The Alien's Abducted Romance Author: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance, page 1
THE ALIEN’S ABDUCTED ROMANCE AUTHOR
ALIENS & AUTHORS
BOOK ONE
MARGO BOND COLLINS
CONTENTS
Introduction
About The Alien’s Abducted Romance Author
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
About the Author
More Books by Margo
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ABOUT THE ALIEN’S ABDUCTED ROMANCE AUTHOR
He's abducted the perfect human woman to help him choose a mate. The only problem? She doesn’t know anything about real love.
Three star cycles ago, a Dhrusten scoutship came across an abandoned spaceship drifting just outside their planetary system. Inside, Dhrusten warriors discovered a library containing the history of a race no one had heard of before.
Humans.
These histories captivated the Dhrusten—tales of the great deeds of heroes, recountings of battles against vicious monsters, detailed records of great detectives, and more.
Vhuron, the captain of that scoutship, found himself entranced not by those epic tales, but by the stories of ordinary males and females finding their perfect mates.
His favorite? The Spaceship Captain’s Bride by the great human historian Savannah Harper.
Now it’s time for Vhuron to choose his own mate. Unfortunately, no one appeals to him.
But he has a plan.
And who better to help him implement it than the one human who knows everything there is to know about choosing a mate?
There’s only one catch.
Savannah Harper keeps telling him she knows nothing about love.
Every book in the rollicking Aliens & Authors series is a standalone romance featuring a spicy hot alien hero and his reluctant human heroine. Fans of Grace Goodwin, Evangeline Anderson, and Ruby Dixon will love this steamy new series by the author of the Alien Bride Lottery series.
1
Captain Vhuron of the Dhrusten, Ahstram Clan, leaned back in the control chair on the bridge of the Fleet ship he commanded, the Ahstram Star, staring at the derelict freighter floating in space just outside their bow.
The spaceship took up just about the entire view screen. That other ship was why he and his crew were out here.
When he and his crew had discovered it, their scanning sensors pinging them with the notice of a vessel sitting unmoving in the Klatek quadrant, far outside the shipping lines, Vhuron had assumed it would be just another merchant vessel, little better than pirates, attempting to bypass regulations or fees and ending up stranded.
They’d been stunned at what they’d found.
Vhuron glanced at the scrolltab reader he’d placed on the console in front of him, his lips pursed in thought as he considered the handheld device, the armor plates that ran down his spine lifting and flattening in a slow rhythm.
When they realized they had stumbled upon a derelict alien ship, he and his crew had, of course, followed protocol. There was no room for error in a first-contact situation.
Quickly enough, though, they discovered there was no contact to be made.
Whatever had happened to the aliens aboard the broken-down hulk now floating outside his ship had not involved sticking around. Vhuron’s crew had discovered no one aboard the wreck—neither dead nor alive.
But they had discovered quite a bit otherwise. The creatures who had abandoned the other ship were obviously intelligent—no race made it to space otherwise—and in fact, seemed more like the Dhrusten than any other race ever discovered. For one thing, they were bipedal and bilateral. And from the images his chief computing engineer had pulled out of their database, they were similar in other ways as well. Their facial features were remarkably like the Dhrusten, with sensory organs that seemed to function much the same way.
They were a little odd-looking, to be sure. Their skin appeared to be entirely without scales, making them appear as soft and vulnerable as a Vlala pet’s exposed belly.
The females—or, at least, the ones Vhuron assumed were females—seemed to have only one pair of mammary glands, and if Vhuron remembered his xenobiology course from Fleet Academy, that suggested they were unlikely to have more than a single offspring at a time.
He shook his head wryly, considering the litter his clan brother’s mate had produced recently, the tiny offspring attacking each other with high-pitched growls and small, sharp teeth, rolling themselves into balls to avoid any serious damage from one another. Their spine ridges flattened against them until they looked like a miniature version of a Bhrakin egg as they showed nothing but the armor plating of their scales.
Vhuron’s hearts twisted into his throat. The thought of his clan brother grinning at him with a glint in his eye flash through his mind.
“Isn’t it time you took a mate?” Adikto had asked. “I know you’ve been able to put it off because of your position in the Fleet. But you cannot escape it forever, you know.”
