Warriors of Phaeton: Paine and Rowe Read online

  “What’d she say?”

  “I can’t hear.”

  “Our liaison tricked us all,” Juniper said loudly, her voice clear and strong. “There were no matches for any of us. Eva sold us out. Literally. She sold us. There was some sort of auction, and we were the big-ticket item.” Juniper paused to gesture to K’hor. “Warlord K’hor and his crew found out where they were keeping us and hijacked our shipment before we could be sold to—” She cleared her throat. “Well, I’m sure you can imagine where we were all heading.”

  Her words ignited every bride in the room including Indigo. This wasn’t breaking news to her, but she was just as upset hearing it now as she was the first time.

  Juniper gestured for everyone to quiet. “Believe me, I’m just as pissed as every single one of you, but like K’hor said, we have a choice.”

  “What do you mean?” Indigo stepped forward, her hands propped on her hips. She didn’t see any other choice other than going home and forgetting all of this had ever happened.

  “The men here need wives,” Juniper answered back, loud enough for everyone to hear over the whispers.

  Indigo felt like an idiot. Looking around the room, she noticed that among all the men, the only females present were the humans they’d rescued. It was something she hadn’t noticed before, but she was sure as hell noticing it now. These guys were in the same boat as the Phaetons, and they’d rescued a shipment of single women looking for husbands.

  Looking up to the heavens, Indigo tried to keep calm. The hairbrained scheme she’d come up with when she was drunk a few months ago had jumped the shark. All she’d wanted was to open the door to her future and she’d been kidnapped, almost killed, raped, and murdered, and now she was stuck here. In space. With a bunch of horny miners that wanted nothing more than to keep the women they’d found.

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

  “Soul’s mates,” K’hor corrected loud enough to jar Indigo out of her head and back to the present.

  “Sorry.” Juniper smiled up at him before clapping her hands to get the attention of the dining hall again. “Like I said, the men are looking for soul mates—”

  “Oh no,” Indigo mumbled under her breath. This was much worse than she thought.

  A man starts spouting off about soul mates, and women trample one another to get to him. It was like relationship catnip—women couldn’t resist it. Add in the looks of the hotties surrounding her, and the brides were bound to start dropping eggs left and right.

  She’d be a fool to not shore up her defenses.

  Wrapping her arms around herself, Indigo began to build an invisible wall between her and anyone with a dick. There was no way in hell she was getting wrangled into staying on a planet and living with a bunch of cavemen. Her five-year plan included expanding her business into a franchise, not popping out babies for some alien miner like an intergalactic Betty-fucking-Rubble. She was sure they were nice and all, but this was not what she’d signed up for.

  Hell, she’d never intended to fulfill what she had signed up for in the first place.

  “So, they won’t let us leave?” Charlotte asked, unknowingly fanning the flames to Indigo’s inner meltdown.

  “They will let us leave. Just not until the storms clear for the Phaetons to pick us up.” Juniper nudged K’hor’s side. “Tell them what you told me.”

  “My planet is facing the same struggles as the Phaetons. I’m sure you have all noticed the lack of Djaromir females among you. Our numbers dwindle year after year, and soon we will die out without intervention. You’re our last hope for the future of our race.”

  Indigo watched as the women around her began to get a clue about the situation.

  “We have been kidnapped,” one bride cried out in panic as the general hysteria in the room rose.

  “You’ve not been kidnapped! You were saved! It’s your choice if you stay here or go with the Phaetons,” Warlord K’hor announced loudly. “Without matches, you will most likely be shuttled back to Earth. My men are offering an alternative. Look around you. We may be rough, but we’re strong and more than willing to provide everything you’d need to be happy here…with us.”

  Indigo didn’t know what to think about the situation, but she knew one thing. She wasn’t staying—it didn’t matter how hot the guys were.

  “So…y’all want to date us?” a hesitant voice asked from one of the back benches.

  Indigo had to hold back a snort of laughter at the confused look on Khor’s face. It only took a moment and a whisper from Juniper before he seemed to get it.

  “Yes,” K’hor answered loudly. “All we ask is that while you wait for the Phaetons, you give us a chance to date you.”

  “And if we want to leave when they get here?” another bride shouted, her words barely audible over the increased volume of side conversations.

  “Then you’ll be free to go,” K’hor’s voice sounded over the crowd without the slightest hesitation. “No one shall force you to stay. We simply wish a chance to discover if any of our soul’s mates are among you.”

  “Soul mates?” a few in the group parroted back.

  “Yes, our soul’s mates. On Djaromir, we don’t use applications or pacts to find our mates. The stars guide us to the missing pieces of our souls.”

  Indigo immediately looked to where Saber still stood guard over Charlotte, who was seated in front of him. If the Djaromir truly did believe in the idea of predestined mates, then it explained quite a few things she’d noticed.

  “You think some of us might be the ones you’re looking for?”

  “I don’t simply think so. I know so.” K’hor paused to look down at the woman by his side before focusing on the crowd again. “A few of my men have also felt the pull of their own soul’s mates as well from some of those among you.”

