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Marked Brides: Six Alpha Shifter Romances
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Marked Brides
By
Maren Smith, Morganna Williams, Delta James, Pepper North, Allysa Hart, and Lesley Clark
Copyright © 2020 by Stormy Night Publications and Maren Smith, Morganna Williams, Delta James, Pepper North, Allysa Hart, and Lesley Clark
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.
www.StormyNightPublications.com
Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson
Images by Shutterstock/ortlemma, Shutterstock/ShutterSparrow, Shutterstock/Valentyna Chukhlyebova, Shutterstock/Daniel Eskridge, Shutterstock/Ernie Hounshell, Shutterstock/Anton_Ivanov, Shutterstock/Halay Alex, Shutterstock/FOTOKITA, Shutterstock/Eky Studio, Shutterstock/Oleksandr Rybitskiy, and Shutterstock/Everilda
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Versoth Bride by Maren Smith
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Mate of the Mamuut by Morganna Williams
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
Wildcat by Delta James
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
A Polar Hope by Pepper North
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Daddy’s Stowaway by Allysa Hart
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Their Fated Mate by Lesley Clark
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
More Stormy Night Books by Maren Smith
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More Stormy Night Books by Morganna Williams
Morganna Williams Links
More Stormy Night Books by Delta James
Delta James Links
More Stormy Night Books by Pepper North
Pepper North Links
Allysa Hart Links
Lesley Clark Links
Introduction
The Great Event was the worst disaster that befell Earth since the Ice Age. Decimating humans’ way of life, it wiped out most technological advancement, leaving a populace scrambling to survive without the tools they had heavily relied on.
One glimmer of hope emerged—the nations now knew they would have to work together for humanity to survive. Nothing was effortless anymore. And as hunger increased, governments tried to organize and become the public servants they had promised to be. They formed a new Coalition of Nations, uniting all nations across the globe.
But then the mighty alien race known as the Arcans arrived and demanded a meeting with the Coalition of Nations. They informed the Earthers they were the descendants of a colony of humans sent into space long ago. Only the oldest on Earth remembered hearing family stories about a colony of scientists, explorers, and convicts who had left in a whirlwind of fanfare. It had been a stunning multi-national achievement. When they vanished without a trace, the world leaders abandoned them to their fate.
After years of struggle, the colonists had flourished, but in different ways.
The researchers had remained behind the walls of the great city and made tremendous advances in scientific endeavors.
The explorers had, for the most part, left to travel among the stars.
The convicts had been given a choice: return to Earth to serve out the remainder of their original sentence, or take their chances in the wilderness. None had chosen to return.
The new environment had affected those that did not live within the confines of the city. Those outside evolved over time. Their daily contact with the planet had sparked an evolution—a profound transformation. Their human DNA and bodies had undergone a synthesis with the planet itself, creating new and different species shifting from their Earth roots—human, but also Arcan.
The representatives had returned with a purpose. The inhabitants of Earth possessed compatible genes with the lost colonists. Terra Arcus needed genetic material, as the rate of females born on their planet had crashed. Retracing the voyage back to the colonizing planet that had abandoned them, the Arcan scientists theorized that Earth females would be genetically compatible with their males. The Arcan scientists completed extensive testing and confirmed that Earth females were a perfect match.
The Coalition of Nations sent out an appeal to the inhabitants across the planet:
The Coalition of Nations seeks volunteers to come to the aid of all peoples on Earth. In exchange for sharing our best and brightest, the Arcans will share their vast technology resources and knowledge. Families of the volunteers will receive endless food, clothing rations, and medical care. Volunteers will live in luxury, enjoying all the privileges that Terra Arcus offers.
Motivated by a desire to support their struggling families as well as their wish to bolster the lives of others across the globe, skilled minds from all industries and arts began to line up at the centralized Selection Arenas. There, each completed a series of tests and a detailed questionnaire that tasked the mind and body.
Versoth Bride by Maren Smith
Chapter One
My hands were shaking as I moved through the swampy overgrowth. Keeping a sharp eye out for snakes, I circled the hearth tree that made up the backbone of the grass hut I had come to call home and carefully cut the required number of switches. Six switches per lasher. One lasher per mate. Three mates for me once tonight’s bonding ceremony was through. It was going to be a long and, at times, terrible night. Small wonder I couldn’t stop shaking and yet, I wasn’t scared. Not really.
