a shuddering breath, I closed my eyes and tried to think about Kiel instead, tried to hold onto the pleasure still coursing through my body. My pussy was swollen and hot, the pulsing of my orgasm sending aftershocks through my system. My hand burned and I rubbed at it through the gloves I wore, wondering if the mark on my palm would truly be red, of if this was some strange, lingering delusion my mind was conjuring to torture me.
My dream man was gone. The nightmare about my son’s broken body was gone. And reality? Reality was staring at the inside walls of a Coalition Fleet shipping crate. No, it wasn’t pitch black. No, it wasn’t suffocating. I’d become used to the scent of dirt and trees from my corner where I had a comfortable chair, anchored in place. I had food and water, light.
It wasn’t ideal, but they’d given me a pill to help me sleep. I was calm—too calm—and I had a feeling that special pill worked a little too well. I’d always been sensitive to medications. They probably didn’t want me to freak out halfway through the journey, and I had to admit, neither did I.
If I thought about where I was going—what I had to do—for long enough, losing my freaking mind would be easy to do. I remained calm, slept, entertained myself with a tablet with movies. The perfect two-day “veg-fest” as long as I didn’t think about the fact that I was hurtling through deep space in a freighter at light speed.
Forty-eight hours I’d been locked inside this cube. Yes, I had a full suit of Coalition camouflage space armor and helmet. The squinty eyed-doctor in the Miami Processing center had promised me I could survive for two weeks on the air and energy processing units built into the suit. Much longer than the two or three day journey should require.
But I wasn’t sure I trusted that bitch. My head still hurt where she’d jabbed a needle into my skull to implant what they called a Neural Processing Unit, a gadget that was supposed to make it possible for me to understand every alien language I might encounter where I was going: The prison planet known only as The Colony.
The Colony was some kind of dirty little secret that no one was supposed to know about. Some of Earth’s troops were reported to be there, tossed away like garbage by our own government. A few months ago, Senator Brooks from Massachusetts had received word that his nephew, a Navy SEAL who had volunteered for the Coalition Fleet, had died on this far off world under mysterious circumstances. Captain Brooks apparently had a brother still out there somewhere, fighting.
The Senator loved his sister, and she loved her sons. The Brooks family was wealthy and powerful with a proud history of military service going all the way back to the Civil War. Mama Brooks had been furious when her sons volunteered for the Coalition Fleet. And now, with one still out there somewhere, and one dead under mysterious circumstances…well, she wanted answers.
And she was willing to pay to get them. Pay. Threaten. Cajole. Demand. She was willing to hurt my son to discover the truth about hers. I understood a mother’s love, the relentless ache of it. I’d agreed to take this assignment, not because I wanted to, but because refusing would cause Wyatt more pain. Success, however, would see his surgery paid for and performed by the very best doctors the Brooks family could afford.
And they could afford a lot.
And all I had to do was bring them the truth about the prison colony. The contaminated flesh of our warriors. The truth about what was happening to our military personnel.
Captain Brooks had served his country well, then volunteered to go into space as a Coalition fighter and battle the mysterious enemy no one had ever seen. The Hive. Rumors and conspiracy theories were everywhere. But these creatures were supposed to be terrifying beings straight out of Star Trek. Monsters so scary that the governments of Earth had agreed to the Coalition demand for brides and warriors to protect us from a Hive invasion.
A lot of people didn’t believe the Hive existed. That the whole thing was a government conspiracy, a cover-up, a way to sacrifice people to some strange alien force without raising alarm. Some thought our volunteers were nothing more than cattle being led to slaughter. The information shared on the news networks was vague. No pictures of these Hive were ever shared. They were just bad guys in space, far away, mythical things that could never hurt us. But that seemed to be just what the governments wanted us to know. People in power argued that if the truth of what was outside of our atmosphere, beyond our moon and the reaches of our space shuttles was shared, there would be pandemonium. Riots. Chaos in the streets.
They wanted the truth to remain hidden, it seemed, for our own good.
I didn’t care about any of that. I cared about Wyatt and my mom. If someone was willing to pay me money to get the truth, then I’d go. I wasn’t interested in the truth. I didn’t care about conspiracy theories or cover-ups. I was interested in the money this assignment would pay. The surgery Wyatt needed that this money would cover. I cared about healing my son.
And if I failed? Well, there was a price to be paid. They would hurt him. They would kill my mother and torture my boy. Those small details something they’d chosen not to share with me until the very end, of course.
But I believed the threat. Something in Mrs. Brooks’ fanatical gaze sent a shiver down my spine. She’d lost both of her sons and, apparently, her mind and sense of human decency. Too late to turn back now. The only thing I could focus on was getting back home to Wyatt, who was probably asleep under his Power Rangers comforter with a stuffed tiger named Roar snuggled under his sweet, innocent little chin at this very moment.
Space aliens weren’t my biggest fear. Wyatt not being able to walk normally, not grow, be forced to watch from the sidelines as the other boys run and play? That would break his little heart, and my baby hurting was not acceptable. Not to me.
And the threats made against him? I couldn’t bare to think about that. I simply would not fail.
I startled as the crate shifted under me and I realized it was moving, swinging a bit as if being lifted and carried through the air on the end of a crane.
Everything was happening exactly as they’d told me it would.
Two days on board the freighter, arrival at The Colony. We’d landed a few hours ago, the rumble of the ship’s engines nearly rattling my teeth out of my head as we’d landed. A slight jolt when it made contact with the planet’s surface. And now, a few hours later, I was being off-loaded, stacked in their new storage facilities. I was packed in with a shipment of seeds from the Salvard Global Seed Vault. I’d been staring at their logo for so long, I could draw it in my sleep.
Apparently, The Colony was working to terraform their new planet to make it more appealing. They were bringing in plants native to every Coalition home world. I’d been sleeping next to thirty-foot tall maple, elm and locust trees. Also in the hold were spruce and drought resistant shrubs of every variety. Huge trees, too big to send via their precious transport technology.
We were headed to Base 3, where the Governor had, according to my sources, recently been mated through the Interstellar Brides Program to a woman from Earth. All of this was for her, his devotion—or obsession, depending on who told the story—was so complete that he was creating an Earth garden just for her. I would be able to sneak onto the planet because of some woman named Rachel that I’d never met.
The ways onto the planet were limited. No one from Earth was allowed unless he or she was a Coalition fighter or a bride. I wasn’t the military type. I’d never even held a gun before. The other option was to volunteer for the Interstellar Brides Program, but I didn’t meet their requirements. I had Wyatt. I was a mother. Besides, I had zero interest in being a mate of a space alien, or in leaving Earth.
No. I
