RUSNEON MATES
(BOOK 1-3)
ASHLEY HUNTER
Chosen By The Alien Lord
Ashley Hunter
Copyright 2015 by Ashley Hunter
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced
in any way whatsoever, without written permission
from the author, except in case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews
and articles.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any
person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First edition, 2016
Chapter 1
Present Day, Rusneon…
Eyes a deep shade of ocilion—ice blue, as the humans would call—and slightly dark skin. Her hair was unlike the hair from his people, reflecting light rather than give off aura, was not unbefitting. Yet what drove his pleasure further was noting the rest of her.
Her body was shapely, not as much as Alterians, but delightfully so. Her breasts were not the biggest he had seen but they looked delightful and her hips were wide. She looked like she could handle him… handle enough of him.
She would do. Perfectly.
“What is your name?”
He asked and he could hear how her breath hitched in her throat. So fragile. So pure. He could feel his hunger begin to mount.
“T…” She began, pausing only to gather her composure before swallowing. “Tessa.”
“Tessa,” he tested the name on his tongue. It was sharp, strange, yet not ugly. He liked it.
“Tessa…” he breathed the name out once more, elongating every syllable as he worked the name through his teeth. She shivered and he could feel every vibration of her skin. Delightful.
“I am Ceff,” he introduced.
“The Greatest, and leader of Rusneon.” Take them away.
What of her?
I have decided on her.
Tessa’s eyes went wider when she realized how some of the men they had seen before appeared through the door and went to gather the fallen women. Some of them still groaned and sighed as they were carried off. It was almost amusing.
“W-wait, where are you taking them?” Tessa asked, her voice small. Ceff smiled down at her.
“I have no further use of them.” He answered. Her lips parted and he could catch a glimpse of her teeth.
They were straight and pale, adorable.
“They will be taken care of.”
“What? No!” She shouted, and she was suddenly pleading. Her eyes were no longer dazed and blown wide but narrow and angry.
“You can’t!”
“I assure you,” Ceff explained.
“I can, and I will.”
Her expression morphed from angry to completely livid, and the change of emotion was so sudden that Ceff was left to stare at her in amazement.
Humans were passionate creatures, he had been informed. But this woman’s emotions were nearly as powerful as his and he couldn’t help but feel a twinge in his gut as she glowered at him.
“Take them away,” he ordered and they were gone. He turned to look at her, but Tessa was running after them, screaming.
Chapter 2
Two hundred Earth years ago…
Name: Tessa Stone
There is an uncomfortable sort of smell that ebbed from the walls and stuck uncomfortably to her nose, like a mixture of saline, rubbing alcohol, and cold metal pressed together.
Age: 23
She supposed this was normal, considering.
Height: 5’6
The medical document in her hands looked pale and bright beneath the sharp light of the traveling clinic. She glared down at the empty lines, staring at the desired information with some bitterness before sighing and sitting back on her chair.
Glancing away, Tessa met gazes with another young woman in the clinic and they exchanged polite smiles. Tessa glanced away and looked at other parts of the portable facility, staring at the walls and their weird placement of ads on the walls. Happy faces all around.
Tessa let out a slow exhale, leaning her head back on the wall behind her chair. Green eyes closing, there was a moment where she wished she didn’t have to be here, at the end of her rope.
Any other day, Tessa wondered if she would have arrived to this place, she wondered if she had felt like it was a good idea to succumb to pathetic wishes and find herself with her butt on a chair in a traveling clinic asking for blood samples in exchange for cash.
If circumstances had been ideal, would she have been able to enjoy this day?
Tessa nearly snorted at the idea because today was her twenty third birthday.
It was an anniversary she never celebrated, because whenever she had tried, fate had other plans for her. It wasn’t like it was something that bothered her anyway, she was used to it. Living in the foster care system made it hard to want to enjoy such a simple day anyway.
She was often forced to deal with other situations than embrace what fine luxuries came with having a family, mainly because she never had a family for very long.
Eventually, each birthday that came and went only brought her further worries and concerns, because she wasn’t being adopted and the closer she got to her eighteenth birthday, she would no longer be protected by the government and forced to fend for herself.
Sure enough, the day came and without a cent to her name, Tessa became homeless and desperate for some semblance of security.
Still, she liked to think she did a fair job at keeping herself alive for the following five years. She survived and even managed to get herself a small job and a dingy little apartment in a speck of a hole in the wall within the city.
It was small, but it was enough. She jumped from place to place, accepting jobs that promised to pay higher than minimum wage.
But Tessa had been laughably uneducated in the art of handling finances. No one told her that credit cards came with permanent fine print, nor that taking out loans to pay for bills only left you in bigger problems if you don’t know what the hell “interest” is for those loans.
