by Vi Voxley
Eleya didn’t yell at her. She smiled sadly in welcome and resumed watching Rhea. Isolde wondered if the planet would ever stop conjuring up certain emotions for them. For Eleya, it would always be the place where Eren died and peace was gained at last, and for Isolde it was the place she had been trying to get to for so long, but had to leave almost as soon as she’d arrived.
“I nearly lunged, you know,” Eleya said when they’d been silent for a while. “I almost threw myself between Diego’s sword and him. All those years of avoiding him and loathing him, undone in a second as I saw his eyes. They were so sad. He truly believed I would try to stop Diego.”
Isolde hadn’t the slightest idea of how to respond to that, but Eleya didn’t seem to expect her to say anything. “And then it was over,” she continued, standing straighter again. “And I could remember again. The kind of monster he was, the things he did. How he managed, for a while, to fool even me into disobeying the Elders. The moment he was gone, I no longer felt sorry for him. I no longer felt anything for him. I… was free.”
When Isolde looked at her, there were tears in the senator’s eyes. Not tears of remorse, but tears of joy. “I am free at last,” Eleya repeated, her voice shaking with happiness. “I am not a general any more, but I can do my service to the Elders and I am no longer bound to him. I am free, truly free.”
Isolde smiled in return, happy to see her delight.
“Besides,” Eleya added. “The generals still have to obey the senators, now that we are back in charge. Which means I get to tell Diego and Faren what to do. I am not entirely sure yet, but I think it might be even better than being a general myself.”
They shared a laugh at that, so loud they drew weird looks from the Brions walking by, but it had been a good day for both of them, so they didn’t care. Instead, Isolde decided to resume the task she had started on Briolina, of making friends of Diego’s friends. Besides, she liked them. So they drank alios and had Urenya check it for poison. Then they settled into a discussion on who might be Eleya’s next gerion and Deliya’s first. The names of the other generals came up a lot.
Eleya said she would love to be Faren’s gesha, but fate didn’t always give the Brions what they wanted and more often what they needed. Isolde never let Eleya forget that when they’d asked her about Atren, she’d smiled and said, “He is handsome, of course. And a good fighter. But he’d better grow balls or Faren will eat him for breakfast the next time he shows up with the hull of his ship still reading the Fearless.”
Later in secret, Isolde told Diego about that comment and got to experience the first moment of her general truly, freely laughing at something. She felt so sorry for Atren afterwards.
The day they arrived back on Briolina was like night and day compared to the last time Isolde had been there. Her first impression of the planet had been hostile and unwelcoming, soon proved wrong, but this time they were welcomed back like heroes. Not only that, Isolde still remained the first non-Brion gesha and got a lot of attention for it.
The Elders had asked about her too before they returned to their sleep and had promised to think about this new possibility. No one questioned her legitimacy as Diego’s gesha. She liked that. It was such a sacred part of their lives that even the fact that she was human didn’t bother them. They just thought it was interesting.
For a while, they stayed on Briolina, setting things right as Diego had said. Isolde found herself suddenly put into the position of spokesperson between Briolina and the GU, but also between Briolina and Sphere. Eleya created a new position for her to have official support for all she said and Isolde, who had never imagined such a use for her studies, went to work on mending the most messed up bundle of relations in the galaxy.
Terra was surprised, to say the least, and Isolde got to spend some other happy hours with her friends watching holocalls from people who still thought the Brions had kidnapped her. For a short while, she was horribly tempted to take Diego to her reunion prom, but decided against it. The first drunken insult and there would be a decade’s worth of political tension.
Honestly, Isolde didn’t miss Terra. A part of her had never belonged there, not really. Once she confided that in Angus, the ambassador for Terra, who merely smiled and asked why she thought he had spent more than half his life stationed over a strange alien planet. Neither of them missed home. Space was, as they said, fun.
Above all, Isolde had feared that the butterflies would still, eventually, go away. That Diego would get used to her and even Brion warlords could grow dull with all the blood and killing, the Brion equivalent of drinking on the couch.
Only it didn’t happen. As days and weeks and months went by, Diego looked at her the same way he had when they’d only known each other for a day. If anything, his eyes grew more loving as they grew closer. As did hers.
Brion warlords work out, she thought, lying on their bed on the Triumphant and watching her general undress for the night. It was true, of course. She desired him with the same fervor that tormented her in her first week aboard Diego’s ship. But it wasn’t just that.
The Brion bond didn’t let the fated get to know each other much before it flooded them with lust and desire, but all her fears had been dispersed when the war was averted and she finally found that bonds for bonds, love for love, she and Diego had truly come to like each other.
