by Tasha Black
Zane
Alien Adoption Agency #4
Tasha Black
13th Story Press
Copyright © 2021 by 13th Story Press
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
13th Story Press
PO Box 506
Swarthmore, PA 19081
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Cover designed by Sylvia Frost of The Book Brander
Contents
Tasha Black Starter Library
About Zane
Zane
1. Sarah
2. Zane
3. Sarah
4. Sarah
5. Zane
6. Sarah
7. Zane
8. Sarah
9. Sarah
10. Zane
11. Sarah
12. Zane
13. Zane
14. Sarah
15. Sarah
16. Zane
17. Sarah
18. Sarah
19. Sarah
20. Zane
21. Sarah
22. Zane
23. Sarah
24. Sarah
25. Sarah
26. Zane
27. Sarah
28. Zane
29. Sarah
30. Sarah
31. Zane
32. Sarah
33. Zane
34. Sarah
35. Sarah
Tasha Black Starter Library
About the Author
One Percent Club
Tasha Black Starter Library
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About Zane
She hungers for justice, but he hungers only for her.
Sarah Flynn is committed to avenging her father’s death at any cost. Even if that means adopting a baby and traveling to a remote frontier moon. She’s built a wall around her heart so she can do what needs to be done. But when she meets her new son and the handsome dragon warrior assigned to protect him, she can feel her defenses beginning to crumble.
Zane is a proud dragon warrior of the Invicta. His new duty protecting an Imberian baby has taken him out of the trenches, but the scars of war remain in his heart. Until he glimpses the child’s new adoptive mother. Sarah is fierce and focused on her new child and a plot to catch a fugitive murderer. But when Zane looks at her, all he sees is his fated mate – the woman who can heal his soul and open his eyes to all that is good.
When Sarah’s hunt for the killer pushes Zane past his limits, he’s forced to confront the violence of his past. Zane would do anything to protect Sarah and little Bowen. But she’ll have to find the line between justice in revenge on her own, if she doesn’t want throw away their chance at a happily ever after.
Join the Alien Adoption Agency for an amazing adventure on the brand-new moon of Lachesis!
If you like strong women, hunky aliens, wild adventures, steamy sensual scenes, and happily-ever-afters, then you’ll love the world of Stargazer!
Alien Adoption Agency is a Stargazer Alien Series – read them all:
Set on the moon of Clotho:
-Noxx
-Kade
-Tyro
Set on the moon of Lachesis:
- Zane
- Rexx
- Odin
Zane
1
Sarah
Sarah Flynn prided herself on not being easily rattled.
But after a couple of hours aboard a flimsy excuse for a ship, with constant turbulence thrashing her around the cabin and making her bad leg ache, she was starting to question every decision that had brought her here.
Justice, Sarah, she reminded herself firmly. Justice delayed is justice denied.
She glanced across the aisle at her fellow adoptive mothers. Each of them was wearing a low-cut purple gown identical to the one Sarah wore. In her opinion, they looked like a trio of floozies headed for certain disaster.
In reality, they were heading to Lachesis, the second moon of the gas-mining planet Hesiod-8, to meet the babies they would adopt and raise.
The women had been recruited by the Alien Adoption Agency back on their respective Terran planets. The intake process was tricky, and very few women made it through. Unlike most selection processes on the Terras, Sarah had been shocked to realize that the Alien Adoption Agency didn’t appear to make its choices based on connections or bribes.
She wasn’t really sure how they made their decisions. There had been tests - written, medical and psychological. She hadn’t expected to pass, after all, she wasn’t exactly doing this because she was longing for a child.
But when she got her letter and arrived at intake along with Liberty and Abigail, there had been no explanation offered for why any of them had been chosen to serve as mothers on Lachesis.
Liberty obviously came from money, but had fallen on low times. Her shoes and clothing were worn when she arrived at intake, but her hair was the striking, iridescent blue-black possible only with expensive in-womb modifications. Whoever her family was, they had raised the elegant Liberty gently. Then perhaps, they had unceremoniously ejected her, leaving her with no option but to flee the planet.
Sarah didn’t really know, and she had never asked, since it was none of her business. She had a begrudging respect for Liberty that slowly turned into friendship during their time together.
Abigail, on the other hand, was an open book. They all knew everything about her six brothers and sisters back home, her old teaching job, her infertility, and the two dozen possible names she had picked out in advance for the baby who would make her a mama. It did no good to remind Abigail that the baby would be Imberian, not Terran, and might not have the same needs and wants as her six younger siblings, whom she had blissfully cared for throughout her childhood. Abigail radiated delight about the whole adoption process.