The chaos of the scene had made Vhuron want to curl up into a ball, too. And now, as he remembered it, the thought of a single offspring seemed practically calm by comparison.
The alien creatures aboard the derelict ship had a number of other interesting features as well—most of which had learned about once the linguistics expert, Dhirzan, had decoded their language.
In all his years in the fleet, it was the first time Vhuron had truly understood the value of a linguistic specialist. With his specialized programs, Dhirzan had eventually managed to upload the bulk of the aliens’ language system into the Ahstram Star’s computer.
And that was when Dhirzan had discovered the historical repository—a vast digital library the aliens had brought with them.
That was when the Dhrusten began to learn about the new race whose relics they had discovered: humans.
Apparently the aliens’ culture had developed along a similar trajectory as the Dhrusten people, developing language and a written system well before they’d conquered space travel. Their historical repository was truly amazing. Apparently, these humans had recorded the personal histories of all the most important members of their species. Tales of the great deeds of heroes, recountings of battles against vicious monsters, detailed records of great investigators, and more.
The crew of the Ahstram Star had originally begun reading the translated texts as a way of learning more about a people they might run into again.
They had continued reading because the human histories were infinitely more interesting and entertaining than anything the Dhrusten had in all their own texts.
But then one book had truly captured the imagination of his crew.
The Space Captain’s Bride.
Vhuron learned about it after apparently half the crew had already consumed the information it offered and had tracked down his linguist to demand to see a copy.
“Of course, Captain. I’ll send it to your scrolltab. Be warned, though,” Dhirzan said as he tapped on the screen of his own tab. “It’s an oddly personal kind of history. It seems to be about the meeting dance between a ship’s captain and a human female.”
At these words, Vhuron’s spine ridges stood up almost straight. “Stargods, not mating again,” he muttered.
“Pardon me, sir?” Dhirzan asked. Vhuron waved his linguist’s question away with three of his four fingers in a gesture that would’ve been almost unbearably rude on Dhrust-3. But out here in space, everything was much cruder, the standards of politeness relaxed.
“I appreciate you sending it to me,” Vhuron said. “It should make for interesting reading.“ Even if only so he could learn more about this species that had found its way into his quadrant. After all, he would need to know what to do if he encountered them again.
Sometime the next day—he wasn’t entirely certain at what time—Vhuron dropped his circular scrolltab, the tablet that held his entire professional life, into its charging port beside his sleeping platform. Dhirzan had understated the case.
That was certainly the strangest history he had ever read.
It even went into intimate detail of the aliens’ mating rituals. And once he got past the odd anatomical description—apparently the males h
He’d found himself contacting Dhirzan several times as he consumed the information, checking on various translations that didn’t seem like they could possibly be correct.
Usually, Dhirzan had been able to add context as he learned more about the language.
Picking up the reader again now, Vhuron scrolled to the beginning again. Under the title was some interesting information. First, two words: A novel.
Dhirzan had said those words appeared on roughly half the tomes aboard the derelict and that the word novel meant new.
It made no sense. Unless it meant a new history?
But that wasn’t the line that interested him. Below the “new” word, there were two more: Savannah Harper.
Dhirzan and his computer had worked out what the linguist thought was a relatively correct phonetic alphabet, and Vhuron had used it to sound out the words.
Whatever else might be true, these humans had created a language that sounded beautiful to Vhuron’s ears. Or at least, those two words did.
When he came across a section entitled “About the Author,” he’d finally determined that Savannah Harper must be the name of the historian who had compiled the records for the book—and that historian was a female of the human species.
Savannah Harper.
He closed his eyes and thought about what her life must be like on that far-away planet…
Would she be expected to find a mate? Did human clans require their members to continue to propagate the species?
And there he was, once again thinking of the demands of his clan.
I have no idea how to find a mate.
But he knew one thing for sure: he wanted the kind of love Savannah Harper described in her history book.
He was still considering his dilemma when his comms buzzed. With a sigh, he shook his head and sat up straight.
Time to get back to work.
But in the meantime, the beginnings of an idea had started stirring in the back of his mind.
He simply had to work out the details.
2
Mary Sue Johnson, pen name Savannah Harper, bestselling author of romance novels, wiped a tear away from her cheek and dropped down into her office chair.
