HIs to Take Read online

  His To Take

  A Post-Apocalyptic Alien Overlord Romance

  Selina Coffey

  Summer Cooper

  Copyright © Lovy Books Ltd, 2019

  Selina Coffey and Summer Cooper have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Lovy Books Ltd

  20-22 Wedlock Road

  London N1 7GU

  United Kingdom.

  Contents

  Personal Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  His To Mate

  About the Author

  Personal Note

  Hey there,

  Thank you so much for buying my book.

  Selina

  1

  February 20, 2020

  Ann stared out of the window of her father’s SUV and wondered if anything would ever be the same again. Two hours ago, the ground shook, sonic booms rang around the world, and then… everything turned to chaos.

  She thought about it now, as her father sped down the highway, how she’d been on the couch, watching Netflix as she waited for her neighbor, and one-true-love, Rex Wolfson’s baseball game to start. It had been a normal Friday evening, and she’d planned out a new strategy to get Rex to notice her as more than just his neighbor when the ground started to shake. That, in itself, wasn’t really eventful; they lived in California after all.

  It was the strength of the earthquake, the way the house swayed and jumped that made them all panic. Then the sonic booms started. Not just one but several, maybe seven, Ann couldn’t really remember. There’d been screams, the sound of wood and glass breaking, and so much noise that Ann screamed along with whoever else it was that screamed in the kitchen.

  Now, she sat beside Rex, her parents were in the front of the SUV and her dad pressed the SUV’s engine for every bit of speed it had, with Rex’s parents in the very back seat. Fear, shock, and despair mingled in a rather unsettling way with the joy she found with Rex beside her. She was terrified, and even the sound of her favorite band, Fleetwood Mac, didn’t calm her. She had the band’s albums on her phone, earbuds in place to block out the reality of the world around her, but she still didn’t feel calm, though.

  Instead, she felt as if she was on the verge of dying. Her chest was tight, and her heart pounded in her chest, but this time it wasn’t because Rex was there with her. Normally, when he was around, her heart would flutter in her chest, her cheeks would go warm, and she’d hide behind her long brown hair until she could breathe normally again. This was something so much more than that. It felt as if her heart had been squeezed in a vice and whoever had control of the vice just didn’t want to let go.

  Ann’s attention was caught when her mother slammed her fist into the side of her husband’s seat. Ann pulled out her right earbud, alarmed at her mother’s violent display. Mary Adams was 35 years old, and except for Mary’s blue eyes and blond hair, was an exact copy of her daughter. She was soft, sweet, and tender by nature, a loving mother and wife. The fear and rage now on her face scared Ann even more than she already was.

  “John Adams, you tell me where we’re going, and you tell me right now!” Her mother’s voice was strained, not the quiet, pleasant tone that normally came from her mouth. The fact that she yelled only intensified Ann’s fear.

  “Mary, please, think about the children!” John reached for her hand, kissed it and sent her a calming glance with the brown eyes Ann had inherited. “It’s a place up north, hidden away, where we can’t be found by looters. It’s a good place, and if what the news people say is true, it will be the best place for us.”

  “But what is it, John?” Mary pleaded, and something about the wild look in Mary’s shimmering blue eyes told Ann that her mother was on the verge of a panic attack too.

  Ann reached forward to touch her mother’s shoulder and Mary jumped. “It’s okay, Mom. Dad wouldn’t take us somewhere that isn’t safe.”

  “Ann’s right, Mary,” Stephan Wolfson spoke up from behind Ann. “John told me he had a safe place for us all, and I believe him.”

  “But why is it a secret?” Mary whined and sat back in her seat. Like her daughter, Mary was a couple of inches above average height and her slim frame filled the front seat.

  “It’s not a secret, Mary, it’s just hard to explain. And I’m trying to get us there quickly and in one piece.” John had to swerve the wheel to dodge the SUV around a car that had stalled in the road. “We have about another hour before we get there, so just settle in and help me watch for objects in the road.”

  Mary just sighed loudly, and then turned the radio up.

  “Ash clouds will soon fall across the country, folks.” The radio announcer was male, his voice tired and sad. “This is it folks, the end of us all. Yellowstone, the Long Valley Caldera, Mount St. Helens, they’ve all gone off and we’re getting reports that the…”

  The announcer stopped to cough, and Ann’s attention zeroed in on the radio. Why was he coughing?

  “Sorry, folks, that ash cloud has been here in Denver for a while now.” Ann could hear the man take a drink of something, and then his voice came back. “If you’re listening on satellite radio, I’d advise you to get underground, now. Nobody knows how far the ash will spread, or how long the eruptions will last.”

