Star Mate Matched
Interstellar Shifters Book 1
Margo Bond Collins
Contents
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
About the Author
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Star Mate Matched
Copyright © 2021 by Margo Bond Collins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.
Published by Dangerous Words Publishing
Cover by Covers by Combs
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Created with Vellum
About Star Mate Matched
This alien warrior has finally met his match. But she's not who he thinks she is...
Nora Marlin
Fired from my job. Kicked out of my apartment. And dumped at the altar. All in the same week. So of course, that’s when an alien swoops down in his spaceship and steals me away.
FML.
Worse, he’s an overbearing, possessive giant of an alien, complete with rippling muscles and a sexy smile that could melt even the most hardened heart.
Okay. Maybe being abducted by an alien isn’t so bad, after all.
But I still need to get home and straighten out my mess of a life. Right?
Commander Lutro Dax
I was supposed to go to Earth to pick up my matched mate. When I got to the rendezvous point, Nora was there—so of course I brought her aboard.
There’s only one problem.
Nora’s not the human woman I was supposed to meet. She’s not my mate at all. So why is it all I can do to keep from claiming her as my own?
If I were smart, I’d turn around and take her back to her home planet immediately.
But I won’t…
Star Mate Matched is the first standalone book in Interstellar Shifters, a steamy new sci-fi romance series featuring alien beast warriors, kick-ass human heroines, and a happily ever after in every book!
Prologue
Commander Lutro Dax
“Commander Dax, there’s a message for you. It’s from Captain Jalek.”
I waved at the junior officer to let him know I heard him, then turned toward the comscreen.
About time Jalek reported in. He’d been gone for several solar turns longer than I had anticipated. I knew he assumed the mission I sent him on was less important than the battles I had assigned to others in his unit.
It was not.
In fact, his mission might be the most important one of all. Because there was one important fact Captain Jalek did not know. Other than me, no one outside of High Command knew it.
If we did not find mates, our entire species would be wiped out. The Karlaxons’ latest salvo had left virtually all our females barren.
The Drovekzian people were doomed. Even if we won all the battles, our world was lost, our people destroyed. Unless Jalek, or one of the other hundreds of scouts sent out on secret missions across the universe, came back with news of viable mates.
I swallowed down the fear that rose in my throat. I had no time for that now. As the first scout reporting back in, Jalek’s news was paramount.
I played the message.
Jalek’s face appeared on the comscreen. And by the ancient gods, he looked cheerful, an expression I hadn’t seen on his face since he lost his ability to shift into his beast.
“Commander Dax,” his image spoke. “I am sending this message ahead to report mission success. I repeat, mission success.”
Wait. What?
Of all the things I had expected to hear in Jalek’s report, mission success was the lowest one on the list.
I had to pause the playback for a moment to collect myself.
We are going to survive.
The lump in my throat this time came from relief.
“In fact,” Jalek continued when I resumed the message, “I am returning from Earth—that’s what the people there call planet X-320—with a mate of my own.” His voice dropped and he glanced around as if to ensure he wasn’t overheard. “At least, I know she’s my mate. She is still deciding.”
Deciding? What the garlockian underworlds did that mean? Either she was his mate, or she wasn’t. There was no deciding to it. I shook my head in confusion.
“We should arrive within three solar turns of your receipt of this message. I am also attaching a planetary scan of appropriate DNA matches for your perusal, as you requested. I hope this finds you well. I look forward to introducing you to my Lucy.” His image blinked out and the file unfolded in front of me.
Lucy. Such an odd name. But, as the old saying went, alien peoples have alien ways.
I was almost sorry I wouldn’t be around to meet her.
Quickly, I entered the file into the program High Command had sent me, then leaned back to wait for the results, tapping my fingers on the console. I was anxious enough that my claws popped out, scraping against the metal with an unpleasant sound and leaving behind four long scratches. I retracted them immediately. It wouldn’t do for any of my subordinates to see me losing control like that.
The system beeped its conclusion and I leaned closer to read the results.
“Yes,” I hissed.
There it was.
A perfect match for my own DNA.
I stood, pulling my uniform straight and smoothing my fur. I definitely would not be meeting Jalek’s Lucy. Not yet.
No, our paths would cross in transit. According to my orders, I was heading to … what was it called?