  “What exactly do you expect us to do?” Charlotte asked, her cheeks pink.

  “I’m asking that you give my men a chance. Give us a chance to convince you to stay.”

  “Let’s be honest…what the men are offering isn’t that far off from what we signed up for. We would have had thirty days to figure out if we had wanted to stay with the other guys, so how about we give the men here the same chance? Talk to them. Mingle. Treat this like a free vacation at one of those singles resorts that none of us can afford,” Juniper pitched. “I know it’s a lot to take in with everything that’s happened, but I trust K’hor. Nobody is going to be forced to stay.”

  “What about you? Are you staying?” Indigo asked, unable to stop herself from being nosey. If the woman seemed so keen on giving these men a chance, she had to have made up her mind already, right?

  “I…” Juniper paused, clearly flustered.

  Indigo immediately felt bad for putting the other woman in the spotlight. She was about to offer an apology when their leader took Juniper’s hand in his own and smiled down at her.

  “I’m going to do my best to convince her to stay with me,” the warlord answered, never looking away from Juniper’s face. “Just like my men if they do find their own soul’s mates.”

  Indigo didn’t blame Juniper one bit for the mushy look she aimed at K’hor.

  Hot as hell, sweet as could be, and they believed in soul mates?! These guys were kryptonite to women everywhere, not just the ones they managed to save from a fate worse than death.

  Indigo bit back the temptation of looking for love—or even a bit of fun—here on Djaromir. First, she didn’t want to lead anyone on, and second, she’d learned her lesson the first time. If anything, this entire fiasco had shown her that she should have never left Earth.

  She should have kept her head down and toed the line like always. The diner wasn’t that bad, and she really did love making pies. Indigo just had the silly idea of doing it all for herself instead of doing it for the man. Considering both her skill and the hours upon hours she’d invested, what she received was nowhere near her worth. Worse, it was also far from a living wage. She’d been ru
nning on little more than credit and fumes.

  Both had been running out.

  Her government stipend was earmarked for her future. It was her way to get from beneath the heavy load that she could no longer carry. No matter how much she cut back. In the end, she’d reached for something too high and ended up knocking everything down.

  If her abuela were here now, she would be on the receiving end of a lecture, starting with the evils of greed and ending with the backlash of karma.

  She would have deserved it too.

  Chapter Four

  Thirty-three days later…

  Indigo hid herself away in a corner that she’d claimed not long after making her way down to the dining halls. Standing slightly behind a column of carved stone, her position allowed her to see everyone in the room, even while keeping her attendance on the down-low.

  Normally, she was in the middle of it all, but tonight she’d felt like hanging back a bit. She wanted to soak up as much of it as she could to fill her memory banks.

  Weirdly, she was kind of sad to be going. Just a smidge.

  A happy grin graced her face as she watched her new friends mingle with the miners they’d been living with for the last month. It seemed like just yesterday that she’d woken up surrounded by a bunch of aliens on their home planet, when in reality, so much had happened.

  She’d made friends, she’d experimented with alien baking, but most importantly, she’d dodged hot, sex-starved miners like nobody’s business.

  That last part had been the hardest—obviously.

  Pun intended.

  Not only were they hot as hell, they were also incredibly persistent. It had been rough, but she’d been serious about avoiding entanglements. Indigo had stuck to her guns, and amazingly, it’d worked. The men hadn’t been too keen on leaving her alone at first, but after she explained that there was no way she was going to let their matting woo-woo affect her, they rambled off. Of course, Juniper and a few of the other women would just so happen to have random groups of miners stop by for a quick chat whenever she visited their apartments.

  At one point, she was sure even K’hor had rolled his eyes at the excuses his wife had used when thirty miners showed up for teatime. Indigo had been lucky though.

  Knock on wood.

  So far, she hadn’t managed to trigger any of the Djaromir’s mating instincts. Out of the hundreds that she’d come into contact with, none of them had reacted to her other than general attraction on their parts. She was realistic enough to know that her luck wouldn’t last forever. Indigo had overheard a couple of the big guys talking about the other cities bringing more men over to see if they were compatible.

  Statistically speaking, she was screwed if she hung around much longer. There were thousands of miners on Djaromir looking for mates, and eventually it was bound to happen. She wanted to be out of here and in the clear before they came sniffing around—literally.

  She didn’t want to tempt fate any more than she already had. She needed to get back to Earth, and it had to happen sooner rather than later.

  Why? Because the longer she stayed, the crazier she felt.

  That wasn’t her being dramatic. She needed to get back to Earth one way or another before she literally lost her mind.

  Prior to the kidnapping, Indigo had been trudging along minding her own business. Her life was mediocre at best, but it hadn’t been so awful that it affected her headspace. Mentally, she’d been in a place where she managed to stay steady.

  That wasn’t so much the case anymore. Thanks to the kidnapping, she was not doing so well. In fact, it had moved past “not so well” a while back and into the “time to get help” stage that was described in the pamphlets you’d find at your doctor’s office.

