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  Ysaak looked sick. “He intends to hold the nanotechnology as leverage to force the cooperation of Earth and make them turn over the best breeding stock.” He said the last two words with a disgusted curl of his lips. “I can’t believe how shocked I am by this after seeing what he’s already done, but I couldn’t have imagined such a twisted and vile plan, or think he would be capable of forcing half the humans into breeding and servitude.”

  “Not so shocking,” contradicted Taleeza, who had been a quiet spectator in the corner until that moment. “Dazon males have done it to the females for the last three generations, and they care even less about human females than their own species.”

  Ysaak nodded, clearly agreeing with her, albeit reluctantly. “You’re right, sister.”

  “Now what happens?” asked Embeth. It was the obvious question, but with no obvious answer.

  It took hours before their theory was confirmed, and even more time spent by the leaders of Earth on debating whether it could actually be true. It was early the next day before there was a general acceptance among world leaders that the reason women were falling ill was because of a biological weapon used by the Dazon Empire.

  As an ambassador, especially with the unique perspective obtained from having been to the planet and present during the coup to replace Emperor Talek, Embeth was involved with the debate behind the scenes and the teleconferences coordinated from the central hub of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. She had folded there with Ysaak early that morning, before he had returned to the consulate.

  By early afternoon, the leaders had reached a consensus that war was the only answer. Embeth wanted to disagree, but she had no alternative options to offer, especially with the state of health among the general population.

  Dr. Wy was currently synthesizing nanotechnology as quickly as he could, and women would be receiving doses as soon as possible, but in the meantime, half the population of Earth was suffering or ill. There had been a catastrophic number of miscarriages already, and female infants and elderly women in particular were faring poorly.

  The babies and elderly should be the top priority when the nanotechnology was available in large enough quantities, but she was certain the nanotechnology would go first to the elite before eventually trickling down to the “common” population. It was disgusting, and for a moment, she could understand why Aryk and his group considered humans barbarians.

  Not that the Dazon were any better, having practically poisoned half the population with little regard to what would happen to the weaker members of the race. A large number of elderly women and many of the babies had already succumbed to what the scientists had dubbed ROMKS, or Rapid-Onset Mutagenic Kaiser’s Syndrome.

  Only the young, strong, and previously healthy women seemed to be handling the severity of symptoms, though there weren’t any signs of recovery yet. This must have been what Aryk had referred to as The Culling when he had talked about selecting the strongest breeding stock. He’d just left out the detail that they would only take the ones who survived the process and ignore the ones who didn’t or were severely weakened by it.

  The president addressed the world that afternoon, having inserted herself as the spokesman for all the world leaders. For a change, Saunders didn’t look perfectly coiffed and poised. She seemed frazzled and looked ill. As a world leader, she, along with all the other female heads of state, had received one of the first batches of nanotechnology that were available, so her symptoms had remained relatively mild and were mostly in check now, but there was still evidence she had been suffering too.

  “It is with a heavy heart I confirm news reports that the Dazon Empire has attacked us to infect human women with a virus that will reprogram our genetic material to make us compatible with their DNA. They wish to acquire human women, or at least our eggs, to continue their race. Our negotiation efforts have failed, and the Dazons proved intractable. They insist there’s no peaceful solution available, and we’re reluctantly forced to agree. World leaders have unanimously voted to declare war on the Dazon Empire. Although a frightening prospect, for the first time humanity is drawing together to face a common foe. I’m confident we’ll emerge stronger than ever from this threat, and with a new sense of unity and purpose among all people on Earth.”

  It was a pretty speech, but Embeth didn’t buy it. The way the president had swayed and paused to dab her brow to remove perspiration at the key moment when she assured them they would all emerge stronger was an unintentional dose of irony, she was certain. The president was saying the right things, and they were probably what the people needed to hear, but Embeth could take no comfort from the speech, and she had no faith in the president’s words.

  At that moment, they were united, but it had taken a lot of squabbling and negotiation just for the major world leaders to agree on an initial course of action, whose sole task was to declare war, but without a substantive plan of how they would do so. She was skeptical that the union could last, even in the face of a common enemy, but she couldn’t continue to worry about that at the moment. She just didn’t have the energy.

  She was leaving the conference room with seating for five hundred, along with international teleconferencing equipment, when Ysaak folded in front of her. “What are you doing here, Ysaak? I thought we’d agreed to meet at my apartment this evening. I expected you to still be at the consulate.”

  He put his arm around her. “We must return to the consulate as quickly as possible.”

  She didn’t even have a chance to reply before he had folded them back to the antechamber of the consulate. It was normally an open area with people coming and going. Today, it was filled almost to capacity, with Dazons and humans alike pressed against the glass of the observation windows. He angled them into a small opening between a group of Dazons, and his gaze seemed to be frantically scanning the stars.