And much as Sarah hoped the girl wouldn’t be disappointed, she couldn’t help but feel that Abigail’s happiness had smoothed the process for all of them. You couldn’t be in her presence without feeling just a little bit light-hearted.
The ship dropped so suddenly that her stomach flipped, and then it caught itself on the air again with a jolt that made her bad leg throb.
Sarah winced and clutched her cane.
She had taken a bullet in that leg during the bank robbery where she lost her father. The surgeons had to take a chunk of muscle from her leg because of the poor quality of the projectile. Now she had a slight limp, and an ache that came and went.
Sarah and her father had run an accounting business and it was tax season on Terra-7 at the time of the robbery. They had been bringing the week’s receipts to the bank after a very long day, when an idiot that called himself Jericho Caldwell came marching in, waving an old-fashioned gun around and demanding money.
Banks were insured. All he’d had to do was go up to the counter with a note to be given huge sacks of credits and sent peacefully on his way.
But Caldwell was the kind of man who liked a little drama. So of course things escalated. By the time he made his escape, several people were injured, and Sarah’s father was bleeding out on the marble floor.
The city cops hadn’t even made a real effort to catch him. They told Sarah there were “bigger fish to fry” and the bank’s insurance company w
ould sort it out.
Sure enough, they had paid out a tidy sum. But Reginald Bowen Flynn could not be replaced with a stack of credits. He deserved justice. And if no one would give it to her, then Sarah was determined to hunt down the criminal herself.
She’d begun by hiring a private investigator who had tracked the coward Jericho Caldwell as far as a cargo ship headed for the moon of Lachesis.
But she hit a dead end, because Lachesis was closed to new immigrants, and the PI could follow him no farther.
Sarah had done some homework, and learned that the only legal way onto Lachesis was through a special program, run by the Alien Adoption Agency. All adoptive mothers of Imberian babies would be given land and a modest stipend on one of the moons of Hesiod-8.
It was a long shot, but it was the only shot she had.
So Sarah had walked away from her old life to start this new one. She would begin with justice for her father. After that, she could allow herself to focus on single parenthood on the frontier moon. It was an honorable life, and she hoped to be a good mother, even if she had originally only decided to adopt the child to accomplish her own purposes.
And in her secret heart, she couldn’t wait to hold the little one in her arms and lavish it with all the love she had.
“Holy wow,” Abigail murmured.
Sarah followed her gaze out the window. The landscape below them looked almost like it was underwater. Low, murky light from between the clouds dappled long, waving grasses. The blues and greens of the vegetation were deeper and more vibrant than back home.
It reminded her of the aquarium her father used to take her to when she was a girl. They would spend hours gazing into the peaceful depths of that underwater world together.
Sarah had just enough time for a pang of quiet happiness to lift her heart at the memory before the ship dropped and caught itself again, causing Liberty to let out an unladylike yelp and then clamp her hand over her own mouth as Abigail giggled.
“Prepare for landing,” said a crackly voice over the intercom.
2
Zane
Zane held the little one securely in his arms. The whelp was very excited and wiggly as he took in the local wildlife.
A school of shiver birds winnowed through the air in formation, their silvery feathers sparkling in the low light. The little one waved his little hands and squeaked as if he wished he could swim after them.
A few feet away, Zane’s brother in arms, Rexx, paced with his own whelp, who was still fussy after the landing.
While the men were dragon shifters, whose bodies naturally accommodated environmental changes, the whelps were Imberian, and the lower-than-standard gravity on Lachesis made them uncomfortable.
But Zane was sure Rexx’s whelp would adjust to the new gravity soon. The babies had proven very resilient so far.
At the moment, Rexx wore an annoyed expression that had nothing to do with the little one. The blue dragon warrior valued discipline over everything, and the adoptive mothers’ ship was late.
“They’ll be here soon,” Zane said to him, hoping to ease his strain.
“It’s not a good sign,” Rexx snapped. “What kind of mothers will they be if they can’t even be bothered to show up on time for their first meeting?”
“I don’t think they’re piloting the plane,” Zane teased.
He glanced over at Odin, the third member of their group, for back-up. But the red dragon warrior looked even stormier than Rexx.
Odin was never exactly cheerful, but he had been downright snarly ever since the adoption date was scheduled. Zane was pretty sure it had to do with handing over the whelps.
The three were Invicta warriors, each of them with an impressive military career. And their purpose was to protect the younglings, not to form bonds with them.