Without warning, Tessa received a summons that called her into court, and when she arrived she was told that her only living relative had passed away and that she was now responsible for their debts as well.
It took six months of arguing that she didn’t even know she had relatives—considering—before she realized that it had been her father. The only person who had been around did nothing for her… then he died, and all of a sudden, she had to pay for those debts. It was highly unfair.
She didn’t have enough money to pay a lawyer, she had nothing. Soon enough, what money she had to survive began to dwindle into double digits… then single digits…
Tessa was in a new low, so when she saw the ad asking for women to enter for blood trials that would pay handsomely, it was hard to stay away.
She was desperate.
“Are you signing up for the trial?”
Tessa glanced away, pulled out of the unplanned reverie to meet a pair of soft blue eyes. Blinking, Tessa nodded at the woman sitting on the opposite side of the room.
She was pretty, with round cheeks and her dark blonde hair styled into loose curls. Tessa nodded, smiling again as she set her documents aside. She needed a break from writing all that information—even if she didn’t write all that much.
“Yeah,” Tessa admitted after a small silence.
&n
bsp; “Kind of a last option sort of deal… you?”
The woman nodded, “Yeah. My brother’s been needing help with paying some bills, so I figured why not right? I’m Serena, by the way.”
“Tessa,” she introduced herself, leaning forward to catch the woman’s hand in a greeting shake. When they pulled away, they settled back on the chairs and Tessa watched Serena continue writing on her document.
“It’s a bit weird though,” Tessa explained, looking down at the papers awaiting information, gesturing at the small room and the unnecessarily bright light.
“I figured this would be more… Red Cross-ish.”
“I thought so too,” Serena laughed airily.
“But it kind of looks legit… right?”
“Right,” Tessa said and she could tell there was that underlying question—an unspoken uncertainty—that she had been bouncing back and forth in her mind reflected off Serena’s eyes.
The entire thing, all of this, it looked and even felt strange… but money was money… and the promise of cash for something simple like blood samples did seem like something attainable, maybe even reliable.
“These questions are a bit weird too,” Serena sighed, flipping through the page of her packet to read the questionnaire.
“Like… are you sexually inexperienced?”
Tessa’s eyebrows rose, “It says that?”
“Yeah, look on the back of the first page.”
Tessa did so, reaching over to grab her slim packet to read through the questions. Sure enough, the quoted passage appeared right on the paper and Tessa scowled.
“Weird,” she muttered.
“But then again, it’s probably just another way to ask if we’re sexually active or not.”
Serena shrugged in reply and they settle back into silence.
A few moments later, the door to the far left of the room slid open, revealing a man dressed in scrubs, tufts of short brown hair pressed to his hairline and scalp, and his figure was gangly, movements robotic. He glanced over at them mechanically, with practiced moves and glances that made Tessa feel slightly on edge.
“Thanks for your patience,” the man said, eyeing them carefully.
“Have you completed your packets?”
“I have,” Serena said, pulling her packet from its place on her lap to show him. The man nodded before looking back at Tessa.
“I might need a little time,” Tessa replied, giving him a wan smile. His expression didn’t change, only blinking as if she had stated something irrelevant.
“We are ready for you two now.”
“Oh…” Tessa murmured, exchanging confused glances with Serena before standing up.
The two women moved toward the door where the man made space to lead them. They followed close behind, and Tessa noted how Serena suddenly approached closer to Tessa’s side, probably just as nervous as Tessa was feeling.
They walked down a brightly lit hallway, the walls looking like they were constructed quickly—like those temporary office spaces that people use while a building is being renovated—and had no windows to peer through.
The hallways led toward a single door and when they arrived, the man placed his hand on a scanner that beeped once before the door’s lock let out a loud click. He pushed at the door and gave them a piercing look. Tessa shivered.
“You will be briefed on the project and given instructions for your donation,” he said.
“It won’t take long.”
And with that, he gave them a quick nod and left the room.
Tessa and Serena looked around the room. It was small and had several chairs that faced one side of the room with a whiteboard. It was bare. Just the two of them and after some silent looks, the two women settled in a couple of chairs.
They must have been waiting for several minutes when the door opened again and they could hear the voice of the man repeat the words he had told them before he disappeared.
Two more women appeared, a tall woman of dark skin and big lips and a shorter woman with freckles and red hair pinned in a bun behind her head.
“You two in for the trials too?” The tall woman asked, looking at Tessa and Serena with simple appraisal.
Serena nodded, “Yeah.”
“Is he usually this…mechanical?” the woman asked, motioning to the door.
