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Eight young women are abducted by aliens from college, I'm one of them!
I wake from my abduction while being separated from my friends. Sore and groggy, I'm tied to a bed before I realize what's going on.
As the circumstances start to sink in, I fight until I hear a roar of rage.
At first, my rescuer scares me as much as my captors, but when I realize he's helping, he becomes my new best friend...
MATTHIAS'S MIRACLE is the sequel to BREN'S BLESSING (Book One of the Quasar Lineage).
You don't have to read Bren's Blessing in order to understand the plot, but the story will be more well rounded if you do!
PLEASE NOTE: This SciFi Romance alien book contains Adult Language and Steamy Adult Bedroom Scenes. It is intended for 18+ Readers & Adults Only.
It's part of a science fiction romance series but can be read as a standalone story with no cliffhangers!
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Copyright © 2018
Pearl Tate
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Book Cover Design by Alena Marie
Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/alenamarieartistry/
Thanks to my family for their infinite patience with me.
Eight young women are abducted by aliens from college, I'm one of them!
I wake from my abduction while being separated from my friends. Sore and groggy, I'm tied to a bed before I realize what's going on.
As the circumstances start to sink in, I fight until I hear a roar of rage.
At first, my rescuer scares me as much as my captors, but when I realize he's helping, he becomes my new best friend…
“Everyone is going to love these brownies! Chocolate and peanut butter, right?” Lisa’s chatter next to me is only interrupted by our sneaker noises cutting through the damp grass. I hate how early it gets dark now. It’s only seven thirty as we walk up the stairs to the old building, but in the November evening, it’s full dark.
“I hope everyone hates them because I’d like to have two.” Holding the door with a smile, I inhale their scent as the basket she’s carrying them in goes by my face.
“I know! Maybe nobody else will show up. You never know. I plan to think positive!” Lisa’s infectious laugh echoes in the stairwell as we start up the stairs. We’ve been meeting with this small group of other girls for a little over a month now, once a week. As second-year students, we have banded together to try to figure out our physics class.
It’s an informal study group. Shelly is the coordinator who set it up on the meet-up website. Most of the college study groups have used online platforms to get their groups together. Shelly’s appealed to me because of the amount of detail she included. Women only, on campus and she even had this time slot and room reserved for us to use at the school. Much less distracting than a coffee shop.
My first year, I had a math study group that started studying in a coffee shop. By the end of the semester though, some of the guys had decided to change the spot we met to a bar. Who does that?
Oh yeah, horny-ass guys at college!
My mind wanders as Lisa goes over the brownie ingredients. She was able to make them up between a hot plate and her toaster oven. She doesn’t remember that she showed me how to do it about two weeks ago. “I love them. I don’t even care what they have in them. You showed me how to make them, or at least the hot plate part, remember?” Reaching our study room door, I smile as I hold it open for her again.
“Oh yeah! I was thinking it was Stephanie, but it was you.” Stephanie is her roommate and I’m right next door with Jill. “Damn! Are we late?”
Following her in, I see that there are six other girls already spread out in chairs at the round table.
“No. You guys are right on time. Especially since you have food.” Beth waves us over and pulls out a chair for Lisa. She drops gratefully into it as I pull off my hoodie onto the chair next to her. By the time I settle into my seat, the basket is circling around the table with everyone chattering away.
“How are ya?” Shelly, the organizer of our weekly group, is to my left, and I smile noncommittally.
“Can’t complain, really. I wanted to thank you for coming out for the rally yesterday. It really means a lot to all of us. Every person counts.” The campus MeToo movement is picking up speed. She waves her hand at me like it’s no big deal, but I can tell I’m embarrassing her, so I change the subject. “I’m a little stressed out about the test next week. Do you feel prepared?”
“Fuck no. But let’s do this.” Clapping her hands wildly over her head, her blonde shoulder length hair flies. “Ladies, ladies. Oh yeah! Brownies.” Grabbing one from the basket that stalled in front of her, she slides it over to me before continuing. “Let’s break into groups for our specific issues. With eight of us here, that should make it, so we can cross reference our strengths and weaknesses for each other.”
She stands and starts pulling out some of her own paperwork. Everyone begins talking quietly again.
A bright light pulls my attention behind Karen. She's directly across the table from me, with the window behind her.
What the hell?
The light has lit up all the windows on the wall behind her. Even with the lights on inside, it’s easy to see that it’s super bright. My first thought is a helicopter. Except we’re three stories up, so it can’t be someone on the ground or a car or something. What the fuck?
“What is that?” Lisa’s brown curls bounce as she stands up next to me, and Beth quickly jumps up too. I don’t even realize I’m on my feet and moving to the window until I’m around the table and almost there.
