Belong

by C. R. Jane

  Belong

  The Fallen World Series Book 4

  C.R. Jane

  Mila Young

  Contents

  Join C.R. Jane’s Readers’ Group

  Join Mila Young’s Readers’ Group

  Join C.R./Mila’s Joint Readers’ Group

  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

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Siren Condemned

  Chapter 1

  About C.R. Jane

  Other Books by C.R. Jane

  About Mila Young

  Other Books by Mila Young

  Belong by C. R. Jane and Mila Young

  Copyright © 2020 by C. R. Jane and Mila Young

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  For permissions contact:

  crjaneauthor@gmail.com

  milayoungauthor@gmail.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  To you, our readers. For always looking at the sky and seeing possibility. Thanks for supporting Ella and her aliens. We love you.

  Join C.R. Jane’s Readers’ Group

  Stay up to date with C.R. Jane by joining her Facebook readers’ group, C.R.’s Fated Realm. Ask questions, get first looks at new books/series, and have fun with other book lovers!

  C.R.’s Fated Realm

  Join Mila Young’s Readers’ Group

  Join Mila Young’s Wicked Readers Group to chat directly with Mila and other readers about her books, enter giveaways, and generally just have loads of fun!

  Mila Young’s Wicked Readers Group

  Join C.R./Mila’s Joint Readers’ Group

  Join C.R./Mila’s Joint Readers’ Group to chat directly with C.R. & Mila and other readers about their cowrites, enter giveaways, and generally just have loads of fun!

  Join Fallen World Series Group

  1

  Pregnant.

  I stared out through the window, past the multicolored trees at the lavender ocean that stretched out before me.

  A baby.

  I still couldn't wrap my mind around it.

  I stroked my stomach absentmindedly as I watched the lavender waves roll gently onto the shore, so alien but so beautiful at the same time.

  A strange cerulean blue serpent-looking sea creature jumped in and out of the water. It moved smoothly along until a giant blood-red fish creature with five eyes burst out of the water and snapped it up, causing me to jump back a step despite the fact that I was on the shore and safely encased in our safe house.

  It was amazing that a place could be so gorgeous, yet so dangerous at the same time. Every creature on this planet - including the Vepar that I was desperately in love with - was designed to lure you in and then destroy you.

  I rubbed my stomach again, a wave of nausea hitting me as I thought about the immense task it would be to keep this baby safe if we were to stay on a place like Veon. My baby needed three fathers just to have a chance.

  Except I didn't know if they were really the fathers though, did I? They had said all the right things...about how they would love my baby, whoever it belonged to, as if it were their own...but was that true? Two of them would always have been left out regardless, but at least they would know that the baby belonged to one of them.

  In this situation. I rubbed my stomach again...I couldn't think about it. Parents on Earth who adopted kids claimed to love those kids as much as the kids they birthed. They couldn't all be lying about that.

  My nausea only intensified. Which reminded me how lucky I was that one of my lovers happened to be the most brilliant scientist on Veon, and perhaps anywhere, as he'd been creating things to try and make my pregnancy easier since before I'd even gotten pregnant. That fact alone should have eased my worries. They had wanted a baby so badly, they'd been planning for it, despite how against it I'd been since they met me.

  I wasn't against it now...that was for sure.

  My mom had told me stories about how she'd loved me from the moment she'd found out that I existed. And I remember wondering how that was possible. How could you love someone you'd never met?

  And now, I knew.

  Since the moment I saw Corran's elated reaction, signaling that my pregnancy test was positive, I had been irrevocably in love with my baby. It could come out with green tentacles and one eyeball, and I knew that I would still love it forever and ever.

  "Little darling," I whispered to it softly. The Veon did have better than average hearing, so there was a chance I guess that it could actually hear me, even inside of me.

  Although I was being silly, since there was no way that the baby had ears yet. The little flutter that I kept thinking I was feeling since Corran gave me the news was just my imagination.

  I wondered what kind of mother I would be. Would I be able to keep my temper? Would the long nights be hard or easy? Would I know all the right things to say when they were sad, or when I needed to teach them something?

  Thoughts of being a mother inevitably made me think of my own mother and how very good she had been at it. She would have been the best grandmother. The very best.

  She will be the best grandmother, I thought fiercely, trying to stay positive. I'd found my father somehow, despite the fact that he hadn't even been on Earth. I could find my mother if she was out there. The guys had already promised to help me, and one thing I'd learned about them was that when they sought out to do something, it happened.

  We would find her.

  Random memories flitted through my mind as I thought about the kind of mother she was.

