Blooming Desire: An Extraordinary Spring Romance Collection

by S. J. Sanders

  “Of all days,” she muttered to herself, her eyes flicking to check the rear-view mirror before returning to the road in front of her. “Of all days to meet Anthea, it had to be today.”

  Muttering darkly to herself, Aella continued to follow the curve of the road.

  Thunder rumbled again, louder, closer and much more malevolent, causing her to duck her head between her shoulders, a small whimper vibrating in the back of her throat. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands, her knuckles white and her nails biting into her palms.

  She hated driving in the rain.

  More than driving in the rain, though, she hated driving in the rain in a foreign country.

  Her older sister, Anthea, and her husband moved to Scotland two years before the Grays’ Mothership blocked out the sun like a sign of impending doom. She, like everyone else, thought that the circular object slowly covering the sun was the moon but she hadn’t remembered hearing anything in the news about an eclipse that day. Slowly, the object grew larger and larger until its massive shape broke apart into much smaller shapes that spread around the globe. People did not panic right away; for several hours, the Mothership’s drone ships remained within Earth’s atmosphere, hovering over its cities. Goosebumps raced up her arms and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She remembered watching an old science fiction film that resembled the ships that blotted out the sky – only this was real.

  She returned home to find that her father, a retired air force major, received the call to arms.

  News broadcasts around the world replayed footage of the drone ships breaking away from the Mothership and speeding towards the capital cities: Shanghai. New York City. Berlin. Johannesburg. People all over the globe speculated on what this could mean, on whether these ships posed a threat or if they sought sanctuary while others whispered about conspiracy theories and Area 51. These broadcasts also showed that military bases around the world were preparing for war.

  Her father kissed her mother and hugged her goodbye and that was the last time Aella saw her father.

  Unlike the science fiction film she watched as a little girl, the aliens did not attack Earth. From the Mothership, a Roswell Gray appeared on her television screen. Its lips moved, and she heard the words it spoke in her own language, but she also heard a different dialect underneath it. The alien spoke about how lucky the human race was, to be granted the gifts of technology that only the Grays could offer them. It was adamantly clear by the way that the alien spoke that they did not have a choice; the Gray was simply sugar-coating the fact that Earth now belonged to the Roswell Grays and its people would become little more than their slaves.

  Earth refused to surrender.

  Aella closed her eyes, her fingers clenching on the steering wheel, trying to push those memories from her mind but the images played out before her.

  Earth finally declared World War III but this war was far more important than any that had been fought before; this was the fight for their freedom.

  The next year would haunt Aella until her dying day.

  The Grays clearly had access to technology far more advanced than that of Earth and could destroy the planet if they so desired. The fact that they did not, meant that they wanted the planet’s people and its resources.

  Within the first year of the Invasion, everything changed. People rallied together, forgetting about the colour of one’s skin or their nationality; none of that mattered anymore in the face of an even greater threat. While this was not World War II and there was not one specific country that wanted to annihilate the others, this was still a war and humans were very good at understanding the principles of war.

  Her mother died within the first year, protecting a group of children from a Gray that wanted to bring them to the Mothership. The alien pierced her heart with a weapon Aella did not recognize and left her mother’s remains unrecognizable; the children fled while her mother distracted the alien.

  Aella’s eyes burned with the sting of hot tears. Biting her lip, she angrily brushed them away from her cheeks.

  She knew, as did everyone else, that the Grays would eventually succeed in conquering Earth. They simply did not have the technology or weapons to prevent the Grays from succeeding.

  And, then, one day, in the middle of a brutal battle that ravaged the city of Canberra, a ship entered Earth’s atmosphere. This one did not resemble the circular shape of the Grays’ Mothership or its drones; it was unlike anything Aella had ever seen before. It somewhat resembled an ocean cruise liner but that was where the similarities ended; at the rear of the ship, two enormous engines provided unimaginable power and speed that would allow them to travel the galaxies in comfort. The ship was sleek, pale silver in colour with blue trim, had two wings like a plane and had weapons that the militaries of the world could only dream about. It was clear that this was a massive war machine built for destruction and stamina. There was a beautiful script on the hull of the port side of the ship; later, she and everyone on Earth would learn that the words were the symbols for the Interstellar Alliance and the ship’s name: the Nebula.

  It was with the arrival of the Interstellar Alliance’s massive warship that the tide started to turn. Commander Malekith Ska’arzal and those loyal to him helped to protect Earth against the Grays’ Invasion for another year before the Interstellar Alliance’s second warship, the Solar Flare, arrived with reinforcements. The Mothership retreated from Earth’s atmosphere but not its orbit; the Solar Flare then proceeded to openly attack the Mothership and any of its drone ships that dared to approach Earth. While the Mothership may have retreated, that did not mean that the Grays left Earth in the helping hands of the Interstellar Alliance. War raged for another two years before their joint forces were able to achieve victory.

  And the loss of life to Earth’s population was the worst ever recorded in human history. Over four and a half billion lives were lost; that was 750 times greater than the people murdered during World War II.

