacher, and friend was temporarily forgotten in her struggle to understand her new skills.
“I’m not quite sure,” Ania replied calmly, retrieving her fighting stick and leaning on it. “You went into some kind of fighting zone that I couldn’t penetrate. It was much like the way Dorian fights. Perhaps he gave his skill to you with your mating. Sirens share all they are with their chosen mates, though I have never seen it take this form.”
Gwen shrugged. “It was like I saw everything you were going to do in my head. One minute I was contemplating whether or not to trust what I was seeing, and the next—you were on the mat. Hell, I didn’t even know I had moved until I saw you at my feet.”
“What you did in besting me was most impressive for a Khalsa warrior with your limited training,” Ania praised, bowing her head. “Do you think your intuition is growing as well?”
“Yes. It’s just one more thing you were right about I guess. Though it’s more like I’m reading minds than predicting the future like Zade and Synar do,” Gwen said, seeing Jurek walk through the door and give Ania an assessing look, which Ania missed with her back turned.
“I still don’t see the benefit of intuition. For example, I certainly don’t need to read my old trainer’s mind to know Jurek has a crush on you. And frankly, I’d just as soon not see what form he wishes that admiration could take. Sheesh—he needs a female,” Gwen said, tossing her fighting stick from hand to hand for something to do. She had a hard time being still lately and was reading minds a lot more than she was comfortable admitting.
Ania laughed, unaffected by the passing desires of other males for her. Jurek was a fine male, but there was only one in her life that counted, a fact she was grateful for, because he was enough of a distraction. Synar had been talking about having children for the last two days, and she couldn’t get him to cease his dreaming of her carrying his child. He had already made her confess that she had dreamed of their children years ago when they were still new to each other.
Synar was so absolutely committed to having a family that she hadn’t yet figured out how to tell her mate that her dreams of children had died completely after Malachi had informed her they would be demon babies too. It was bad enough she shared a demon’s fate. The last thing she wanted was to force it on innocent children.
“Odd that you are able to read Jurek so well. I would say that in addition to your enhanced fighting skills, you have also acquired Dorian’s ability to read personal energy. Combined with what you already biologically inherited from your Thelorian father, your intuitive skills should be more than equal to Synar’s now,” Ania said, nodding in approval. “Of course, learning to
control
those abilities and exercise sound judgment on what they provide will still prove a great challenge for the irrational Earthling you mostly still are.”
Gwen settled for a glare. Ignoring Ania’s teasing to focus on the bigger picture was becoming second nature. Her Khalsa trainer was teaching her to keep her mind calm even when her emotions got out of control. It was more than being calm under pressure. It was the ability to calm herself when she wanted to be calm—something she’d thought she’d mastered until she took on a Siren and ended up bound to him.
“This mating deal with Zade just keeps getting worse,” Gwen complained. “I got married to an invisible groom who made me perceptive to other people’s sexual needs when I’m personally unable to do anything except wish for him. Not a very good wedding gift if you ask me. I like being physically stronger, but Zade could have kept the voyeurism stuff to himself.”
“The Creators sometimes use circumstances like your unusual mating to bestow what they wish a being to have as gifts. I doubt Dorian had that much control over what you received,” Ania said with a shrug, not needing to be schooled in Earth mating customs to hear the disappointment in Gwen’s voice.
“Are you telling me you believe your deities are partly responsible for the Klageldon dung I’m going through?” Gwen asked, rolling her eyes at how ridiculous it sounded to her. “Why? Do they hate me?”
“It took Dorian three years of training to put me on the mat. You managed to do it less than a week after your Siren mating cord was completed. Doesn’t that make you feel better about some of your new skills?”
Gwen laughed but finally nodded. “Yes. I suppose being capable of putting a real Khalsa warrior on the mat makes up for the rest of it a little.”
“Good to hear. Of course I was a lot younger when I trained Dorian. Maybe after several hundred years I’ve slowed down enough to be bested by an Earthling,” Ania said, grinning at the flash of irritation in Gwen’s eyes. “Perhaps I should even be ashamed.”
Ania saw the punch in the arm coming but figured she deserved it when it landed harder than she’d anticipated. Laughing, she danced away from Gwen to rub the mock wound. The young warrior definitely was getting stronger. She hit like a male lately.
“You just had to ruin the moment for me, didn’t you?” Gwen demanded.
“You make it too easy wearing your mixed feelings for Dorian all over your attitude that way. Why don’t we try meditating again? I know you say you can’t quiet your mind enough, but I think we should practice each day regardless,” Ania said. “Visions come during meditation much like they do through dreams.”
“If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have said no yesterday. Let’s go then,” Gwen said, jogging off the mat and putting the fighting stick back on the wall. “I haven’t seen him in my head in several days. I’m ready to send Malachi to try again. Anything is better than waiting for something to happen.”