There were still work to be done, editing, revisions, a final pass over the manuscript—and then, of course, whatever her editor wanted her to do, though over the last few years, she had begun incorporating Laney’s most common suggestions into her revisions before she ever handed it over to the editor. so usually there wasn’t that much more to take care of.
Another Savannah Harper book completed, another amazing romance out among the stars.
Another life like nothing she would ever experience.
She knew it was all fake, of course—real love did not show up in a whirlwind, didn’t sweep you off your feet and into the stars, either literally or figuratively.
Real love, she suspected, was quieter than that. The daily grind of getting children to school, deciding who would do the dishes, being annoyed by the other person’s mess and choosing to ignore it.
Not that Mary would know, of course.
In the publishing world, she was the Queen of Romance.
In real life, though, love had eluded her so long that she’d finally given up on it.
In fact, other than the money it brought in, nothing else about her career was real.
But this was the career Mary had wanted. Day after day, she worked in her small, second-bedroom office, creating fantasies for other women.
Her friends—the few she had in real life—knew what she did for a living, and some of them even knew the pen name she wrote under. But everything else about her identity, everything her readers knew about her, was as fictional as the stories she wrote.
Savannah Harper is living her dream life in New York City with her husband, an actual real-life duke from England.
She’d snickered when she’d written the fictional biography, not realizing that eventually, readers at book signings would start asking her about that fake husband. She had finally built up a portfolio of everything she ever said about him—a character sheet in order to keep all her lies straight.
In reality, her life was boring. She did live in New York—that part was true—and had even managed to buy a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan with her royalties.
But there was no husband, no exciting life, no duke—just the quiet day-to-day life of a writer. A little lonely, sometimes, but full of the imagined loves of hundreds of other men and women.
It’s enough, she told herself more than once. I don’t need excitement.
I don’t need love.
But she wasn’t a good enough storyteller to convince herself of that lie.
Not quite.
Not yet.
Two weeks later, Mary met with her agent Daphne at a bar in Grand Central Station, arriving at four o’clock in the afternoon to avoid the worst of the crowds. She’d always loved this bar, with all its red leather, old train-related decor, and dark wood.
“Mary, darling,” Daphne said, standing up from her seat at a table to press her cheek to Mary’s and give air kisses. "How have you been?"
“Busy,” Mary said. “The usual.”
Daphne gave her a knowing look. "Holed up in your apartment writing?"
“Exactly.” Mary grinned. She and Daphne had worked together for almost a decade, ever since Mary had written her first romance novel, and sent it off, full of hope and excitement, to over a hundred agents.
That first book had been utter crap, something Mary could see easily now. But Daphne had seen the kernel of something great in it and had invited her to revise and resubmit.
During that first meeting, Daphne had stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Your name is really Mary Sue? You can’t possibly publish under that.” Her mouth had twisted. “We need to come up with something…sweeping. You know—something romantic.”
Mary had obliged, and Savannah Harper had been born.
And over the years Savannah and Daphne had become fast friends.
Now, the robowaiter rolled up with the drinks Daphne had ordered before Mary had arrived.
Am I really that predictable? Mary wondered as she picked up her piña colada and took a sip. But she knew she was. She always ordered the same drink, no matter where they went—and her favorite bars were those with the best piña coladas.
“What’s so important?” Mary asked. “You’re not usually quite so…” Her voice trailed off.
“Pushy about making sure we meet in person?”
Mary laughed. “Yes. That.”
“I have some news.”
“Good, I hope?”
An expression of discomfort flashed across her agent's face. “Mixed,” she said finally.
Anxiety curled through Mary’s stomach, and almost unconsciously, she pressed a hand against her abdomen. “What is it?” she asked, dread suffusing her voice.
“Starscape Books has decided not to renew your space captain series.”
Nausea replaced the anxiety. “Did they say why?”
“Don’t panic, dear heart,” Daphne said. “I recognize that look.”
Mary’s voice came out strained and harsh. “Why didn’t they renew it?”
“Sales have been less…exciting than they were when the series originally came out.” At Mary’s stricken glance, Daphne continued. “You know, book sales have been steadily declining for everyone, not just you. People simply don’t read as much as they used to.”
