Viper (Second Wave Book 1)

Viper

By Mikayla
Lane

Cover art by: humblenations.com

First Wave
Series in Reading Order

Hunting
Cari

Finding
Jess

Chasing
Dare

Grai’s Game

Second Wave
Series in Reading Order

Viper

Find me on
Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005239848031

TDB- Thank
you for being such an awesome person! You help in more ways than you know!

Beth – You
are truly amazing! Thank you so, so much! You’re the best!

To my Readers:

Thanks so much for all of the
awesome reviews, suggestions and comments.

As always, feel free to email me.

[email protected]

I’m working on my facebook, so it
looks terrible right now and kind of bare. Feel free to hit me up. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005239848031

Mikayla Lane

443 Word Document Pages

94,100 Words

Chapter One

Viper fle’ te’ Trugh of the planet
Tezaria was having a really bad day. It started with the dreams that had been
awakening him every night since they had arrived on Earth three months ago to
help Balduen Skardard of Valendra.

The disruptions to his energy had
begun immediately after the dreams had started and kept him feeling restless, uneasy
and frustrated.

His people, the Tezarians were
known for their ability to connect with a planet's energy on a natural, primal
level. However, he knew that the disruptions weren’t being caused by his
connecting with the Earth’s rhythm. He wasn’t able to concentrate long enough
to bond with the planet’s energy. That was the first indication that something
was wrong. It had never happened to him before.

Viper was abruptly brought out of
his thoughts and back to the reality of his bad day when he felt the fist that
connected to his already swollen jaw.

“Tell me where they are! How many
of you are here?” The Relian hybrid, scourge of all the known worlds, screamed
at Viper.

Viper felt the rush of blood fill
his mouth and turned his head to spit it out on the ground near the Relian’s
feet. He grinned awkwardly with swollen, bleeding lips and chuckled slightly,
knowing it would anger the volatile alien standing above him.

“You will tell me, you bastard!”
The Relian growled, before hauling back his leg and kicking Viper in his
already abused ribs.  

Viper sucked in his breath at the
pain radiating through his torso, the pain in his head forgotten for a moment
while his ribs burned like fire. Damn, he was seriously screwed he thought as
the Relian stormed off again.

Gathering his energy, he tried
desperately to send a message through the universal telepathic energy path
known as the Shengari’, to his brother Dread. He was again met with an eerie
silence in his mind.

The concussion he’d gotten when the
transport crashed disrupted the energy signals in his brain, preventing him
from using the telepathic communication path.

Viper thought back to the crash,
trying to figure out if anyone else had survived. He didn’t remember anything
but the warning given by the pilot and the interior alarms blaring before the
transport was hit with heavy fire and then the rapid fall of the craft to the
ground.

He awakened, tied to a tree on the
edge of a clearing, hours ago, judging by the location of the moon in the sky. Other
than the periodic beatings and questioning by the five Relians, Viper had not
seen any sign of the others that had been in the transport with him.

It was supposed to be a routine
recon mission, nothing more than checking out some strange stories that had been
hitting the Internet about unusual disappearances and invisible men.

Ivint Torenson, former High
Councilor of the planet Valendra and Grai T’Alq, the half Relian and half
Valendran hybrid, leaders of the Alliance, had decided that the occurrences
were happening far too often to not be taken seriously.

The area being only a hundred miles
from one of their main command centers gave rise to the concern that their
location may have been compromised or close to discovery.

When the last Relian finally walked
away from him, Viper again tried to break free from the ropes that were tied
tightly around his wrists and ankles. Ignoring the pain in his head and body,
he struggled until he was too tired to continue.

The only thing he’d managed to
accomplish was making the ropes slick with his blood. They were bound far too
tightly to break free on his own; he thought with a heavy sigh.

Viper looked around, blinking hard
to try to focus on the slightly blurry images around him. Nothing but trees and
underbrush, the details were still too out of focus to recognize. The Relian’s
only had on gear and light packs. So they either dropped after the crash or
were on the ground already and had pulled him from the wreckage.

It was the only thing that made
sense to him. It didn’t really matter though, Ivint and the others back at the
command center in Dillon, Texas would have a rescue mission on its way, if not
already here. He just had to tough this out until they found him, he thought
with another sigh that hurt his ribs.

Closing his eyes to ease the pain
in his head and gather his energy to try to contact his brother again, Viper
took a deep breath and almost choked. Opening his eyes wide, he whipped his
head around from side to side, trying desperately to see what he was smelling.  

There was nothing there, not that
he could see. However, he knew better. He could scent it. His heart began to race,
and he fought harder against the ropes; he had to get free. Now.

*****

Lara Blain was having a really bad
day. Another one. It seemed the only time she ever had a good day anymore was
when she was here, out in the wild. And away from people.

At twenty-six years old, she had
become a hermit. The government called it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. An
unfortunate side effect of the IED, improvised explosive device that killed her
teammates and almost killed her.  

It had taken her eight long months
to recover from the physical injuries. It was ten months later, and she still
couldn’t recover her mind. The nightmares plagued her the moment her eyes
closed. A dark shadow at the back of her mind that waited until she was
vulnerable in sleep before coming out to torture her soul.  

If the pain she had gone through,
the physical and emotional scars not enough, the final betrayal came this morning.
The notice from her attorney that her government had deemed her too dangerous
to be out in society with a weapon and were trying to revoke her right to
protect herself.  

The same government that had
trained her to use those same kinds of weapons and had forced her to use them
in their wars, was trying to take hers from her.

It had been bad enough when she had
returned, and the Veteran’s Hospital jerked her around for months over her
rehabilitation. Routinely denying her appointments or even ‘mistakenly’
cancelling her benefits. But this was too much.