The light isn’t like a normal light. It’s like rays of the sun, beaming through the window in individual strands. As I stop at the window, it’s so bright, there’s no way that I can look and see exactly where it’s coming from. Using my hand, I shield my eyes a bit and try to get a fix on the actual source.
Angling my body away from the light, I see Lisa, Beth and Karen are just behind me. Still around the table, Jo-Anne, Jenny, Shelly and Rachel are standing. Their mouths are hanging open. We’ve all gone silent.
Pulling my hand away from my face, I feel the strands of light prickling my skin! It feels like static electricity. How’s that possible?
“Can you feel this…” My voice dies out.
All the individual streams of light dance with iridescent colors around me. They don’t seem to be coming at me anymore. It’s the prickling on my skin that makes it feel like they’re attacking me.
I can actually see the individual strands of light and all the colors of the rainbow. It makes a waterfall of light color around me. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’m about to say that and see if they’re experiencing the same thing when I realize I can no longer see anything.
How is that possible?
Now I’m freaking out but afraid to move. The light is everywhere. Did you ever see those old oil lamps that beads of oil are like rain coming down in a circle around the lamp figure? That’s what it reminds me of only millions of them as fine as a strand of hair. Every color in the rainbow and some of them are so mesmerizing that you don’t even want to move.
“Lisa! Can you hear me?” Where is everyone? Is just my vision affected? What the hell is going on?
“Yes! Susan! I can’t move, though.” Lisa’s voice sounds much farther away than it should, but I’m relieved knowing that she’s there. She sounds as scared as I feel.
Unfortunately, her words register, and I realize the same thing. I can’t move. I can’t even seem to close my eyes, and now my mouth won’t move to even respond.
So, is this it? Am I dying?
Are we all dying?
Is this the end of the world?
That’s my last thought before my eye lids mercifully close, and my brain shuts off.
Imust find the woman that I’ve been envisioning for the last two weeks. It isn’t an option to forget about it.
I’ve tried. Logically, I don’t want it or her. A mate. An irrevocable bond. Commitment. But I can’t ignore what I’m feeling or seeing in my daily reflections.
I’m scared. I know why—because I’ve already spent two years in captivity to a woman. Staring out into space on the exterior screen in the view room, the thoughts tumble over and over in my mind.
“Matthias. Did you hear me?” My brother Bren’s voice cuts through my fog, and I turn towards him slightly.
“What was that?” I try to act interested, but my brain seems to be on another planet. Literally.
“We’re just coming into sight of Six Two Four, the prison planet. Are you still feeling like we’re getting closer?”
“Yes. Is that it there?” I point to a tiny speck on the screen. Even though I’m on a space ship now, this is the first time for me. A reward of my brother and his mate’s leverage to get me off planet to look for the woman in my visions.
My potential mate. I say potential because this is all so new, and I can hardly believe it’s happening to me. I’m excited and terrified at the same time.
“Yes.” Bren comes to stand next to me. We both stare quietly as the planet gets closer and closer.
My chest tightens, and my skin seems to stretch and shrink, firmer and firmer to my muscles and bone. It’s suffocating. Breathing heavily, I question what I'm feeling. Bren continues to explain the procedure about to happen.
“We have three prisoners for the planet this time. Usually we have at least one, but no more than five, every time we go out for our six-month rotation. We take the shuttle down and…” He looks at me and hesitates. “Are you alright?”
“I’m not sure.” I’m almost afraid to tell him what I feel.
This is different from what I’ve felt for the last two to three weeks. Instead of the insistent tug in one direction, I actually feel a very acute pull to the planet.
As we slow, nearing the planet’s atmosphere, our ship the Discovery starts to feel like it’s powering down. The Discovery settles into a rotation above the round, multicolored prison planet.
Closing my eyes, I reach out mentally and try to see if the pull comes from anywhere else in space around my physical body.
Nothing.
Nothing except for in one direction.
“She’s on the planet.” My voice is dire, because I know how unbelievable this is going to sound.
We set the prison planet up hundreds of years ago. When our space explorations found a suitable environment, it was inevitable. We started to ship off our convicts and undesirables here.
“Are you sure?” Before his words even finish exiting his mouth, though, he’s grabbed my elbow and drags me toward the door. “We have to get onto the shuttle. I’m contacting them now.”
By the time we reach the shuttle dock, they’ve loaded all the prisoners in. My skin is crawling with dread and anticipation.
How can this be?
How can a human woman, let alone a female, have ended up on this planet?
Our females have never been sentenced here. They have their own sentencing procedures that I’m not even totally versed in. But they don’t come to planet Six Two Four.
My older brother, Bren, has only been mated for a short time. He met his human female when he found her in a SkyLab rotating around Mars. But he’d been seeing her in his daily reflection visions for almost a year. What they later found out was he started seeing her right after she left Earth. It took all that time to get out to the Mars space station.
