She met his eyes.
"They know we've come, captured your settlement, and transported our slaves out of here. Who did they think would be here to answer this message?"
Her brow furrowed. His logic struck her. "No one. They should have figured we were all rounded up and taken away by now."
"That’s not the case. They know there's someone still here to answer your message."
She shook her head. "How could they? They're on the other side of a causeway. They don't have the technology to spy on Dak-Hiliah communications. And I didn't contact them. You know I didn't. I never had the chance."
"I know, Meredith. But they sent a message. They knew someone would be here to receive it."
She was still bewildered.
"Who would they presume to still be here?"
Meredith concentrated. Yeah, who?
"You and I stayed here because we were looking for them. They knew we would still be here."
"They couldn't possibly know that, Jaximor."
"Yes they could. If we found out some of them were missing, which was very likely, some of us would stay to go through your files to try to find them. And we'd have one of the colonists with us, most likely the only causeway specialist. They knew you would still be here. That's why they sent the message. They wrote it in such a way that they would reveal nothing if a Dak-Hiliah read it. They made it untraceable. They knew we would go to you to answer it. Read the portion about how they want you to respond again."
Meredith fixed on the letter. "Is it safe to come back? If yes, send the password through an all channels beacon. If no, send the abort password."
"Two passwords. Only you know what they are. I can order you to send them the first one, but you could just as easily send the abort password. I'd have no way to know which you sent. None of the Dak-Hiliah would."
Meredith blinked a few times. Her mind was slowly catching up.
"Meredith, they know there are Dak-Hiliah here investigating their escape. They're not asking, 'is it safe to come back because the Dak-Hiliah are gone?' They're asking, 'is it safe to come back despite the Dak-Hiliah being there?' They're asking for the answer you already know. Are we monsters that you should risk death to escape? Or is it safe to finally surrender?"
Meredith fixed her anguished eyes on the letter. "That can't be it."
"It has to be. Meredith, what if I wasn't here? Would it be safe for them to come back? There's still no food. What's the sense of coming back to this place to die? They only reason they would come back is to surrender. Otherwise, why wouldn't they just go forward and risk Plan B?"
Her lips parted. "You're right."
"They want to surrender, Meredith. They're just asking if we're so terrible that they should risk death rather than do so. You know that we're not. Not to the brides and not to the slaves."
He stood and took her hand. "Come with me to the control tower. Send the password that will bring them back."
Her bleary eyes gazed up at him. "Then what happens?"
"I will have our warship intercept them. They'll be dispersed the same as the others were."
She dragged herself to her feet.
Once in the control tower she sent the password through an all channels beacon. Her hand trembled as she did it, but she knew it was the right choice. The only choice.
Princess still had her detail their flight plan. All her questions from before were answered. This time Jaximor had no doubt she was telling the truth.
They stayed another day on Europa. The next evening Jaximor receive a call from the mother ship. All 38 escapees were taken to the slave colony. There were no potential brides among them.
With that confirmation Jaximor prepared the ship for departure. Meredith scanned her home a final time, and then left to begin her life with Jaximor in earnest.
Jaximor's ship landed on the private airstrip behind his mansion on planet Den. Meredith gaped when she exited. It was a three-story palace with balconies and pagoda-like roofs.
"This is your house?"
Jaximor came beside her and kissed her cheek. "Our house now."
"Oh my God."
A robot drove up in a floating golf-cart-like vehicle. "Welcome home, Commander."
"Ah, Porter, this is my wife Meredith." He jumped into the vehicle. Meredith entered from the other side.
"Pleased to meet you, Mistress. Congratulations on your marriage, Commander."
They were driven through lush manicured landscaping with statues of frolicking animals Meredith thought looked like deer with elephant trunks. Her attention was pulled away from it all when Jaximor's hand slid surreptitiously up her inner-thigh. She plucked it away with a roll of her eyes. He was making her regret trading the austere black dress for a strapless light-purple number.
They came to a circular driveway composed of glittering pressed stones.
"You really live here all by yourself?"
"With Pret-Dorno and Princess."
Her lip curled in a sneer. "Yeah. I want Princess to stay the Hell away from me."
Jaximor laughed. "She keeps to her office. You won't have trouble avoiding her."
