The Krinar Eclipse: A Krinar World Novel Read online

  The Krinar Eclipse

  A Krinar World Novel

  Lauren Smith

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  The Krinar Code by Emma Castle

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Lauren Smith

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Lauren Smith

  Excerpt from The Krinar Code Copyright 2019 © by Emma Castle

  Cover art by Anna Crosswell - Cover Couture

  Note: The Author of this book has been granted permission by Anna Zaires and Dima Zales to use the copyrighted characters and the world of The Krinar Chronicles created by Anna Zaires and Dima Zales in this book; all copyright protection to the characters and the worlds of Anna Zaires and Dima Zales are retained by Anna Zaires and Dima Zales.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-947206-75-5 (e-book edition)

  ISBN: 978-1-947206-76-2 (print edition)

  For Anna,

  She let me dream and write in her amazing Krinar world.

  Prologue

  Five years ago

  Bianca’s sweet sixteenth birthday should have been celebrated with a new car in the driveway with a pretty bow on it, not with an imminent alien invasion. Instead of Bianca rushing out the door, shiny new keys in hand, two Secret Service agents rushed into her bedroom and hustled her into the hallway toward her father’s room.

  “We have secured Hummingbird. Repeat, we have secured Hummingbird,” one agent said into his ear mic. The two armed men trapped her near the back wall of her father’s bedroom, shielding her with their bodies.

  “Bianca?” Her father rushed over to her, his own security detail flanking him. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine…” Her voice shook as she looked around the room. “What’s going on?”

  “A ship has appeared in orbit, just outside our atmosphere.”

  “A ship? What do you mean, a ship?” Bianca stared at her father’s ashen face. There was really only one possible answer, but she had to hear it for herself.

  “A spaceship.”

  Bianca would have laughed if it wasn’t for the looks on the faces of the men around her. No one was joking.

  “You mean…like aliens?” Her heart raced so violently in her chest that it hurt. She struggled to process what was happening.

  “Yes, we—” Her father’s words were cut off as a man materialized in front of them in the center of the room with a flash of light. The man—or alien, presumably—looked straight at her father.

  The Secret Service agents drew their guns on the sudden intruder. Bianca just stared at the man—who looked human, yet was somehow too perfect to be human—as he spoke to her father. This was no thin green specter with oval-shaped black eyes who’d dropped to Earth in a beam of light from a flying saucer. This…creature looked more like he’d stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine. It didn’t make sense. Why would aliens look so human?

  His speech was slow and measured, with a hint of an accent she’d never heard before. Her stomach knotted, and her body flushed with a rush of heat as she stared, bewitched, at the beautiful man before her. She was only sixteen, but her hormones were already raging. She knew a sexy man when she saw one, and this one was beyond sexy.

  “President Wells, I know you spoke to Arus, one of my kind, a few minutes ago, and he made it clear that we, the Krinar people, are no threat to you.” The man was tall, too tall, with russet hair and brown eyes that seemed to flash a tawny gold every few seconds. There was something terrifying and fascinating about him that made it impossible to look away.

  “I did speak with Arus. Who are you?” her father asked.

  “My name is Soren. Arus has assigned me the role of…” Soren paused, his lips twitching in a near smile as he seemed to search for the right word. “Ambassador.”

  Bianca strained to see over the shoulders of her Secret Service detail. They wedged her between their two large bodies and the wall, smothering her with fear and panic as wild thoughts of a hundred alien invasion movies swarmed in her head. There was a soft rumble to the man’s deep voice that seemed to put her at ease as her instincts screamed that nothing was calming about facing off with an alien.

  In fact, she knew without a doubt that something was terribly wrong, because she should have been screaming and trying to escape…yet her voice wouldn’t work. She was rooted to the spot in horror and fascination.

  “I am to represent the needs of the Krinar people on Earth. Any issues that arise will be dealt with by me.” The man crossed the room and seated himself in an armchair, the one her father liked to sit in at night and smoke a cigar when he had the chance.

  “You have been poor custodians of such a precious planet. You have ruined it. We are here to fix what we can, and you will be thankful for the intervention.”

  This man…alien…who called himself Soren, simply leaned back, hands on the armrests in a picture of complete ease, watching them without fear. His casual, carefree attitude warned Bianca that whoever these Krinar were, they weren’t afraid of humans at all. That meant they had power, and lots of it.

  Soren cleared his throat politely and continued. “I assume you don’t mind if I procure a residence close to yours. It will give me time to acclimate. I have not set foot on your world in more than five thousand years.” Soren chuckled. “Much has changed.”

  Her father seemed to recover himself. “Five thousand years?”

  “Yes. I was checking in on your progress. Egypt was the center of advanced technology. They were quite gifted.”

