by Roxie Ray
Rescued By The Warrior Lord
Lunarian Warriors: Book 2
Roxie Ray
Contents
Prologue
1. Sawyer
2. Haelian
3. Sawyer
4. Haelian
5. Sawyer
6. Haelian
7. Sawyer
8. Haelian
9. Sawyer
10. Haelian
11. Sawyer
12. Haelian
13. Sawyer
14. Haelian
15. Sawyer
16. Haelian
17. Sawyer
18. Haelian
19. Sawyer
20. Haelian
21. Sawyer
22. Haelian
23. Sawyer
24. Nion
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Rescued By The Warrior Lord
Prologue
Sawyer
When the man of your dreams asks you to marry him and you say, “Yeah, sure, okay,” you say it because you’re thinking about the dress, the veil, the bouquet, the shiny diamond ring he’s holding out to you. The life that it will mean for you—for both of you—once he slips it on your finger and you finally say your I dos.
What you’re not thinking about is the catering, and the hairdresser, and the fittings, and the seating arrangements—holy hell in a handbasket, the seating arrangements. When I told Aiden I’d marry him, I thought I was planning a cute little ceremony where our family and friends would celebrate our two lives, two hearts, two souls becoming one. But then of course, I found out that Aunt Greta and Uncle Merv still weren’t speaking to each other, and Aiden’s sister couldn’t be anywhere near the cousin she’d accidentally made out with two Halloween’s ago, and somehow just telling people where to sit while they smiled and drank champagne had become a high-level diplomatic event.
And I wasn’t a diplomat. I was a kindergarten teacher. Sure, I could handle juice boxes, hair pulling and Red Rover, Red Rover—but I couldn’t exactly stop Celestina from swapping spit with anyone or put Uncle Merv in a timeout when he brought up politics again.
It was the seating arrangements, in the end, that killed it.
There were other things, sure—so many other things that it almost boggled the mind as to how the heck I’d ended up convinced that Aiden McBride was my soulmate to begin with—but the seating arrangements were easier to blame.
“I’m so sorry,” I gushed to the wedding planner as I rifled through my bag. A dozen broken crayons, my reading glasses, a few half-used red lipsticks, three picture books and a mountain of receipts shuffled around my fingers—but no planning portfolio. “I could have sworn I put it in here before I left, but…”
“Mmhmm.” Blythe brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the blue-class stripe on her ID badge, looking bored. “Well then. If you can’t be organized enough to show up for our meeting prepared—”
“No!” I yelped. I raked my fingers through my disheveled hair. My natural blonde suddenly felt greasy and unkempt compared to Blythe’s sleek, stunning platinum. “I’m so sorry. Could you maybe wait here for ten minutes while I run home to get it? It won’t take long. Promise.”
Blythe sniffed, then shrugged and studied her French manicure. “I suppose. I’ve already booked out the hour for you. If you’re going to waste your fiancé’s hard-earned money, you shouldn’t waste my time on top of it.”
Her words should have been cutting. Maybe they were. But I knew that Aiden’s world was my future now. I couldn’t afford to be embarrassed—at least, not there. Instead, I popped up out of my chair immediately and forced a grin.
“Thank you so much, Blythe. I’ll be right back. Pinky swear.”
And never mind the way Blythe literally shuddered at the thought of interlocking pinkies with me. Like she’d said, Aiden was paying her for her time. If she didn’t want to deal with a lowly green-class, then she shouldn’t have taken the job.
My cheeks burned bright red the whole way home anyway. Somehow, they always did.
This was what life was like as a green-class citizen suddenly pulled up into the blue-class elite. Sure, the blue-classes were just one tier above me, but they acted like within that tier there was an entire universe. People like Aiden and Blythe had never had to work hard for their money. They’d never even really had to worry about what job they’d do when they grew up or how they’d manage to pay rent while they worked their way through college. But me…I’d fought hard for everything I had. In reality, I was one of the lucky ones. At least I wasn’t red-class, having to break my back every day in the searing sun to make a living, or worse, gray-class, with only the worst possible jobs and salaries being afforded to me.
In the green-class, I had to struggle, but I always knew that with enough hard work, my life would stay afloat. And now that I was with Aiden, I knew that I had an even more promising future to look forward to as well. If Aiden and I had kids, they wouldn’t have to worry about where their place in the world would be. He could give them jobs with his family’s investment firm or use his connections to make sure they could take internships with people who would help them follow their dreams.
When Aiden had proposed to me, that was what had really sealed the deal in the end. He was kind to me, he didn’t beat me or abuse me, and he’d give our children the best future possible. Was he going to be a perfect husband? Of course not. But in our world, love wasn’t the end goal. Safety and security were what I had in mind, and if Aiden would take me then I’d have him.
Or at least, that was what I thought until I got home.
When I parked on the driveway and threw open the door of my beat-up old car , I heard a nasty crunch. Bewildered, I snapped my head toward the sound.
“Crap,” I swore beneath my breath. There right beside me was Aiden’s sports car, with a massive dent in the passenger side door. I’d been so distracted when I pulled up that I hadn’t even noticed his car was there.
