by Tonya Kuper
“Let’s begin,” President Lattimer says. Everyone on the stage shifts into position, standing across from their intended spouse, Bishop and me in the center where everyone in the audience can watch. Bishop takes my other hand in his, our hands joined across the small space between us.
I want to shout out that this is wrong. That I don’t know this boy across from me. Have never had a single conversation with him in my entire life. He doesn’t know that my favorite color is purple or that I still miss the mother I don’t remember or that I am terrified. I shoot a panicked glance out to the audience but see only smiling faces reflected back at me. Somehow, that makes it even worse, the way everyone goes along with this charade. How no one ever cries out or tries to stop their child from marrying a stranger.
Our compliance is the strongest weapon President Lattimer has in his arsenal.
And, in the end, I’m just as bad as the rest of them. I open my mouth when everyone else does, repeat the words I can’t even hear over dozens of louder voices around me. I tell myself that none of it matters. I have to get through this part, and so I do. I slide the plain gold band that was my father’s onto Bishop’s finger and he does the same with mine. The ring feels foreign against my skin, tight and confining even though the sizing is correct.
When the minister pronounces us man and wife, Bishop doesn’t try to kiss me, not even on the cheek, and I am thankful. I don’t think I could have stood it if he had. It would be like someone on the street grabbing me and planting his mouth on mine. An assault, not affection. But all around us, couples hug and cheer and most of them have no trouble kissing as if they’ve known each other for much longer than an hour. Will these girls be so happy in a few months when their bellies are heavy with babies and they realize they are stuck forever sleeping next to a boy they barely know?
For them this ceremony is about keeping the peace, about honoring a tradition that has worked to stabilize a society for more than two generations. But unlike them, I know how fragile that peace is, how it hangs by only a few slender threads that are even now being snipped. I am different from all these other girls surrounding me because marrying Bishop Lattimer has not fulfilled my destiny. My mission is not to make him happy and bear his children and be his wife.
My mission is to kill him.
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Lux Beginnings, Collector’s Edition
Featuring Obsidian and Onyx
by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Obsidian
There’s an alien next door. And with his looming height and eerie green eyes, he’s hot...until he opens his mouth. He’s infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, he lights me up with a big fat bulls-eye. Turns out he has a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal his abilities and the only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to him until my alien mojo fades. If I don’t kill him first, that is.
Onyx
Daemon’s determined to prove what he feels for me is more than a product of our bizarro alien connection. So I’ve sworn him off, even though he’s running more hot than cold these days. But we’ve got bigger problems. I’ve seen someone who shouldn’t be alive. And I have to tell Daemon, even though I know he’s never going to stop searching until he gets the truth. What happened to his brother? Who betrayed him? And what does the DOD want from them—from me?
Lux Consequences, Collector’s Edition
Featuring Opal and Origin
by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Opal
After everything, I’m no longer the same Katy. I’m different... And I’m not sure what that will mean in the end. When each step we take in discovering the truth puts us in the path of the secret organization responsible for torturing and testing alien hybrids, the more I realize there is no end to what I’m capable. The death of someone close still lingers, help comes from the most unlikely source, and friends will become the deadliest of enemies, but we won’t turn back. Even if the outcome will shatter our worlds forever.
Origin
Daemon will do anything to get Katy back. After the successful but disastrous raid on Mount Weather, he’s facing the impossible. Katy is gone. Taken. Everything becomes about finding her. But the most dangerous foe has been there all along, and when the truths are exposed and the lies come crumbling down, which side will Daemon and Katy be standing on? And will they even be together?
Mirror X
By Karri Thomspon
At the age of seventeen, I was put into a cryogenic tube and frozen. Now, more than a thousand years later, I’ve finally been awakened to a more serene and peaceful future. Or have I? Everyone is young. Everyone is banded and tracked. And everyone is keeping secrets. Not even Michael Bennett, the cute geneticist in the hospital, is being honest with me. When I’m told only I can save the human race from extinction, it’s clear my freeze didn’t avoid a dreadful fate. It only delayed the horror…
Gravity
By Melissa West
In the future, only one rule will matter: Don’t. Ever. Peek. Ari Alexander just broke that rule and saw the last person she expected hovering above her bed — arrogant Jackson Locke. Jackson issues a challenge: help him, or everyone on Earth will die. Giving Jackson the information he needs will betray her father and her country, but keeping silent will start a war.