Right. Earth.
I was heading to Earth, where I would claim a mate of my own.
And there would be no deciding involved.
I glanced down at the DNA scan one last time.
That one.
She was mine.
Chapter One
Nora Marlin
Fuck. My. Life.
The words echoed through my head with each step I took, like a mantra I repeated as I stomped down the sidewalk of Central Park West and turned onto a path into the park itself.
FML.
After a few moments, I realized I was actually muttering the words aloud. “Fuck my life.”
The bright sunlight on this beautiful late spring Saturday had brought out even more New Yorkers than usual, and many of them were stopping to stare at me as I sailed past, muttering and scowling.
I stopped to kick off my high heels, and then scooped them up to carry them in one hand. Sure, I knew it was a terrible idea to walk through any part of New York City barefoot—even (or was that especially?) in Central Park. But at this point, I figured what the hell.
It wasn’t as if my week could get any worse.
I mean, I suppose I could die of tetanus.
But at this point, that would probably be a blessing.
The only thing I had with me right now was my phone. It was almost out of battery, but I still needed to try to figure out where to go next. I dialed the super’s number for my old building, the one I’d lived in until I had finally moved all my stuff into William’s apartment.
He was no help.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Nora,” George said. “We rented your apartment out already. The new tenant’s moving in today.”
I bit back a scream of frustration.
And to think that as recently as the previous Monday, I had promised myself that I would not allow anything to ruin my happiness this week.
That resolution had started going to hell by lunchtime Tuesday, when my boss had stopped by my cubicle to call me into his office.
“Hey.” I leaned my head in through his door. “What’s up, Peter?”
He waved me in. “Hi, Nora. Please close the door behind you.”
I did as he asked, but my heart started beating a little harder. This was not Peter’s usual style.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Have a seat.” He folded his arms on his desk and leaned forward, an odd expression on his face, as if he were trying to look like he really, really cared about what he was going to say. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to make some cutbacks here.”
I froze. Oh, hell.
“And, to be frank, we’re starting with the employees who seem the least happy to be here. The ones who maybe don’t quite fit in as well as they would like.”
“What the fuck, Peter? I’ve been here five years. I fit in just fine.” At least, I thought I had.
He pursed his lips, then made a strange clicking noise. “Well,” he temporized, “with your situation changing, we think you’ll be able to find something new quickly. We’ll be happy to give you a glowing recommendation, of course.”
“Wait. You’re letting me go because of William?”
“No, no, of course not,” Peter backtracked. “Your marital status would never affect your employment.”
Yeah, right.
Seriously? I was getting let go because I was about to marry someone wealthy?
I stood up in the middle of my manager’s self-serving, smarmy words about what a valuable employee I had been. “Fuck off, Peter. And yes, I expect the kind of recommendation letter that will land me any job I want.”
Peter’s mouth pursed into a tiny, disapproving bow and his tone turned cold. “Of course.”
My desk was packed, and I was out of there before my colleagues had returned from lunch.
When I got home that night, William was less sympathetic than I had anticipated. “Peter’s not wrong. It’s not like you’ll even have to have a job after the wedding.”
“That’s not the point.”
William glanced up at me from his phone. “You’ll be fine. Do you know how many times I’ve changed jobs?”
I rolled my eyes. “Changing jobs because you started a new company is not exactly the same thing as getting let go, William.”
He waved a disinterested hand in the air as he went back to perusing the screen. “You can come work for me, if you really want to do something.”
I bit back a scream. I had been thrilled when William asked me to marry him. He had swept into my life like a hurricane, taking me out of my normal, everyday life and twirling me into a life of movie premiers, fundraisers, galas, nights at the theater. The kind of glamorous New York life I had dreamed of when I moved here but had never been able to afford.
And maybe his friends treated me like a bit of an oddity, like William’s charity case, as if dating someone who’d grown up in a middle-class home in Kansas was somehow the equivalent of lifting someone straight out of the gutter.
But William didn’t seem to care—and most of the time, it didn’t bother me, either.
Except for times like this, when he simply could not understand how upset I was over things that would have no effect on him.
“Anyway,” he said, “it will give you more time to work on the wedding.”
Yes. The wedding.
The one that his mother had taken over.
