Blurb
It’s a routine mission. Hunt down the ones who dared – dared – steal our sacred procreation metal from us, the rulers of the empire.
The Arrisans conquered Earth in a day. They smashed into our helpless planet like a wrecking ball, and overnight, everything changed.
That’s what our history books say.
The truth is, I’ve never seen an Arrisan face-to-face. But when my lone medical ship is attacked by ruthless pirates, the nightmare that hunts them down is no hero. Cloaked in assassin’s gray, metal scythes fused to his wrist-bones, he is the grim reaper of the conquerors. The Arrisan elite special forces. A blade.
Luckily for me, he’s in a good mood now that he’s the last man standing in the blood-soaked ruins of my bridge, so he lets me live. After all, I’m just a lesser. Clearly I’m no threat.
Until his body starts reacting to mine…
From the author of the Lords of Atlantis and Onyx Dragons comes a dazzling new series full of unique alien shifters, fierce passion, and loyal warriors who find their fated mates in the stars. Each full-length book is a complete romance with an epic happily-ever-after. Claim your conqueror today!
One
Catarine
The last thing I hear before I sneak out is my mom agreeing the planet Vanadis is terribly far away.
“But she hasn’t been responding to the new drugs,” my mother murmurs into the portable viewscreen while she sits alone on our single living room couch. “The Vanadisans have more medical knowledge than any other race. I’m sure this is what she wants.”
I can’t hear my dad’s response on the viewscreen.
My mom glances over her shoulder at where I linger in the shadowed hallway. She tilts the screen away. “Don’t cry right now, Mat. Did you ask about the advance?”
That’s how I know she doesn’t see me. They never talk about money in front of me. They don’t want me to worry.
My throat tightens.
I’m sorry, Mom and Dad.
I time the movement of our all-female guards outside the brick building, disable the alarm, and slip out the side door into the tight alleyway.
When I’m seeking my fix, I am strangely clever. My brain clears away the fog just long enough to get what I need.
And I must be clearheaded right now.
I take side streets through New Brussels to the club zone wearing my sheer white bodysuit, fur-lined heels, and neurolink cat ears. The color contrasts nicely against my golden-beige skin and dark brown hair. They know me at all the local places, bars repurposed from chunks of old buildings, so I can’t actually go inside. But it’s enough to be close by.
I make the recording while I walk.
Mom and Dad, you did your best to raise me and love me, and I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.
Sending me away is the best choice right now. I promise it’s going to be great.
So don’t worry about me, okay?
Someday, I’ll stand before you and show you the amazing things I’ve done. I’ll be myself again. I’ll be well.
I’ll be the daughter who makes you proud.
Someday.
A man calls out in the local French, “Hey, catgirl! You need a fix, babe?”
I end the recording and turn in his direction. Soon enough, I have found myself in the arms of a man I don’t know.
I don’t want to need this.
I don’t want to be like this.
My life, my future, my dreams have disintegrated around me, and all that’s left is the craving. The craving to be whole. There’s a missing piece deep within me, a hunger that no food can sate. I’m a bottomless stomach. And that’s what I’ve been reduced to. A hole that cannot be filled.
My parents’ guards break in as I’m riding the third stranger. Or maybe it’s the fourth. I’ve lost count. The men jump up, apologetic and embarrassed, which means I’ve been caught with these men before and I just don’t remember.
But I grab on to the one that I am with and make him finish. It’s the finishing that does it. Not semen, not dildos, not my climax—believe me, we’ve tested everything. Only after the pause, the heat, the spurt can I get the satisfaction that I need. The clarity.
And then it’s over. That brief moment is gone. I’m already feeling soft edges on everything, as if my feet barely touch the pavement.
The guards wrap me in a blanket and take me home.
My mother stands on the front step with red-rimmed eyes, her white skin paler under the streetlight. She has passed the point of tears with me. All she does is sigh. “One more time?”
My eyes burn, but I try to keep it in like she does. I hold out the recording chip.
She slips it in her pocket and helps me into the shower, runs a full body scan, and calls the emergency medical service. Again. They try to send a male doctor, and of course that’s not possible for me. I might try to seduce him. My mother stays for the health check from the female examiner, then wraps me in a fuzzy blanket and tenderly puts me into my bed.
All around me on the walls are the photos of things I once wanted to do. The friends I used to have. The dreams I carried like flames in my heart.
I used to have dreams.
I was going to be someone important. I was going to heal the sick like my mom. I was going to build bridges like my dad.
I was going to study the vast intergalactic empire we’ve unwillingly joined and become a great communicator. Reach out to the hundreds of other lesser worlds, conquered like us, and make allies. We all serve the same terrifying race. The Arrisans took over our planet in a day, and we’re still scrambling to catch up.
But now my existence slips away from me like sand.
And my mom understands my frustration, but I can’t even talk anymore to my dad.
We were so close. When I was a child, I used to crawl up in his lap and watch as he designed the great bridges that spanned uncrossable divides. There is so much rebuilding left to be done, and he was always busy, but he never minded taking me with him. He was big and protective.
Whatever got into me was something he couldn't protect me from.
And I know it kills him.
This sickness that drives me toward strange men also violently repels me from my male blood relatives. If I see a slide show of relatives, a memoriam of our Dutch and Malay ancestors that happens to include a man, I’ll destroy the viewscreen. Why? I can’t understand. My mind goes blank. I don’t even feel angry when the guards wrestle away my makeshift weapons, pens, and scissors.
My dad lives in another country, another time zone. My mom gave up her career to take care of me, so my dad works twice as hard from afar. He was always the social one, and now he’s all alone.
He’d do anything for me.
They both would.
And this voyage is my chance to do something for them.
My mom knows I’m grateful, but I swear that someday, I will look my dad in the eye and tell him the same thing.
Thank you for loving me as best you could.
Thank you for trying so hard to save me.
Thank you.
In the morning, my mom gets me up. I feel as rested as I ever do. We get dressed.
The cruiser is leaving from the North America space center, which is on a jagged mountaintop in Iowa. We breakfast in a cross-Atlantic chartered shuttle, then my mom signs the hundreds of contracts that promise I’m in my right mind, and my parents will not try to sue in the case of my unfortunate demise. I stare out the window and try not to make her signatures a lie.