All around me, the buzz and chirps of insects kept me company. The gentle lap of slow-moving water bumped up against the stilts of the narrow wooden dock as I climbed up into the crisscross of low-hanging branches that sheltered our home. The soft moss felt good under my bare feet as I scaled the tree to reach those new-growth
verges higher up. Living in a swamp was hard on clothes. Even if they hadn’t stripped away all my belongings in my first few terrifying moments on this world, nothing I’d brought with me would have survived more than a handful of weeks. I hadn’t known it at the time, but escaping from the horseman, his clan and his cage, naked and wounded into the swamp, had been like being born again.
That I’d survived at all had been nothing more than luck.
Fate, as my Versoth mates would say.
Fate truly was a funny thing...
* * *
Saying goodbye to everyone and everything a person has ever known was a lot easier than one might think. Honestly, it was as simple as signing my name on the document at the Centralized Selection Arena. Once I received my acceptance letter promising that first transfer of food credits and medication, all of which would arrive at my grandmother’s door just as soon as I completed my testing, was enough to put me on the transport for the CSA. I didn’t get to see her withered face light up when it arrived or watch as my siblings dove into their first really good meal in... I honestly can’t remember how long... but knowing it would happen made what I was giving up more than worth it. The sickness eating away at my grandmother’s already frail body would take her from us soon enough. The medication I’d won for her would do nothing except make her comfortable, but I’d do it again. In a heartbeat. For the woman who’d raised us since before I could remember, she deserved not to be in pain.
My brother and my youngest sister, both still in school, would get to keep the house after she, and now I, were gone. These extra food rations would continue to the ends of both their lives, plus they’d get college scholarships. Free rides all the way. That was the promise that was made to me in exchange for leaving Earth, traveling God only knows how far away to Terra Arcus where I would start my life all over again. The willing wife to an absolute stranger—because unlike most of the people who were going, I wasn’t the smartest woman on the planet. I was pretty enough, maybe, but not beautiful. I don’t have a doctorate in anything. Before signing up for this program, I worked in a grocery store, which let me take home scraps smuggled out of the garbage and, believe me, I knew how lucky I was to have that job. And yet, when the alien ship came, like some bad 1950s movie, demanding women, I dropped everything to sign on. If it weren’t for the artists’ clause, however, I never would have been accepted.
The best of the best. That’s what they say the aliens wanted. I don’t know how well I stack up against the best on Earth, but I do like to draw. It’s my hobby, my passion, and charcoal pencils are my preferred medium. Anyone who has seen the walls of my bedroom knows I’m good at it. They’re covered floor to ceiling, just a hodgepodge of things I’ve seen and that stick in my head. Faces of people I both know and don’t know, all of them caught in little moments that I like to think define everything that’s good and decent about humanity. Little kindnesses—a shared touch between a mother and child, man and wife, complete strangers doing something they don’t have to for someone they don’t know. They’re all recorded on the walls of my room in charcoal and plasterboard.
When I found out artists were being allowed to sign up, I grabbed a camera, took pictures of all the ‘little moments’ I thought showed my abilities to their best advantage, and I submitted it to the online application program along with my contact information. Two days later, I got the phone call.
Two days after that, I was saying my goodbyes and packing a single suitcase to take with me to Dallas where I was scanned, assessed, medically cleared as both healthy and fertile, and then cataloged with all the other girls who’d been accepted and given a bracelet.
“Don’t put it on unless you’re sure,” I was told by the intake recruiter.
My family needed what they were getting in exchange for my going. I put the bracelet on right away, because I couldn’t afford to change my mind. I couldn’t afford to even think I had a choice.
The moment it clamped around my wrist it melted—for lack of a better word—against my skin. Only there was no heat. Rather, it became like a steel manacle, with two flashing red lights and one green one and at least two needles that punctured into my arm. It stung, but it likely would have hurt a whole lot more if not for the numbing agent those needles injected as they punctured my skin.
One flashing blip of those lights at a time, the manacle linked itself into me and began reading... whatever it was supposed to read.
The actual voyage itself was weirdly surreal. I was a participant at a massive slumber party, only I didn’t know anybody and it was in space. The whole ship hummed to the vibrations of the engines, but as fast as we were traveling, I could barely feel us moving as we jumped from wormhole to wormhole, turning all those distant star dots into white-line streaks.
