Ascension Saga Book 2: Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga Read online

  Ascension Saga, Book 2

  Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga

  Grace Goodwin

  Ascension Saga, Book 2 : 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 2

  Cover design copyright 2018 by Grace Goodwin, Author

  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

  Prequel

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  The Ascension Saga

  Let’s Talk!

  Find Your Match!

  Get A Free Book!

  Connect With Grace

  About Grace

  Also by Grace Goodwin

  Prequel

  Twenty-seven years ago Queen Celene was forced to flee Alera with her unborn child. Read the story of her escape to Earth in The Ascension Saga prequel -- for free!

  Click now to find how how the adventure began...

  www.ascensionsaga.com

  Prologue

  Queen Celene of Alera, Prison Cell, Location Unknown

  I knew from the angry, quick slap of my captor’s boots on the smooth, metallic floor that something had happened. Something that would make his customary ranting and raving seem pale in comparison.

  “Open the door.” The bark was louder than usual through the thick metal.

  His order was obeyed instantly, but even the speed of the two guards he had chained outside the door wasn’t enough, and I watched as he struck them with an electrically charged flogger repeatedly for being too slow.

  The two aliens—whose race I could not define—flinched, but didn’t make a sound. Like me, both were prisoners. Perhaps more so, for I was not a slave destined to live a life of cruelty and despair.

  And this bastard knew it. Thrived on it.

  I wasn’t a slave. I was a queen. Even in my red and black lumberjack plaid pajamas I’d been wearing when they’d taken me. I sat on the edge of the small cot I’d been provided, my ankles crossed, my hands settled demurely in my lap, my chin up and my eyes shooting as much disdain and disgust as I could manage while cold, hungry, bleeding. I would not give in to this alien’s glee at weakening me.

  “What do you know of the citadel?” he asked.

  My silence was all the answer he would receive, but hope flared in my heart. I’d been taken days ago. Perhaps a week. With no sunrise or sunset to mark the time on this spaceship, I wasn’t really sure how much time had passed. I could feel the subtle hum of the engines, note the smooth movement of the ship through some quadrant of space. We were not on Alera, that was for sure, but I had no idea if we were within the planet’s orbit or half a galaxy away.

  But in the time since they’d stormed the house and yanked me from my bed, they’d never asked me about the citadel itself, only about the royal gemstones. The mark of royalty I’d hidden all those years ago. Inwardly, I was pleased with my forethought to secure their safety, deciding not to take them to Earth with me twenty-seven years ago. If I had taken them, both the gems and I would be in the hands of evil now.

  Better me than the power and tradition the royal gemstones represented. The royal bloodline would continue, even if I were to die in this cold, wretched cell. Alera would survive. The ancient bloodline—and their gifts—would survive me. The same could not be said if the gems and their powers fell into the wrong hands.

  No usurper would stand a chance of claiming the throne without them. The people simply would not accept their rule, not while I lived. Not while the light of the spire glowed over my home city of Mytikas.

  And while my captor wasn’t happy about it—he wasn’t happy about anything—he knew this. Or his master did. And that was why I was still alive.

  The only reason.

  The gray-skinned giant walked closer but I refused to look away. To let him see anything but my confidence in the line of succession. In my daughters.

  “Talk, female,” he snarled, spittle flying from his lips. “Tell me what you know, or I will bleed you.”

  I gave a slight shrug to let him know I’d survived that action once. I could do it again. “We both know your master won’t let you kill me.”

  “There is pain, Celene,” he vowed.

  Inside, I shook with fear. But outside, I remained calm. This alien monster with his gray skin, black eyes and huge, scaled hands had already beaten me. Starved me. Threatened me. Screamed. Raged. But no more.

  He might not know it, but he was a fool. A pawn. I had never seen another of his species, had no idea what dark planet he came from. He was nothing to me.

  I remained silent and he dropped to his knees before me, so that our gazes aligned. Black meeting crystal blue. I believed he meant for me to fear him even more, but he was a supplicant now bowing, before me. A worm.

  “The citadel. Three more spires light the sky. What do you know of this?”

  Unable to contain my joy at this confirmation, I defused the smile with a soft chuckle meant to enrage him. It worked, for the hideous gills in his neck flared.

  “I suppose, if the legends are true, there must be three more living royal descendants on Alera.” All of this he already knew. “One of them is probably parading around in the royal gemstones and being crowned the new queen as we speak.”

  If this were true, I would not be held here. I’d be dead.

  “Your cousins, the only other royal family members, never had a spire light for them. Not one. And they tried many times.”

  “Then the Goddess deemed them unworthy,” I clarified. Again, the history of the spires was something he knew. “Perhaps She changed Her mind?”