  They did not just lose the lives of 4.5 billion people; because the war was fought on Earth, the planet itself was greatly changed.

  The islands that made up the northernmost part of her country had flooded over the last two years thanks to powerful tsunamis that rippled across Earth’s oceans. Japan no longer existed. Both the polar regions of the planet doubled in size and were now under several hundred feet of ice. There now existed a giant crater in the middle of the Australian continent. The dangers that faced Earth before the Invasion no longer existed because the weapons used helped to change the planet’s climate. Earth cooled and, even though humans died by the billions, the animal populations around the globe slowly began to grow in numbers; even the seas churned with life.

  The war officially ended at the beginning of October.

  Now, eight months later, Aella still reeled with the loss of both of her parents. Their deaths pained her to her very soul. She hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to either of them and that fact ate at her insides like acid. Their deaths reminded her how very precious life was.

  This was why she was here in Scotland.

  Fort Augustus was holding a memorial for all the military personnel that had died during the Invasion. This was a chance for her to bid a final farewell to her father.

  She wanted to reconnect with her sister, Anthea. She and Anthea did not get along; both of them led very different lives growing up and, even though there was only a two-year difference between them in age, that impacted Aella greatly. Her sister was beautiful and that made her popular at the school both of them attended. Tall and slender with her red-orange hair cascading down to her shoulders in luxurious waves, Anthea turned the head of every male student in the school. Meanwhile, every student in their school picked on Aella, calling her cruel names, the older students shoving her into lockers and knocking her books from her hands and Anthea ignored everything happening to her in favour of flirting with the boys.

  The old anger, the old hurt, rushed through her, k
nots twisting in her belly until she tasted acid on the back of her tongue. Hurtful words whispered in the back of her mind. Her fingers curled tighter around the steering wheel.

  She forgave her sister for her part in her torment. It had been easy to find that forgiveness; over a year of sessions with a psychologist helped Aella realize her own self-worth, but she still lacked self-confidence. Plump, round in all the wrong places, Aella knew that no one would ever find her attractive. Her sister’s love story and happily ever after caused jealousy to roil inside of her. She, Aella, always wanted the family life, to be a wife to a man that adored her, to be a mother to the children she would never have, to share the love that filled her heart with the most precious of people, and it would never happen.

  She bit her lip, the pain of her teeth piercing the sensitive flesh sending small prickles to the back of her brain. She inhaled through her nose, struggling to stifle the sobs building in her chest from escaping her lips. Her small breasts heaved with the effort.

  Anthea never wanted children – never – and, now, to learn that she was pregnant with twins?

  Agony and jealousy and hurt pierced Aella’s heart until warm tears slowly rolled down her cheeks.

  She knew these tears weren’t simply because of her sister; she was grieving over the loss of her mother and her father and her sister and the fact that she would never, ever, hold her nieces and/or nephews in her arms.

  Her sister had made it adamantly clear that she wanted nothing to do with Aella.

  Aella did not know if Anthea blamed her for their parents’ deaths or if her sister simply did not wish to have her in her life because they did not get along. All that she knew was that her sister was all that she had left and she wanted to fix whatever it was that was causing problems between them both. She wanted to be there for her nieces/nephews; she needed to. There was nothing else in this world she wanted to do more than to have a family, and if this was the only shot of having a family she would get, then she would bite the bullet and try to mend things between them.

  Thunder boomed overhead causing her entire vehicle to shake and her body to start violently in surprise. Tongues of blue-violet lightning lit up the sky. She watched a spark of electricity zigzag across the dark clouds that stretched beyond the horizon before igniting into streaks of blue-violet. Rain started to pound down heavily upon her windshield, too fast for her wipers to clear the glass to allow her to see the road in front of her.

  Swearing under her breath, Aella slowed down, leaning forward in her seat to peer anxiously through the glass, squinting, her knuckles turned white from the stress of driving in this wild storm.

  She knew better, damn it.

  These storms had the potential to destroy cities. No one knew just how severe a storm would be until after the skies cleared. Sometimes, they proved benign, like the storms before the Invasion, but, most of the time, they proved dangerous and people were warned to remain indoors. It was not uncommon for power outages; in fact, only the largest cities were capable of providing power to their buildings. Aella and her mother had lost power to their house six months into the Invasion. People were no longer focused on supplying energy to civilians when the military needed the power and fuel for their tanks, jets, and vehicles in order to fight the Grays.

  Anger and hurt clouded her judgment but Anthea refused to offer her a room for the night and her hotel was an hour’s drive away. She had had no choice but to leave.

  And, God, it hurt.

  It hurt so much that her sister did not want her involved in her life. That knowledge burned in Aella’s gut.

  Lost deep in her thoughts, even driving at a much slower speed, she would not really understand what happened next until much later.

  The earth shook beneath her vehicle when thunder boomed overhead and the sky lit up with tongues of blue-violet lightning before striking an enormous tree on the right side of the road. Aella’s brain registered the bright flash of colour, the sound of wood cracking and watched the tree smash directly in front of her. She did not have time to slam on the brakes.