I’ve only been feeling and seeing my mate for about fourteen rotations. How did she end up here?
As a couple of the guards are swapped off the shuttle for Bren and me to take their seats. Brock ducks into the shuttle at the last minute. Brock’s a great male who befriended me as soon as I came on board. He and Dr. Atticus have been documenting my changes over the last couple of weeks.
Although they’re the doctors, I know more than them about the changes that are happening. My profession was a historian of the Likana line. I’ve spent the last ten annual rotations in the private collection of historical records. The last few weeks I was on Quasar, I specifically looked for information about mates. I was looking for biological effects to expect. When Bren contacted me about his mating to Hannah, he needed to know. He had no idea what they could expect, physically and biologically. Also, what their rights would be in our society on Quasar.
“You can sit here.” Bren moves to stand for Brock, but he shakes his head.
“Sit, Bren. I’ll be fine.” Grabbing onto one of the bars along the ceiling, he has no trouble reaching it with his tall frame.
We float out into space slowly through the dock doors. Our shuttle is small. As we exit the Discovery, the full scale of the spacecraft we’ve been traveling in strikes me. Our tiny shuttle drifts away from it. Every nerve in my body is screaming to get to the surface of the planet. We slowly turn and get into position to drop through the atmosphere.
The shuttle craft is silent. Six escorts surround our three muzzled prisoners. As we get closer to the ground, the scale of the facility we’re going to comes into focus. I don’t know much about the prison planet, but it appears they have a pretty nice setup.
The facility is domed, for their protection from both predators and weather. Once the prisoners are processed, they’ll be set up in living spaces. I've heard they're able to come and go around the facility as they wish. If they get along with others, they’ll get to stay in the common area. If they’re banished outside the walls of the dome, then they’re on their own.
The area around the facility’s dome is overgrown with plant life that is unrecognizable to me. Off in the distance, mountains and valleys dot the landscape. There’s water in isolated pockets in the form of rivers and lakes.
Life is new and basic on this planet. Fully terra-formed by us, it was originally hoped to be a new world. Maybe someday it will be. For now, the outlaws of our planet are sent here.
Even that is open to interpretation. I know from my record keeping that many of the “outlaws” here are good men. They were pushed too far and ended up pissing off the wrong person. There were many times that I considered the idea of leaving my own situation by ending up here. How bad can it really be?
“Have Warden Benard set to receive me personally. Matthias, you’re coming with me.” Bren stands as the shuttle’s engines shut down.
“Sir.” The pilot turns to Bren. “They say Warden Benard’s not available. He’s… resting?”
He’s as shocked as I am. We’re not here last minute. Bren carries the full power of the council and represents them in all of his visits. No one should be too busy or resting during his arrival.
“His associate, Len, will be right outside.”
Bren is the first to step out and I’m right on his heels. The ramp is barely down before we’re both striding over to two males already saluting us.
“Associate Len?” Bren wastes no time addressing the one with the highest ranking shown on his uniform.
“Correct, sir. We all apologize for Warden Benard’s untimely sickness and apologize that we’re meeting you in his place. We were expecting a normal drop off, not a visit by the Discovery’s captain.”
“Understandable.” Bren’s words are a direct contradiction to his tone. “It seems that you had some excitement recently. A shuttle with visitors?”
Both men freeze as their gazes jump from one of our faces to the other. They didn’t think we’d know. Why would they? Bren was just fishing based on my mating pull. She’s here, and they obviously know it too.
“Well, yes sir…” Len sputters a bit, but his words drift off. He seems at a loss for what to say. They weren’t prepared for this.
“Tell me everything from the beginning.” Bren turns and starts striding to their control room, leaving them to follow him. I hear the prisoners and other chatter start up behind me as I follow.
Len visibly recovers and falls into step next to Bren. “When the ship came in, it was really coming in hot, and we thought it was going to be a real mess. Crash and burn type of situation. But even though it came in that way, at the last second, it slowed and only dug up the ground. It crashed just on the perimeter of the dome.” Len’s arms are gesticulating wildly as we follow behind him. Brock’s just on my left and watching him intently. “It had the Quasar council seal. It was clearly one of our ships, but no communication came from it. We were trying to be respectful and not intrude. After it crashed, we went ahead and forcefully entered it. It’s in our hangar if you’d like to see it.”
“Yes.” Bren is doing an admirable job of acting like this was exactly what he already knew. I’m having a hard time holding it together as we follow.
As we twist and turn through their maze of halls, Len grows strangely quiet. He seems to come to a decision before opening his mouth again. “We have just started to try to go through the logs. To find out where it came from with its cargo.” Hesitating as he opens the door, he swings to look at us. “Do you know where it came from?”
