Authors: Lisa Lace
I thought my life had changed for the better once I met Dar. An alien king falling in love with me was a dream come true!
That was before the enemy started coming through the wormhole. Faster, stronger, more powerful than any race we had ever encountered before, the first they they did was take away Dar's memory.
Now he doesn't remember who he is, let alone what we've been through together. His mother, formerly my worst enemy, has turned into my biggest ally as I try to restore his mind before the enemy enslaves our galaxy...
Mated to the Alien King: The Complete Series is a collection of the five part serial MATED TO THE ALIEN KING. This book is a complete, standalone novel.
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DAR
I looked at Kenna. Though she seemed deeply concerned, she was in complete possession of herself, as usual. She picked her way across my bedroom. Although I decorated the room with solid, well-made furniture and rich red velvet, it was a mess. She was forced to skirt around some of our clothes that we had carelessly tossed on the floor while still in the grips of passion.
She held up her fancy dress to keep it from falling, not having bothered to fasten it in the back. When Mana and Jared banged on the door in the middle of the night, we threw on whatever we could find.
"What do you mean, we're going on a little trip?" she said, coming up to me. She was standing close enough that she had to tilt back her head a little because of the difference in our height. "You're the king. You can't be risking your precious neck going on missions. Shouldn't they be handled by someone more experienced, like your trusted Senior Advisor?"
Mana nodded her head vigorously in agreement.
"And your newly appointed Head of Security." She indicated Jared, who nodded too, his blond curls bouncing solemnly.
"I agree with Kenna," Mana said, her eyes troubled. "We almost lost you at the volcano. There's no need to endanger you again, going up against some unknown threat. As Senior Advisor â and as your friend, your majesty â I recommend against it."
With both Kenna, the love of my life, and my oldest friend siding against me going on out into space, I reconsidered the idea, dropping down into a chair. Maybe they were right. It didn't make sense to risk the head of state's...well, head...on a mission that could prove fatal.
Then again, I wouldn't want to send Mana and Jared into that situation either. At least if I were there, I could make command decisions for my planet.
Come on, Dar, I told myself, what's the best decision for your people and your friends? Think. Think.
Susohn recently negotiated a treaty with the humans. Earth would share both the maintenance and protection of Wormhole 87 and also the profits that made from any interstellar traffic that came through.
The humans had been in charge at the time when an anomaly appeared. We weren't sure what it was yet. Immediately afterward, the entire space station disappeared along with the humans and Susohnnans stationed on it â ten thousand in all.
We had no idea what the threat was or what happened to the space station. We didn't know who did it or why. We were flying blind at the moment, and I hated it.
I had no idea how to deal with this menace, and things were out of my control. I didn't like that. I needed to do what was best for my people and my planet. To do that, I needed to know what in the name of The Three was going on.
I stood up and looked at them.
"No. I have to go. I need to know the shape of the enemy. I can't make decisions from here. And I couldn't forgive myself if anything happened to you, and I had been sitting back here safe and sound, unable to help."
"But Dar..." Kenna said. She was ready to continue the argument, but I held up my hand, shaking my head. She looked surprised. She hadn't seen too much of Dar, the king of Susohn, yet. Well, she would have to get used to this side of me, too, because I wasn't going to stop being king anytime soon.
Mana sighed. She knew the tone I was using and that there was no use arguing because I had made up my mind. Jared shrugged and grinned, his blue eyes twinkling.
"Glad to have you aboard, man," he said, ignoring the fact that I was not a man, but a Susohnnan. Yes, we were genetically identical, and both humans and Susohnnan came from the same Great Race, but there was a difference all the same. It was cultural, I supposed.
I used to be very prejudiced against humans, but Kenna and Jared had changed my mind. I now considered them our equals. Almost. Susohnnan were slightly more equal.
"He's not a man," Mana said, sounding a little annoyed.