She was no danger to anyone, not
even herself. They knew that. They were afraid she would talk about what she
knew, they were trying to wear her down. Before he was killed during the IED
attack, John had warned her that they would try to intimidate them, silence
them.

Lara stopped and used the chance to
catch her breath, allowing the pain at the thought of John to flow through her.
He was her best friend; her only friend. They had met in Afghanistan when they
had been assigned to the same unit.

It was the first time in her life
that she hadn’t felt awkward when she met someone. It had felt like they were old
friends, long lost family, from the moment their eyes connected.

Blinking back tears, Lara shook her
head to clear her thoughts. She didn’t need to think of John right now. She
needed to get this done, keep her promise, before they finally got to her.

Pulling back her shoulders, she
repositioned the heavy packs and crept silently through the trees. She was
determined to get to her grandfather’s hunting cabin by morning. This was the
last trip she needed to make, nothing more was needed now. Nothing else
mattered anymore.

Lara had been making these trips
for months now. When she realized that those she had trusted the most had
betrayed her; had betrayed them all. It wasn’t the PTSD causing them to try to
disarm her and others just like her who had been returning from their wars.

It was because they knew that when
the time came, and they started to institute their plans that she, and the
other vets like her would help the people stand up. Would help them to fight
what was coming.

John had been the first to
intercept the communications. His love of all things electronic helped him
build some pretty amazing devices in their down time. One of which found the
strange frequency and the communications between their superiors… and the
enemy.  

John had a friend back home, and he
had been sending copies of the communications to him for weeks before they were
sent out on that ambush. The one she wasn’t supposed to survive. The one John
didn’t survive.

If it hadn’t been for a local tribe
that had found her, she wouldn’t have made it. They cared for her while they
reached another unit, not her own, that got her out of there. She had no doubt if
her own unit had found her first that she never would have made it home. She
had no doubt that the rogue leaders would have made sure of it.

Was it really PTSD if all the
people, except you, that had heard the tapes were dead? She shook her head,
thinking about John’s friend who had been killed recently in a suspicious house
fire. He had sent her the tapes right before his death. She was the only one
left now; she thought as she adjusted the pack with the tapes in them.  

There was nowhere to go now that
they wouldn’t find her. At least if she stayed in their world. Lara snorted at
that thought. Their world. She had always felt like an outcast, even among her
own family. As if she were the only one who was out of place. Everyone was a
stranger, even her parents.

John was the only one who had ever
felt like family. Now he was gone, and she was all alone again. She had no
siblings and according to her parents, they didn’t either. With her parents
dead these past four years, she was the last of her family.

At least, she didn’t have to worry
about losing anyone else that she cared about; she thought with a sigh. It was
a perk of being a loner, someone who never fit in… or belonged.

Lara stopped for a moment and
watched the moon begin to rise over the tops of the trees. She was exhausted,
but refused to stop this close to the cabin. The normal three-day trek to the
cabin would only take two if she pressed on.

Even though she didn’t mind
sleeping beneath the stars, it was the nightmares that she feared, and the
memories and the pain that they brought with them. No, she thought; she wouldn’t
sleep tonight. Whether she actually tried to or not.  

She was more restless today than
normal. Almost driven to get to the cabin as quickly as possible. She didn’t
know why, and really didn’t care. She had learned over the years to trust her
instincts. They saved her life on more than one occasion and this time they
were telling her to hurry.

Besides, she could rest when she
got there, she thought. She’d been setting the place up for months now, ever
since she got well enough to make the three-day hike from her parent's home.

At first, it was because it was the
only place where she felt at peace. It was only later that Lara realized it was
the only place she could go that was safe. That was when she began laying in
supplies.  

It was the only rehabilitation she
was going to get since the VA had abandoned her. She remembered the first time
she had set out on the trip. It was miserable. The three-day trek had taken seven,
and it had taken four more days at the cabin for her to heal well enough to try
to come back.

The eight days it had taken her to
recover from the trip when she came back had only made her more determined to
keep doing it until she could make it in three days again.  

By the time she had gotten the
letter this morning, she had been making the trek twice a week, taking at least
one sled of supplies with her each time. The letter had been the sign she had
been waiting for, telling her it was time for her to disappear. To live to
fight another day. At least until she could warn others, get the information
into the right hands.

It was the only mission keeping her
going now. Her promise made to John was the only thing left for her to finish.
Her only purpose. There was nothing left for her here without the man she loved
like a brother, the only person she had ever felt truly connected with.

The moment she had looked into his dark-blue
eyes, she had felt like she had come home. She knew he had felt it as well by
the widening of his eyes and the brilliant smile he had given her. It had only
taken him moments to clear a path to her, taking her hands in his own he smiled
down at her, uncaring that dozens of people in camp were beginning to stare.

“Where have you been? I have missed
you madly! Where is your tent? Let me grab your bags. Come, sister of my heart
and tell me where you have been and how you ended up finding me here.”

Lara was so overwhelmed by the rush
of feelings for the man; she had followed him like a zombie as he chatted with
her. There had been no way to deny it though, she thought with a sad smile, he
had been right. They were family.

They thoroughly checked both of
their lineage; they knew that they had absolutely no blood in common that ran
through their veins. But they were family. Somehow, someway, something went wrong,
and they were born in the wrong families. They knew, deep down, that it was
true, no matter how crazy it sounded to anyone else.

It was as if their souls knew the
mistake and wouldn’t allow the connection to be denied. For the first time, she
felt at peace. As if she finally belonged here now. No longer alone and out of
place.