Ascension Saga, Book 9: Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga

by Goodwin, Grace

  Ascension Saga, Book 9

  Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga

  Grace Goodwin

  Ascension Saga, Book 9: Copyright © 2019 by Grace Goodwin

  Interstellar Brides® is a registered trademark

  of KSA Publishing Consultants Inc.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, digital or mechanical including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning or by any type of data storage and retrieval system without express, written permission from the author.

  Published by KSA Publishers

  Goodwin, Grace

  Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga, Book 9

  Cover design copyright 2019 by Grace Goodwin

  Images/Photo Credit: Period Images; BigStock: forplayday

  Publisher’s Note:

  This book was written for an adult audience. The book may contain explicit sexual content. Sexual activities included in this book are strictly fantasies intended for adults and any activities or risks taken by fictional characters within the story are neither endorsed nor encouraged by the author or publisher.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  The Ascension Saga

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  Also by Grace Goodwin

  Prologue

  Queen Celene – Optimus Unit Prison, Cell Level C

  I stared at the wall, trying, once more, to use my power.

  Nothing. I’d been too long from the citadel, the bond grown too weak to use as I once had.

  The last time I’d truly used my gift, it had saved my life. It had often felt like yesterday when I’d had to flee, but now… it felt like a lifetime ago.

  I needed to return to the citadel. Reconnect. Become strong, as I was long ago. My daughters needed me. Alera needed their queen. First, I needed to escape.

  The cleric bitch who’d threatened my daughters was gone. Had been for days. I had no idea if she were dead or alive. I’d been well-treated since then, strangely so considering the misery when I’d first been taken. Not that it mattered. I had to get out of here. Time was ticking in my mind like the countdown on a bomb.

  Something had changed, something significant. The moment that cleric had murdered the guard I thought of as Scarface, everything had shifted.

  My clothes were warmer.

  There had been no more beatings. Before that even, if I thought about it, but it was as if I’d gone from a cruel gulag to the Four Seasons, by comparison.

  I had shoes and thick socks to keep my feet warm and an extra blanket on my bed.

  I wasn’t hungry, either. I’d given in and eaten everything they brought me, which had been not only delicious, but nutritious as well. Fattening me up for the slaughter, perhaps? No. If they wanted to kill me with poison, it would have happened long ago. Besides, they didn’t need to resort to such devious means to commit murder. If they wanted me dead, they could slit my throat and dump my body in the Western Sea. It was only a few hours away by EV, and the creatures that lurked beneath the waves on Alera were much more aggressive than the peaceful sharks on Earth. They were true predators. Piranha-like monsters the size of small boats, some of them with teeth longer than my arms.

  Dead or alive, I’d be fish food in a matter of minutes. Seconds, even.

  I’d been moved three times in the last two days, so when the door opened and I saw the two young guards holding handcuffs, I wasn’t surprised. Their words, however, shocked me.

  “Greetings, My Queen. We have been sent to escort you to your new home.” One spoke. Both bowed.

  What the hell was going on here?

  They knew I was the queen. Greeted me formally. As Destiny would say, WTF?

  “What are you talking about? Where are you taking me? To the palace?”

  The second guard straightened and stood tall, shifted his shoulders back and puffed out his chest, as if he were proud to be holding his queen captive. As if locking me up against my will was a fucking honor. “Our king has returned, My Queen. He has instructed us to escort you to your new home where he will see to your safety and well-being.”

  The King? Again, WTF? What the hell were they talking about? “The king is dead.”

  The first guard, young and beautiful, and clearly so, so naive, smiled. “No, My Queen. He lives. He has returned, at long last, to take his place by your side.”

  “At long last?”

  “Twenty-seven years is a long time to wait, My Queen. We had nearly given up hope.” His dark blue eyes were bright with excitement, as if he were about to open a gift on Christmas morning. The look was genuine. Which meant this young idiot believed what he was saying. He hadn’t even been alive all those years ago.

  “The king has been gone for twenty-seven years?”

  The second guard spoke. “Yes, My Queen. He disappeared when you did, and returned soon after your daughters appeared.”

  “He disappeared because he’s dead,” I countered. Dead was dead. I’d watched as my mate, King Mykel, was stabbed, killed in front of me. It was a memory I could never forget.

  “He’s alive and well and eager to see you, My Queen.”

  But… could he be alive? Could he have somehow survived? Surely, others would have had to know; he’d have needed a ReGen pod. Help to get there. Doctors.

  And this guard used the word eager. No one was eager and waited twenty-seven years. Yeah, I just bet he was. If it was Mykel then why wait so long? Why now? It seemed the game had changed even more than I had realized. Or maybe it wasn’t him. Someone else and that meant nothing had changed. I still didn’t know who’d kidnapped me. Tried to have the girls killed. Now they were going to try to convince me to accept someone else as my dead mate? Did they believe that after nearly thirty years, I would not recognize him? True, our mating had been short, the attack coming soon after our mating ceremony, but I would know him. He had eased my Ardor, pledged his life and love to me. And died protecting me. Or had he?

