Reaching my destination and still seeing no one—or any evidence of a fight—did nothing to calm my nerves. I walked in slowly, although I needn’t have bothered. The center was as empty as the rest of the ship.
Making my way to the captain’s chair, I sank into the seat where Nolan should have been. My head pounded from the constant assault of the ship alarm. I grabbed the tablet Wes had briefly shown me how to use. There was a feature to turn off the blare and I pressed it, stopping the noise. If anyone was on the ship, it would alert them to my presence in the command center, a risk I had to take to simply function.
I wasn’t really worried—the ship was empty. I knew it in my gut. The last time the alarm sounded, C.J. had found me within minutes.
No one was coming this time. The implication of this made my insides cold. If I understood nothing else, I understood beyond a shadow of doubt the love the guys held for me. They’d die for me.
The computer screen beeped and the signal for a message popped with nothing but the letter M beneath it.
I let out a breath. C.J. called me M. I clicked on the tablet, bringing it on the screen.
The words recorded two days ago showed before C.J.’s face appeared on the screen. The ship alarm blared in the background of his recording. Blood dripped from a head wound, and I gasped as I saw him.
“M, if you’re getting this, then you woke. Dane says the med bay machine will eventually raise you on its own. It’s a setting, but it could be days or weeks. He doesn’t know what it’s set to, having never imagined this possibility. I just don’t know. If you’re watching this, then you woke and the ship is safe. We’ve been attacked, and not by the Nobles, but by the Nomads. They’ve boarded the ship. As far as we can tell, they don’t want you at all, which doesn’t make any sense. They’re here for the rest of us. They took Geoff first. Dane tried to wake you, and they took him next. Nolan and Wes are trying to get to you. If they don’t, this message will be here for you, assuming they don’t eventually get around to kidnapping you, too. I wish I had answers. I don’t. I love you, you know that, right? I love you like…like there aren’t words for it.” A loud bang sounded behind him. “Shit. Listen, I’m putting this on auto pilot. The second all of our badges are off Artemis, the ship is going to release sleeping gas. I programmed it a second ago. I don’t think it’ll affect you. You’re already out cold. Then she’s going to take off. As far as I can send her. We’ll do our best to keep our attackers so busy they can’t stop the ship. When you get this, send the ship to…” The screen blurred for a second and then went black.
“Sent the ship to where?” I jumped to my feet. “Send it to where, C.J?”
I sounded hysterical. He wasn’t there, and he couldn’t answer me. He’d set off sleeping gas. Did that mean there were people unconscious all over the ship? I had no idea how to run Artemis, and that was entirely my fault. I’d been painting when I should have been figuring out how to pilot and make Artemis run. Truth was, I’d been avoiding Nolan. I hadn’t wanted to face him before I’d understood him better.
“Pull it together.” I spoke to my shaking my hands, my racing heart, my clenching stomach. “You have to do this. You have to find out if there are people on this ship with you or if you are alone. You are Melissa Fucking Alexander.” Nolan would be mad at me for saying it, but for once it helped. “You don’t remember her, but she is in there. This is probably her fault, somehow. You’re strong, tough, you blow shit up. You earned the love of men who would take a bullet for you. So get up and figure this all out. Now.” I still couldn’t make myself move. “Now, damn it. Now.”
My own words, wrenched from my gut, propelled me forward. I moved, out of the chair, out of the room and across the hallway. Room-by-room, I would search, and if I ran into anybody other than the guys, I would shoot them first and ask questions later. I wasn’t a coward.
I couldn’t let myself be.
I’d almost convinced myself the ship had been totally abandoned when I found him. Lying on the floor, out cold, in the last room I had to check—the shuttle dock—was a face I’d never thought to see again. Frank, the leader of the Nomads we had rescued on Hall, who had been looking for Lilah, lay on the floor. I bent over to look at him closer. His face was beat up pretty badly. One of my guys most have been really mad at seeing him, but he breathed.
We’d saved him and he had, in turn, attacked us unprovoked. I kicked him hard in the gut and he groaned, his eyes flying open.
He coughed before he spoke. “Gas.”
“It’s gone.” I pointed my gun at his head. “Start talking.”
He sat slowly. “If you were still the old you I’d actually be afraid you’d fire that thing. But you’re a lamb now. I doubt you even know how to shoot.”
If he wanted to believe that, fine. He’d be all sorts of surprised if he had to find out I did. “What happened here?”
Frank sighed loudly, rubbing at his eyes. “I’m hungry.”
“I don’t care. Start talking.”
“I hate that this happened. She promised us she would get Lilah returned if we helped her. The general, your mother.” He rubbed at his eyes. “We came with two other ships, had very specific orders. No one was supposed to get hurt. Take the guys, then you. We were supposed to start with them to keep you calm and compliant, but you were already out cold. Changed things a bit. And then they managed to get the ship out of our control.” He tried to stand, and I waved the gun at him again. “Where are the others?”
