Axall: Vaxxlian Alien Mail Order Brides #4 (Intergalactic Dating Agency) Read online

  Axall: Vaxxlian Alien Mail Order Brides #4

  Intergalactic Dating Agency

  Sue Mercury

  Contents

  About this book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Also in the Vaxxlian Alien Mail Order Brides series

  Also by Sue Mercury

  About Sue Mercury

  The Intergalactic Dating Agency

  Copyright © 2020 by Sue Mercury

  Axall: Vaxxlian Alien Mail Order Brides #4 (Intergalactic Dating Agency)

  All rights reserved

  No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Sue Mercury. All names, brands, characters, and settings are purely from the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to real people, real brands, and real locations is a coincidence. Contact: [email protected]

  Editing by Celeste Jones

  Cover design by Croco Designs

  Published in the United States of America

  Sue Mercury, Sue Lyndon

  http://www.suelyndon.com

  About this book

  He won’t leave Earth without her.

  After awakening from cryosleep, Rachel struggles to find her place in a strange new world. Earth isn’t the way she remembers it. Not even close. For starters, humans have made contact with real live aliens. Before she can wrap her head around all the changes, a bossy Vaxxlian warrior shows up in her bedroom claiming to be her mate. She tries to send him away, but the alien in question is as stubborn as he is tall. He also looks infuriatingly good without his clothes on…

  Axall has never believed in fate or love at first sight. That is, until he meets Rachel —the petite human female with soulful blue eyes and wavy, dark hair who stirs up his protective side. One glance and he’s completely smitten with the headstrong woman who incites his most primal desires. He’s determined to capture her heart and take her back to planet New Vaxx.

  Despite Rachel’s assertion that they aren’t compatible, Axall keeps trying to woo her, and if he doesn’t stop making those sexy growling noises, she just might lose her resolve. But no. It would never work—she has responsibilities on Earth she can’t abandon, even if she is starting to fall for the hunky green-eyed alien with the heart of gold...

  Chapter 1

  Rachel peeked out the window. Again.

  Having never seen an alien in person before, she couldn’t resist the temptation.

  Tall with broad shoulders. Bulging muscles. Dark wavy hair. Piercing green eyes that sometimes glowed. The magnificent being’s deep rumbling voice carried through the window on the breeze, a string of words she couldn’t understand. Galactic Common? She doubted the human female at his side spoke his native tongue of Vaxxlian.

  She squinted at the scene, trying to get a better look at the huge alien male. Moving with a surprising level of grace given his impressive size, he picked up a canoe and tucked it under one arm, holding it as though it weighed nothing. He proceeded to wrap his other arm around Shayna Bradley, the young woman who lived next door, and escorted her to the water’s edge. Apparently, a romantic sunset boat ride was in order.

  Maybe it was impolite to stare, but Rachel simply couldn’t help herself. She was absolutely transfixed by the sight of the muscular alien. Not because she was lusting after him—she wasn’t about to crush on another woman’s man—but because she still couldn’t believe that not only were aliens real, but they regularly visited Earth. A variety of alien races even lived on Earth, though from what she’d heard about Vaxxlians, they preferred to take their human mates back to their planet of New Vaxx and settle down.

  Not for the first time since she’d awoken from cryosleep, a wave of disbelief washed over her. Aliens were real and some even mated with humans. Interstellar travel was an actual thing. She gave her head a slight shake.

  How long would it take until this strange new reality felt real?

  Would she always feel out of place, like an outsider looking in?

  She exhaled a deep breath and moved away from the window. She turned around and gasped as she came face to face with Karla. The elderly woman glanced around her to peer out the window, then shot Rachel a knowing smile.

  “You scared me!” Rachel placed a hand over her racing heart. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Oh, long enough,” Karla replied with a laugh. “I’d wondered where you’d run off to. I should’ve known you were ogling Shayna’s new mate.”

  Rachel straightened. “I-I was not ogling him. I’m simply a bit curious, that’s all. Even though I woke up two months ago, it still feels strange to me and...” Her voice trailed off. Her breaths suddenly became shallow and fast, but after a few moments she managed to fight off the panic that threatened to choke her.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “I think so. It’s just that sometimes I feel as though I’m still in cryosleep, and maybe I really am. What if I never woke up? Maybe I’m dreaming. The scientists said we wouldn’t dream, but they were wrong about a lot of things. Maybe they were wrong about that too.”

  Karla displayed a compassionate smile before reaching out to pinch Rachel’s arm. Hard.

  “Ouch!”

  “You’re wide awake,” the older woman said in a matter-of-fact tone, her expression growing serious. “And you’re alive and well, young lady, I promise you that.”

  Rubbing her arm, Rachel scowled at the woman who was not only her employer, but the only friend she had in the world. The only person she trusted. Needing further reassurance, Rachel reached out and put a hand on Karla’s forearm, touching her just to make sure she was real. Well, she felt solid enough. The panic from moments ago receded further.