  Not possible, but this male didn’t believe in the strength of a female. He didn’t understand the divine wisdom—and power—of the Goddess. The idiot.

  “The spires would not light for them after all these years,” he countered. “Not while you live.”

  My smile turned malicious and I shrugged once again, as if this conversation, as if he, were boring. “It’s been a long time. A very long time. Your master waited too long to take over the throne. With the additional spires lit, he’s too late.”

  I hoped he would slip, tell me his master’s name, give me some way to track and eliminate my enemies, the threat to my daughters. But I was becoming accustomed to disappointment.

  “Bitch queen.” He stood and I braced for impact. Even knowing the blow was coming wasn’t enough. That monstrous hand struck the side of my head and everything went black.

  1

  Captain Leoron Turaya of Alera, Mate to Princess Trinity, Cleric Building, Interrogation
Room, Sub-Level Three

  The punches and kicks that rained down had ceased to hurt hours ago. I was numb. I felt no pain, could only hear the sound of flesh on flesh, a hard boot against my already broken ribs, the hiss of air as I struggled to breathe through what had to be a punctured lung.

  “Where are the females? Where are the queen’s daughters?” The voice did not belong to my tormentor, but to one of Alera’s highest-ranking clerics. “Three females entered. None of them exited the building. Where are they?”

  “Still inside, I guess.” I had no idea where they were, was still reeling with the revelation that the female whose Ardor I soothed, The One, my mate, was the future queen.

  “The citadel is empty. The sanctum was searched by the royal family.”

  “There is no royal family on Alera.” That was the truth as far as I was concerned. Or, at least it had been until Trinity and her sisters arrived. Queen Celene’s cousins, those deemed unworthy by the citadel and unable to light a spire, had not earned the right to call themselves royal. Most people on the planet agreed. If they did not, we would have had a new queen years ago.

  “The royal family searched the citadel. It was empty. Where did the females go? How did they escape?”

  Trinity and her sisters weren’t found inside the citadel? Where were they?

  The large male doing the dirty work was a man I’d never seen before, but the inked markings covering his body indicated he belonged to the clerics’ private army.

  An army they had systematically denied creating the past few years as they jostled for power after the queen’s disappearance. No one had claimed the throne in the twenty-seven long years since. And now, no other would, except my mate. Three decades of plotting and scheming brought to an abrupt end by the light of a few spires.

  I tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a wheeze. “Worried that your evil… plans to take over Alera… are ruined?”

  The cleric was not amused and he nodded at the brute beating me to continue. Still smiling when the first blow landed over my already broken ribs, I clenched my teeth and endured, focused on the hem of the long, elaborate cape wrapped around the body of the cleric sitting a few steps away. The cell was cold, but I knew the soft, black shell and even softer silver lining would keep him warm in much worse conditions.

  Beneath, he was dressed as all the clerics were, in a fighter’s uniform with a ceremonial dagger at his hip. I knew he had been trained to wield the blade better than any standard Coalition fighter. The uniform cloth was an array of sharp angles in silver and black while an expanse of white crossed his chest and shimmering silver graced his arms. The silver was tradition, a token of their eternal service to and respect for the royal bloodline.

  And apparently, a complete lie. At least where this male was concerned. He was a master-level cleric, an expert in hand-to-hand combat—yet he refused to get his hands dirty with me—and I’d seen the links of silver chain around his neck proclaiming his status to the world.

  Despite his youthful frame, I estimated he was near sixty years old with deep lines around his eyes and mouth, not from laughing, but scowling… as he was doing now.

  More of me was broken than whole. The taste of blood filled my mouth and I had to wonder if I were spitting it up due to internal bleeding, or if my mouth filled with the dark liquid because my lips and cheeks were flayed open.

  I didn’t focus on any of that, nor the questions they asked. All that filled my mind was her voice. Her scent. Her taste. The feel of her pussy as it had clenched and milked my cock. The soft feel of her hair as it brushed over my chest when she’d kissed her way up from pleasuring my cock with her mouth. That had been an experience I’d been waiting a lifetime to have fulfilled.

  I thought only of Trinity. My mate. The One.

  There was no fucking way I was going to die now at the hands of the clerics. They might be brutal and vicious, but I would survive. For her. My cock had only just awakened and there would be nothing that kept me from returning to Trinity, to sinking between her parted thighs again. To ease her Ardor, which had yet to be resolved.

  She would be suffering, aching with a need that returned with a vengeance. I knew she wouldn’t seek out a consort. She would need me—my cock—to soothe her.

  I would get out of these chains, out of this barren, cold, evil room and satisfy her in any way she needed.

