Ascension Saga, Book 6
Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga
Grace Goodwin
Ascension Saga, Book 6 : Copyright © 2018 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 6
Cover design copyright 2018 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
The Ascension Saga
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Prologue
Queen Celene, Aleran Dungeon
This newest prison cell they transported me to was in Mytikas. I couldn’t see outside, as there were no windows in the square room, but I knew what home smelled like, even after all these years.
The Aleran flowers that surrounded the citadel grew randomly throughout the city in a multitude of colors. The petals close to the honored building were nearly translucent and delicate. But farther away, they changed based on the environment in a way our scientists had never understood.
I knew it was the citadel itself that made them change, that they were part of the consciousness of the intelligence that designed them. Strange as it sounded, they were the citadel’s nerves within the city.
And their scent was unmistakable. Sweet. Comforting.
Home. It smelled like home.
A fresh set of clothing awaited me once more, and I didn’t bother arguing, changing quickly into what looked like the uniform of a low-level cleric. The basic black pants were comfortable, the white, silver and black pattern on the tunic symmetrical on the outside. Within, it was soft and warm. Thank the goddess they were warm. The dress they’d made me wear on the spaceship for a while had been thin and cold.
But then, making me uncomfortable seemed to be part of their plan. Until now. For included with the uniform were a thick pair of socks and comfortable boots.
I could have been preparing for a walk in the mountains with my husband on Earth.
Adam Jones. I missed him. Knew he was so far away. Unreachable. The emptiness inside me was even more profound than when my Aleran mate, the king, had been murdered.
That had been a young love. Passionate, but short-lived. We’d only been mated a few months when the attack occurred. When he’d been killed, and I fled Alera for Earth.
I’d mourned my mate and what could have been, what should have been. Time softened the ache and the goddess had put Adam in my path. A surprising twist in my destiny. With Adam, our love had been aged by years of struggle and shared victory. By raising three daughters. By life. He was part of me, and the longer I sat, isolated by my captors, the more my thoughts turned not to saving Alera, but to him.
I would leave Alera when the time came, step down and allow Trinity and her sisters to lead if that’s what I had to do to feel his arms around me once more. If he could not come to me, I would return to Earth. To my life there.
He was my true mate. Not in the Aleran way, but in every way that counted. Heart, body and soul.
The door slid open and I hastily wiped the tear from my cheek. I was ruthless with my emotions so not to show weakness to these traitors.
“More news about your daughters, Celene. Would you like to hear?” A cleric I’d never seen before walked into the room; behind him, the scar-faced man stood with a scowl and his arms crossed.
Damn it, he was baiting me, but I could not resist. I was desperate to know how my girls were doing. “Yes.”
He came in and sat on the small bed I’d been given, so close our thighs touched. I scooted away from the contact and he chuckled, as if my disgust amused him. They had yet to touch me sexually to get me to talk. I had to assume, since I was fully clothed, even down to boots, that kind of torture would not begin now.
I wondered why none had tried to force themselves upon me. To get me pregnant. It would be the easiest way to ensure their DNA would become royal. Perhaps they discovered from the ReGen wand scans that I was no longer fertile. For once, early menopause was a blessing.
“Your daughter, Faith, was arrested by the Optimus unit and headed for interrogation.”
He knew her name. There was no reason to deny her existence now. But there was no reason to respond either. Whatever he meant to tell me would be designed to torment me with worry. A worry I welcomed.
“She was arrested for snooping through Lady Jax’s private rooms. However, the Jax family refused to press charges, and Thordis Jax himself came to remove her from custody.”
Again, I waited. More was coming, I could feel the tension thrumming through his body like an electric charge in the air.
“Your daughter then returned to their home, and now Lord and Lady Jax are both dead. Poisoned.”
Lord and Lady Jax were dead?
“That is troubling news,” I said, spitting out the words as I considered the implications.
“Yes. Your daughter will not fare well in our care, I’m afraid.”
I glanced up at him. “What are you talking about?”
“She was a traitor who seduced Thordis Jax into bringing her into his bed and his home where she poisoned his parents. Her plan was to set up his well-respected family to fall and it worked. She will answer for her crimes, Celene.”
Faith, poison people? Maybe with her horrible cooking. People would go hungry because it was always burnt, but kill them? Impossible. And so I said as much.
“She did not poison anyone.”
A new voice came from the doorway and the scar-faced man stepped aside. It grated on my nerves even more now than it had when we were both young. My cousin, Lord Wyse, now leader of the Optimus unit, if his clothing was any indication, stood before me with the same emotionless face I remembered. “Faith Jones Herakles is a traitor and a murderer, Celene. I will make sure to send her your regards.”