I kept to myself mostly, watching out the windows at the vastness of the universe while behind me, women were chatting, laughing, and eating all the exotic foods and fruits they constantly brought out for us. We lounged about as if we were some grand sultan’s harem, all of us from different walks of life and bound to the same unknown, uncertain fate.
And then we arrived.
From space, Terra Arcus looked a lot like Earth. It was big and round, with lots of blue water, white clouds, and smudges of green and brown continents—just not the right number of them, in the right shapes or even in the right places.
I stood at the windows watching that world growing bigger the closer we approached, and all I felt was excitement. For the first time since I’d made my decision, I was eager to land. My new life would be a grand adventure and I—in good company with every other woman on this vessel—was doing something that none of us would ever have considered possible even a short month ago. We were going to help colonize a completely different world. True, this was attempt number two for Terra Arcus. The first colonizing effort had failed dreadfully. But that had been a long time ago, back when most of the people chosen to be sent here had been criminals, much like America and Australia back in their colonizing days. That didn’t bother me. As far as I was concerned, their technology was advanced and they had all the resources—food in abundance, fresh water and air—that Earth... my family... so badly needed.
Just my being here meant we were all going to get a fresh new start in life. How could that be anything but good, for any of us?
As we drew near, a polite voice over the intercom ordered us out of the common luxury area to our individual quarters. For safety in the landing process, the unseen man explained. So we obeyed. All of us, including me.
My room didn’t have windows. It was just a narrow closet, no bigger really than the space required for a narrow bed and a washing station.
“For your own safety, please lie down on your beds.”
The first hint of a niggling doubt tickled at the back of my head, but I did that too. Almost immediately, my entire body was caught in some kind of invisible field, sucking me firmly to the bed. I couldn’t raise or even move my head. I couldn’t so much as twitch a finger. All I could do was lie there, feeling the vibrations of the engine shake through me until the dread of it rattled my bones as we cut through Terra Arcus’s atmosphere. Over and over, I told myself that I was being ridiculous and there was nothing to get scared about. That this was just as that voice had said, a safety measure to prevent my getting hurt in this process. That this was still exciting.
Then came the even more dreadful stillness once we were down and the engines cut off.
And then that long, horrible silence, with me still stuck to my bed under the weight of that inescapable force field that refused to let me go.
Eventually, the silence was broken by the echoing tromp of footsteps passing back and forth down the corridor outside my door. Passing, but never stopping. Not knocking. Ignoring me completely, although now and then I could hear the high pitch of female voices softly asking questions as they were being led off the ship. One by one now. We were no longer a harem together; we had very easily and effectivel
y been segregated down into captive units without any leverage to argue or protest, and certainly no way to fight back.
Not that I knew what I was fighting back against. Not then, anyway.
Eventually, they came to get me too and it was as I was walking out that I finally realized that the truth of my new situation was nothing like I’d been led to believe. These people didn’t look on us as their saviors, or even as their equals. We were not coming there to be their mates. We were captives.
I was led straight from this luxury ship, past all those comfortable chairs where we’d enjoyed all that fresh fruit and food, and straight out the hatch doors into a tunnel of mostly fabric. It billowed in and out, as if it were a living, breathing thing, granting me only one direction in which to go and shielding from me even the most accidental glimpse of the world on the other side.
I could hear it though, familiar city sounds—vehicles traveling on a road, street vendors calling their wares, the rumble of many low masculine voices talking over one another.
With every outward snap of cloth, I could smell it too. The most marvelous scent I’ve ever filled my senses with—fresh, clean air, infused with the smell of baking bread, cooking meat, trees, flowers, earth—it was all there. In every breath, I could smell it and it was fantastic.
I stumbled along between the two guards who held me, one of my arms in each of their hands, letting them lead me wherever they pleased and breathing that wonderful scent. Just trying to get as much of it into me as I could before we reached the tunnel’s end and I had to go into the next building. The guards at the door opened it for us and the light on the other side was so glaring and bright that it blinded me.
“In,” one of my escorts ordered. He nudged my back and, shielding my eyes, I reluctantly stepped inside. With a sharp, almost medicinal hiss, I was enveloped in a blue mist. The mist didn’t hurt me, but it dissolved my clothes. The fibers deteriorated into nothing even as they fell off me. I tried to catch the shreds as they dissolved, becoming threads and then nothing within seconds.
Clapping my hands over my nakedness, I tripped right out of my fast-dissolving shoes as I shrank backwards out of the room. Or would have, had the door not slammed shut behind me, freezing me naked under the brightest of lights.