  “Our progress?” Bianca spoke up, only to have one of her agents mutter a curse and try to remove her from the room. But she dug in her heels.

  “Stop. Leave her be.” Soren’s commanding voice stilled the agent gripping her, and his hold loosened. “Who is this?” Soren seemed to notice her for the first time. Her father stepped between her and the Krinar man.

  “My daughter, Bianca. She normally wouldn’t be in here, but your little magic act has my security team noticeably concerned, and they thought it best to bring her to my room.” Her father waved at the agents hovering near him and Bianca.

  Soren raised a dark brow, studying Bianca. There was a knowing look in his gaze, as though he could read every thought she’d ever had. There would be no keeping secrets from him. A sudden shiver rippled down her spine at the thought of feeling so powerless against a man like him.

  “Today is your birthday?” he asked as he looked down at his palm. Had he written notes on it, like she did when she was
worried she’d forget something? The idea of a powerful alien needing to scribble down notes on his hand struck her as both funny and bizarre.

  “Y–yes,” she replied. He then moved a few steps closer, and she saw that his palm was empty of notes. What had he been looking at? And how had he known about her birthday?

  “Happy birthday, then. Sixteen is an important year in a human’s life, I’m told.” Soren smiled and turned his focus back to her father, having lost all interest in her.

  “Now, Mr. President, it’s time we talked peace terms in order to prevent millions of innocent deaths.” He rose with confidence and preternatural grace from the armchair and came face-to-face with her father. “Here’s how Earth is going to surrender to Krinar control.” Bianca felt like she’d swallowed her tongue whole as she stared at the gorgeous, scary-as-hell man who had just announced that his people were not only invading, but had already won. All she could think was that he reminded her of a leopard she’d once seen in a zoo. So close against the glass, golden eyes hungry with dark intent…

  A predator.

  Bianca opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

  1

  Bianca bolted upright in bed, heart smashing against her ribs. Her roommate, Claudia, stared at her. The other girl flipped on the light between their two beds and watched her nervously.

  “You’d have that dream about him again?” Claudia asked, her blue eyes wide. Bianca nodded. Mortification deadened her limbs as she realized she’d woken up her roommate with her screaming.

  Today was her twenty-first birthday, and like clockwork, the nightmares had come back. K-Day. The day the Krinar had arrived and taken over. Everything that Bianca had believed about her life and even Earth itself had been turned on its head once the Krinar had made some announcements to the world.

  Thousands of years ago, the Krinar had modified existing life on Earth to become compatible with and originate from Krinar-based DNA in order to create humans. Humans were nothing more than ants in an ant farm to them. She couldn’t help but fear the day one of those Ks would give their little ant farm called Earth a mighty shake.

  “I’m just glad the agents have the night off,” she muttered.

  Claudia nodded. The first couple of times she’d had nightmares, her agents had rushed into the room, guns drawn. Claudia had almost asked for a new roommate from Princeton’s college housing. But Bianca had convinced her not to, and they’d told the agents they had to take nights off. All that really meant was that they took up a post in an SUV parked in front of the dorm. At least from there they couldn’t hear her scream. She had to wear her panic button around her wrist at all times. She was glad the White House tech team had been able to make it so small. Embedded in a leather bracelet, it looked more like a fashion accessory than a personal security device.

  Claudia slipped out of bed and headed into their shared bathroom. “Want me to get you some water?”

  Bianca rubbed her eyes and drew in a slow breath. She wasn’t sixteen anymore. She was finishing her final year at Princeton. She wasn’t helpless, wasn’t trapped beneath Soren’s predatory gaze. Yet even after five years, thoughts of him, the first Krinar she’d ever seen, wouldn’t go away. Her stomach knotted, and she suppressed a moan as she fought off the wave of nausea that came with it.

  Flashes of memories, slices of that moment always came back. Predatory golden-brown eyes that threatened to swallow her whole. After she had seen him, heard his calm demands all those years ago, she had been escorted to her room and kept under lock and key while her father, the president, had spoken with him for the next four hours about the future of mankind and how best to protect the American people from panicking. It was why her father had been reelected by a landslide. He’d kept the Great Panic that had followed the invasion limited. America and the other major countries of the world had kept the confusion and casualties as low as possible.

  “Here.” Claudia held out a glass of water, which Bianca gratefully accepted. She curled her fingers around the glass and drank deeply. There was something purifying about water after she had nightmares, as it washed away the metallic tang in her mouth that always accompanied her nightmares.

  “It’s been five years. You’d think you’d have adjusted by now,” said Claudia.

  “You weren’t there,” said Bianca. “I didn’t have any kind of warning to cushion the blow like most people did.”