Long ago, the Invicta had made a terrible mistake, annihilating the gentle people of Imber in an error that would haunt their ranks forever.
The intergalactic counsel had finally given them leave to make things as right as they could. Using preserved DNA from Imber, the Invicta had gestated a group of pod babies who would inherit their planet and its wealth once they were grown.
As part of the deal, each baby would be guarded until the age of twenty standard years by an Invicta warrior. Serving as a guard to an Imberian youth was considered the greatest honor that could be bestowed upon a warrior like Zane.
Some of his brothers took to it more happily than others.
But Zane himself had been both honored and excited to be chosen. He had always liked children. Spending time with a child while also helping to redeem the honor of the Invicta was a dream assignment.
The darker moments of his service seemed like only a memory to him now. Though he tried to approach caring for the whelp with the cool dedication of a professional soldier, it was impossible not to grow fond of its strange sounds and expressions of wonder as it discovered the world all around them. Its warm weight on his chest was a comfort he dared not acknowledge out loud. Zane was a warrior. He should have no need of a whelp to console his heart. His heart should be made of iron.
But it was not. The little one had wrapped a chubby fist around his heart, and it felt like it was made of warm melted chocolate now.
He only hoped that the whelp’s new mother would allow him to amuse and nurture the little one when she was busy with other tasks.
If she would not, he supposed the Invicta would still have what they wanted - a soldier willing to give his life to protect a whelp of Imber. A few weeks of unintended bonding had been enough to seal his loyalty forever.
A racket from above distracted him from his thoughts.
“Gods,” Rexx murmured. “I hope the adoption agency didn’t cut corners in other regards.”
Odin made a low, growling sound and wrapped his arms more tightly around his own whelp.
Zane felt sorry for the new mother of that small one.
They all watched as a rickety spacecraft lowered itself nearby, wavy grasses blowing flat under the blast of its thrusters.
A foul-smelling exhaust was spewing from it, and Zane had to fight back the instinct to run for cover with the whelp.
It felt like a trap, like so many of the situations he’d found himself in under active duty on Falnnos. But he had left the dangers of the pirate belt behind in exchange for service on a peaceful frontier. He had to adjust his expectations.
A hatch opened, and workers in bio-suits scrambled out, hastily pitching a decontamination tent.
“Bah,” the whelp said in complete surprise, gazing at the flapping tent in wide-eyed wonder.
“That’s to make sure no one brings in anything bad for the moon,” Zane explained to him.
The whelp chirped like an airlock warning and whacked Zane on top of the head with his little arm.
It was certain that the whelp understood almost nothing that he said. But Zane felt compelled to speak to him anyway. The babes of Imber matured more slowly than dragonets, but one day his words would begin to have meaning for it.
There was a commotion inside the tent and then the flaps flew open to reveal a woman he’d never seen, but who was somehow familiar to him.
She had dark, straight hair and she wore a low-cut swirling gown that was completely at odds with the serious look on her face. She clutched a bag in one hand and something that was either a fighting baton or a walking stick in the other.
As Zane watched, she took two tentative steps, light as a fawn, and her face went soft with wonder.
Something inside him shattered, leaking warmth through his chest until he radiated like a star. From deep within him came one single, unmistakable notion.
Mate…
But that could not be.
Could it?
He watched, gobsmacked, as she marched right up to him, all business now that she had gotten her footing in the slightly lower gravity.
“I’m Sarah,” she said, “Sarah Flynn. Is this my son?”
3
Sarah
Sarah let her gaze rest on the baby. He had large, intelligent eyes and he was nice and sturdy. He would be a tribute to his grandfather.
But it was suspicious that his skin had the same strange coloration as the man who held him.
“Why is he… yellow?” she asked, holding her arms out. “I thought he was from Imber.”
“I am a golden dragon warrior of the Invicta,” the man said calmly, without meeting her eyes. “The people of Imber are known to be very adaptable. This whelp is golden because he has been in my care. My hue has imprinted on him.”
She noticed that he didn’t offer her the baby, even though she was clearly holding her hands out.
“Are you with the Alien Adoption Agency?” Sarah asked suspiciously.
“No,” he replied, sounding surprised. “I’m the baby’s guard.”
“I see,” Sarah said. “Well, I’m his mother. May I hold him?”
“Of course,” he said, meeting her eyes at last.
The intensity of his look nearly caused her to take a step back.
There was something about his bright blue gaze, something almost familiar. But that couldn’t be. She was certain she’d never met anyone like him before. There was very little need for dragon warriors where she came from.