Although, to be fair, it shouldn’t have been there. I’d had to rush from work to home to the cafe to get to my meeting with Blythe in time, but despite a little good-natured begging on my part, Aiden had assured me that he wouldn’t be able to make it. He had work to do—loads of it. He’d told me he’d probably be with James, his business partner and the best man for our impending nuptials, at the office all night trying to tackle it all. It was one of the few things that we had in common despite the difference in our classes, actually. I had to stay late prepping lesson plans all the time, and Aiden was always winding up with a few more expense reports on his plate than he could reasonably manage.
So…what the heck was his car doing in the driveway, then?
I took a breath as I slipped out of my car. He’d be furious with me for denting his door, but I knew he’d be even more furious if I came in demanding to know what he was doing at home. Probably he’d done the same thing I had—forgotten something here. To be fair, it was pretty easy to do. When I first moved into Aiden’s house, I’d gotten lost just trying to find my way from the bedroom to the kitchen those first few mornings. With six bedrooms, a library, an office, a parlor and a freakin’ in-home sauna to contend with, it was hard not to lose track of things there.
That must have been it, he’d forgotten something too. Maybe we’d both be able to laugh over how forgetful we’d been when I got inside. Maybe it would gloss over the fact that I’d just dented his prized possession.
I could hope, anyway. Still, I practiced my apology for his dented car all the way to the front door.
But when I stepped into the foyer, I was met with even more weirdness—and this time, it was a little more difficult to expla
in. Aiden’s shoes, slacks, jacket and tie were all scattered across floor. They made a trail down the hallway towards the bedroom—extremely strange. For as long as I’d known him, Aiden had been an unrelenting neat freak. He’d even shouted at me once for leaving a nice blouse he’d bought me draped over a chair instead of hanging it up immediately. Leaving his clothes strewn across the house was completely out of character for him.
But this too, I could reason my way into dismissing. Maybe he was home because he’d spilled something on his shirt. He was probably in the master bath right now, rinsing a coffee stain out of his button-down or slipping into a fresh suit. That had to be it. There was no other answer.
Slowly, a little smile moved onto my lips. Aiden was always harping on me to be more spontaneous, especially in the bedroom. Sure, it would mean keeping Blythe waiting, but I had a feeling that if I slipped up behind a half-naked Aiden and placed a hot, wet kiss on his neck, he wouldn’t mind me wasting Blythe’s time.
I put on my sultriest hip swing as I made my way down the hall, picking up Aiden’s clothes as I went. I could dump them in the hamper before I wrapped my arms around him—neat and sexy. Let him figure out a way to be angry about the dent in his door after I’d cleaned up after him and rocked his freakin’ world.
But just at the end of the hall, I frowned. I had all of Aiden’s clothes in my arms right down to his boxers, but when I stopped to pick up his silk tie, I froze.
The item of clothing I was holding was definitely silk—but it definitely wasn’t a neck tie. I shifted the rest of the clothes beneath one arm to hold up a shiny red G-string. Normally, for me, that would have been a glaring red flag. Aiden hadn’t exactly been the most faithful of boyfriends. A secretary here, a stripper there—I’d done my best to forgive him, but for a while, the infidelities had really started to add up. After the third time I found pictures of him with his tongue down a busty brunette’s throat on his social media, I’d wanted to leave. The only thing that had stopped me was advice from my mom.
“Wait it out, Sawyer, baby,” she’d told me over the phone. “Blue-class men like him just need to get that kind of thing out of their system. One of these days, he’ll propose and it’ll all come to an end. And when’s the next time a blue-class guy like him is going to come courting a green-class girl like you?”
And to my amazement, she’d been right. When Aiden finally popped the question, he’d promised me that he’d never cheat on me with another woman ever again. He’d looked so honest and sincere about it, I’d believed him too. To date, he hadn’t given me any reason to doubt…and the thong wasn’t exactly the kind I could imagine on another stripper. At least, not the female kind. There was a significant amount of fabric in the front that heavily suggested it was a man’s thong.
Gradually, I let out a giggle. Maybe Aiden was trying to think of ways to spice things up in the bedroom too. Admittedly, thongs on men weren’t really my kind of thing, but if he’d been wearing this under his boxers while he got up the courage to show me, I’d humor him.
Or at least, that’s what I thought until I walked into the bedroom to find Aiden balls-deep in his best man’s ass.
As soon as I opened the door, I was hit with the sound of feral grunting and the plastic scent of lube. When I caught sight of what was happening over the dresser—our dresser—my heart stopped and all the clothes I’d been holding fell to the floor.
For a second, I hoped I was hallucinating. That would have been preferable to the reality of the scene, which I could see from two angles. Right in front of me, Aiden’s pale, flat butt was jiggling as he pumped between James’ cheeks, legs spread in a power stance. And in the mirror over the dresser, I could see both of their faces contorted in pleasure, their lips spread in mutual ecstasy…
Or they were until they opened their eyes and caught sight of my reflection staring back at them.
Then, their jaws both dropped in horror.