Another robot met them at the door. "Welcome back, Commander."
"Porter, this is my wife Meredith."
She exchanged niceties while the robot opened the sliding door for them.
"Both those robots are named Porter?"
"That's their function, not their name." He took her hand. "Come. I'll give you a tour."
They passed through an impressive three-story foyer with a massive skylight, then past long curtains into the main room. Meredith's face soured. The massive living and entertaining room had the large windows blocked by long lush curtains. There was the same carpeting, couches, and giant lava lamp things as on his ship.
She crossed her arms. "All right...I'm going to tell you this right now. I am redecorating the Hell out of this place."
Jaximor looked around them in confusion. "What?"
"Your bachelor pervert days are over, Jax. I want natural light, and some seating that doesn't look like there's been an orgy on it." She walked to one of the giant lava lamps. "These things are gone. All of them."
Jaximor gasped. He stood in front of one protectively. "But they're hypnotic."
"They're for perverts to stare at while smoking sex sludge as an under-aged bimbo gives them head."
Jaximor considered with a hand to his chin. "I didn't think it was that obvious."
Meredith continued to eyeball things she wanted to change. "Seriously, though--do you mind if I make this a place less pervy? I want to be able to have people visit without thinking there's a threesome later."
He smiled and drew her into his arms. "I give you free reign. Make this a home where you'll be happy, and where you'll greet guests with pride."
She kissed him. "Thank you."
"But the cellar is off limits."
Meredith blinked. "Oh my God--do you have a sex dungeon in your cellar?" Despite her outraged tone, a shiver of illicit thrill coursed through her.
Jaximor gave her a wicked smile.
END
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About the Author
The Alien’s Bride series was my first foray into Sci-Fi Romance. I’ve always loved the possibilities this genre can give you. My stor
ies are mostly the lovely ‘Mars Needs Moms’ trope, which I spice up with some interesting alien dynamics.
Alien’s Bride takes place in the future and the first three books included time travel. After that I took advantage of the world that was built up to give the women in that era some stories. The series wrapped up with Alien’s Bride: Meredith, but I didn’t stop doing Sci-Fi Romance.
Bride of the Keil Warriors was my first Sci-Fi Romance after Alien’s Bride. This was a longer work for me, and a one-shot rather than a series. It dealt with a warrior caste system in the dystopic future of Earth. I tried to make the heroine Amerset a real mover of the story. She gets two husbands and manages to make a family out of the three of them, while helping her people.
If you take a look at this sci-fi ménage I think you’ll see that there is a clear evolution in my writing from where I started with Alien’s Bride.
I took a break from sci-fi romance to try my hand at Paranormal Romance. My jaguar shifter story was another ménage, with Michelle getting mated to two male jaguars. I tied in the story with Mayan mythology. I really feel like this was one of the best books I’ve ever written, but sadly could not break into the competitive paranormal romance market with it. The reviews are stunning from those who did pick it up.
After writing such a long book as Mated, and then seeing it fail I was kind of burned out. It’s tough to see your best work ignored. I’m a full-time author so I had to keep writing to make my income. I switched to shorter Sci-Fi Romance stories to give me a break from longer works.
The first one was Indentured Bride, which I really recommend. It dealt with a human girl who’d been enslaved by aliens and has a chance to eventually become free if she marries one of her alien masters. It turned out to be a very touching story, and really resonated with my readers. It sold so well it got made into an Audio Book also.
I followed this up with Confiscated Bride, about an Ambassador who finds herself wooed by her people’s worst enemy.
Each of these stories can be read as stand-alones, but they are linked in the same universe. I’m currently working on the newest installment, Ensnared Bride, which should be out by the time you read this.
I have one more Sci-Fi romance I should mention. Computer overlords screwing things up is a motif I've been exploring in my work. The computer C-Raptin in The Android's Bride controls the main android character, and we don't know if he's evil or not until the end.
Getting back to the 'About the Author' stuff, I believe that writing is a role, not a job. This was a calling for me from before I was out of diapers. I had to tell stories, and then I had to write stories. I started going into trances when I wrote at a very young age. It's kind of like taking Quaaludes. There's time distortion where I think an hour has passed when it's actually been 12 hours. I also talk in my characters voices without being aware of it. If this sounds crazy to you, it's really not. Other prominent writers have admitted to 'writing trances.' Every fiction writer has to get into their 'zone' to write. For some it just gets creepy. I'm fine with this phenomenon. It's how I make my living, after all.
