Adrik: Titans book 1

Ember and her sisters have known nothing but captivity, traded like commodities from one cruel captor to the next. But when a group of warriors known as the Titans rescue them, they’re forced to reckon with a new kind of threat—one that comes in the form of the brooding, dangerous leader, Adrik. Despite the Titans’ rough exterior, Ember can’t deny their surprising decency or her growing attraction to the Commander. But she can’t afford to let her guard down. Not while her sisters’ safety is at stake.

Adrik is no ordinary Titan. As a rare shadow Titan, he’s dedicated his life to the service of his people, bound by duty and devoid of personal desires. Until he encounters Ember. Among the rescued females, one stands Ember’s resemblance to a shadow female—a near-mythical rarity in his species. Shadow Titans are only allowed to mate with shadow females, and the dwindling number of such women has left Adrik with little hope for a future. Until now.

Caught between the ghosts of their past and the uncertain promise of a future with the Titans, Ember and her sisters must decide whether this unexpected refuge is worth the risk. But when another faction of ruthless galactic warriors offers to purchase the females, Adrik is faced with an impossible choice. One that leaves Ember wondering if he will sacrifice everything to keep her or if his duty will demand he abandon her.

*This is book 1 in the Titans series. Each book focuses on a different couple and can be read as a stand-alone.

***

Adrik’s lips thinned into a grim line as he glared at the “cargo” being loaded onto his ship. He and his crew had intercepted a distress signal and upon boarding the damaged vessel, they’d initially assumed the ship was abandoned. They’d been wrong.

Eyes narrowing on the cage filled with humans, Adrik watched as his crew carefully maneuvered the cage into the hold of his ship, the Cressida. The human hostages whimpered, and it wasn’t lost on him—or any of his crew—that the survivors were not only human but females. All females.

It'd been a long time since any of his Titans had seen a female. Worse, from studies done on their home planet of Cesca Sol, Adrik and his Second in Command, Kaze, knew that Titans were sexually compatible with human females. A few Titans had even coupled with human females, resulting in hardy offspring that held all the power and intellect of Titans with the diplomacy of their human mothers.

The thought of creating offspring had Adrik reaching down to adjust himself. He too hadn’t had the pleasure of a supple female body for… Gods, how long had it been?

One of the females started shouting, and it pulled Adrik from his thoughts. His gaze slid from the female to Pitch.

Pitch was a hardened Titan warrior. They all were, but unlike the rest of them, Pitch had an aversion to humans. Pitch had been captured and experimented on by human scientists. Adrik and his team had defied orders and had flown to Earth to rescue their brother—who’d crash-landed on the occupied planet—and while Adrik and the crew of The Cressida had reclaimed Pitch with little resistance, it had taken them a full lunar cycle to finally rescue their fellow Titan. In that time, Pitch had suffered.

The same female that had been shouting earlier started in again, and Adrik’s gaze sliced to her. The fury on her face was universally understood. It made Adrik grin as he gave his full attention to his new…prisoners? Guests? He still wasn’t sure how to deal with the headache of their newly acquired “cargo”.