“Just you. Why did the General, my mother, want this to happen? Why come after us like this?”
Frank laughed, a loud sound. “The General doesn’t share her plans with me.”
“Unfortunately, I believe you.”
I fired.
Afterwards my body vibrated from the discharge. I stared at his body on the ground of my ship. Like the man in Truest, I’d hit him right between the eyes. As before, I hadn’t even really thought about it. Nolan wasn’t here. I didn’t get to faint. In fact, as far as I could tell, and maybe it was the shock of the whole thing, but I couldn’t have cared less about ending another life. I dropped the gun to my side.
My mother had taken my men and then meant to capture me. What were her plans? Cooper had warned me against getting in the machine in The Bridge, he’d said I wouldn’t live through it.
Cooper…
We’d never gotten rid of the shuttle Geoff stole from Master’s after everything had gone to hell on Truest. I walked to the ship. This was a Noble vessel. Surely, there had to be a way to reach him. What had Peter, the asshole on Hall, done when he’d needed Cooper? He’d made a call.
Could it be that easy?
I walked to the com center of the small shuttle. Everything looked pretty self-explanatory, which was why Geoff had hated flying the thing. Point and click, Wes had said. I pressed a button that said call on it and waited.
A robotic voice answered me. “This is the shuttle center command. How can we forward your request?”
“I…” Geoff had pretended to be a shuttle commander. I didn’t have the luxury of doing the same. The Nobles were horrible, mind-erasing nightmares, and I needed their help. Somehow, I had to figure out what to do, where to go, so I could regroup and get my guys.
“Say again,” the computer responded.
“My name is Melissa Alexander. I am in a stolen shuttle. I need to speak to Prince Cooper Jackson. Please relay my message to him, immediately.”
“Do I understand you correctly?” This time a male, human voice answered instead of the computer. Something I’d said had moved me past the computer to an actual person. “You’re in a stolen shuttle and you want to speak to the Prince?”
I could hear the disbelief in his voice. “What kind of day do you want to have? One way or another, I need to speak to Cooper. You can have an easy time of this and put me through, or I can let him know later that you didn’t. Up to you.”
Ten minutes later, a voice I’d come to love hearing, even
though I held no memories of him, came on the line.
“Melissa-mine?” His voice sounded low. “Is this actually you?”
“It’s me, Cooper. I know we don’t know each other and—”
“I know you,” he interrupted.
I smiled, despite my hands shaking so badly I had to stick them into my lap to control them. “I’m in trouble.”
“I can’t get a fix on you. The wireless signal blocker on the whole ship upped after the last time we spoke, which didn’t surprise me. What’s happening? Talk to me.”
So I did. I started with the decision to take the bomb out of play and to make a plan to go get him. I didn’t leave out any of it, including how I shot Frank in the head.
“Please tell me what is happening. Nolan thinks you didn’t cause this. That I did it myself and you are in this mess, too. I need you to tell me. My memories aren’t coming. I feel…sick. I think I’ve been unconscious for two days.”
Silence met my statement. Had he disconnected? Had I made a terrible error?
“Listen to me, mine. Closely. You are in a lot of trouble. I can’t tell you the details because I don’t have them. I barely managed to stow away on a shuttle you took before I passed out from the same drugs you used on all the guys. When I woke, we were in a firefight. I never knew with whom. All you would say, in between being furious with me for being on the ship, was they wanted you to do something you could no longer tolerate and that you were pregnant. Then we crashed. Hard. Onto a planet that doesn’t sustain life. You were out cold. I had no choice. I called the Nobles by turning on my tracking device.” He paused. “I cut a deal. I came to them, and I’m under constant surveillance now. Or at least I’m supposed to be. The last few days have been lax. If I could have tracked you, I would have come. You got to live and to keep the baby—they think it’s mine—and you had your mind erased. The plan was for me to marry you when you got out of Master’s. I never thought past that. Eventually, I’d planned to somehow get us both back home to Artemis.”
Tears sprung to my eyes. He knew more than I did, but I’d been counting on him for more answers than he had. A beep sounded on his end.
“They’re trying to get through this call, to hear what I’m saying. I can’t stay on much longer. Tell me where you are. I’ll get to you. I don’t know how, but I will.”
“No,” I answered fast. “I’m sorry you’re stuck there, but I have no time to wait. I need to get to the General. She has the others. I’m going to Truest.” Point and click. I hoped it worked. “I’m going to let myself be seen. If the General wants to make a deal, she can make it with me there.”
“I don’t know if that’s smart. Maybe…”
“Cooper. I’d love to meet you in person. If getting away is something you can do, come to Truest. That’s where I’ll be.” I paused. “Thank you for your help. I…I know that I loved you. I want to again.”
I disconnected the call and stood. I had a body to put out the airlock and a mess to clean. I needed to eat something—I wouldn’t fail the baby—and then I had to move my ugly ship to Truest Space Station, where I’d recently killed a man.