I started out getting published in small literary journals when I was out of college. I won contests here and there, and I always seemed to be working on my next submission for publication. In 1999 I discovered yaoi (Japanese gay romance for women) and it was an epiphany for me since I'd been writing yaoi for decades but never had a label for it. In 2004 I started my own publishing company, Yaoi Press, and put out yaoi graphic novels. I got out 50 or so before Borders Books closed and the bottom fell out of the market. The last book Yaoi Press published was in 2012, and I'm pretty sure that's the end of ink and paper books for me.
Ebooks have given me a wonderful and viable career. I started out with male/male romance in the form of Incubus Master, a serial where I was testing out my prose skills for the first time. The premise and characters are solid, but it's not as strong prose-wise as my current books. Still, my imagination uncorked with this series and it led to the sequel, Captured, and then Scor's Story.
These early series proved to me that I could still live off my writing, even if Yaoi Press is mostly shut down. I've been pumping out work at a fast clip ever since. Sometimes new fans discover me and my work resonates with them. They want to read everything I've put out, but it's daunting. I have around 160 titles on Amazon right now. If you want to get all my past works I recommend starting with The Big Yaoi Bundle and then continuing with The Huge Yaoi Bundle. This gives you the bulk of my library in two heavily-discounted purchases. After that is The Maelstrom Compilation—which is really one of my best works, I highly recommend it, and then Incubus Master Complete and Incubus Master Captured Complete.
My most recent works are some of my best. I will always recommend UnPrison in every new ebook I put out because it's still garnering praise even a year after its release. Seriously, check out the reviews for this ebook. Even people who don't like prison romance or gay romance in general have ended up liking it. I worked in a men's prison for a year and channeled all that insight into a very realistic daddy/kid prison romance story. Str8 Room8 is another top-seller I hope new fans will not overlook. It's an extremely sensual, fun, short read about a thoroughly seduced hetero college student.
I write for a living, as I said. If you are an aspiring writer and want to know all my secrets I cover all my advice in the book Ten Steps to Kindle Fiction Success, which I try to keep for free on Amazon, but since it's exclusive under Kindle Unlimited I can't trip the perma-free status by just making it free elsewhere. If you don't have Kindle Unlimited and want a free copy, email me at [email protected] and I'll send it to you (it will take a week or more, so don't freak). In exchange for the free gift I ask for you to sign up for my newsletter at http://yaoimila.com. This covers the 'how can I be a writer like you' part of my About the Author section.
The real Yamila Abraham is a super friendly lady who loves meeting you at conventions or on the road. I live in a motorhome and tow it south in the winter and north in the summer. You can read about my misadventures in my RVing blog: http://searchingfulltime.com I also post lots of stuff in my Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/yaoimila
If I've interested you I hope you'll go to my Amazon page, select the option to follow me, and peruse all my offerings. I've got prison romance, alien romance, demon romance, BDSM, hurt/comfort, fantasy, and lots of bundles that group my huge body of work into affordable mega-deals. Check that out here: http://amazon.com/author/yamilaabraham
And please sign up for my newsletter! I only bug you once a month. http://yaoimila.com.
Also by Yamila Abraham
Other Books on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited:
Male/Male Sci-Fi Romance
Warlord’s Enigma – MM BDSM Sci-fi
Hostile Taking
The Eidolon's Conquest
Impregnated Alpha
Male/Male Fantasy Romance
The Demon and the Emperor
Vanquished Knight
Xenoskar
Male/Male Romance
Teaming Our Teacher
Thicker than Water
Conquering the Phobe
UnPrison
Sci-Fi Romance
My Two Jaguars - MMF Bisexual Paranormal Romance
Indentured Bride
Confiscated Bride
Ensnared Bride
Mated to the Jaguars – Paranormal M/F/M Menage
Alien's Bride
Bride Games
Alien's Bride Lisette
Aliens Bride
Alien's Bride Meredith
The Android's Bride
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The Complete Alien's Bride Page 57