  There was this one time when she had to go into surgery on Valentine's Day, and she felt so bad that she couldn't be with me that she stayed up all night getting surprises ready for me to wake up to. I remember I'd wandered out into the living room and there had been pink, red, and white balloons everywhere-on the ceiling and on the floor. There had been special presents and a special Valentine's cake. She'd been exhausted for her surgery, but she'd never put herself first. My father and I were always top of her mind.

  I wondered if I could be even close to that good of a mom.

  "Where are you, mom?" I whispered through the window, focusing on that strange lavender-colored sea once again.

  I'd once been scared of the ocean. The sheer vastness and emptiness of it had made me feel alone and terrified.

  The emptiness of the skyline in front of me was comforting now. After months of being on the run, I savored feeling alone. I would stay here forever it if was possible and the whole world wasn't falling apart around us.

  That made me think of the guys, and the whispered conversations they'd been having since we'd been here. I frowned, thinking of how protective they still were...would probably always be. I would be grateful for that trait when our child was born, but it still drove me crazy when they overdid it with me.

  Speaking of the guys...where were they?

  Since the news of my pr
egnancy broke, one of them had always been close by.

  I tore myself away from the view and set off down the hallway to track them down. We needed to get a plan together for how we were going to find my mother before I got too pregnant to do anything. We still had at least 6-7 months before that happened, but the less cumbersome my belly was, the better off we all would be.

  As I approached the main room where the Veon version of a living room was, I heard raised voices. I sped up, trepidation tingling down my spine. All the stakes felt higher since finding out about the baby. And whatever they were yelling about...it just sounded like more bad news.

  "I know I can fix this if we can find the source," Corran was saying to Derrial and Thane as I stepped into the room. They were standing around a table watching a hologram display a scene of mass chaos. I shivered as I realized what it was.

  It was more of the infected Vepar that we'd encountered when we went to visit Thane's mother. Except what was being shown on the hologram looked like it was a thousand times the amount of infected that had been in that mental health facility. It reminded me of that one movie I'd seen back on Earth, World War Z I think it was called.

  Except this apparently was real life.

  "Is that happening right now?" I squeaked out, causing all three of the guys to turn their attention immediately towards me, various looks of concern and dismay on their faces. They obviously hadn't wanted me to see that. But I was glad that I did.

  "Ella, you should be resting," Corran said as he approached me, his eyes dipping to my stomach, even though it was much too early for me to be showing. "You look pale and exhausted."

  "Thanks," I said wryly, causing Corran to give me a very uncharacteristic eye roll. "I just need one of those magic shot thingies. I've thrown up three times so far this morning." Corran was already pulling one of the syringes out of a drawer before I could finish my sentence. I shivered just looking at the needle. I'd been on the wrong side of a shot like that too many times since meeting the guys.

  It's not like that anymore, I scolded myself. Corran gave me a questioning look at the nervousness bleeding out onto my face, but I answered him with a reassuring grin. Old habits died hard for me apparently, but I was working on it.

  The prick of the needle was gone in an instant, and then I began to feel blessed relief as the nausea instantly started to fade. The Vepar really needed to share technology like this with Earth. There were a million expectant mothers that would kill for relief from morning sickness.

  "Feel better?" Corran asked, brushing a kiss across my forehead. I pulled him towards me before he could step away, burying my face into his chest and inhaling his delicious scent.

  "Love you," I whispered, and felt his chest rumble with pleasure.

  I had fought this thing between the four of us for a really long time, and it felt so freeing to give in to the feeling of love that had been beating to get out from almost the very beginning.

  Finding out that I was pregnant had finally pushed me to stop being so wishy-washy with everything in my life, including my relationships.

  Taking one more second to savor Corran's embrace, I stepped away, expectantly looking at the other two, who were looking at the two of us with a mixture of jealousy and warmth. The hologram had been shut off.

  "How many are they saying have been infected now?" I asked, striding to the table and picking up the hologram device, trying to figure out how to get it working again.

  "Give that to me," Thane grumbled, taking the device from me and flicking it on once again. We all watched in rapt silence at the footage of the crazed Vepar trashing cities and towns. The horns and different colors of their skin only added to the surrealness of the video.

  "They're saying it's only a couple of thousand right now, but knowing the Council, I'm sure it's three times that number," murmured Derrial as he watched a group of the infected demolish a government building in just a few minutes.

  "Do you have any guesses about what's happening?" I asked, biting a nail nervously. I cringed when two infected Vepar tore into a Vepar man who had been trying to run away from them.