  Ann knew the SUV had satellite radio and glanced at her dad. “Are we going underground, Daddy?”

  Her voice wasn’t very loud when she spoke, and her father didn’t answer. Rather than demand an answer, she just went back to the voice of the man that announced doom for them all.

  “I doubt I’ll be around for much longer, folks, so I just want to say, it’s been a great ride, and I hope that some of you survive this insanity to rebuild.”

  Ann thought it was an odd thing to say, but then wondered if it was the end of the world. But surely the ash would blow away and that would be the end of it?

  Snow started to fall from the sky, and Ann glanced up, overjoyed because she’d never seen it snow in this part of California before. “Mom! It’s snowing!”

  “That’s not snow, baby. It’s ash.” Her mom’s voice now had that same tired edge as the announcer’s, and Ann looked to the front seat. Her mom’s face was tired, drawn, and filled with worry. “Don’t worry, honey, your dad will keep us safe.”

  Ann glanced over at Rex, but he still had his earbuds in, hidden by his longish, light blond hair, and his hazel eyes were closed. The way his head bounced steadily against the window on his side would have given her a headache, she thought, but that wasn’t really her concern right now.

  “What did he mean, rebuild if we survive? Won’t this end in a day or two?”
br />   “It,” Mary’s words cut off as she muttered something Ann couldn’t hear. “Nobody knows how long it will last, Ann. Science can only predict from past experiences. They can’t guarantee anything. And if that many volcanoes have gone off at once? Well, maybe being underground isn’t so safe. John?”

  “Yes, Mary?” her father said but didn’t take his gaze from the windscreen. He twitched his head when his dark brown hair, long on the top but short around the sides, fell into his eyes. He didn’t even want to take his hands off the steering wheel long enough to move his hair out of his eyes. Ann thought he probably wished he’d had his hair cut now, like her mother had told him to do countless times before.

  “Will it be safe underground? Surely there will be more earthquakes?” Mary’s voice interrupted Ann’s thoughts and brought her attention back to her mother.

  “I really don’t know, honey. I can only think that we’ll be safe up there, and hope.” John patted his wife’s knee and that was when Amanda, Rex’s mother, spoke up. She wasn’t a geologist, or a volcanologist, but she was a science teacher at the local two-year college and knew a thing or two about Earth sciences.

  “It sounds like the planet, or at least the mantel, is going through a sudden major shift, something that has never been recorded in human history. All of these volcanoes going off at once, and Yellowstone? Something’s happening, and being underground might not be safe, but it will be safer than being above ground. Especially since we’ll likely have something similar to a nuclear winter for years to come. Is there food there, John?”

  “We’ll have everything we need, Amanda, don’t worry. We’ll all be safe.”

  Ann glanced at her father and decided to try and block the world out for a little while longer. She put her earbuds in and lost herself in one of Stevie Nicks’ tracks that she released without the band. It always soothed Ann, and it did so now.

  A week later, the new routine of being in the bunker was broken. The Wolfson family had started to… change.

  “We’ll have to lock them out of our section until they either calm down or… you know.” Ann heard her father whisper to her mother.

  At 15, Ann was a very intelligent young woman and had learned to listen for whispers from her parents. They wanted to protect her, to keep the truth from her, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew they’d be down in the bunker for at least two years. At first, she’d been delighted. They were safe, there was ventilation, food, and the place wasn’t that different from being in a house.

  There were several levels, one for maintenance and the machinery needed to keep the bunker liveable, with several different technologies for energy sources. There was enough food stored for ten people to live on for 20 years on that level, as well. The level they lived on, the second level, had bedrooms for the same amount of people, three bathrooms, a living room area, a kitchen, an infirmary, and several other rooms that had different purposes. All were fitted with lights that mimicked sunlight, and there was even an outdoor area with fake grass, sun loungers, and a picnic table.

  Below that was a level that had space for more rooms and a long track that could be used to walk or run for exercise. That level wasn’t really complete, and Ann didn’t go down there often because it was the darkest level of them all.

  At first, the whole place was a little scary, but over the days Ann had become used to it, and now it felt like a sanctuary. Or had, up until the point when Rex snarled at her and his face started to sprout long, blond fur. She’d stared at him in horror as his face continued to change, and her scream had alerted her father that something was wrong.

  John Adams had wrestled the young man out of the living room area and had taken him back to the left wing of the level that the Wolfsons called home. John had closed them off with the help of a heavy steel door. He’d turned on the locking system that could only be opened with a code that he knew, and he’d watched through the 4-inch tall, thick pane of glass as Rex had… become something else.