Looked like sexy time was over then—for all of us.
There was a flurry of movement, the frantic kind. James was a freckled blur streaking into the bathroom—but not so fast that I couldn’t catch his face and neck turning the same color of red as his hair. As for Aiden, he whipped around so fast I could hear his dick slap wetly against his thigh before he covered it up with his hands. Red wasn’t exactly his color—as a natural blond like me, his cheeks and chest were a hot, searing pink.
“Sawyer. Fuck.” Aiden blinked like he was trying to send a desperate SOS out in Morse code with his eyelashes. “Um. Ah. I can explain—”
“Can you?” I reeled back in disbelief. “Because I’m pretty sure I just caught you treating your best man like he might be a better husband. So…”
“No.” Aiden shook his head. Typical blue-class businessman—deny, deny, deny, even in the face of all the evidence in the world. “It wasn’t like that. See, James and I, we had to change, and then he slipped, and—”
“Then you slipped into his butt?” I blinked back at him, sending an SOS of my own. “Repeatedly?”
Aiden’s shoulders slumped forward. He must’ve known how stupid his story sounded. Now he was ready to try on a new one.
“It was just one time, Sawyer. One last little hurrah before our big day. I just thought—”
“And see, I thought you were done cheating on me,” I snapped back at him. My fists curled in rage, even though I wasn’t sure yet if I wanted to put them through the wall beside me, or through Aiden’s lying, cheating face. “Guess we both thought wrong, huh?”
“I promised I wouldn’t cheat on you with any more women,” he pointed out. His tongue slicked across his lips nervously. Like a lizard trying to look for its way out, even though it knew it’d been cornered. “And James, he’s not a woman, so…”
“Oh, honey.” I shook my head and clenched my jaw. “Those technicalities might work in the business world, but they sure as hell aren’t going to work on me.”
I turned away before I actually did punch something—and before he could see the way my eyes were starting to fill with tears. As I stormed down the hall, Aiden threw every desperate plea he could conjure up at me.
“Please, sweetheart, I love you—please, Sawyer, this wedding has been so stressful, I was just blowing off steam—”
But I didn’t want to hear it. Any of it.
I didn’t want to hear anything from that lying bastard anymore.
When I threw open my car door again, I made a point of making an even bigger dent in Aiden’s car this time. He watched from the front step and let out a pained gasp at the dirty crunch noise his car made as metal connected with metal.
That was the last I saw of him: standing there in the doorway of the home we’d shared, bare-ass naked, looking like he wasn’t sure what he was more upset about—losing me, or the way I’d just shredded the paint of his fancy new convertible.
As I tore down the street and hit the highway out of town, the tears that had been gathering on my lower lashes finally spilled over my waterline and streaked down my face. My cheap mascara burned in my eyes and my sinuses were scorched with saline—but it didn’t matter.
That was the last straw. The final infidelity that had finally broken the back of any future Aiden and I might have had together. The big, fat ring Aiden had put on my finger glared up at me from where I gripped the steering wheel. My knuckles beneath it were a ghostly white.
I sobbed, and I sniffled, but I drove on. No matter how much this had hurt me, I knew there was no going back now.
Halfway to my parents’ house, I fished my phone out of my pocket and fumbled with it to dial my mom. I knew she’d be crushed that I was leaving Aiden, and that she’d be even more upset that I was driving in this state, but it didn’t matter. She’d just have to understand.
But when I tried to open her contact to make the call, my fingers slipped. It was hard enough seeing through my mascara and tears when I was just trying to keep my eyes on the road. Dialing my phone only further complicated thi
ngs—but what could I do? It had been a complicated day.
I let out a ragged breath and steadied my phone against the steering wheel. If I squinted, I could just barely make out her name in my contacts list. I should have pulled over, I knew, but frankly, I didn’t have the time. I wanted to put as much space between that asshole and myself as possible, as quickly as possible.
That, in the end, was my final mistake.
One second, my phone was lighting up as I successfully placed the call.
The next, something hit the front end of my car so hard, it launched my phone all the way through the back windshield.
Suddenly, the world was a blur. I was spinning. Wildly. The front window shattered and crumpled inward as my body jerked forward violently. My seatbelt strangled my chest as the steering wheel slammed up into my ribs and knocked every breath of air out of my lungs. A second too late, my airbags exploded. The force rocked me backward again against my seat. I gasped for air and caught a lungful of dust instead.
For a moment, I must have blacked out completely. When I opened my eyes again, everything had stopped spinning except for my head. I was dizzy. Nauseated. My entire body ached like I’d just been pummeled by an MMA fighter and something warm and wet dripped down onto my cheek. Not tears this time. Blood.
My engine whirred pathetically, spitting black smoke. Distantly, I could hear my mom on the phone somewhere outside the car, shouting my name.
“Sawyer? Sawyer!”
But when I reached for it, I found that I could barely even move my arms. My vision was so blurry, I couldn’t entirely see how bad my front end was, but I could feel it. Every piece of metal beneath my hood was lodged so tight against my chest, it was hard to separate the humming of the dying engine from the beating of my heart.