  “What is it?” Fear curled in her stomach like an icy ball.

  “Our long-range sensors have detected an armada approaching.”

  “Armada? Aryk?” she asked, her breath hitching in her chest as panic filled her.

  “We don’t know yet, but it seems likely.”

  She clutched Ysaak’s hand and leaned against him. “They’ve come to harvest the women, haven’t they?”

  He hesitated. “Or just their eggs, though that will still require taking the women they’ve selected. I really don’t know his exact plans, my love.”

  Grim possibilities occurred to her, chief among them being torn away from Ysaak, and then she wondered what they would do with the infant already inside her when it was born. Would she be allowed to raise her child, or would he be shunted to a rearing facility while she was forced to be a breeder in a breeding facility?

  Her heart ached at the thought, and for a desperate moment, she wanted to get in the ship that had folded them here and disappear to one of the other colonies or somewhere else uninhabited in the galaxy. In their explorations, the Dazon had mapped a good portion of the universe, and Ysaak would know where to go.

  Before the selfish impulse could take root, the armada entered their view. It was too late to flee now if they could physically see the ships without the Dazons’ advanced technology. The armada would see their ship folding and might destroy it. She wasn’t yet ready to throw away her life, Ysaak’s, and their unborn child’s in an attempt escape the Dazon.

  All the communication screens nearby suddenly filled with the face of the man she had seen in the corridor as they had made their escape from the palace. She didn’t remember his name, but she recognized his scarred face, particularly his missing eye. “That’s General…”

  “Monash,” said Ysaak.

  “Is he Aryk’s man?”

  Ysaak shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, belisa.”

  “This is General Monash of the Dazon Armada. We’ve come to protect Earth from First Prince Aryk’s unlawful campaign to exploit Earth and its resources, including humans.”r />
  A wave of relief swept through her, and she collapsed into Ysaak’s arms, detecting he was also trembling slightly with relief. She couldn’t determine the size of the armada, or the number of Dazon warriors aboard each of the ships, but that they had some support and advanced technology gave her new hope for the forthcoming war with Aryk and his supporters.

  She squeezed his hand and clung to that hope rather than submerging herself in fear.

  MOON MADNESS (DAZON AGENDA, BOOK FOUR)

  Co-Authored By Juno Wells and Aurelia Skye

  © 2016 Juno Wells

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

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  © Kit Tunstall, 2016

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  Blurb

  When General Orix Monash defected from the Dazon armada to protect Earth, he expected some fear and suspicion. What he didn’t expect was to find his mate among the Earth women at the Moon’s consulate. Mary Catherine Jones is the caretaker for the orphaned human-Dazon hybrid babies, but when he looks at Mac, he wants to take care of her forever. She feels the pull too, and they’re quickly drawn together—and drawn into a plot that involves a traitor and the first battle in Emperor Aryk’s bid to steal Earth women for mating purposes.

  Chapter One

  Since leaving the rearing facility at fifteen planet-cycles-old, Orix Monash had been a soldier. That was a long time. Certainly long enough to look at a room to size up the situation immediately. There was a lot of hostility, and though it shouldn’t have surprised him, it did. He could understand the negative reactions, particularly among the humans seated around the large table, but it still startled him to see a range of emotions from distress to blatant suspicion on many of the faces around him, including faces of those he had known for a long part of his lifespan.

  In particular, Commander Sash Darvig was regarding him with flagrant mistrust, indicating he wasn’t certain of Orix’s motives, or why roughly thirty percent of the armada had defected with him. He cleared his throat as silence finally descended, and all gazes fell on him. They were waiting for an explanation, and that was something he couldn’t offer, not really having one himself, which was likely to add to the mistrust surrounding him.

  Ambassador Embeth Williams, who sat beside her mate, Second Prince Ysaak Chon, gave him an encouraging smile. He wanted to rebuff the gesture, to remind her he was a hardened warrior, not a nervous schoolboy. It would be ill-form to do so, especially since he also felt disconcertingly like a nervous schoolboy for just a moment.

  Orix cleared his throat again, waiting for someone to ask the first question. It was a negotiating tactic he had learned early on in his military career, and it also revealed a great deal about the other party’s position. They shouldn’t be in negotiations, since he and his comrades had voluntarily defected from their military and home world, but he knew they were going to take some convincing to believe it for certain.

  Sash was the first ask, “What are you really doing here?”

  Orix maintained a calm expression, fixing his one good eye on his old friend. “We’re here to defend Earth from Emperor Aryk’s intentions, Commander Darvig.”

