by Jane, C. R.
Bound
Fallen World Series Book 1
C.R. Jane
Mila Young
Contents
Introduction
C.R. Jane’s Readers’ Group
Mila Young’s Readers’ Group
Blurb
Prologue
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
Author’s Note
Lamented Pasts Sneek Peek
Prologue
Chapter 1
Apollo Is Mine Sneek Peek
Chapter 1
Join C.R.’s Fated Realm
Other Books by C.R. Jane
Join Mila Young’s Wicked Readers
Books By Mila Young
Bound
C. R. Jane & Mila Young
Bound by C. R. Jane and Mila Young
Copyright © 2019 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:
[email protected]
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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.
Cover by Everly Yours Cover Design
Created with Vellum
To anyone who ever looked up at the stars and dreamed.
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Bound
They came to Earth. They destroyed my life, took those closest to me, and now they’re set on making me their own.
Ella Monroe has only one goal in life. To survive. Trapped in a world that’s been taken over, Ella is reminded daily of everything that she has lost because of the Vepar. What was supposed to be a fun night out to celebrate her birthday turns into a nightmare encounter at a Vepar club when she catches the eye of three terrifyingly alluring men.
Powerful and terrifyingly seductive, the three Vepar make clear they will stop at nothing to possess her. Unable to escape, Ella is plunged into their dangerous and secretive world, where everything is more than it seems. Ella doesn’t know what the future holds as their prisoner, but one thing is for sure. Their obsession knows no bounds…
Prologue
They came in the night. There were no gunshots fired. No one’s last breath was given for their kingdom or country. It was just over. And they were in charge. They told us that our governments had no choice...that they did what was best for us by giving in. As I watched the President and the First Lady be frog marched out the front gates of the White House by a group of their armed guards, the President and his wife with just one bag in each of their hands, it was clear to see that life as we knew it would never be the same again.
Years later, I would think back on that moment and wonder if that was the first time I had seen them. If they somehow sensed even then that I was out there and that I was something that they would want...something they would obsess over. I wondered if there was anything I could have done, any way that I could have run to ensure a different outcome.
It didn’t do any good for me to think about what-ifs. The simple fact of the matter was that I was never given a choice. I belonged to them. I always would.
1
Liar!
“I didn’t steal the money,” I whispered to Greg to avoid the customers in the diner from hearing our conversation. Biting back the fury that danced through me, I curled my hands and stuffed them into the pockets of my skirt, concealing them. How dare he accuse me of theft after I’d worked here for the past year and covered every necessary shift, stayed until midnight to close up most nights, and even cooked the damn food when we were short on staff. I stared at my boss in disbelief. He may only be five foot three and sporting a shaved haircut to cover his receding hairline, but he reminded me of a bulldog with his squished nose, chubby cheeks, and downturned mouth. His brown eyes squinted in an accusatory manner.
“You were responsible for the register,” he barked, not caring that he was raising his voice.
My cheeks burned, and I opened my mouth to respond, but no words formed. I was the only waitress on hand today because Sandy called in sick, again, and was most likely having a full day of orgasms with her new boyfriend. Lucky her. The cooks couldn’t have touched the cash since they never came up front. So that left me...
I exhaled loudly. “I know it looks that way, but it wasn’t me. You know me, Greg. You know I wouldn’t do that to you.” I wished he’d installed cameras as I suggested months ago. Then we wouldn’t be having this problem.
Greg huffed, his shoulders rising and falling. “The lost money will come out of your next check.”
“No!” I reached out for him, but he batted me away, scrunching his nose as if I were no better than a fly.
“That’s a douche move, man,” Cherry’s voice came behind me, my best friend who often came here for lunch and to bug me. She meant well, but this would only get worse if she tried to interfere.
I turned towards her and shook my head, mouthing the word, don’t.
She ignored me and climbed out of the nearby booth located right behind the register and strolled toward us in her stilettos. “She’s innocent until proven guilty. So, you can’t dock Ella’s pay without evidence.”
Greg stood as tall as he was able, his hands gripping his wide hips, his name badge sitting at an angle across his heart. The corners of his lips twitched in distaste as he looked at my best friend. “My diner. My rules. You don’t like it, both of you can leave.” His voice rose and I realized that the rest of the diner had fallen silent, listening to our argument.
“Well,” Cherry began, but I stepped in front of her.
