I’d filed my reports and expected my superiors to do the right thing.
The day I heard that the FDA approved the drug, I’d nearly puked up my hot mustard and salami sandwich at my desk. I’d called the president of the company personally, and when she wouldn’t listen, I called the CEO.
They all ignored me, and sent some goons to wreck my house and shut me up. They’d fired me, discredited me, and, little did I know, kept my data and lined me up to take the fall if things went bad.
And things went really, really bad. At least four hundred people died before the FDA figured out it was the new drug doing the damage. When they came looking for someone to blame, GloboPharma handed them my head on a silver platter.
Fuckers. I refused to go down without a fight. I was not going to run like a scared puppy and live the rest of my life on another freaking planet. I had to do the right thing. I had to fight. If I didn’t, the bastards who did this to people would just do it again. And again. And again. I went to graduate school and completed my PhD just last year in biochemistry. I studied physiology as an undergrad so I could make a difference in the world, so I could help people. I never wanted to be in a fight like this. But now that I was here, I couldn’t walk away. I didn’t have a choice. It was either fight or rot in jail. And if I let them beat me, they’d just do it again, make another mistake. Kill people. Lie about it.
“I can’t leave. I have to go to court. Please, I want you to understand.”
“Your appeal is two months away,” she replied, not commenting on my rant. She knew what had happened, the charges, the trial, my conviction. It was all in my file on that tablet of hers. Everything about me was on there, including what I ate for lunch three months ago and my bra size. “Your lawyer recommended that you be tested for the Interstellar Brides Program, just in case.”
My lawyer was a nice man, accomplished at his job, but he had highly skilled, very well-placed people at the FDA and GloboPharma’s army of attorneys fighting against him. He’d told me it was going to be a hard fight, but I didn’t care. I’d done nothing wrong. I’d found out what others had done, were doing, to tens of thousands of frightened people desperate for a cure. They’d taken advantage of people who were sick and scared. They’d forged documents, lied, conspired and put my name on everything. The company paid a stupid fine and walked away. I was the one in jail for forgery, fraud, conspiracy. And that was the short list. I didn’t care what they said about me. I wasn’t giving up.
“Yes, two months, then the truth will come out and I’ll be free.”
She didn’t look hopeful. “Mating a Prillon is not the end of the world, Rachel.”
“Yes, it is. Literally. I wouldn’t be on Earth any longer.”
“I’ve been there. To Prillon.” She angled her head toward me. “I was mated to a Prillon warrior six years ago. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Yet you’re here,” I countered. Her lips compressed into a thin line and a shadow passed through her gray eyes. I’d said something to hurt her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your story, your life. I’m just—” I tugged at the restraints “—trapped.”
When she did not respond, I studied her carefully stoic expression. Yes. She was young, probably younger than my thirty-two by at least four years. But the pain in her eyes was old pain. Old and hardened into armor around her heart.
“How could you have gone to Prillon six years ago? The Brides Program only started two years ago.” Two years since the aliens landed. Two years since everything on Earth went into a tailspin and we learned we weren’t alone.
Two years, and our governments were still struggling with each other like bullies on the playground fighting for territory. Nothing changed. Nothing would ever change. Human nature was…well…all too human.
Her smile was controlled, and didn’t reach her eyes. “Well, I was not in your position. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. My mates found me before Earth was officially brought into the Coalition. I didn’t have a choice, Rachel. Not like you. I was only with them a short time before they were killed by the Hive, but I loved them and I don’t regret a moment I spent as their mate. I understand your fear of going to another planet. But you’ve been matched to a decorated Prillon commander. I have no doubt you will grow to love him. His second will, I’m sure, be just as impressive.”
“Second?”
She nodded. “Yes, all Prillon warriors share their mate with another. It is their way. If one of your mates should be killed in battle, you, and any children, would have the second to protect and care for you.”
“Two men? A threesome?” Was she crazy? I didn’t want a ménage. I didn’t want one space alien, let alone two.
My body recalled the two men filling me with their cocks just moments ago, in that damn dream, and heated instantly. No.
No. No. No. I was not walking away from my appeal just to go have hot alien sex. Just, no.
“No way,” I said. If I could have sliced my hand through the air, I would have. As things stood, I had to settle for rattling the chair beneath the cuffs attached to my wrists. Looking up into her eyes, I shook my head again to make sure she understood exactly what I was saying. “No, thank you. I know John said I should come down here, but no. I can’t leave. I refuse the match.”
“Then you will go back to the maximum security prison until your appeal.”
The idea of going back to solitary confinement was miserable. A jail cell or space. The choices were grim. The knowledge that I was innocent set my resolve.
“I appreciate your concern, Warden. But I’m innocent. I have to believe I can win this. I can’t let them get away with lying to the FDA and all those poor patients and their families. I won’t go off-planet and ruin my career. If I run, everyone will believe what they said about me, that I lied about the risks, that I lied to protect the company. I didn’t. I gave them the real data and I can prove it. I don’t want to go to another world. I like this one. I had a good life. I want it back!”
Tears filled my eyes, but I willed them away. I missed my house, my sports car, my freaking cat. I had never wanted to sleep in my own queen-size bed so badly in my life. But I’d cried enough. Hell, that was pretty much all I’d done the first couple months in prison. No more. I was innocent and I would prove it. Go free. Go back to my life in the lab. I would continue my research and save lives. That was the only thing I’d ever wanted. I refused to give it up.
My dad would roll over in his grave if I walked away from this fight. He’d watched my mom die when I was just five. I barely remembered her, but I remembered the way her bald head had felt when I hugged her. I remembered the smell of sickness in my house.