  I was no longer a servant to the Coalition. I was a servant to my mate.

  The fact that she was an Aleran royal only doubled my loyalty.

  Tied to a chair, my ankles bound to the front legs, my arms pulled behind me and cinched behind my back, the punches rained down. There was no way to protect against them.

  Another strike had my head flying back.

  I didn’t bother to lift it. I knew what was next, the indescribable pain of the neurostim devices. The technology was designed to heal, but had been modified to stimulate pain receptors in the body… and nothing else. No bruises. No physical damage. Hours of torture. The practice had been outlawed decades ago for driving people mad.

  The cleric cleared his throat and the brute paused his strikes, which was almost worse than the continued assault. It gave me time to feel everything he’d already done to me.

  “Princess Trinity announced herself to one and all. But who were the other two? Her sisters? I need their names and descriptions from you, Leoron. One way or another, I will get them.”

  “Fuck you.” I was proud of the sisters, of my mate. They’d thought ahead, Destiny and Faith covering themselves, remaining hidden from the cameras as they’d bolted into the citadel. I’d thought it odd, at the time. But then, I’d assumed they’d come out the way they went in. Through the front door.

  Instead, all three of them had vanished into thin air.

  Just like their mother had, twenty-seven years ago.

  The cleric sighed. “Use the stim.”

  I cringed before the small device touched my flesh. The moment it did, I bellowed in rage and in pain. The device was impossible to defeat, sending a burst of power through every nerve receptor in my body.

  My body arched off the chair as if I were having a seizure and I had no control of the movement. When it was pulled away, I slumped over like a bag filled with sand. Dead weight. My limbs, my head too heavy to hold up for another moment.

  Silence. Cool, cold silence.

  “He’s no longer responding.” The big brute said, his voice bland. It was as if he’d done this before, as if I were just a single person in a long line of many who’d been tortured in this room. And died. As if he were bored.

  “Stop then. I want him to suffer. He’s no good to me dead.” The cleric’s order was soft, but annoyance was clearly audible in his tone.

  “He hasn’t given up anything. Not one word about the spires. Who the other two royals are who entered the citadel. He hasn’t even said why they were with him.” The deep, gravely voice of the one who had beaten me filled my head. “I’ve seen his kind before. He’ll let us kill him, but he won’t break.”

  “He will.” My hair was gripped, my head lifted by the cleric. While my eyes were open, I could barely see the male before me beneath the swollen eyelids. “He will. But not today. Tomorrow morning is soon enough. Cut him loose. Water. No food.”

  The cleric released his hold on me, and I felt my head fall forward. I tried to lift it, but it was as if the stupid thing suddenly weighed a hundred pounds. Perhaps I was in worse shape than I’d realized.

  With a grunt, the giant released my restraints. The bindings fell away from my arms and legs, and he kicked the chair out from beneath me. It tipped and I fell with a hard thud to the stone floor.

  The cold felt good against my swollen face.

  “Do we give him a ReGen wand this time?”

  The question made me wince. For several hours now, they’d beaten me to the brink of death before healing me with a ReGen wand just enough to start again. I knew this could go on for days. Weeks.

&n
bsp; I didn’t care. I would survive. For her. Trinity. My mate.

  The cleric’s laugh was pure evil and I shuddered, faced with the evidence of my stupidity. For years I’d believed the clerical order when they’d claimed their soldiers were just for protecting the citadel and the queen’s future. I’d believed their stated purpose of serving the people and having no ambition to rule Alera themselves.

  I’d been wrong. Three families were powerful enough to fight for the throne. Just three. But the clerical order had its own army, spies, a network so vast I wasn’t sure they could be beaten if they decided to take the throne. And if they had allied themselves with one of the other power-hungry families?

  War. We were on the brink of war. And I was falling hopelessly in love with the female who would be at its epicenter.

  The cleric stepped on my hand as he walked away, crushing the already aching digits into the cold, hard floor of the cell. “Let him suffer. Perhaps in the morning he’ll be ready to talk.”

  They were hoping I’d do just that. But I wouldn’t. The only other Alerans alive who knew about Trinity, Faith and Destiny were the Jax guard who’d been injured—and, with Faith’s help, hopefully recovered—and the assassin who escaped. Everyone else was dead. No consort, no other guards. I doubted these men knew of the injured one. Perhaps were aware of Lord Thordis Jax’s involvement, but doubtful. Definitely not of Prime Nial’s request for my help.

  As for the assassin? I’d recognized him from my time in the Coalition Fleet. He’d worked in their Intelligence Core. He’d killed Hive, mowing them down without remorse. Among other things.