by Elsa Jade
Table of Contents
Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides
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
The next adventure!
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Intergalactic Dating Agency
Black Hole Brides
The Interdimensional Lord's Earthly Delight
After a bad divorce, Lishelle Lewis was finally ready to put herself out there. She just had no idea how far out there. Abducted by a cruel, heartless alien and then rescued along with the rest of the Black Hole Brides, she’s trying to find herself again in a big universe. At least she has a big wedding where she’s a bridesmaid to distract her. Now she just needs a date for the wedding…
But there are more powerful forces at play in the universe than quantum entanglement and buttercream frosting. And Lishelle, who has always kept a piece of her heart locked away, will have to open herself—mind, body, and soul—to the chance of a love bigger than galaxies, deeper than space, and more consuming than any black hole.
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Copyright © 2017 by Elsa Jade
Cover by Croco Designs
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Prologue
Light. So much light, all the light, it burned him. It scorched away everything he was, everything he’d ever known, and left him with nothing, only…
Dark.
And unending, falling void.
At the end (how could there be an end to the unending?) he found a single finite point, a chance…
Hope.
Chapter 1
She’d sworn she was never, ever, not ever setting foot on that nasty space station ever again, nuh-uh ever and hell naw.
So it was really annoying to be standing in the station’s atrium garden, going back on her word to her own self. But somebody had to manage the wedding of the first Black Hole Bride. Right now, she was directing staff from the Azthronos estate who were hanging lavish purple loops of ribbon from the high arched dome where transparent triangular panes that framed the vastness of space.
She refused to look at the black hole swirling out there among the stars.
Lishelle Lewis had a lifetime of experience ignoring whatever got in her way.
Of course, it was one thing to ignore her high school counselor who’d told her girls from rural Tennessee didn’t apply to Ivy League schools, or her first boss who’d believed such a diploma didn’t count since it got paid with scholarship money.
It was a little harder to ignore a cosmic black eye glaring down at her.
Well, she had dark eyes too, except she had two of ‘em, so that ugly ol’ singularity could go larf itself.
Her animated gestures to the decorating crew morphed to a ruder one at the black hole.
“That’s tempting fate, you know,” said an amused voice behind her.
She swiveled to face Rayna Quaye. Like Lishelle, Rayna was one of the Black Hole Brides—a handful of surviving Earth women abducted by a crazy alien who wanted to sacrifice them to the singularity in order to reanimate his dead consort.
Or whatever wackiness that’d been. With the upcoming wedding, Rayna—Lady Rayna Quaye, actually—would become the bride of Aelazar Amrazal Thorkonos, Duke of Azthronos, Blood Champion of Zalar, Avatar of Azjor, God of Oaths. Which would make Rayna the duchess of an alien solar system—let the wackiness shine on.
At the moment, she didn’t look the part. Instead of a Thorkon day gown or more formal robe, she was clad in a pair of sturdy overalls liberally streaked with mud. The extraterrestrial plantings in the atrium garden might be genetically engineered to help clean and circulate the air in the space station, but they were still just dirty.
Lishelle set her hands on her hips. “The last time I argued fate and free will, I was smoking weed in my dorm room. It went about as well as you might imagine.”
Rayna laughed. “We definitely need another Earth girls’ night out before the wedding. No weed, but we do have ghost-mead.”
Although Lishelle smiled back at her and agreed, inside, she felt herself shrinking.
Lady Rayna was about to be a duchess on Azthronos. Trixie, the other Black Hole Bride who had chosen not to return to Earth with her memory wiped, was training to be an on-station technician. And that was despite being recaptured by the crazy alien who wanted to make her a singularity snack.
Rayna and Trixie weren’t ignoring the nightmare they’d all been through. They were, like, leaning in and shit.
Sort of made Lishelle wonder if she was the only not-crazy one.
Rayna tilted her head to study the bunting. Under the mud smudges, her tawny skin was flushed from her exertions. Or maybe the duke was around here somewhere, getting her dirty and hot. “It looks great, Shel. Maybe you don’t believe in fate, but I feel so, so lucky to have you and Trixie and my sister here helping with the wedding.” She let out a deep breath, collapsing her shoulders. “Maybe that’s a terrible thing to say, because it means you’re here instead of back on Earth, happily knowing nothing about sentient, spacefaring species, some of whom are homicidal psychopaths. But still… I do feel lucky every day and every night and every…whatever weird perpetual twilight we got coming from that black hole radiation. I hope you know how much you mean to me.”