“It’s fine.” My heart raced at the thought of losing my job when I was already living paycheck to paycheck. “I’ll cover the missing money.”
Cherry exhaled loudly behind me, while Greg just grinned.
“That was never a question,” he replied snottily before he turned and marched into the back office.
“Fucking ass,” Cherry murmured as she snatched my elbow to drag me to sit in the cushioned booth with her. “He can kiss my ass, that dick is lucky to have you working for him.” She pushed over her half-eaten vegetable fries and I helped myself, deciding I might as well drown my sorrows in food. But the food didn’t sit well in my stomach with all the worry that was churning through me. It also didn’t help that I still remembered how real French fries tasted, and this “healthier” version couldn’t compare.
I tucked the loose strands of hair behind my
ear, but it was a losing battle as it fell right back into my face. “I’m going to lose half my pay, and after paying rent, I’ll have nothing left to live off this month,” I told her as I gloomily stuck another disgusting vegetable fry into my mouth.
I looked outside the diner window to the blue sky that was growing heavier with clouds. There was supposed to be a storm rolling in tonight and the sky was certainly starting to look foreboding. Just as I had that thought the sound of thunder boomed from outside sending a shiver down my spine. My grandma had always warned me that thunder was an omen, but I’d never given much weight to such supernatural tales. Not when my life was work, earn enough to pay my rent, and save enough for a car.
I sighed again. I was never going to be ahead. I had dreams once upon a time for how my life was going to be. They certainly didn’t involve working at the Cinnamon Diner forever. I took the job twelve months ago as a quick fix until I found something that paid better. But this city rarely had opportunities and if they did, they filled up before anyone could think twice. A quick glance over my shoulder, and Greg was back at the till, shaking his head, counting the money again. Asshole. As if I’d steal the money. He probably took it and forgot.
I popped two more fries into my mouth and regretted it at once as my stomach riled up.
“Are we still up for tonight?” Cherry said, examining her long red nails nonchalantly that she obsessively wore as a tribute to her name.
My birthday. Right. It was easy to forget about things like that with how my life had been going lately. Or maybe it was how the world seemed to be going lately. Ever since they had taken over. Staring out at the sky again, I saw a jet fly by, a long electronic sign shooting out from behind it, reminding us all about registration, as if we could forget.
February 3, 2017 was when the world fell apart. It was done quietly. Everyone went to sleep the night before and woke up to an entirely different world. The churches had declared that they were messengers sent from God to warn us to change before the last days, but I was pretty sure the invaders were the gods themselves.
They told us they had come from a planet called Vepar and that they wished for everything to continue as before...but everything was different. The first thing to change was the required Registration. For some reason, only the women of the world were forced to register every six months. The Vepar wanted to know our names, ages, relationship status, and pregnancy history. Every woman was put on a mandatory special form of birth control that we were told was much healthier than the options we had available to us before. I would never admit it, but there were no terrible side effects with their birth control, and it was no longer a burden to take it. It was the only thing that I could say they had made better for us.
The next change was a mandatory “clean living” mandate. All food that was processed, fried, or had any chemical in it besides healthy oils was removed as an option. No longer could I pick up a hamburger or a pizza anywhere. Instead, I could have lentils or cauliflower pasta, or something equally disgusting. Everyone was required to enter a gym for an hour a day and we were scanned as we arrived to keep track. The bastards of course didn’t make anything that was mandatory free so my already thinly stretched budget was now non-existent. I had been pulling double shifts at the diner for a year now, which in my opinion should have covered my hour of exercise, but I was barely surviving.
“Ella?” said Cherry impatiently, annoyed that I wasn’t paying attention to her.
“Sorry, just a little tired. Yeah, I’m still on for tonight. You only turn twenty-three once,” I told her, the thin thread of exhaustion evident in my voice. She pretended not to notice and stood abruptly. “I’ve got to hit the gym and then start getting ready,” she told me, kissing me on both cheeks like she was some kind of fancy European instead of a girl from Brooklyn. She then walked out the door without another word. As I stood, I realized she forgot to pay for her fries. There goes my ability to eat at all this week, I thought wryly to myself, not able to muster annoyance at my best friend due to my exhaustion.