  “Then where is he?” I asked the guard. “Tell him to come down here and explain this to me himself.” I’d watched a masked assassin in black drive a dagger through the king’s heart moments before I’d fled. That hadn’t been faked. Whoever these guards were following, he had to be an imposter of some kind. Surely. Mykel was long dead. My heart belonged to Adam now. Adam, who was far away on Earth, worried sick about his family.

  “He can not yet reveal himself, My Queen. He has asked us to personally escort you to your new accommodations and see to your safety.”

  I’ll just bet he has. “Then why the handcuffs?”

  The first guard dipped his head in a show of apology. “Apologies, My Queen, but he was afraid you would not believe us and attempt to escape.”

  The mystery king was right. But I wasn’t going to attempt anything.

  I sat on the edge of my bed and took my sweet time putting on my shoes, hoping the guards would come closer and enter the room.

  My patience was rewarded. By the time I was done, they were both inside my cell and the door left wide open behind them.

  I stood and held out my wrists like a docile doe. The guard nearest me stepped forward with the cuffs.

  “You know,�
�� I said, “the last person to stand where you are now threatened to murder all three of my daughters.”

  His eyes widened in a mix of surprise and horror, as if the idea was appalling to him. Strange, considering I was his prisoner. “Our apologies for your mistreatment. It took us some time to find you. I assure you, that person will not hurt you or the princesses.”

  “Is that so?” The cuff drew near and I held back a smile when the second guard stepped closer, very close to the first. Two puppies, the bumbling fools. Kind, unlike the others, therefore, I would only incapacitate them, not hurt them.

  Catching my escorts unaware, I grabbed the first guard’s wrist and tugged him toward me. Off balance and leaning forward, I swept his front leg with my foot as if I were kicking a soccer ball to the side. With his leg lifted out from under him, he fell like a redwood tree and the wind was knocked from him. On the way down, I grabbed the handcuffs.

  The second guard stood there blinking, completely stunned that I’d actually moved, and on top of that had taken his partner to the ground. I took the opportunity to snap one end of the cuff around his wrist. When his eyes met mine, I gave him a small smile. “Sorry.”

  I was a little bit sorry because they were sweet, but not sorry enough to stop.

  Letting the cuff drop so it dangled from his wrist, I placed both hands on top of his hand and twisted. It turned his lower arm in a direction that wasn’t all that comfortable—thank you Destiny for torturing the entire family with showing all of us what she’d learned in her Jiu-Jitsu classes way back in ninth grade—until he had no choice but to drop to his knees, then to the ground as I kept up the pressure on his shoulder blade. He went to the floor or his shoulder popped out of the socket.

  This happened in all of two seconds, and I wrapped the cuff around the nearest leg of the simple bed, then connected it to his partner’s wrist. The first guard was finally catching his breath and they flailed and tried to get up, but they didn’t make it far since their arms were trapped beneath the bedframe which was affixed to the floor.

  I looked down at the two, wondering if they were the worst guards on the planet or if they had truly felt I was a sweet, kind queen they’d envisioned their whole lives. I could be sweet, but not when someone threatened my daughters. Moving to the open doorway, I stopped and looked back at them where they moved awkwardly on all fours. “You’ll be found soon.”

  Someone would come for them, eventually. Moving on silent feet down the hallway, I kept going until I saw another guard. This one armed.

  Good. When I found this imposter king, I was going to put a very large hole in his head.

  When he saw me, he raised his weapon, but I played the weak woman card. “The guard, he’s hurt.” I pointed anxiously down the hallway and gave him an Academy Award winning performance. “Hurry, I think he needs a ReGen pod.”

  He came close to me, his weapon forgotten since I hadn’t portrayed myself as a threat. As he was walking past me, I grabbed his ion pistol, quickly set it to stun and shot him.

  He crumpled to the floor, remained still. Leaning down, I patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll live.” He’d be incapacitated for a while, but I had no idea the strength of his stun setting, so I didn’t linger.

  Goddess, it felt good to be doing something, to be assertive instead of meek. Offensive instead of defensive. I was grateful they’d moved me to a less secure cellblock. They’d transferred me every day, as if they were barely keeping one step ahead of someone who was looking.

  Well, the queen was out of the cage now, and the whole world was going to know about it. I’d lure this imposter king to me. And if it was Mykel after all these years, he was going down.

  Alarms pealed, the sound harsh on my ears after so many days of near silence, alone in my cell. I might have been able to take down three guards, but it was impossible to disable cameras. Eyes on the walls saw everything. Saw me take down a guard. I ignored the shrill sound. I had to get out of this area of the prison, find guards who were loyal Alerans, not minions of my enemies.