Bren ignores him for a moment before walking through and past us all. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that information at this time.”
I may have misgivings about having a mate, but when I see the ship, I start to panic. It’s in bad shape. It obviously took heavy fire before it arrived. “The autopilot was set to come here. But no crew.” Len grows quiet again.
Bren swings around quickly at his words, and I crowd in to help him intimidate the smaller male. “No crew. But where are the beings that were on the ship?” Bren’s voice is hard, and Len falls back a step.
My chest squeezes as a sharp pain—no—not really a pain, but a dagger of sympathetic horror shoots through me. I can feel her! She’s frightened—no, petrified right now.
That’s it! I can’t wait.
I know right where she is, and as I take off running, I hear yelling behind me. “Let him go! Don’t stop him and stay out of his way!”
Bren’s sharp command is at first just in my ears. It echoes out, ringing loudly on the site wide mental to audio communication system. I can feel my body going into overdrive, as the bond I feel shares her horror and dismay. If this is the way we feel connected before ever meeting, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like once we join.
It’s overwhelming! As I crash through doors, using brute force and my intuitive knowledge, I move closer to her.
I see Brock following behind me, although he can barely keep up, even with me having to stop and break through doors. His booming voice assures the males behind me I’m not a threat and to just stay back. Finally, I know I’m close when revulsion and panic, that I know isn’t my own, makes my vision turn red.
This isn’t how I wanted to meet her. I’m sure I look like something strange and foreign even to myself. I crash through the door into a fine living area that must belong to the warden. He’s stumbling out of another room and wrapping a robe around his naked form as he yells. “What’re you doing in here?”
His words stall as he looks at me. I must look really bad.
Ignoring him, I continue into the bedroom he just exited. The roar I hear as I take in my mate’s form for the first time could just be the blood rushing to my head, but I’m not sure.
Probably not.
She’s tied down to a sleeping platform. Spread out and tied by her wrists and ankles.
Naked.
Gagged.
She’s thrashing, yanking and pulling on her bindings. Long, dark hair whips around her head and face as I try to slow my heart and movements.
As I reach the foot of the bed, she hasn’t calmed, but I release a leg easily by slicing through the material tying it there.
She freezes as she realizes what I’ve done.
Moving slowly, I walk to her other leg and cut it free, too. My nails are like blades at this point and cutting through the flimsy material is easy.
Her legs immediately move up to cover her torso as she pulls them into a fetal position. Reaching her right arm, I see her gaze flicking between me and the door as the Warden is detained and his cries start up. Brock and Bren’s voices match his as they respond, and I hear blows.
I wish it was me, but I slice through the material holding her arm instead. Freeing her is more important.
She starts trying to break the material remaining and holding her left arm. She’s so strong. So fierce as she rolls and drops to the floor. Crouching there, she struggles and tries to untie the knot with her newly freed hand.
Instead of going over there, I slowly take off my shirt and pass it over the bed, dropping it next to her head. She flinches and freezes.
Sitting down, I lean back and motion for her to hold out her arm. Her wide eyes dart from one side of the room to the other as she looks at me and then the door. She’s still crying silently, but no longer frantic. My heart breaks to see her like this, and I feel like crying with her.
“Hold out your arm, and I’ll cut it loose. You can put on the shirt.” She freezes as my words sink in.
“You understand me?” Her voice is hoarse, and it angers me to know that’s from screaming. “You speak English?”
“Yes. Hold out your arm.” Grabbing the shirt as she stands, she holds it up in front of her but thrusts her arm out for me.
Slowly, I reach forward and cut the material, letting the end drop onto the bed. She immediately scrambles with the shirt, trying to figure out where the head hole is located in it.
“It’s alright. It’s over now. I’m here, and we’ll leave this place in a few minutes when they’re done getting the arrests over with. Can you tell me what happened?” I don’t move a muscle as she continues to fight with the material in her hands.
Still struggling with the shirt, big, wracking sobs start to shake her body. I’m impossibly drawn to her, although I’m sure she won’t let me near her. But as I slide over and wrap my arms around her, she stiffens briefly, but then relaxes against me as I stroke her silky back.
I’m touching her. For the first time, I’m touching my mate.
I’ve never been frozen in fear before. Even when that asshole guy carried me out of the other room and into here. It took a few minutes before I could move from whatever drugs they used on me. As soon as my body was functioning, though, I was fighting.
I’m a fighter.
No way in fucking hell that I’m dying now. I’ll make these guys miserable if that’s what it takes.
If that’s all that’s left of my life, I’m on it! But when this new guy walked in the door, I literally froze.
Not only was he way bigger—he looks fucking livid. Crazy too.