  “If you aren’t feeling well, you can take the evening off,” Karla said.

  “Oh, no. I’ll be okay. I suppose even if I am dreaming, I might as well play along with the whole affair.” Rachel laughed, but it felt forced. A lot of things she did felt forced.

  She was out of place, out of her own time, adrift in a futuristic world that she doubted would ever feel like home. Home was gone. Home was seventy-five years ago. All the people she’d grown up with, family and friends, they were all gone. Every single last one of them.

  She followed Karla into the kitchen and helped her get dinner started. Currently, there were five vacationers staying at Karla’s Kove, a quaint bed and breakfast that rested in a picturesque cove on Bitterroot Lake. The evening meal was always served at seven o’clock sharp and if they didn’t get a move on, dinner would be late tonight.

  “You know, you’re still young, and this planet isn’t how you remember it. Not by a long shot.” As Karla chopped up a tomato, she nodded at the small television that was mounted on the wall next to the fridge. Scenes of riots taking place in various cities across the United States flashed on the screen, the video feed streaming from Karla’s favorite independent news website that wasn’t exactly sanctioned by the government.

  From what Rache
l understood, the riots stemmed from a variety of causes—a crashing economy, anger at corrupt politicians, and a recent drastic increase in taxes. After awakening to a country in chaos, Rachel had intentionally settled in a remote location far removed from the larger cities where the majority of the unrest was occurring. But she couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be safe here on the lake.

  “Anyway,” the elderly woman continued, “maybe you ought to consider leaving. Do what Shayna Bradley did and sign up for Vaxxlian Alien Mail Order Brides. New Vaxx is supposed to be an amazing planet, peaceful and beautiful, and Vaxxlian males are said to be loyal and protective of their mates.”

  “Are you crazy?” Rachel asked, pausing in the midst of chopping up an onion. She blinked fast when the pungent aroma made her eyes water. “I couldn’t marry an alien, let alone a complete stranger.”

  “Why ever not?” Karla aimed a mischievous smile her way. “Honey, if I were a few decades younger, I’d sign up in a jiffy. Can you imagine what it would be like to mate with a Vaxxlian? I mean, I think the whole state of Montana heard Shayna and her Vaxxlian getting it on last night.” She waggled her eyebrows and giggled.

  Rachel’s face heated. She’d heard it too—the Vaxxlian’s deep, animalistic growls alongside Shayna’s keening moans of pleasure. The whole ordeal had lasted hours. Honestly, Rachel was surprised Shayna could walk straight today, though she kept this thought to herself.

  “I could never leave Earth,” she said after a pause. “My contract with Cryo-Z won’t allow me to leave the country, let alone the planet.” Once a year, she was required to report to Cryo-Z headquarters in Bozeman, where she would undergo a blood test and various medical scans, all for the purpose of discovering whether or not her long years spent in cryosleep had caused any adverse health effects. Though ten months remained until she needed to report for her first round of testing, she was already dreading it.

  “To hell with Cryo-Z,” Karla said. “If you ask me, those bastards screwed you over. They ought to have paid you a lot more, considering all you had to give up. Besides, if a Vaxxlian male tries to take you away on his spaceship, how is Cryo-Z going to stop him? They wouldn’t know you were missing until it was too late, and they sure as heck wouldn’t track you down all the way to New Vaxx. They don’t have a fleet of interstellar ships at their disposal. You’d be safe from their poking and prodding, and you’d have a brand-new start at life.”

  Unsure of what to say, or what to think, Rachel fell silent, finished chopping the onions, and added them to the pot of vegetarian chili. She headed for the sink and rinsed her hands off while considering Karla’s words. Not for the first time, she wished she had never signed up to become a test subject during Cryo-Z’s initial human trials.

  At the time, she’d been consumed by heartache and unable to cope with the tragic loss of her parents and sisters, who had recently perished in a plane crash. Shocked and grieving their loss, the thought of going to sleep for years and not feeling anything had been too sweet a temptation. A magic button to mute all her pain.

  When she saw a Cryo-Z advertisement for volunteers, she sent in her application immediately, praying they would select her. And oh how she’d sobbed with relief when she received that acceptance letter, clutching it as she fell to her knees, certain the Cryo-Z experiment was the answer to all her problems.

  But seventy-five years passed quickly when you were asleep. To Rachel’s dismay, it wasn’t any different than going to bed and rousing the very next morning.

  Now she was awake, and she couldn’t run away any longer.

  In the present, decades after the accident that stole away those she loved most in the world, she had no choice but to face the pain, to experience and process all the horrible feelings she had so desperately tried to escape.

  Unfortunately, there was no magic button, no pausing her grief.

  And God, how it hurt. There were days when she thought the anguish would swallow her whole. Since awakening, she wavered between spells of anger, sorrow, guilt, hopelessness, and countless other dark emotions.