Rayna spread her arms as if she was coming in for a hug, but Lishelle warded her off with the flash of one palm. “Just keep your lucky, filthy self over there, girlfriend,” she said firmly. “This is a new frock.” She smoothed her hands down the bright geometric pattern of her sleeveless day gown. “You can show me exactly how much I mean to you by depositing hella galactic credits into my account if the station is up and running in time for the”—she made air quotes—“most romantic nuptials in the Thorkon galaxy.”
Wrinkling her nose—which had mud on the tip—Rayna speared her hands through her whiskey-dark hair. “Ugh. I know we’re cutting it close, but having the wedding on the station is a great chance to position it as the premiere exotic destination resort in this quadrant. That’ll earn you, me, the other girls, and the duchy a crap-ton of galac
tic credits.”
Lishelle eyed her. “Right now, seems you’ve been rolled through actual crap. We can’t sell this as a fairytale with you looking like the underside of a cow’s tail. A duke might marry a closed-world commoner who was bequeathed a space station and became a lady, but no crap.”
Rayna snorted even as she swiped uselessly at her overalls. “You sound like the dowager.”
“Because that old biddy knows about looking the part.” Lishelle did too, even if she hadn’t ever been able to disguise what she was. Generational rural poverty never quite wiped off, no matter how she much she increased her vocabulary and tweaked her syntax.
“The dowager is the one who got the crocus bulbs from Earth, and she said if they were planted right away, we can speed up the growth cycle in time to bloom for the ceremony.”
“I just don’t think she meant you should plant them.”
“Somebody had to,” Rayna said with a very duchess-like wave of her hand.
It wasn’t the nonchalance or even the faint whiff of mud wafting off the nobility-to-be that made Lishelle turn away.
Somebody had to.
And it hadn’t been her. After all her post-doc work on grit and achievement, she hadn’t gotten dirty like Rayna. She hadn’t stuffed Blackworm into the black hole like Trixie. She hadn’t even gone back to Earth like the other two Black Hole Brides who’d been rescued by the Duke of Azthronos just a couple months ago. She was just…stuck in limbo.
She might as well have let Blackworm send her over that event horizon for all the good she was doing.
“…And the streamers really look beautiful,” Rayna was saying.
Lishelle grimaced. Riiiiight, so at least she could hang streamers. And she was fabulous at that job because she was tall. Good thing she’d put in all those years of schooling and career and alien abduction.
She refocused on her friend. “Let’s do our Earth girls’ night out tonight.” Or today or later, or whatever reference to time made sense under the brooding radiant eye of the singularity.
Rayna brushed at her clothes again. “Oh, can’t tonight. Raz and Nor are bringing another delivery, and they asked me and Trixie for help unloading. You should come. Not to work or anything, just hang out.”
Ugh. The only thing worse than being a third wheel to a lovingly engaged couple was being fifth wheel to two lovingly engaged couples. Mousy little Trixie had decided she wanted the sexy, swaggering spaceship captain (well, not captain anymore since Nor and Trixie had remote-controlled the duchy’s flagship dreadnaught right into the black hole to prevent an attack on the ducal homeworld) and while they’d decided on a longer engagement so as not to compete with the noble wedding, they were still very loving. In front of everyone. All the time.
Ugh.
Even as she heard that cranky inner voice, Lishelle wanted to gag herself in purple bunting. Since when was she the sourpuss spinster aunt making disapproving duck lips at everyone else’s happiness?
“Sounds good,” she forced herself to say. “Just message me the time and place. Now, you go get cleaned up before your sugar duke comes back.”
Rayna reached in for a phantom hug, giggling again at Lishelle’s pantomimed shooing to protect her gown.
When one of the estate staffers balanced on an anti-grav unit with ribbons in hand called out for her opinion, Lishelle turned away from Rayna with relief. Was decorating, dancing attendance, and disapproving all she was going to be good for? How depressing. But at least she wasn’t dead.
She finished helping hang the non-perishable decorations. The yili flowers that were native to Azthronos, along with the spring crocuses that had been brought from Earth, would all be force-bloomed for the ceremony. The dowager duchess had insisted on the purple color scheme to offset Rayna’s dark gold looks while Raz would be in the royal blue of Azthronos nobility. Lots of bold beautiful color, though Rayna hadn’t seemed to care at all, too enamored with her handsome fiancé to be distracted by minor details like wedding colors or decorations.
Or the fact that the groom was an alien.
Since both yilis and crocuses were some of the first flowers of spring on both worlds, it seemed appropriate to feature them in the first wedding between an Azthronos noble and a commoner—not just a commoner but a closed-world Earther. Rayna had told Lishelle and Trixie that she wasn’t going to argue over the details when she was already destroying Thorkon tradition by marrying so far out of her league. Like, lightyears out of her league.