"Sorry, babe," he said. "'Glad to have you aboard, Susohnnan' just doesn't have quite the same ring to it, though."
Kenna laughed, but Mana glared at him.
"And don't call me, babe."
"Whatever you like, Manadwell."
"Mana is fine," she said coldly and turned away from him, clearly irritated.
I stared at her. Normally, she was so unruffled and calm. What was going on with her?
"You insist on going along with what is apparently becoming a fool's errand?" she said, turning her irritation on me.
"Yes," I said, hating to go against her advice. In the past, it had usually been a bad idea to ignore what Mana recommended. She pressed her lips together.
"And if Dar's going, I'm certainly not going to sit at home working on my embroidery or something," Kenna added. "So you can forget that if you thought you were leaving me behind."
I smiled wryly.
"I never imagined it was even a possibility," I said. "What's embroidery?"
"Never mind," she said. "I'll tell you once we're on our way."
"The four of us are going â plus crew to pilot the shuttlecraft?" Mana said. "What class of starship?"
"Better take a Class 4, Mana," Jared said. "It would be suicide to take anything less. Even the firepower on a Class 4 is...." He tilted his hand from side to side.
"Is what?" I said.
"Inadequate." He frowned. "Especially if we run into any real trouble."
"Like if we happen to meet any aliens who can spirit away an entire space station without a trace in mere seconds?" Mana muttered sarcastically under her breath.
"Make it a Class 5, Jared," I said, ignoring Mana's comment. "And have it outfitted with extra weapons. Oh, and ensure that the transporter's range and power are more than doubled, just in case."
"Will do," Jared said, turning to go. "Come on, Mana. We have work to do."
"I know that," she said, crossly. "I've been working here a lot longer than you, man."
"Hey, chill out. I was just..."
Their voices faded as they walked away.
I stood for a moment, completely overwhelmed. How were we ever going to solve such an enormous problem? How could I protect my people from this threat?
Then I felt Kenna's arms come around me. I turned to hold her.
"I don't know what's going on or what's going to happen, Dar," she said. "But I promise, we'll face it together. Okay?"
She stood on tiptoe and kissed me softly.
Yes, that was a good point. If I were about to die, at least Kenna and I would be together until the very end.
KENNA
I stood looking out the viewscreen at the spot where the space station had once been. Everyone else was behind me at the conference table, still hashing out more ideas â trying to figure out what we could do.
This danger terrified because of the unknown. We had no idea who or what had destroyed the space station. It gave me the shivers to think that someone erased ten thousand people from existence in a heartbeat. And what had killed them? We had no idea.
We didn't have much information. There was no debris to analyzed. There were no survivors to question. Dar was frustrated, and he was ready to tear his hair out. We had gone over the area with a fine-toothed comb, using every sensor and instrument we had aboard to try and figure out what had happened.
Nothing.
I felt more than a little out of my depth, while Mana, Dar, and Jared worked on the problem. They were amazingly intelligent, and I tried to bow out more than once, but they insisted that I remain at the meetings because I could offer a fresh perspective on the situation.
Maybe I did provide a different viewpoint, but I felt like a lowly human. I didn't even feel like an exceptionally smart one! The highly intelligent Susohnnan were capable of using a higher percentage of their brains than us Earthlings.
Yes, we were genetically identical, and both Susohnnan and humans descended from the same Great Race. Humans had regressed because of the catastrophic incident that destroyed all our technology and civilization. The Susohnnan continued to develop, and they were now able to access 12 to 15 percent of their brain capacity. In theory, it didn't seem like much more than our 10 percent but I assure you, in practice, it was much more.
Jared was human like me but was clearly well-educated. He hadn't given us much information about his background. What he lacked in brain capacity, he made up for in knowledge and training.
He knew all about space travel, spacecraft, and higher mathematics and physics. He, Dar, and Mana would go on about quarks, gluons, hadrons, and other particles that I had never known. I felt like the village idiot and wanted to crawl under a rock.