“No!” I didn’t want her to worry about me if she were held by the Optimus unit. She had enough on her mind as it was.
The cleric rose and walked out the door, leaving me with my cousin.
“I should have tried harder to kill you, Celene. You’re like a needle in my boot, a constant irritation.”
“You haven’t changed, Coburt. Still sneaking around in the shadows like a snake.” We’d grown up together. While he was a decade older, royal circles were small.
“Where is Destiny?” he asked.
I froze. Shit. How did he know Destiny’s name? I shook my head and stared at the wall, giving him nothing. If he didn’t know wher
e she was, then she was still safe.
“I had men on Earth, Celene. They asked around. I know you have three daughters. I know Faith and Destiny are half-human twins. I know your pathetic human male is hiding from your own government, waiting for word from you.”
“Don’t you touch him, Coburt, or I will send you to the depths of the lowest hells myself,” I hissed, my hands clenched in my lap. He had lived with me for over twenty-five years, knew Aleran ways, at least tangentially. But he was still an Earthling.
His laugh was not reassuring. “As of an hour ago, you are no longer my problem.”
The door slid closed behind him.
What the hell did that mean?
I dropped onto my side on the thin cot, pulling the blanket up over me.
Damn him.
Damn him to hell.
I hoped my daughters killed him slowly.
And they would succeed. Coburt Wyse would die.
I simply could not think of anything else.
1
Thordis Jax, Jax Mountain Lodge
The Aleran male I had bound to the chair bled, not from any torture or abuse he’d suffered at my hands, but from his attempts to claw his way through the metal binding cuffs that held him. He’d been here for a day and had told me nothing.
That was about to change.
“Where is the queen?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he spit out. “Release me. You’ll rot in the Optimus unit’s dungeons for this. Let me go. I demand it.” Of course he did.
“Yet you are the one tied up. This isn’t a dungeon,” I glanced around the servants’ room on the top floor of the lodge. We only used the retreat a few weeks a year and there were only two servants who remained year round. They lived in a small house elsewhere on the property. This room was sparse. A bed, a table and chair. A chair that the bastard was tied to now. On the wall behind me was a vid display, recording everything that was happening. He glanced up often, saw himself on the screen.
“But I promise you, I will be ruthless with you if you don’t begin to talk.”
He was noble. Rich. A spoiled son of a wealthy family. And my mate’s distant cousin. I took a moment to think of the royal family tree. Queen Celene’s mother had one sister, Zetta. She had a son, Coburt, now known as Lord Wyse. Lord Wyse and his mate had Radella. When Queen Celene disappeared decades ago, Radella moved into the palace with her mate, Danoth. A few years later, they had a son. Pawl. The little fucker before me.
It seemed the evil didn’t fall too far from the tree, for I’d grown to hate Pawl’s grandfather, Lord Wyse, Inspector Optimi of the Optimus unit, who I now suspected of trying not just to arrest and interrogate my mate but murder her in cold blood. My mother, with her dying breath, had given him up.
He was my enemy. An enemy to all Alera, and yet he held one of the most powerful positions in the land.
He would kill Faith—and her sisters—if given the chance. He’d had several now, and fortunately, they had not been successful.
My purpose in life changed the moment my mother confessed her sins and then died in my arms. My one goal now was to make sure Faith was safe. My mother had tried to poison my mate, the female I loved beyond all thought or reason, and then confessed her sins as my father lay dead in Faith’s stead.
I’d lost everything in a matter of moments. My family. My honor. The wealth and status of the Jax family would be stripped from us. Even if I did not spend the rest of my life rotting in a prison cell, I would be a disgrace to the entire planet. The only Jax who remained alive, to carry the burden of my mother’s sins. All of Alera would judge me for my bloodline, if not for my deeds.
And Faith. Fuck, my heart ached for my mate. My cock longed to sink into her warmth, to fill her again with my seed as she came, milking it from my balls. She deserved more than just a skilled fuck and a male whose soul was not stained by such a terrible legacy. And children who wouldn’t be tainted. She was a fucking princess. While she was not direct heir to the throne—Trinity would become queen after their mother—she was royal through and through.
I was not worthy of Faith. But I could protect her. And that is what I would do—at all costs. If that meant torture and murder of the lying bastard before me—her fucking cousin—then I would bury my disgust and do what was necessary. I was not a killer, I was a noble, a man of business and law.
But for Faith, exceptions must be made. I didn’t give a shit if Pawl’s murder was recorded for the queen’s guard to discover. My life was over without her. As long as she was safe, nothing mattered.