  What had started as a few bad dreams had quickly turned into more. She’d tried to shrug them off at first, reminding herself she was safe and sound—not on Earth, but safe and sound all the same. Considering she’d dealt with a similar situation before, she’d thought they’d fade away after a little while. She kept trudging along. Pretending everything was okay.

  Everything wasn’t okay though. She wasn’t okay.

  Instead of her nightmares easing over the days and weeks that followed, they got worse. At times, they felt so real that she’d wake up covered in sweat and shaking. For more than a few nights, her own sobs had been the sound that helped pull her out of the prison of her nightmares. They had become, for lack of a better word, relentless.

  The constant bouts of night-terror-triggered insomnia not only exhausted her physically, they had started messing with her head. Some nights, she’d see her death; other nights, she’d see much worse. More recently, the past and present had begun to mix to create some majorly messed-up nightmares. She wasn’t lucky enough to forget her dreams. Not one moment was forgettable. She could recall every single horrific second vividly. So vivid, they tormented her mind throughout the day like a macabre cartoon on repeat.

  She was stuck in a catch-22. She couldn’t sleep because of the nightmares, and the longer she went without sleep, the more consuming her nightmares became once she finally passed out.

  Indigo couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept for more two hours at once. Before all of this had happened, she’d tracked her sleep using one of the features on her fitness watch. She’d had to wake up so early to get her pies ready at the bakery that she normally ended up napping to catch up on her zzz’s. That handy little gadget had helped her make sure that she was getting just enough sleep to function. They hadn’t been accounted for all at once, but they had been accounted for. Considering her watch had disappeared in her kidnapping, she couldn’t track her hours any longer. It wasn’t as if she needed to see a graph to know she wasn’t sleeping. She knew she was stuck.

  She just couldn’t break the cycle.

  The nightmares wouldn’t let her.

  Even though a month had passed, they came like clockwork every night at the moment she closed her eyes. They were so unrelenting that she’d been on the verge of seeking out the healers when news had come that the storms were clearing.

  Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, Indigo had been in a holding pattern for the last week. There was no point in wasting the time of the healers on Djaromir when they were so busy with all the new mates to monitor.

  At least that’s what she told herself.

  Once she was back home, everything would be normal again. She’d smoke a little cannabis, take a bubble bath, and binge watch The Office until she was required to interact with society again. That was her big plan.

  Until that happened though, she was still having nightmares and not sleeping. It took all her strength to keep her eye on the finish line. Once she got home, she was sure she would feel safe enough to sleep without her brain replaying what could have happened.

  Indigo sucked in a calming breath and slowly let it out in a steady whoosh.

  Taking a moment to center herself, she listened to the lull of the crowd around the room. Every now and then, she’d hear one of her friends laugh, which reminded her of what she’d be leaving tomorrow.

  Just thinking about not seeing them again made her sniffly. It wasn’t as if they were going to be able to see each other again, even if they wanted to.

  No amount of frequent flier miles would cover a trip like that.

  Indigo only allowed herself another moment of melancholy. The last thing she should be doing is regretting that she didn’t ring any of the miner’s bells like some of the other ladies had. Which was an insane thought, considering she’d never planned for the match to pan out.

  Pasting a somewhat genuine smile on her face, Indigo left the safety of her corner. Almost immediately, she was greeted by the men and their mates as they welcomed her into the fold. For every new friend that she said good-bye to, Indigo felt steadily worse before she spotted the one person guaranteed to cheer her up.

  Juniper—her newest and bestest friend.

  Chapter Five
r />   Stranded on Djaromir for the last couple of weeks as they had been, the women had naturally formed friendships. Some of them were tighter than others, but they all had each other’s backs, and that feeling of family was something Indigo hadn’t had in years. Their circumstances had made it inevitable.

  Her friends back home had simply been people she’d known. The folks who bought her pies. Her local grocery store clerk. The guy who delivered her alcohol-fueled online ordering binges. The lady that nodded to her when they saw each other at the corner coffee joint. None of those people knew what her normal Chinese food order was or what kind of pie she ate on her birthday—which were obviously the two most important things you could know about someone. Well, that and her favorite movie.

  Her lack of relationships had never been a conscious decision. She’d been so busy trying to stay afloat that she hadn’t had time to invest in relationships. Every person she met was kept in her life on a superficial level. Not only did it seem necessary for her to keep things light because of her schedule, but she also found it was safer that way. Considering her past, she found it easier to keep trucking along if you only had to worry about yourself.

  Indigo had been called a cold bitch more than once, but she didn’t let it bother her. She preferred to think of herself as driven instead of a workaholic. She was focused versus antisocial, keeping her eye on the prize to the point where she didn’t have normal relationships. Regardless of her embraced loneliness, she knew it hadn’t always been that way. In fact, when she was a child, her mom had always said that Indigo had never met a stranger. She was loud, happy, and made friends simply by walking into a room. She was the oldest of five kids living in a crowded, yet happy multigenerational household. Her home had been filled with so much love that it had been bursting at the seams.

  Everything had been smoothly chugging along in her blissful seventeen-year-old life—until it wasn’t.