  The enormous tree toppled over, its massive trunk clipping the hood of her SUV and sending her vehicle rolling head to tail over and over again.

  Aella’s head flung against the back of her seat, her teeth snapping together the moment her vehicle started to roll. Her seatbelt tightened, keeping her body pressed tightly to her seat, but did nothing to protect her dangling arms or legs. Roaring filled her ears, the sound of metal crunching, glass cracking and thunder continued to rumble overhead, the blue-violet lightning streaking across the endless expanse of sky.

  The second time the car rolled was much more violent, having picked up momentum as it careened downhill toward the frothing surface of Loch Ness.

  Aella couldn’t scream, the fear freezing the air in her lungs and sending numbing tingles up and down her spine. Her entire body fell forward with the vehicle’s momentum, her head smashing into the window glass. Pain erupted in her right side, her eyes watering, her teeth clacking together, and she blinked away droplets of blood that clung to her lashes. Small shards of glass pricked along her cheeks and her arms, nicking her here and there. Her breath escaped her lungs in small, panic-filled breaths.

  Her vehicle then twisted in a way that caused her upper body to slam into the steering wheel. Bright spots of pain filled her vision when her ribs cracked, each breath now absolute agony. She pressed her hands to her chest, coughing, and she tasted blood on the back of her tongue, the life-giving liquid spilling down the corners of her mouth.

  There was a strange sensation of floating through the air, such as that moment when a plane lands and bounces along the runway, before gravity returned, pulling Aella forward and then slamming her back when her SUV hit the water.

  Water rushed over the hood of her SUV, the waves frothing angrily as her vehicle slowly tilted its nose downward. Aella blinked blood from her eyes and struggled to breathe shallowly because anything deeper caused pain to spear her lungs. Cold droplets of water fell upon her forehead. Spiderweb cracks crisscrossed the entire front windshield and the driver’s side window was much the same. And then water slowly started to seep in around the soles of her feet.

  Panic widened the young woman’s emerald eyes.

  She frantically searched for the metal buckle that would release her but, when she pressed the button, nothing happened. A soft whimper vibrated in her throat.

  Try again, Ella, she thought desperately.

  Now, the water crept over her ankles.

  She pressed the button again, jiggling the metal buckle in an attempt to free herself.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  She jerked her hands away from the release and gripped the material straps around her shoulders and waist. She ducked underneath the shoulder strap but the one across her waist prevented her from doing little more than wiggling her hips.

  Cold water kissed her knees and soaked the soft material of her seat.

  A loud, desperate cry left her parted lips.

  Giving up on the strap, she searched for anything that she might use in order to cut herself free. Her fingers curled around the cute little stuffy that came with the vehicle and an angry sob tore from her throat as she flung it on the passenger side seat.

  Water slowly rolled over her hips now.

  She gasped from the cold, only to cry out from the sharp pain in her ribs.

  I – I don’t want to die, she thought despairingly, her eyes burning with tears. I wanted to make things right with Thea. I wanted … I wanted to hold my nieces and nephews for the first time.

  Her fingers curled around the strap that secured her hips to her seat, the cold water rushing over her warm skin. Again, she tugged, trying to loosen the belt enough that she could wiggle herself free. There was the slightest amount of give in the belt but not enough for her to escape.

  Crying loudly, Aella stared down at the water that now reached just above her midriff.

  I survived four years o
f brutal war only to die from drowning, she thought with a momentary bout of hysteria.

  Please, God, she began to silently pray, I – I don’t want to die. I want to fix things between me and Thea. I want to tell her that, whatever I did, I’m sorry. I – oh, God, I’m … I’m scared.

  The water crept over the gentle curve of her breasts.

  Aella stared out the broken windshield of her vehicle, staring into the dark depths of Loch Ness. The flickering headlights illuminated the water around her but she could not see its bottom. She closed her eyes. Loch Ness was the second deepest lake in Scotland. It could take her sister months to figure out that she had drowned when her SUV rolled.

  Please, God, she silently prayed. I’m so scared.

  Water bobbed at her chin.

  Tears fell from her eyes.

  Anthea, she thought as the cold water rushed over her mouth and nose, when you discover I’m dead, please don’t think less of me.

  Cold water washed over her head and her vehicle plunged down into the dark depths of Loch Ness.

  She had one precious minute of life left.

  Mom, she thought. Daddy. I’ll be with you again soon.

  Her vision started to darken. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her body craved oxygen but she was underwater.

  And, as her mind started to darken along with her vision, for the briefest of moments she thought she saw something large and serpent-like and glowing blue.

  Amon.

  Fresh, clean water rolled over his gills, igniting his blood, causing him to stretch his long, sinuous body and sending small ripples of pleasure from the tip of his tail to the tip of his snout. His dorsal fin flared to its full height, the membrane between the spines matching the dark green shade of his scales and fading to black as it neared his body. He luxuriated in the strength of his body, his tail coiling into loose knots before relaxing and sending him forward with but the smallest of flicks. He closed his eyes, happiness bubbling up inside of him.