“Where is Queen Celene?” I sat in a chair facing the young idiot, watching his gaze as he looked at me with the eyes of a liar and a cheat. They narrowed as I reclined in my chair, arms crossed, completely at ease as far as he could see. Inside, I seethed with the need to rip his head from his shoulders and unleash the pain within me as violence against my enemies.
That didn’t work well when one of those enemies was my own mother.
Fuck me. Pawl may be the grandson of a traitor, but I was the son of one as well.
“I told you, I don’t know,” he repeated. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Lies. Lies. Lies. I sighed and lifted a comm sphere from my pocket. Holding it into the air, I activated the holographic images I had stored there for this purpose and made sure to hold it up to be clearly within line of sight of the recording device on the wall.
As soon as I had walked away from Faith I’d made the call to Nix to ensure her safety. But the moment I watched the assassin’s arrival and stepped foot off Jax property, I’d been on a mission. Get to the truth, to the mastermind. My mother, while guilty, had been a pawn. Just like Zel. I’d known where to go, to dig. I’d paid some very large bribes to some lower level members of the Optimus unit who didn’t care for Lord Wyse’s style of leadership, but I’d finally found what I needed—Lord Wyse’s orders to Pawl, giving him instructions just a few weeks ago to leave the planet and go where?
Earth.
Coincidence? No.
I played the recording, watched Pawl’s eyes widen as he realized exactly what I had found. Not only did it prove his guilt, but his father, Danoth, had been with him when he received the order from Lord Wyse. It seemed evil ran in the family.
In the comms, there had been no mention of the queen by name, no direct orders, nothing substantial. Nothing I could take to Princess Trinity or the Optimus unit that was strong enough evidence to take down their leader.
But I knew. I knew, and I wasn’t above breaking the law to protect what was mine. Faith. For her, I’d kill a thousand males just like this one.
“I don’t think you understand me, Pawl.” I leaned forward, slipping the holographic comm back into the pocket of one of my best tunic jackets. I looked like I’d just come from the palace. Well-dressed. Powerful. Connected. It was all part of my plan, even though I hadn’t slept since I’d walked out of the Jax mansion and out of Faith’s life.
I didn’t expect her to forgive me. I’d left Faith with my parents’ dead bodies—fuck, had it really happened? Any moment now, I expected the news of what had happened last night in my family home to spread like a wildfire. Announcements would be made, my family shame exposed to the world, my family name worthless after hundreds—no thousands—of years of loyal service to the queen and her royal bloodline.
All because my mother wanted more.
More. More money. Power. Prestige. Status.
Now she was dead and had nothing. Not only was I, her precious son, not going to be a powerful ruler, I would be a penniless orphan and an outcast once my mother’s treachery became known. I could only imagine what had occurred inside that dining room once Nix and the other guards arrived to find my mother and father lying dead in the dining room, and my mate, tear-streaked and broken, kneeling beside them.
I left the Jax mansion knowing Faith would be safe, protected by Trinity and all her royal power, by the warr
iors Nix and Leo, and by Leo’s father. I knew that what I planned would place Faith in danger. And I didn’t want her to see me like this—desperate and angry and willing to kill. I’d lost my entire family, my parents, my home, my life. I would not see Faith fall. I could give her up, save her from the monster these traitors forced me to become, but I would not risk her life, or expose her to the kind of evil pulsing through the veins of the coward before me.
I’d yet to hear anything through the news sources of my family’s downfall, but it was only a matter of time. The truth would come out and I would be ruined.
Before then, I intended to make sure that Faith—and her family—were out of danger, even if I had to cut Pawl into pieces to do it.
“Faith Herakles is my mate. So let me be clear. I will let you sit in your own piss and feces for days. I will flay the flesh from your body one small strip at a time as I kill you and smile when you scream. I will let you rot, tied to that chair, as maggots eat out your eyes. I will do the same to your traitorous parents.”
“Wait. Wait!” he said, tugging at his restraints. “My mother has nothing to do with this. She’s innocent. Weak. She’s been content to live in the palace and throw parties, but nothing more. Please, I beg you to believe me. My mother knows nothing.”
“Ah, so it is your father and grandfather who have raised you to be a traitor. You follow in their evil footsteps.”
He remained silent, even pinched his lips together. But there was no denying the truth of the holographic message I’d just replayed for him and the camera.
“Faith is mine. Where is her mother? Where did you take the queen after you dragged her from her bed like an animal?”
Ascension Saga, Book 6: Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga Page 1