  Too late, she realized she should’ve faced the loss of her family head on. Too late, she realized she shouldn’t have tried an easy fix for the pain. But youth and stupidity and grief had made for a bad combination. Now there was no going back.

  How would her life have played out if she hadn’t entered cryosleep? Would she have gotten married and had children? Would she have gotten a job in the fashion industry like she’d always dreamed?

  Twenty-one years old. She’d entered a cryochamber at age twenty-one, knowing everyone she knew would likely be gone by the time she woke up—all the well-meaning friends, aunts, uncles, and cousins who’d begged her not to volunteer. Yet she’d done it anyway.

  Seventy-five years later, she had awoken to a strange new world, a reality where aliens and amazing new technology existed. A reality that included war, unrest, famine, frightening new diseases, dangerous new weather patterns and environmental disasters.

  She barely recognized her own planet.

  A noise on the lake drew her attention. As she dried her hands, she glanced out the open kitchen window. Shayna and her Vaxxlian mate were seated on the canoe in the water, facing one another as they joined in a loving embrace. Every now and then the male would playfully kiss her neck and growl, which caused Shayna to giggle and nuzzle her face against his broad, muscular chest.

  Without warning, an odd sense of longing reverberated in Rachel. Even though she had Karla and she also regularly interacted with the guests at the bed and breakfast, the depth of her loneliness sometimes took her breath away. Particularly when she observed an affectionate couple. What would it be like to have someone who truly loved her? One special person who was utterly and deeply devoted to her?

  “The Vaxxlians are traveling to Earth quite regularly now,” Karla said, coming up behind her. “They used to arrive every six months on their big spaceship, the Hostanna, five hundred of them at a time, but they recently discovered a wormhole that makes travel to Earth much faster. Now they’re traveling here on their own smaller vessels, the same ships they used in the war against the Irrcons, those nasty aliens who killed most of their females all those years ago. Did you see that crazy looking spacecraft parked behind Shayna’s house?”

  “Yep, I saw it.” Rachel pulled out a large bowl for the cornbread mix and gave Karla what she hoped was a quelling look. “Listen, I appreciate your concern about my life, my future, but I’m perfectly content right here. I love living at Karla’s Kove and I enjoy working for you. Besides, I’ve heard Vaxxlians are rather bossy. The last thing I want is a man telling me what to do.”

  Liar. She glanced away when her face heated, hoping Karla didn’t press the issue. She was making half-hearted excuses, but the truth was much darker than Karla could ever know.

  “Here’s a fun fact for you. In some parts of the galaxy, Vaxxlians kidnap unsuspecting human women, bring them back to New Vaxx, and keep them as mates,” Karla said, “but their treaty with Earth restricts them from doing any kidnapping in this sector of space. However, you still hear of it happening now and then. Who knows? Maybe a sexy alien from New Vaxx will show up and abduct you from your bedroom one night.” She shot Rachel a teasing look.

  “If a Vaxxlian tries to kidnap me, he can expect a swift kick to the balls.”

  Chapter 2

  Axall walked the halls of the palatial home he shared with his younger brothers, Khann and Myadd, unsettled by the looming silence of the place. In all his life, he’d never known such loneliness, such emptiness. It was an ache that penetrated deep, down to the very depths of his soul, the vacant halls and rooms a stark reminder of all his people had lost during the war against the Irrcons. Thank the Star God he and his brothers would soon have mates to call their own. Perhaps the house would not feel so empty once they brought their human females back to New Vaxx. He could only hope.

  He checked the time on his wrist comm and headed for the roof. The
moons shone high and bright in the star-encrusted sky. His gaze swept appreciatively over the nighttime landscape of the new planet his people had recently settled upon, watching as a swarm of glowing insects swept over the forest below. The trees swayed gently in the wind, but the soft sound of ruffling leaves didn’t help to calm his growing impatience.

  Where were Khann and Myadd?

  He eyed the three disc-shaped Vaxxlian cruisers parked on the rooftop, all recently refurbished after having sustained great damage during the war. It had taken many moon cycles to finish repairs on their ships, but Axall was glad the project was finally completed. He’d personally repaired the vessels, while his brothers had started constructing their new home on the edge of Starzzia, the main settlement on New Vaxx.

  Once Axall had finished repairs on the ships, he had joined his brothers in putting the final touches on the massive home, which contained three separate wings that spread out across a flat expanse of land bordering a lush forest. After surviving the war, they had one goal in mind—secure mates of their very own and start families. By doing so, they would help their people regain their strength, to rebuild their numbers.

  In fact, every Vaxxlian warrior was expected to claim a human female and procreate with her, though an honorable male didn’t claim a mate until he could adequately provide for her. Shelter her and clothe her and feed her, along with any offspring produced by such a union.