  “Or maybe you’re here to finish the task,” said a small Earth woman farther down the table. She hadn’t identified herself, and she bore no name tag or other way for him to discern her position.

  He shook his head just once. “As soon as we found out what the First Prince…I mean Emperor…had planned, those of us who objected strongly organized and made the decision to break away from the home world and the main armada. We arrived as quickly as we could.”

  “I find it very convenient that you didn’t arrive until after your military had deployed the biological weapon responsible for spreading ROMKS among Earth women,” said the same scowling human.

  He scowled at her, starting to feel tendrils of anger creeping over him. He wasn’t used to being questioned or having to account for his every movement. It had been some time in his career since he been accountable to much of anyone other than the emperor or the first and second princes.

  “I assure you we arrived as quickly as we could. There was heavy fighting to break away. As soon as Emperor Aryk realized we were defecting, he threw everything he had at us. My ships have sustained heavy damage, and we’ve lost at least five percent of the personnel who made the choice to turn their backs on the home world and come here. Your interrogation and insinuations are insulting, Ms.…?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, as though he was something foul. “Jordan Saunders. I’m the president’s daughter, and her liaison for the Moon Consulate.”

  He nodded once to indicate he had heard her introduction. “We’re here to help in whatever capacity we can do so. If we could have arrived sooner, or managed to warn you before the weapon deployed, we would have done so. Those of us who have chosen to defend Earth are appalled at the emperor’s actions. Three generations ago, the Veluvians did something similar to us, and though the emperor and Jorvak Ha are trying to solve that problem, this is not the way to do it.”

  Prince Ysaak cleared his throat, drawing all eyes to him. “General Monash, you said about thirty percent of the fleet has come with you?” At Orix’s nod, he frowned. “That leaves at least seven hundred thousand troops at my brother’s disposal. Did he give any indication of his next step or overall plan?”

  Orix shook his head. “No. The emperor was tightlipped about all the steps. He simply revealed Dr. Ha had created a retrovirus that would make all Earth women compatible for breeding, and it was about to be deployed. There was truly no time to warn the earthlings, especially amid the battle to break free.” He shifted slightly in his seat, overcome with a strange surge of guilt at having abandoned his duty and his post.

  Only a stronger moral conviction could lead him to such an action. His doubts had begun when he had learned of Aryk murdering the former emperor to seize power, but that hadn’t been enough to make him deviate from his duty. It had taken the abrupt and appalling wake-up call of hearing that their own people were preparing to deploy a biological weapon against people who should not be their enemies that had forced him to make a sudden and decisive break with his military career and life on Dazonia Major.

  It was still an unsettling situation, and he found himself struggling as they threw questions at him. It wasn’t that he struggled to answer, and if he didn’t know the right response, he bluntly stated that. The entire process was just an emotionally draining struggle. Inside, he was a mass of turmoil, far more emotional about the situation than he was prepared to reveal to a group of strangers—especially since many of them still maintained a hostile front and seemed convinced he was part of a bigger plot perpetrated by Aryk.

  Did they imagine he and three hundred thousand other soldiers, minus fifteen thousand lost to casualties, had arrived as part of a ploy on the emperor’s part? It was a slightly ludicrous idea, but he supposed he unders
tood their caution and fear. Half the population was ill, and only a few essential personnel in government had been given the nanotechnology that would keep the retrovirus in check and reverse the symptoms of ROMKS.

  He was in the midst of debriefing the prince and the commander about the status of the ships and the troops available, wishing the men would wait until they had a smaller audience before asking him to reveal their strengths and weaknesses, when his heart rate increased, and his hearts thundered in his eardrums. It was a disconcerting sensation, especially since he had no logical explanation for it. Orix glanced around, his gaze locking on a small Earth woman just crossing the doorway of the meeting room, which was open to allow as many essential people to cram inside as possible.

  Clearly, the honey-blonde woman hadn’t been considered essential personnel, but his body suddenly found her very essential. A wave of dizziness swept over him, and he gripped the edges of the table as his hearts continued to pound, and his libido switched into overdrive. He was hard and aching for the woman, who seemed startled when their gazes met. He imagined her reaction was to his scarred face and missing eye, currently hidden under an eyepatch as a nod to decorum for the Earthlings. The piece of fabric itched and irritated his golden-brown skin, making him suddenly, almost painfully, aware of its existence by the way it rubbed his skin raw as she looked at him.

  A second later, the woman was gone, but certainly not forgotten. It took Orix a long moment to realize people were still speaking to him and asking questions, and another, even longer, moment to compose himself and reorganize his thoughts. As he answered, his mind was preoccupied with the woman who had passed by.