Pairing with the Protector Read online

  Pairing with the Protector

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Evangeline Anderson

  www.evangelineanderson.com

  Pairing with the Protector, 1st Edition,

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Copyright © 2019 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art Design © 2019 by Reese Dante

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to a retailer of your choice or evangelineanderson.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only.

  Any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  Contents

  Pairing with the Protector

  Author’s 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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Leave a Review

  Tandem Unit

  Chapter 1

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  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  About the Author

  Pairing with the Protector

  A woman on a dangerous mission to a new world

  A warrior sworn to protect her who fears to risk his heart

  Can Whitney and Rafe escape from the giant beings who have captured them?

  And will Whitney end up...Pairing With her Protector?

  Dr. Whitney Washington is a Xeno-zoologist living on the Kindred Mother Ship and she has a big problem—she has a crush on her bodyguard. Unfortunately, the big Beast Kindred who comes with her to dangerous planets to protect her clearly doesn't return her interest...or does he?

  Rafe is a warrior with a past—a bad one. He has been hurt before when dealing with females and he doesn't intend to repeat the experience. But it's hard to ignore Whitney's beauty and bubbly personality. Still, he's determined to try until an unexpected turn in their latest trip to a new planet for research changes everything.

  Forced to land on an unknown world, Whitney and Rafe find themselves among a group of feral humanoids who seem to be about as smart as house cats. Soon they are mistaken for pets by the huge aliens who live on the planet and taken into captivity as a "mating pair." But what will happen when Rafe and Whitney actually have to mate in order to escape?

  You'll have to read, Pairing with the Protector to find out...

  Author’s Note

  I don't usually write holiday novels but this crazy idea came to me and it seemed like a good one for Halloween.

  Hugs and Happy Reading to you all,

  Evangeline

  One

  Dr. Whitney Washington hummed under her breath as she followed the make-up tutorial on her cell phone. Well, it wasn’t really a cell phone per se—the Kindred Mother Ship didn’t have a cell tower. But its new communications grid did allow for hand-held devices that made watching vids and talking with people on Earth possible.

  It was a recent change and long overdue, as far as Whitney was concerned. She couldn’t count how many times she’d scared her poor mom to death contacting her with a Think-me—the thin metal circlet which allowed the user to project their thoughts directly into the receiver’s head. This way was much better. Plus she could watch the how-to Halloween cat make-up tutorial she was currently following.

  Experimentally, she drew a thin gold line from the corner of her mouth outward. Then another and another—cat whiskers! The girl in the tutorial was using a black eyeliner to do the same thing, but the gold showed up much better on Whitney’s chocolate-brown skin.

  As she drew, adding a little cat nose and some flourishes around her eyes, she sang under her breath.

  “You give good love to me, baaaaby! So good, take this heart of mine, into your hand. You give good love…”

  Her mom had been a big fan of Whitney Houston back in the day—hence Whitney’s name and the fact that her whole childhood had been lived to a constant soundtrack of 80s music. When she was a teenager she’d rebelled, refusing to listen to her mom’s favorite tunes but after growing up and getting a PhD in Xeno-zoology she’d admitted to herself—if not to her mom—that they were her favorite songs as well.

  It didn’t hurt that she had a voice her mom swore sounded just like the fabled singer’s either. She’d been in church choir all her life and had even gotten a scholarship to college for her vocal talent.

  It had about broken her mama’s heart when Whitney had decided she would rather study alien animals than debut on Broadway but what could you do? She’s always loved learning new things and she’d always adored animals—when the University of South Florida, which was renowned for its research—had opened its new Xeno-zoology program, Whitney had been the first to sign up.

  And that was how she’d ended up on the Mother Ship, in partnership with the Kindred in a brand-new program that sent Earth scientists out to find alien creatures for their Bio-Genetic Engineering Initiative.

  The Kindred were famous for taking living creatures and engineering them to be useful in everyday life. The tharps of Tranq Prime were a good example—they were living blankets which could form themselves into clothing and which bonded with their human host. But once they had simply been symbiotic creatures who fed off body heat. Then the Kindred had modified them to be more intelligent and much more useful—not to mention breeding many colorful varieties. Now they were almost all anyone on Traq Prime wore and they had spread to other parts of the Kindred territory as well. In fact, one of Whitney’s friends, Sophie, had one.

  The idea of the BGEI program (or the BeeGee as Whitney privately referred to it) was to find more creatures like the ones the tharps had been developed from and bring them back to the Mother Ship. There Kindred scientists could manipulate their DNA to reinforce positive traits while also eradicating negative ones.

  Some people complained that this kind of genetic engineering was “playing God” but Whitney didn’t see it that way. The Kindred never took sentie