After she died, my dad had tried to hang on. He’d made it until I left for college. And then he’d drunk himself to death.
Guilt. What a weak word for the emotions that roared through me when I thought of my father. I never should have left him alone. I knew he still missed her. I knew he fought his own demons. But I’d been eighteen, and eager to go out into the world and start a new life. I’d moved a thousand miles away for college, only returning home a couple times a year. I’d walked away, and he’d faded right under my nose. Big mistake. Huge.
No. I was not walking away from this.
Warden Egara sighed and I did not welcome the disappointment or resignation I saw in her eyes, as if I was making the wrong choice.
“Very well. Please know the match has been made, recorded and filed in your record. If you change your mind, it is your legal right to contact me. Should you choose to become a bride, all charges will be dropped, your record will be cleared and you will be sent to your mates immediately.”
As she spoke, she lifted a strange, hand-held device to the side of my head and I yelped as a sharp, biting pain struck my temple.
“Oww!” I twisted away from her, tugging on the restraints with renewed determination. “What was that?”
“I’m sorry, Rachel, but it was n
ecessary.” She walked away and placed the odd, cylinder-shaped object down on the table before turning back to me with her data pad firmly in hand and a frown on her face. “And I’m sorry for the headache you’ll have for the next few hours. Normally, you would be in transport while your brain adapted to the NPU, but you won’t have that luxury.”
“NPU? What is that?” I wanted to lift my hand to the side of my temple and rub the aching spot there. What the hell had she just done? “What did you do to me?”
The restraints about my wrists came undone with a single swipe of the warden’s finger on her tablet. She lifted her gaze from the tablet to meet mine, and I saw no sympathy there, more like pity. “The NPU is a neural processing unit required for transport off the planet. Its neural technology will merge with your brain’s language centers, allowing you to understand and speak all known languages of the Coalition Fleet. You can’t be processed as a bride without one.”
“I don’t want to be a bride.” As I rose to stand, a guard walked in with the all too familiar shackles, a long chain rattling between the wrist cuffs. I knew where he would take me, back to prison, back to solitary confinement where the guards would treat me like I was invisible, a rat in a cage that needed food and water, and nothing else. Still, that was better than the alternative. I didn’t want to be more to them than another inmate, another mouth to feed. I didn’t want them to notice me.
But I was innocent. Surely my attorney and my friends on the outside would figure out the truth. I had to believe the judge sitting my case would see through the prosecution’s lies.
“If you didn’t want to be a bride, then why did you follow your attorney’s recommendation for processing?” Her question struck a nerve, but I refused to back down. I refused to believe the justice system would fail me so completely.
“Just in case.”
Her nod was quick and precise. “Exactly. And now you have an NPU, just in case.”
She threw my own words back at me, but the underlying tone made it clear she believed I would be back, sooner rather than later. And if the system failed me and I was convicted, maybe I would come back. That dream. My body still ached with lust. I wanted those big hands on my body. I felt like I was a touch starved idiot, but I wouldn’t stop thinking about the way their hands had stroked my skin, their huge cocks had stretched me open. The intense pleasure as I’d ridden them to the strongest orgasm of my pathetic life.
A fake orgasm, from some stupid computerized highjack of my brain. If I understood the process correctly, I’d been living another woman’s actual memories, experiencing what she experienced.
The whole thing freaked me out. And I didn’t want to leave Earth. I wanted my damn life back, and I was going to get it.
I could survive another two months in solitary. I refused to break. But a nagging voice had begun to haunt me in the quiet silence of my existence in the prison. Even if I beat the charges and won my appeal, what would become of me? Even if I were allowed to go home, would I ever be truly free? If the charges were dropped, if my name was cleared, there would always be those who doubted, who would consider me and any data I found to be tainted. No lab would touch me. At least not in the US. I’d have to relocate, start a new life.
And if I didn’t win, if the system failed? I’d either be shackled and jailed for decades or be sent to a new planet where I would be at the mercy of not one huge alien, but two.
Sounded like, one way or the other, I was already doomed to serving a life sentence.
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All of Grace's books can be read as sexy, stand-alone adventures. Her Happily-Ever-Afters are always free from cheating because she writes Alpha males, NOT Alphaholes. (You can figure that one out.) But be careful...she likes her heroes hot and her love scenes hotter. You have been warned...
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About Grace
Grace Goodwin is a USA Today and international bestselling author of Sci-Fi & Paranormal romance. Grace believes all women should be treated like princesses, in the bedroom and out of it, and writes love stories where men know how to make their women feel pampered, protected and very well taken care of. Grace hates the snow, loves the mountains (yes, that's a problem) and wishes she could simply download the stories out of her head instead of being forced to type them out. Grace lives in the western US and is a full-time writer, an avid romance reader and an admitted caffeine addict.
Also by Grace Goodwin
Interstellar Brides® Books
Mastered by Her Mates
Assigned a Mate
Mated to the Warriors
Claimed by Her Mates
Taken by Her Mates
Mated to the Beast
Tamed by the Beast
Mated to the Vikens
Her Mate’s Secret Baby
Mating Fever
Her Viken Mates
Fighting For Their Mate
Her Rogue Mates
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Interstellar Brides®: The Colony
Surrender to the Cyborgs
Mated to the Cyborgs
Cyborg Seduction
Her Cyborg Beast
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Interstellar Brides®: The Virgins
The Alien’s Mate
Claiming His Virgin
His Virgin Mate
His Virgin Bride
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Other Books
Their Conquered Bride
Wild Wolf Claiming: A Howl’s Romance
Fighting For Their Mate Page 17