The one that seemed to have less and less to do with me at all.
As far as I could tell, my wedding was a vehicle for William Paterson’s mother to show the world how wonderful the Paterson family was.
The wedding I had just walked out of.
In my wedding dress.
No wonder people were staring at me—a deranged woman in a designer wedding gown that I hadn’t even liked, stomping through Central Park barefoot and muttering obscenities to myself.
Suddenly, all I wanted to do was sit down.
I’d made my way deeper into the park without even noticing it, ending up on one of the less-used paths, but there was a bench ahead of me, one that would give me exactly what I wanted—peace and quiet. But not total solitude—there was another woman sitting there, quietly reading a book and eating her lunch out of an insulated reusable lunch bag.
Whatever. Close enough to alone by New York standards.
I marched straight to the bench and flung myself into it, heaving a long-suffering sigh.
Maybe I really could die of tetanus. It would be better than everything I was facing right now.
The other woman sitting on the bench glanced up at me before going back to her book—an actual paperback, I noticed, odd in these days of e-readers, reading apps, and internet-connected phones.
In some ways, the woman could have been my twin. We were both blond-haired and blue-eyed, though she was much thinner than I was.
Of course.
For that matter, she looked an awful lot like William’s ex-girlfriend.
The one I had just caught him with in the bathroom. On our wedding day.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked, sounding truly concerned—more concerned about me than anyone who actually knew me had sounded in a long time.
I opened my mouth to tell her I was fine.
Instead, I burst into tears.
Chapter Two
Dax
It had taken me considerably longer to get to the planet designated X-320—called Earth by the local inhabitants—than Jalek had told me it would.
Either his directions and coordinates were off, or the navigation computer had gone glitchy.
I hoped it was the former. A glitch in the nav system could prove a real problem.
But I was here now, so I needed to track down my mate.
I moved my ship into stealth mode right outside the planet’s immediate—and severely limited—sensor capabilities. As I moved closer, I fed the geographical coordinates into the computer, then the DNA information Jalek had sent in his report.
Setting the hull to translucent, I watched over the enormous city the ship headed toward. Tall buildings almost completely covered the island, and I wondered briefly why this species would cluster together so tightly when there were great swaths of unoccupied land in the interior of the continent.
Alien species have alien ways.
It was one of the Drovekzians’ oldest saying, supposedly dating from our first contact with other species. In some ways, the axiom seemed obvious. Of course alien species didn’t behave the same way we did. But it was also a reminder to the Drovekzian people that our customs were not inherently superior to other races’.
Not that everyone always remembered that.
It was easy, for example, to check this planet’s atmospheric readings and react with horror. These people were slowly suffocating themselves.
So many poisonous gases being thrown into their atmosphere.
I shook my head.
My mate was lucky she would be able to escape her dying planet with me.
And our DNA was such a perfect match that I knew she would absolutely feel the same way.
After all, biology was destiny.
The computer let out a series of trilling beeps, letting me know that it had acquired my target.
My heart fluttered i
n anticipation, and my inner beast purred in satisfaction. I was about to see the female whose life would become inextricably intertwined with mine.
Granted, she wasn’t the only female on this planet I could mate with.
But she was the one who would produce a perfect match.
I had imagined this day for countless seasons.
Our lives would be perfect together. Blissful. A shining example of marital harmony. We would never fight, rarely even disagree. And our offspring would be perfect.
I set the ship on autopilot and it sailed into the city, ending up hovering over a broad swath of undeveloped land.
I couldn’t decide whether I approved of these aliens for at least maintaining some natural landscape within their overdeveloped city or felt horrified by their willingness to live in stacked cubes rather than spreading out.
In either case, this was where my mate waited for me.
The computer beeped again, letting me know that it had homed in on her.
I made one sweep of the area, pinpointing her location. There, on a furniture piece that had, oddly, been plopped down in the midst of this nature preserve.
Two females sat together, and I tapped the console to narrow down which was mine.
“Visual confirmation requested,” the computer’s soothing voice sang out into the bridge of the ship.
“Computer,” I commanded, reverting to verbal orders, “Please conduct a second sweep to repeat the scan and determine which of the females in question is my DNA match.”
My ship turned in the air. “Conducting second scan,” it announced.
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