  “I can’t believe you were up close to Soren, on K-Day no less.” Claudia sat cross-legged on the bed and ran her fingers through her red hair. Now she was awake and wanted to talk, but Bianca just wanted to curl up in a ball and try to make the dreams go away. Ever since K-Day, she had seen Soren everywhere. His arrogant, handsome face appeared on TV interviews, magazine covers, and internet articles.

  The Krinar male was handsome, she could acknowledge that, but she hated him. Hated him because he’d been the first person to really look at her and then just as quickly dismiss her. She was one small, meaningless part of a race his had experimented on over eons. Just a kid. But now? She wasn’t a kid anymore. What would he think of her if they came face-to-face again after all these years? She hoped she’d never know. Going to college had helped her avoid most of her father’s political functions. Her mother had died before he took office, and Bianca had taken the unofficial position of her father’s “plus one” to every gala and state dinner. But after the Krinar invaded, she’d been invited to fewer and fewer of those events for safety reasons, which was fine by her.

  “Soren’s so intimidating,” Claudia continued. “But in kind of a hot way, you know? Like if he kissed you, you would just melt through the floor. My sister’s friend went to an X-club, you know. And wow, she can’t even talk about it. She gets this dazed, swoony look on her face.”

  That had Bianca sitting up. “Your sister knows someone who went to an X-club?”

  Those were Krinar sex clubs. Well, that’s what the news called them, but Bianca wasn’t so certain. They were clubs run by the Ks, but they let humans come inside. The only humans who tended to go in were xenophiles, or K obsessed humans, which was why the clubs were called X-clubs. And once a human went inside, the odds of him or her ending up in a K’s bed were high. Bianca knew why.

  As the president’s daughter, she had been educated about the Krinar more than just about anyone in the general public. She knew only too well which rumors were true and which weren’t. The worst details about the Krinar, well, those were the ones that were mostly true.

  The Krinar drank human blood. Not often, but they did it when having sex. Apparently it gave them some kind of pleasure high, and humans were similarly affected, like being given ecstasy that enhanced their sexual arousal beyond imagining. That wasn’t something Bianca wanted to think about. The Ks were basically space vampires—not that she’d ever say that to their faces.

  “Mandy said that her friend Lucy was sore for days.” Claudia pointed discreetly below her waist.

  “Seriously?”

  “She didn’t say where, though,” Claudia giggled.

  Bianca wished she wasn’t fascinated, but she was. She was still a virgin, thanks to her agents. Any man who got too handsy with her was escorted home by her assigned Secret Service watchdogs. Daddy’s orders.

  “Oh yeah. She says she doesn’t really remember much about what happened after one bit her, just that she was in some crazy kind of orgy.”

  “Orgy? Come on, Claudia, be serious.” Bianca laughed. Orgies? Was she kidding?

  “I am serious.” Claudia frowned. “She slept with three guys, at least she thinks it was three. They were in some basement, and the furniture was floating.”

  Bianca snorted. Sadly, there wasn’t an extra pillow on her bed to throw at her roommate. She was totally pulling her leg.

  “Orgies and floating furniture? Why don’t we just go back to sleep? We have two weeks until finals, and we should focus on that, not Krinar X-clubs and floating furniture.”

  Claudia huffed
and turned off the light. Bianca settled back in her bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, and closed her eyes. But tonight she knew she would get little sleep, because Soren was there, a seductive, threatening shadow in the back of her mind. She stated known facts in her head to calm down.

  Ks can’t read minds. Truth.

  Ks can’t watch you sleep in your bed. Truth.

  But they could see you in your dorm room if they decided to put cameras in here. Scary truth.

  Soren doesn’t know where you are, and he doesn’t care. You’re just the human president’s brat he met once five years ago. Truth? She hoped so.

  She drifted into a light, restless sleep and wondered why she couldn’t shake the sense that someone was indeed watching her.

  Soren frowned at the hologram of the human woman’s dorm room, watching her toss and turn over the next three hours. He hadn’t tapped into this feed in nearly four years, not since he’d assured himself that her college accommodations were suitable. She was the daughter of a great leader whom he respected, after all. It was only natural to check on her. For security. The anti-K rebels had been known to target pro-Krinar leaders and their families. The president wasn’t exactly pro-Krinar, but he was supportive of peaceful relations and cooperation between their species.

  Soren stared at the hologram of Bianca, and his frown deepened. Why she held such a curiosity for him, he didn’t know. Perhaps because he knew she was curious about him, frightened by him too. After eight thousand long years of life, nothing much surprised or intrigued him these days. But she did. And it wasn’t simply because she had grown up from a young human girl to an enchanting woman. Five years made quite a difference. He hadn’t looked at her at sixteen the way he looked at her now. Now she was a grown woman.