  John had then come to Ann and Mary, who had rushed to Ann’s side, and made sure his daughter wasn’t harmed. When Ann assured him she was fine and just wanted to lie down, he’d drawn his wife over to a long black sofa on the other side of the room. Ann had sprawled out on the couch and covered her head with one of the thick green blankets they’d found piled in a storage closet. She’d put in her earbuds, but she hadn’t turned on her music, yet. She knew her parents would whisper to each other now.

  “Did you know this might happen?” Mary whispered to John, and Ann strained her ears to hear her father’s reply.

  “I’d heard a few things on the radio, but I didn’t believe them. I mean, humans can’t turn into wolves now, can they?”

  Ann’s father was a very powerful entertainment lawyer, and he knew the dark side of Hollywood and glamor. He knew that people could be evil and do stupid things. That’s how he’d ended up with this bunker. A really famous actor, known as a beloved father-figure on a long-running program, had screwed up majorly and was caught in a prostitution sting down in Florida. The actor had lost everything and gave her Dad the bunker as payment for his services. Dad had kept it secret from her mom because he thought she’d be angry about the trade, but, as it turned out, he was smart to do it.

  “Apparently, they can, John!” Mary hissed angrily. “We shouldn’t have allowed them down here; they’re dangerous.”

  “It’s not like we knew this would happen! They’ve been our neighbors Ann’s entire life, Mary, what could I do? Leave them to die up there? You don’t know what it’s like… the things I’ve heard about.” John ran the communications room in the bunker and often spoke with others with the devices left in there. Something called a ham radio or something.

  Ann had no idea what a ham radio was, and she couldn’t get wi-fi down in the bunker, so she couldn’t Google it either when her dad whispered about it. She imagined a ham with two wires stuck into it, bouncing around on a table as electricity ran through it. The idea was stupid, and she knew it had to be an acronym or something.

  “What did you hear?” Mary asked quietly, as if afraid to hear the answer.

  “This has been happening from day one. There are theories that something either melted out of an ice cap or something was kept in a pocket underground, some… I don’t know, organism that can change DNA, a bacterium, or a virus maybe, or maybe even a fungus. Nobody knows, they just know that it only started to happen after the events started. People started to turn into wolves.”

  “That can’t be true, John! Werewolves? No, I refuse to believe it!” Mary laughed, and Ann winced on the couch. She’d seen what Rex had started to become, her mother hadn’t.

  John pulled Mary up and guided her to the door outside the living room and showed her the small window in the door. “John! There’s a wolf in there! It will kill the Wolfsons!”

  “No, Mary, that’s Rex. That’s our new reality.”

  “But John…” Mary started, but let the words die off. What could she say?

  “They’ll calm down in a day or two, go back to their normal selves. We just have to keep them locked up until they change again. Then, we’ll see what happens from there.”

  Ann, still on the couch, knew her parents would go quiet now as her father comforted her mother. For a moment, she longed to be back at home, with her small circle of friends, Elizabeth and Maria. They were likely dead, Ann thought, but she didn’t know. They might have survived. But for what? To be slaughtered by werewolves? The thought disturbed her far too much and she did the only thing she could do now. She hit play and let the world slip away.

  2

  February 20, 2025

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, John. I really don’t.” Amanda Wolfson leaned back in the steel utility chair in the conference room and stared out at the rest of the bunker’s survivors. “We have at least another three years before the air even starts to clear a little bit. Sending one of us out there right now, well, it’s just not the smart thing to do.”
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  Ann tuned the others out and continued to draw in one of the notepads that they still had thousands of. She wished her phone’s battery hadn’t died for the millionth time since that sad day and doodled instead. Rex had noticed the sky seemed lighter when they all got up that morning and that discovery had set off the current debate.

  They all sat around the long, rectangular table, one family on each side, and did what they always did in a time of crisis… they discussed their options. Or, the parents did anyway. Rex and Ann rarely had any input into what happened, even though they were now 20 and 21. Another thing that hadn’t changed was how much Ann loved Rex.

  She cast glances at him as she doodled on her pad, hidden behind the long curtain of her hair. She hadn’t cut it since they’d come down to the bunker and it was now well past her waist. The perfect way to hide the fact that she looked at him often. For all that he noticed, she thought with a sour grimace aimed at the notepad.

  She’d grown into a rather womanly figure, with breasts that would fill his hands and then some, and hips that would perfectly match with his. At least, they did in the hot dreams she had about him, the ones that had led to her closing her door at night, not long after they’d moved down to the bunker. Something she’d never done in her real home.