“Your break ended five minutes ago,” barked Greg as he emerged from the back. I managed to not roll my eyes as I picked up Cherry’s empty fry tray and moved to throw it away. It wasn’t as if the diner was currently empty or that I hadn’t taken a break all day, I thought to myself as I stared around at the restaurant that had cleared out after Greg’s fit. My mind conjured up a million different things I would say to Greg if I was a little braver and if I actually had other options for a job. I grabbed a rag and wiped down the already spotless table, my mind full of a million places I would rather be.
* * *
I was dragging my feet by the time I finished even though we had hardly had any customers that afternoon. I didn’t bother to say goodbye to Greg as I pushed out the front door and into the chilled air. October in New York was a glorious thing but all I could think about was how my heating bill was about to spike. I wondered how long I could survive a New York winter with just blankets. Maybe I could start sleeping in the gym locker rooms on particularly cold nights? My membership was practically as expensive as my one-bedroom loft.
Walking down the sidewalk, I couldn’t help but notice all the advertisements featuring various Vepar. Another reason that they were considered gods? Their otherworldly attractiveness. They were built and shaped just like us, but somehow, they were more. Their skin was more perfect, their eye color was more intense, their hair color sparkled in the sun, their bodies were shaped like action heroes. Everything about them screamed that they were the pinnacle of what every human since the beginning of time had yearned to achieve. They were sexy bastards and it was unfair they got to be biologically more advanced on top of all the other ways they had us beat. An ad flashed across a screen and I got caught on the sidewalk, unable to take my eyes off the Vepar showing on the screen in the store window. He was beautiful. Even my hatred for their kind and the havoc they had thrust on my life couldn’t prevent me from admitting that.
Just then a woman walked by wearing a perfume that my mother had always worn and whatever spell I was under was broken. Nothing, not even a ridiculously sexy face, could make me forget that the Vepar were responsible for the fact that I had been alone in the world for three years because of them.
So many people, in particular females, disappeared when the Vepar turned up on Earth. The aliens insisted they came in peace, as cliché as that sounded, and had never harmed anyone that we knew of. But the speculations spread that there was more to the Vepar’s story, especially after our loved ones continued to vanish. Sometimes it felt like the rest of us were waiting for our number to be picked like a lottery, except this wasn’t the kind of prize anyone would want to win. Lots of people insisted they were preparing us to breed with them, which I couldn’t dismiss when we knew so little about their race. The majority of speculators insisted they were getting ready for a complete takeover of our planet, a takeover that would eliminate us. Wasn’t that what invaders did? As far as I was concerned, I hated them and wanted zero to do with their kind. I wished they would vanish and return to their home planet, leaving us alone. Maybe if they hadn’t come here, my parents would still be around, and I wouldn’t be so alone.
I hurried along the sidewalk, tucking my handbag under my arm, dodging a young couple who stopped in the middle of the path to kiss. People flowed in and out of stores, chatting, laughing, many of them wearing gym gear. I squeezed in my hourly workout in the mornings because I couldn’t think of anything worse than a spin class or doing weights after a long day on my feet at work.
I swung down an alley, leaving behind the hustle and bustle and bright lights of the city. Where I lived was about as opposite of the glitz and glamour of the city as you could get. As I walked, I passed trash cans and puddles that I was pretty sure were filled with urine. I went around the rear of the dilapidated Italian restaurant that filled up my apartment with annoying aromas that only served to remind me how hungry I was all the time. Shadows crowded in a
round me, and I pushed into a jog, always a little surprised at how much lighter and agile I felt since starting my gym workouts and starting to eat healthier. Didn’t make me like the Vepar any more though. I missed my burgers and fries too much.
At the back of my rundown apartment, I grabbed an upside-down milk crate tucked near the wall and set it beneath the metal ladder just out of reach. I got up and seized the base of the fire escape ladder, then pulled it down. I made my way up, and once I reached the metal platform of the winding stairs, I kept going upward to the third floor. A cool breeze fluttered under my ponytail, cooling my neck, and bringing with it a tomato and garlic smell from across the alley, enticing a growl out of my stomach.
I avoided the front entrance since I was behind on my rental payments and the landlord lived on the ground floor. Like a hawk, he watched everyone who came and went, and I hoped to buy myself a few more days before I paid him by avoiding entering from the front.
Once I got to my window, I jiggled the wooden frame at the corner until it gave way. I then dragged the window up and climbed inside. Shutting it behind me, I locked it and switched on the light.