Her gerion caught her staring, smirking their secret signal. “Do you want to go home?” he asked, catching Isolde in his arms and kissing the air from her lungs. “We can return to Briolina and stay there for a while, if you want to. No wars seem to call to me these days. You did too good of a job. Soon I will have to fight Faren just so I do not get bored.”
“Just you try that, Eleya will exile us both,” Isolde laughed. “No, I don’t want to go to Briolina. That’s not my home.”
Diego seemed taken aback. “To Terra? I understand you have not seen your home world in a while. We can go there if they can stand seeing a Brion warship in their orbit…”
“Terra? No,” Isolde said. “And it’s probably a good idea not to give Terra a collective heart attack and have you and the Triumphant show up.”
“Where is your home then?” Diego asked, teasing, though Isolde saw a hint of concern. She was getting better at reading him too, developing almost Brion-like senses for her general.
“What do you mean?” Isolde laughed. “Here. On the Triumphant. With you, in our rooms.”
“Do not do that,” Diego said accusingly, biting her lip gently before kissing her. “For a moment I thought you wanted to leave.”
“I wouldn’t mind going somewhere,” Isolde admitted. “But only with you. I don’t think I can stand to be apart from you for too long.”
“Where do you want to go then?”
“Can we finally go to Rhea, like you promised?” Isolde asked. It was a real question, since while the Galactic Union had agreed to let the Brions once again take their part of Rhea’s vast resources, it still might not have been the best idea to have Diego Grothan turn up.
“We can go,” Diego promised her.
“Mm,” Isolde said, completely and utterly at peace with the world in that moment, held close by Diego’s strong arms, feeling safe and loved. “I want to walk under those trees again.”
“You are mine and mine alone,” her general said. “It will be if that is your wish.”
“It is,” Isolde said, thinking on it for a moment. “It really is. I feel like I need to truly finish the trip I started.”
At Diego’s command, the Triumphant broke away from Briolina’s orbit and Isolde Fenner was on her way to Rhea once again.
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Alien Warrior’s Mate
Alien Warrior’s Wife
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ALIEN GENERAL’S CHOSEN EXCERPT
Yes, she’d guessed. Known, even. All through her daydreaming haze, she’d actually already known, but her mind was apparently quite good at protecting her.
She nodded, finding no words to do her feelings justice. She had never been that scared in her life.
“Will you come with me to the Unbroken?” Faren asked.
At least in this, she knew what she had to do.
“No,” she said, her beautiful, trained voice shaking again despite herself.
She would have no escape from this, not truly, but at least she could delay it. Could delay being the gesha of this monster before him, as dreamy as his eyes might have been. A chance to gather her thoughts, at least –
“I’m afraid I wasn’t really asking,” Faren said.
What?
“But…” Leiya began, but then she remembered that people didn’t really argue with Faren.
The general was waiting for her to continue, but words simply refused to leave her lips before him, it seemed.
“It is not safe for you here,” said the man she’d heard ripped the still-beating hearts out of his enemies’ chests.
He held out his hand for her and she hesitated. Not for a second did she doubt that he could read her every emotion straight from her pulse. Apparently, she hesitated for a moment too long. The next thing she knew, she was staring down at the ground with her hands kicking at Faren’s rock hard back.
“Oh my… Faren! Put me down!” she protested at the top of her mighty lungs.
But the general clearly had no intention of listening to her. With her over his shoulder, Faren moved just as easily as he had when he first approached and if Leiya hadn’t been so steaming mad at him, she might have even seen the poetry in it all. A determined lover, a reluctant maiden, brought together despite misunderstandings and uncertainty…
But screw that. He was carrying her off into gods know where and she doubted that was the end of it.
At least he couldn’t read her mind. Usually it was filled with new ideas, and melodies, and dreams. At that moment there was only one thought bubbling under the current of surprise and irritation at her apparent lack of clarity with the Monster of Briolina. Only one thing she knew for certain.
She’d absolutely won the opposite game.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vi's a small-town girl with big city dreams. Born and raised in Texas, she's always had her eyes to the stars. Telling stories is her passion and when she can mix a whole lot of steam with equal parts sexy alien hunks, well, things just get that much better, right?
An ardent Rangers fan, she believes all men should come in a yummy beefcake package and that's exactly the kind of heroes she prefers. A curvy woman herself, Vi likes to write heroines as sassy as she is.
She likes indulging in a little wine and a little chocolate, but her first love int life is writing and everything else follows second.
If you have enjoyed her books or have any questions, don't hesitate to contact Vi via e-mail: [email protected].
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Vi-Voxley
You can find all of my books here:
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Thank you for reading!
Table of Contents
A LITTLE TASTE...
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
EPILOGUE
ALIEN GENERAL’S CHOSEN EXCERPT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