Maybe Cooper would be there.
The guys had risked everything for me. They were my family, my loves. I’d do no less than anything for them, even if it meant in the end I turned myself over to The General and faced whatever my fate was.
Cooper said I hadn’t wanted to do something I could no longer tolerate. What was it? The answer was locked somewhere in my mind. I had to find out what it was. Whatever I’d run from held power over me. I’d been desperate enough to leave the men I loved to try to run. That hadn’t worked. Cooper was alone, had made a desperate deal for me, and the others were taken.
My mother had stolen my husbands.
As I walked to the dead body currently pooling blood on my floor, I squatted, slowly and awkwardly but I managed it. I wasn’t the woman I’d been before. It was possible I was much worse because I didn’t know how far I’d go. I had no boundaries to speak of.
A girl without a past, just a future to protect.
I had to get to Truest Space Station.
Wes had told me Artemis would always keep us safe. I would find my husbands, get them all back, and if anyone tried to get in my way, it turned out I was a crack shock. Frank had called me as weak as a lamb.
His lifeless eyes told a different story.
I just hoped wherever they were, my loves were okay. If they weren’t, there would be hell to pay. I lay the gun on the floor. Time to get moving.
Chapter 17
Prince Cooper Jackson
COOPER
I stared at the screen, waiting for Melissa. Escaping Ochoa hadn’t been a problem today. Sightings of The Bridge in the area captivated the military’s attention, and I’d managed to sneak out. Whether or not I now got caught constituted another matter altogether. With my head sufficiently covered by my sweatshirt and my general demeanor screaming for others to leave me alone, I waited in the closest bar to the docking bay and hoped I would see her soon.
The first time she’d come into my life had been the day I’d resolved to die. My sister had just gotten engaged. Beautiful, royal, and of Noble birth, my younger sibling should have been an ideal political wife. Only she’d stayed simple, never aging intellectually past her sixth birthday. The morning of her engagement announcement, I’d been helping her eighteen-year-old-self dress her dollies for her birthday party.
That had been the straw to break the camel’s back. The Pit was a nightmare, my parents were murderers, and as I was old enough to be included in the family business, I’d had a good look at how awful the future was going to be. Was I really supposed to spend my day torturing information out of impoverished subjects or injecting the unwanted with diseases we had no cures for?
I’d resolved to go out with a bang. I was going to release information to the general populace minutes after I took out a facility where they experimented on unwanted male babies. Bio-tech genetic weaponry. Really disgusting, horrific stuff.
The memory made me shudder. I’d planned on taking out the place and going over the side of the mountain in the process.
But then Melissa walked into the bar, followed by C.J. and Nolan. Where others had left me alone, the Rebel Princess immediately recognized me. By the end of the oddest conversation of my life, I’d decided to join the Nomads and blow the facility using one of Geoff’s bombs.
If it never sat well with me that we hadn’t rescued the babies, I’d tried not to focus on that aspect too much. Melissa had become my whole life. None of us were entirely happy, and she didn’t seem to care that much about our discontentment, which both fascinated me and drove me nuts on a regular basis.
I wasn’t the man I wanted to be, and I think she preferred it that way.
But fuck if I didn’t love her.
She stepped out into the shopping area and I sucked in my breath. Melissa was really pregnant now. Thinner in the face, not rounder, and her walk had changed. A cautious gait had replaced her confident stride. She looked left and right until her gaze caught with mine.
I stood. The memory erase had changed her; I’d seen it on Master’s. Who she was weeks later, I’d have to find out. She was going to want to rescue the other five and I was game. We needed to get them back so I could beat them all to a pulp for ever doubting me. Not that I could blame them. In the same circumstances, I’d have thought similarly.
They were my family. She was my wife.
The End
Publisher’s Note
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About Rebecca Royce
As a teenager, I would hide in my room to read my favorite romance novels when I was supposed to be doing my homework. I hope, these days, that my parents think it was worth it.
I am the mother of three adorable boys and I am fortunate to be married to my best friend. I live in Austin, Texas where I am determin
ed to eat all the barbecue in town.
I am in love with science fiction, fantasy, and the paranormal, and try to use all of these elements in my writing. I've been told I'm a little bloodthirsty so I hope that when you read my work you'll enjoy the action-packed ride that always ends in romance. I love to write series because I love to see characters develop over time and it always makes me happy to see my favorite characters make guest appearances in other books.
In my world anything is possible, anything can happen, and you should suspect that it will.
I'd love to hear from you!
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Other Titles by Rebecca Royce
Her Wolf
Summer’s Wolf
Wolf Reborn
Wolf’s Valentine
Wolf’s Magic
Alpha Wolf
Angel’s Wolf
Darkest Wolf
Lone Wolf
Yes Captain
Table of Contents
Kidnapped by Her Husbands
Blurb
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
Table of Contents
Kidnapped by Her Husbands
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Kidnapped by Her Husbands Page 21