Tessa smirked, “I’m guessing they don’t hire people for their people skills.”
“You got that right. Shalea,” the woman motioned to herself.
“You are?”
“Tessa,” Tessa spoke before pointing at the woman at her side.
“And this is Serena.”
“Nice to meet you two,” Serena said with a small smile.
Shalea gave her a small nod before glancing down at the short woman standing by her side. The redhead gave them a pinched expression before shuffling towards one of the chairs.
“Don’t take it personally,” Shalea explained when Tessa and Serena exchanged raised expressions at the unnamed woman’s reaction.
“I haven’t been able to get her to talk for nearly half an hour.”
At this, Tessa was taken aback. “Half an hour?”
“Yeah.”
When Tessa looked back at Serena, the blonde woman was glancing at her in confusion. Tessa’s uncertain expression grew tighter, “We were just in there, and no one else was.”
“So?” Serena shrugged.
“There are probably other rooms nearby.”
Tessa rose a brow, “There would have been other doors. That was the only room that led to the hallway.”
“Is something the matter?” Shalea asked, raising dark brows up.
Tessa hesitated, noticing how she was suddenly the center of attention. Uncertain whether or not this sudden bout of paranoia should be taken seriously, Tessa merely shook her head, dismissing the issue.
“It’s…nothing. It’s nothing. Just a dumb thought.”
Shalea pursed her lips before heading toward one of the chairs and settling down on it.
Again, the door opened, and the women looked to see the man at the head of the door, urging another two women to enter the room. This time it was a couple of Asian women, one with long braided hair and another with short hair cropped to her chin, they looked identical.
“Hello,” Serena greeted kindly.
The women exchanged glances before nodding silently. “Did you guys just arrive?”
“No…” one of them spoke, the one with the long hair.
“We’ve been here for almost forty minutes.”
The alarm in Tessa head blared once more and this time when she glanced at Shalea, the dark skinned woman was looking equally surprised and even somewhat suspicious.
“Hold on,” Shalea said, “Did you come from another room?”
The Asian woman who spoke frowned, “I didn’t see another room. Just the one that leads to this hallway.”
I knew it. Tessa couldn’t shake the lack of calm in her stomach. This was strange. This was straight up weird.
What was going on?
“What’s your name?” Serena asked.
“I’m Kino.” The long-haired one said.
“This is my sister, Kanako.”
“You’re Japanese?”
The redhead spoke up abruptly, earning surprised glances from the other women. The twins didn’t notice the oddity, merely nodding in response.
Kino looked about the room, meeting Tessa’s gaze once before moving on to Serena.
“Have you been waiting here for a long time?” Kino asked.
At this point, all the women exchanged glances, unsure how to respond considering the latest strange phenomenon. Tessa chewed at her lower lip, deciding to not reply as she tried to narrow down her suspicion.
“Not… really.” Shalea said instead.
Again, the door opened and they heard the man speak, this time Tessa had had enough. Two more women pulled through the door but Tessa didn’t pay them any attention as she stood and rushed
toward the door.
“Hey!” She called, startling the others as she approached the man.
“What’s going on? What’s really going on here?”
The man hardly looked at her, already closing the door behind the woman. Tessa just barely managed to reach for the door before it slammed shut on her face.
“Explain this! Why is time all fucked up?”
At this point, all the women in the room were exchanging worried and alarmed expressions.
“Tessa?” Serena asked softly, her voice tense with worry.
“What is it?” Fisting her hand against the plastic of the door, Tessa tried to gather her mind into a logical place, tried to piece all the strange things together.
“None of it makes sense,” Tessa said, letting out a fierce breath through clenched teeth before facing all the women in the room.
She turned her attention to the women who had just walked in, noticing how they were looking at her with something close to building fright.
“You two, in the room you were just in, did you notice any other rooms? Other doors? Maybe another hallway?”
“Tessa, what are you saying?” Serena asked. Tessa ignored her.
“No,” one of the latest women replied, a woman with thick-rimmed glasses and petite figure.
“It was just that one room.”
“How long did you guys wait before that guy showed up?” Tessa continued, not realizing that her heart was ramming in her chest.
The woman with glasses exchanged looks with her companion—a woman with short spiky hair and a nose ring.
“Like…thirty minutes? Why?”
“That’s not possible.” Tessa breathed out before pulling away from the door and heading toward the other side of the room.
The other women were close behind, curious and confused. When she approached the whiteboard, she was looking for seams in the walls, trying to find another door.
“Why, what’s going on?” Kino asked.
“We’ve only been in this room… what like ten minutes?” Shalea voiced, and when Tessa glanced back toward her, she could see the information click in Shalea’s mind through the realization in her dark eyes.
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