Redeeming Aries
When Mariya is transported to a primitive city on an alien world, the native people immediately push her out into the mountainous forests to search for her 'fated mate'. Mariya is determined to avoid him and find a way home, especially when they warn her he's 'gone feral'.
When Ardek took on the role of protector, little did he realise his fated mate wasn't among his people. Without the balance to the wrath and rage of his beast, Ardek has lost his way. But now she's here. Impossibly small and delicate, Mariya meets his wrath with her calm, his rage with her steely determination.
Mariya is hell bent on going home. But as Ardek shows the person he is beneath the beast, she finds the future she had planned on Earth has less of a pull, and perhaps, the stars aligned for a purpose.
If you like deadly enemies-to-lovers alien romance books where the stakes are high and the love is via touch and instant, then you'll love this entire series. Klevian Warriors are loyal to their people but dedicated to their fated mates.
This book is a part of a series and best enjoyed that way. Each book features one fated couple and ends in a guaranteed HEA.
She was getting ready to leave when she noticed something about the boulder. Where she’d impacted the… what she thought was stone, the soil had wiped away on her top, she realised, looking down and seeing the huge dirt mark covering her.
But instead of stone, the boulder… no, not a boulder.
Mariyah crawled over to the side of it and wiped at it.
Instead of the rough texture of stone, she was wiping over the smooth texture of metal. She cleared away a little more of the dirt, and some fell away, not down the metal to her feet, but inside. It fell away into the dark through a pane of broken glass.
Mariyah’s stomach turned suddenly as her perception shifted. She looked over the sheer edge, and suddenly the shape coalesced in her mind.
She wasn’t sitting on comforting rock and dirt accumulated over millions of years. Slow to move and change, its form shifting subtly over aeons. She was on the side of a building. A building made by Ariesians thousands of years ago and had probably only stood this long because Ariesians were more likely to climb the bare rock faces where they could easily see things that could catch their hooves.
The edge of the mesa suddenly seemed much less safe. Mariyah imagined that any move, any moment, something would collapse under her, and she’d plunge to her death, or worse, plunge into a building a thousand years old and become trapped, to die there slowly over days as she dehydrated to death.
‘I have to get out of here! I have to go!’
Mariyah gathered her bags, and, working more carefully, she descended down the side of the mesa, trying to put as much distance between her and the uncertainty of this place as possible.
A couple of hours later, she finally stepped foot on the forest floor and took several steps away from it. Mariyah felt the whole side might collapse on top of her. That thought terrorised the animal part of her brain that screamed at her to escape.
Mariyah corrected her posture and took control. The mesa, whatever it was, had stood for a long time. The Ariesians weren’t afraid of being up there. So it might have been a city once, or there was a part of a city snagged on one side, or tectonic activity might have raised part of an old city. The point was that the damn thing had stood for a thousand years. At least it was a long time ago, according to the Ariesians and the small amount they’d discussed it with her. So what was the chance that Mariyah’s slight weight on top of it would bring the whole thing down?
Still, her animal hindbrain screamed at her to leave.
‘I can’t leave,’ she said firmly. ‘The jungle is too thick. If I move any farther away, I’ll lose sight of it and get lost. We have to move around the damn thing to make it back to the city.’
As Mariyah spoke, her voice rose until she was practically shouting.
ROOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!
Mariyah turned on the spot, her eyes wide, blood rushing into her ears until all she could hear was the pound, pound, pound of her heart.
Except it wasn’t her pounding heart she could hear.
It was him.
The pounding of his hooves in the jungle.
‘Oh, fuck!’ she muttered. She backed away from the jungle, getting closer to the skyscraper, unconcerned that it might fall on her now. It would never get the damn chance.
He was coming.
The trees moved before he appeared, first shaking with each footfall.
ROOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!
Now they seemed to sway with his bestial call.
Too late, her brain screamed at her to run. To hide.
He exploded from the trees, a mass of ripped muscles, curled ram horns, fur-covered satyr legs, complete with hooves, and at least ten if not twelve feet tall.
ROOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!
Mariyah turned her face away a little to guard against the wretched smell coming from his mouth. From his whole body.
He took a half-step towards her before freezing.
The creature’s aquamarine eyes seemed to widen before he took a step back.
Then he ran. Disappeared back into the trees.