If you asked me to name any plant in the boreal forest and its medicinal uses, I could probably tell you. Ask me to grow a garden, and I'm your girl. I knew I was capable and intelligent in my way.
But I had never had any further education past high school, and they were downright intimidating me. What use were knowledge and training about how to grow food and heal using plants out here in the cold depths of space where nothing could grow or thrive, far from the sun and the earth?
I sighed and turned away from the view screen. I looked at the three people before me, who were discussing something intently.
Mana was a beautiful Susohnnan female. I had a tiny stab of jealousy when I had seen Dar hugging her for the first time. They were so glad to see each other. It had made me envious of their relationship.
That was before I knew that she was his oldest friend from childhood and his Senior Advisor, who had worked with him ever since he had taken over as king. Their relationship was completely platonic and had always been that way.
She was of medium height. Her slimness made her seem tall, or that was my impression. Her honey blonde hair was down, but she had braided it and coiled it around her head like a crown. Her blue eyes were light and crystal clear. She wore a favorite Susohnnan style â navy blue pants that hung loose and flowed from her hips to her feet. Her top was white with large diamond panels cut out of the back; the front showed her flat stomach and nice little belly button.
She had the body of a model she didn't seem to notice. Dar had said she had her doctorate and was much more concerned with applied physics than with her appearance.
She had her eyebrows drawn together right now in a frown, and I wondered what she looked like when she smiled. So far, I had seen her angry, worried, upset, and expressionless. Dar had said that she was uptight, but I never imagined that anyone could be that tense. He loved her as a sister, though, and I was trying to like her â for Dar.
Jared sat on one of the chairs, his legs wide, leaning back in a relaxed position. He watched Mana with an amused expression on his handsome face. He had curly blond hair that sometimes fell into his eyes, and a charming grin that was completely disarming.
And in spite of the terrible experience he had recently gone through of losing his girlfriend â a human terrorist organization called the AEA had killed her in a mass execution â he seemed to be bouncing back. He still had his low points when I would come upon him, and there would be a dark or desolate expression on his usually sunny face. But in general, he seemed to be getting on with his life.
He and Mana had become friends â or something â which I hoped was helping him. We all liked him. And Dar had appointed him Head of Security when the previous guy had retired.
Dar felt that someone younger and more current on what was happening in the galaxy would be a better choice, than some of the more senior politicians who were hoping to be appointed. The older men had experience but not much beyond their planet.
Jared had toured most of the galaxy and had been on many planets during the time when he had been forced to work for the AEA. He had an incredible storehouse of knowledge about weapons and fighting, most of which he had learned while working for the terrorists.
I studied him. He was leaning forward and making some point about a physics concept that I didn't understand. Something to do with wormhole stabilization and what would happen if it became destabilized.
He was a smaller man than Dar, but still taller than Mana and I by quite a few inches. He had a strong, wiry frame that looked like he had got his muscles by doing things, not working out in a gym. And his eyes were a green color that was almost mesmerizing.
I glanced at Mana and wondered if she had ever been fascinated by those eyes of Jared's. Right now she was glaring at him. They reminded me of a boy pulling a girl's pigtail, and she pretended to be mad. She secretly liked the attention, even if it wasn't quite in the form that she had hoped it would take. Was that Mana? I didn't know.
Dar and I said that we loved each other, but I didn't know what that meant for the future. I knew that we were together. And I knew that I wanted to be with him, and he wanted to be with me. But how we were going to do that with the differences between our cultures and his responsibilities as the king of Susohn, I had no idea.
I turned my attention to Dar and noticed that he had stood up and was pointing to the board, at a drawing he made. I watched him and barely listened to his words. He was so tall and strong. I knew every plane and hollow of his muscular body by now, so I could imagine in vivid detail what lay beneath the black, loose-fitting pants and white button-up shirt. His clothes reminded me of the kind that pirates wore back on Earth.