By Thorkon salvage law, the chance that she’d awakened first from Blackworm’s stasis pods meant that she was considered primary beneficiary of the space station and bequeathed the honorary status of lady. Since Lishelle had been awakened second, she was like the Black Hole Bridesmaid of Honor. If the station became the success they hoped it would, she would be well repaid for the various horrors she’d endured, and once Rayna took her position as duchess, her secondary status as lady would pass down to Lishelle.
Which seemed as pretentious and arbitrary as hell, but she supposed she didn’t have the historical background to argue. And anyway, since she’d rejected the opportunity to go back to Earth, the station was the only thing supporting her now. She was literally and figuratively poised above the void.
It was just easier not to think about all that as she unspooled purple and lavender metallic ribbon through the corridors of the space station.
When Rayna sent her a message to meet them at landing bay four, Lishelle waved to the rest of the estate staff and headed off to join her friends.
Even though the ducal estate had sent over much of its staff to prepare the station for the wedding, the place was huge and the halls still mostly empty. Other than the purple decorations. Lishelle found herself glancing warily over her shoulder when the ring of footsteps repeated behind her.
Heartbeat stuttering, she paused.
And so did the footsteps.
Oh duh. It was just an echo. Except…
She was wearing the slippers that Thorkons preferred for casual wear with their gowns and robes, and the soft soles barely made a sound on the hard deck plating when she walked.
She brushed her suddenly sweat-dampened palms down the front of her gown. If only she could swipe away her shivers as easily as the tiny flecks of purple lint that poofed up in a faint, shimmery cloud.
The almost imperceptible haze of lavender eddied and shredded around her, as if an invisible hand had torn through it. And she shivered again.
Probably just a breeze from the ventilation system. Since the station had been in hibernation mode at the time of the rescue, technicians from Azthronos had been running all sorts of diagnostic tests, ramping up in preparation for the hundreds of guests, family, dignitaries, media, and potential investors that had been invited to the wedding. There’d been a few spooky moments when all the lights had gone out—except the starlight, of course.
The thought of the fragile nature of life support on a space station gave her one more shiver. Had the temperature dropped? What if the station was venting atmosphere?
Surely there’d be an alarm. Although considering all the tests, what if something got accidentally turned off? What if—?
Nope. She wasn’t going to entertain that anxiety spiral, which could only lead to bad things, like the black hole sucked all light and matter into its quantum pie-hole. She’d been reading a lot—it was her favorite pastime before and since the rescue—and apparently her imagination wanted to mess with her.
Her aunties had always teased her (with a note of truth as sharp as cheap press-on nails) that it was a race whether her smart mouth or her smart brain would get her into trouble first. She’d liked to sass back and say both would save her. None of them would’ve guessed it would be her not-so-smart visit to Sunset Falls, Montana—former outpost of the Intergalactic Dating Agency and hunting ground of Blackworm’s mercenary minions—that would be her downfall.
Upfall? Sidefall? Direction didn’t matter in space, any more than day
time/nighttime did. Everything was just…out there, floating isolated from each other, tiny motes of fading life in the dark…
Another sound whispered behind her.
With a huff of silvery breath that hung for a heartbeat in the cold air, she whirled to face down the corridor behind her. “Hello?”
No one, of course. No one was ever behind the girl who yelled “hello”.
She stomped one slippered foot, as if she could jar loose the inexplicable unease, and winced at the impact shocking up her spine. Oh, lord almighty, someone stop her before she said… “Who’s there?”
Dammit.
“I have a blaster,” she lied.
For some inexplicable reason, that didn’t convince her stalker to show himself.
From a recessed doorway halfway down the corridor, a shadow emerged.
Lishelle screamed…
Chapter 2
“It was a rat!” She waved her hands at Rayna and Trixie as she recounted the horror. “Huge. Hairy. Except the skinny-ass little naked tail. Did I mention huge? Also, six legs. I think I left that part out.”
“You mentioned.” Rayna sounded sympathetic although most of her attention was on the landing pad where a large shuttle was landing.
“It was a larf,” Trixie said, splitting her focus between Lishelle and the shuttle. “Nor told me about them. He had to scrape them off the outsides of ships when he was indentured to that pirate crew when he was little.”
“Off the…outside.” Lishelle blinked at the smaller blonde.
Trixie nodded. “They’ll chew right through a hull. Not pirates, I mean, larfs.”
Lishelle shuddered. “This one was inside. Will it try to eat out into space?” That would explain the cold breeze she’d felt. She’d make a note for a technician to check that corridor.
Trixie shrugged. “I’ll have to ask Nor.” She hopped off the crate of pixberry tea where they’d been sitting while they waited for the shuttle and darted around the baffle protecting them from the backwash. “In fact, I’ll go ask him right now.”