  The third guard station was manned, based on their uniforms, by three members of the Optimus Unit. Two females and one male, they all looked up when I blasted the lock on the door and stepped through to their station, their mouths hanging open in shock.

  “You’re the queen.” The young female guard gaped and stood, her chair sliding across the floor in her haste. She was younger than my twins. Obviously, she hadn’t known I’d been here, which had me believing I’d been kept isolated, a secret.

  I nodded. “I am. I demand to speak with Captain Travin Turaya, of the royal guard on a secure channel. Then you three will personally escort me to meet him.”

  The all stared. Unmoving.

  “Now.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was their queen issuing a command or the ion pistol I aimed at them that got them moving. It didn’t matter. They were following my commands.

  I smiled. The queen was back.

  1

  Destiny

  Morson. Morson. Where the hell was this guy?

  Nix searched the other side of the room, moving from shadow to shadow along the periphery, unnoticed by the attendees. I had no idea how that was even possible. He was six-foot-plus of pure power and raw sex appeal, but then, maybe since we were in a room full of traitors who were plotting to kill my mother and my sisters, they had other priorities.

  Most in the room were powerful in one way or another. Clerics. Lords. Ladies. I hadn’t been on Alera for long and even I could tell. Members of the Optimus Unit, too. Talk about the fox watching the hen house. The Optimus Unit was like Earth’s FBI and judicial system all in one. Not the brightest setup, in my opinion. Civics class taught me about separation of powers and yeah, they didn’t have that here. I meant separation of powers, but Civics, too.

  I scanned the faces, searching for the man I’d barely caught a glimpse of on the monitor before coming down here. Morson. The only person here who, according to my sister, Trinity, was worth saving.

  With my bat hearing, the ticking noise of that bomb was still echoing in my ears, despite the fact that it was more than one hundred steps behind me, in another room. It appeared my strange superpower had locked onto the sound as a constant reminder that I was running out of time.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Worse than a metronome. Infinitely more annoying.

  Die. Die. Die. That’s what I heard. The sound made my blood pound and my head hurt. Someone wanted everyone in this building dead. Someone wanted to destroy everyone who knew the truth about what happened to my mother all those years ago. Whoever it was held onto a grudge. Twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven!

  People had been dropping like flies. One after the other, some psycho was killing people off. Fortunately, Trinity, Faith and I had survived. And Mom, too, since her spire was still lit. And now, this fucker—yeah, he was a total fucker—was planning on getting the rest with one bomb. A bomb was ticking down and here I was, looking like I was mingling at a cocktail party.

  The risk didn’t bother me. No. What bothered me was knowing Nix was still in the building. My death? Not the end of the world. But if anything happened to him, I’d never forgive myself.

  Was this what love was supposed to be? Gut wrenching anxiety?

  I thought about how I felt any time I imagined Mom rotting in chains somewhere, or the times my sisters were hurt growing up.

  Yep. Gut wrenching anxiety. Worry. Fear. Helplessness.

  Love sucked. Why did we spend our whole lives chasing it?

  “Morson, good to see you here. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

  I wrenched my neck in the direction of that voice and spotted my prey, Morson, talking to an older woman who also wore the uniform of the Optimus Unit. I had no idea who she was, nor did I care. She’d be dead soon. And so would Morson, if I didn’t get him out of here.

  But Nix. How would he know I’d found him? He was on the other side of the large room, dozens of bodies between us.

&n
bsp; “It has been a long time,” Morson replied. “I am looking forward to hearing what the next steps are in taking the throne.”

  If Trinity hadn’t said he was one of the good guys, I would have had a very hard time controlling myself. But this meeting said it all. The person who’d killed the king and tried to kill Mom was back at it. I didn’t linger to find out who the woman was. Clearly, she knew Morson well. But why was he undercover, and for how long? It couldn’t have been since the attack on my mother.

  I looked at him one more time.

  No. Too young. Maybe Leo’s age. He had probably been a child when Trinity’s father was killed. Still, he could have been at this for years.

  Poor bastard. I could never pull that off. I was too impatient, and I knew it. Too prone to take risks. Sometimes, stupid risks. Like riding Nix’s cock in the high cleric’s office while she spoke to a warrior on the other side of a door.

  But god, what a magnificent cock.

  I looked for Nix. Found him. His eyes met mine and I dipped my chin so he’d know to start moving closer. And those eyes. Intense. Beautiful. Focused on me.

  That was the answer. That look. That was what made love worth the pain.

  The woman talking to Morson crossed her arms, her booted foot tapping the floor in obvious annoyance.

  “I expected to be patient and wait for another attempt, but twenty-seven years?” the woman said, thinking the same as me. “I have to wonder if the king is actually dead. It would be just like him to pull a stunt like this, although I never knew him to wait this long for anything.”