  I saw the guys exchange glances with each other. "Alright, what are you hiding?" I growled, putting my hands on both hips and giving them what I hoped looked like a stern glare.

  Derrial sighed. "I liked it much better when I didn't ever listen to you," he chided, but the complaint only came out halfhearted. "We think it has to do with the fertility experiments they were doing on the side. The medicine mixtures involved in that sort of thing are highly sensitive, it's why Corran was supposed to be the one in charge and monitoring everything, one wrong mixture and anything could happen. And it looks like something did happen," he said, gesturing to the screen where what easily looked like a thousand of the infected were running at breakneck speed towards a group of Vepar soldiers.

  "Okay, you can turn it off," I said with a shiver, looking away before the soldiers were destroyed.

  "Do you think there's a cure?" I asked, wondering if my father and the guys' families were safe or if they needed help.

  "I think I could figure it out. But I need to find the source first, and since the Council had hundreds of these secret labs based on those files I stole, it's not an easy task figuring out which lab is the culprit. And I can't even think right now if its multiple labs that are contributing to what's going on. Different strains of this infection could be the end of Veon," Corran explained, his eyes focused far off, likely already mapping out a plan for if that occurred.

  "Have you heard from our families?" I asked, walking to the machine in the wall and punching in a request for a soup that I'd come to love. I wouldn't have normally had an appetite...but pregnancy problems.

  "Lanton's been communicating here and there. So far, their city hasn't been attacked," Thane answered.

  I stopped perusing for food and glanced back at him. "How's your mom?" I asked quietly.

  He just shrugged. "Dad hasn't given many details. She obviously wasn't going to get better just because she left that place and was back with him. But he's determined to take responsibility for her this time. That's all I can ask of him."

  I nodded, wanting to go over to him and hug him, but knowing that he didn't want the pity that came with mention of his mother.

  The hologram started up behind me and more reports came in of new attacks on cities. My hunger dimmed. I began to think about the infected finding and attacking our safehouse, hurting our child. The room all of a sudden became stifling.

  I turned to face the guys, who were once again hunched around the table watching the hologram aptly and making plans. "Is it safe for me to walk outside?" I asked, feeling like I was going to suffocate if I didn't get out of here.

  Corran looked over at me concerned, I'm sure seeing how pale I looked. "Yes, of course. Just stay within the trees and where we can see you out there,” he said, gesturing to the transparency of the dwelling's walls.

  I quickly walked over to one of the walls and waited as an entrance appeared, allowing me to go outside. The breeze coming off the water immediately helped to calm me down. Our safe house was meant to be as open as possible, both the walls and the ceiling allowed you to see outside, but there wasn't anything that could replace the feel of the breeze against your skin and the sound of the leaves rustling on the trees.

  It was at least half an hour before I sensed that they were behind me, watching me. I turned around and saw my three lovers, standing right outside of the domed structure, watching me pensively.

  "What is it?" I asked worriedly, striding towards them, expecting to hear more terrible news.

  "It doesn't usually happen like this," said Derrial. "Once you're mated, there's a ceremony that you do right away, but it doesn't really matter, because the expectation is already there that you belong to each other forever."

  "What are you talking about?" I asked, confused, even as a nervous tickling sensation started in my stomach at the intense way he was looking at me. Like I
was the only thing that existed in the world.

  "He means that it's still your choice whether you are going to be ours. It took us a while to get there, but now the only way this can happen is if you choose to be with us forever."

  "Are you asking me..." I began.

  One by one, they got down on one knee, similar to when they had asked for forgiveness. But this time, I knew this was for something completely different.

  I hadn't really been the kind of girl that dreamed about her wedding day. Once my parents disappeared and all I'd had was Cherry, I'd stopped thinking about happily-ever-afters and walks down an aisle in a pretty white dress. And I'd certainly never dreamed that I'd end up with three Vepar as husbands.

  But seeing the three of them all down on one knee I realized that somehow my reality had become much more romantic than any scene I could have created in my head.

  "I love you," began Corran. "I love you in a way that's illogical to me, someone who's only cared about numbers and cold hard facts his entire existence. You are my dream. You are the only thing I could ever not live without. Marry me. Love me. Choose me," he said in quiet voice threaded with more emotion than I'd ever heard from him, even when he found out that I was pregnant.

  Before I could answer, Thane began to speak. "I didn't realize that I was looking for you, until I found you. And then we fucked it all up, over and over again. But somehow you're still here, and somehow you still love us. And I just want the chance to show you how much you've changed my life, how much I love you, how I would do anything for you, forever and ever. Marry me."