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eBook Category: Erotica/Fantasy
eBook Description: The last of her line, Thea DeLan possesses strange and inexplicable powers, but she can't resist the virile captive she rescues from Dekar Facility to impersonate her deceased stepbrother. With her frozen land facing annihilation by the evil sorcerer Berezan, she has to trick the blond giant into risking a dangerous ruse that will endanger her heart as much as her life. Galen Sar, leader of tropical Borderland, wakes in a strange bed and discovers a beautiful woman tending him. He's more than willing to pose as Thea's stepbrother until he can escape his icy imprisonment and extract his own revenge against Berezan's evil. But the silken bonds of love hold him more firmly than iron shackles. Soon the mighty warrior would battle any enemy and brave any peril to have a chance at besieging his beautiful captor's defenses. Rating: Contains violence and sexual contents. This book was previously published with another publisher and has undergone revisions for release with NCP.

eBook Publisher: New Concepts Publishing, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2005

18 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.3 MB], eReader (PDB) [260 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [251 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [222 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [209 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [260 KB], hiebook (KML) [605 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [333 KB], iSilo (PDB) [205 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [256 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [297 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [325 KB]
Words: 76826
Reading time: 219-307 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1-58608-646-4

Borderland

A Decade Later

Exhaustion threatened to collapse his aching lungs, but Galen Sar ran on. The harsh clang of metal against metal combined with cries of the injured, shouts of battle, and the woeful wail of mourning to play a dreadful symphony inside his head. His people were in danger. His skills, and those of the thirty warriors with him, were desperately needed.

Adrenaline surged, giving another burst of energy to his depleted muscles.

Galen glanced at the men standing near. He signaled for his warriors to spread out, and began to run again.

Sweat beaded on his brow, accumulated dirt from the smudges covering his face, and dripped into his eyes. Not breaking stride, Galen used his shoulder to wipe away the salty mixture blocking his vision.

A half league. Another quarter. The terrain beneath his feet became rockier, the vegetation more sparse, the air cooler. The city of Cree lay beyond the next bend.

"Galen! Behind you."

Galen turned to find a warrior cloaked in robes the color of sand poised to strike a lethal blow with his broadsword. The warrior's fierce cry echoed through the jungle. With no time to draw the sword belted to his waist, Galen sprang forward, blocked the downward thrust of the warrior's arm, and deflected his sword.

Shorter by several spans and lighter by at least two stones, the warrior stumbled, then fell beneath the force of Galen's blow to his midsection. Galen straddled his prone foe, forced the sword from the warrior's hand, and used the interloper's own weapon to end his life.

"Aheeee!"

Galen turned at the alien war cry. Three more warriors blocked his path. He lunged, locking sword hilts with the first warrior. Jakar, his second in command, stepped to his side, blade flashing in the slivers of waning sunlight that filtered down through the dense jungle foliage. A third Creean warrior joined the battle, but his opponent turned and ran back toward the city.

Quickly dispatching his charge, Galen kicked the body of his victim aside. "That warrior will warn of our approach."

Jakar wiped the blood from his sword on the side of his leg. "Perhaps, we should--"

A woman screamed.

Thoughts of strategy scattered. Running headlong, Galen and the warriors of Cree rounded the bend and entered the city.

Galen could barely contain the stampede of emotions that pounded through him. Hundreds of his people lay dead or dying in the clearing that formed the main thoroughfare of Cree. The smell of fresh blood and burning flesh hung in the air as thick as the smoke that billowed from the houses lining the avenue. Enemy warriors, perhaps fifty, looted and pillaged the buildings that remained, strewing clothing and household articles in their wake as they moved from one abode to another.

"Galen!"

Galen pivoted at Jakar's warning in time to ward off the blow of a pike aimed at his head by a warrior whom he'd not heard approach. He stepped back, stumbled over the body of another foe who'd been defeated by one of his warriors, and deflected the oncoming blow by raising his foot and kicking his attacker in the stomach.

Jakar finished the man and Galen pressed forward.

"Gaaaalen!"

His mother's voice reached him over the din of battle. Galen turned to discover his father lying on the steps of the Temple, his body covered with blood and dirt, his golden head cradled against his mother's breast. Galen stumbled toward them, but another warrior attacked viciously, swinging his bloody sword like a club. Galen dropped to one knee and thrust his own blade upward, burying it beneath the warrior's breastbone, plunging it in to the hilt.

A movement from the corner of his eye caught Galen's attention. Turning, sword raised, he found Jakar had stepped to his flank. Jakar engaged a charging foe, clearing the way for Galen to make his way to his parents.

"Gaaalen!"

His mother's garbled scream tore at his innards.

A warrior was at his mother's side, gripping her hair, holding her head back to expose the tender white flesh of her throat, sword poised, prepared to strike.

Less than fifty spans separated them, but it might as well have been five hundred. Galen ran, fighting the agony that crushed his heart, knowing he'd never reach her in time. He sidestepped the blood-covered bodies of children, slipping and sliding in the sticky wetness that soaked into Borderland's fertile soil.

"Ahheee!"

The warrior's battle cry echoed in Galen's ears. A bloodied sword raised high in one hand, his mother's head in the other, the warrior of the desert had but one second of triumph before Galen's sword ripped into his midsection and punctured his heart.

Galen fell to his knees before the mutilated bodies of his parents. Tears slipped unchecked down his cheeks. He reached out, disentangled the dead warrior's fingers from his mother's platinum hair, and then closed her eyelids with trembling fingers. He clasped his father's lifeless hand and brought it to his cheek.

"I swear I will avenge you both. I pledge this with every beat of my heart, each breath I draw into my body."

A hand touched his shoulder.

"Galen, by the Gods, I'm sorry. The invaders have been defeated, Galen, but several escaped into the jungle. We were able to capture one. He told us all this was Berezan's doing. Berezan sent his army to Borderland in search of some mysterious Sphere of Light."

Galen closed his eyes. He trembled with grief and rage. For many sunrises he'd warned his father not to ignore the rumors of unrest and violence from Solarus. He insisted the warriors of Cree remain home instead of leaving the populace vulnerable while they went on their semiannual hunting trip. But Omar Sar had cast aside Galen's worries, maintaining the rumors from Solarus were only rumors, that Berezan would never be foolish enough to attack Borderland.

The senseless murder of his parents, his people, could have been prevented if he'd been stronger, more insistent.

"Don't blame yourself, Galen. You couldn't have foreseen this." Jakar bent and slipped a golden chain from Omar Sar's neck. He held it out to Galen. The bronzed sun-shaped medallion suspended from the chain glistened in the last afternoon light. "The warriors who escaped may bring back reinforcements."

Galen pushed Borderland's symbol of leadership away. "We need to bury our dead, help the wounded, and see that the survivors are taken to our hiding place." Galen rose, wiped the blood from his sword on the beige robe of the fallen warrior at his feet, then sheathed his weapon.

"Galen? Take this." Jakar held out the bronzed medallion. "It's your place to lead."

Galen shook his head. He lifted his father's body from the Temple steps. "I have no right to accept the emblem of leadership or the position of Regis until I've avenged our people's deaths. Come. There's much to do before I depart."

"Don't be foolish, Galen. After our people are seen to safety, your warriors will go with you."

"No. I won't wait. Berezan is mine."