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  Jada shook her head, stunned at the juxtaposition of his words and his actions. “But these are the women you’re planning to kidnap and force to do your bidding. How do you see them becoming some sort of harmonious integration into Dazon society and elevating your standard of living…or whatever you have in mind? The women will fight you every step of the way.”

  He glared at her, giving her a look that suggested he found her no more important than he would a bug pinned under a microscope. “The women will cooperate if they want to have their disease held in check. If they continue to resist, it’s a simple matter to shut down the nanotechnology. If I had your nanos’ exact energy signature, I could shut yours down in five minutes or less.”

  She glared at him with equal ferocity, taking a step forward without thinking. She almost marched right up to him and slugged him in the face, which wouldn’t have been very peaceable of her, but certainly would have felt good. Instead, Ryland’s hand around her wrist kept her from moving forward. “You’re still talking about force and coercion. The only way this union will work is as a partnership. The women have to be ready to become your partners, and there has to be more incentive than holding their health over their head.”

  He shrugged. “You humans are far below us and beneath us. You should consider it an honor that we would integrate you into our society.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’d integrate a strain of fungus into your society if it gave you the results you’re looking for, Dr. Ha.”

  He inclined his head in a nod of agreement. “I see we share a similar opinion of your species then.”

  She turned to Ryland, who had not released his hold on her hand. “I know he’s your brother, but can’t you just shoot him?” She was so frustrated that the words came out staccato, and she punctuated the last one with a grunt.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have that authorization, Jada.” He winked at her. “Now, I want you and the other women to move to the back of the room, because the commander and the rest of the team are in the facility, and they’ll be breaching those doors any second. I want to minimize injury, particularly to the earthlings.”

  Jada nodded, understanding the need to be relegated to the back of the room and protected, though she didn’t like it. She would rather stand beside him, but she knew it would be a distraction for him, rather than a helping hand. She didn’t know anything about combat, and she didn’t even know if Ha’s people would put up a fight or if they would surrender peacefully. Either way, Ryland would be more focused, ergo safer, with her out of the immediate area.

  Jess heard his words too, and she started herding the women who could walk toward the back of the room. Those who were in chairs or beds, and required assistance, took more time. She was surprised that Ha’s group made no effort to stop them from moving the women, but she was glad to be able to accomplish the task quickly.

  They had just moved the last of the nearest thirty women deeper into the room, closer to all the other beds, when the door opened. She had been expecting a battering ram, or the alien equivalent, to be necessary, so it was almost a letdown when the door slid open easily, and the troops entered to surround Jorvak.

  He and his associates surrendered without fighting, though the doctor paused as they started to escort him from the room, looking directly at Ryland as Jada came back to him, deciding it was safe enough to approach now. “All you’ve done today is slow down our progress and delay the inevitable. I’m not the only one who thinks this way, Inquisitor Breese. You’ll see that I have more support than you, and I’ll be the hero who discovered the salvation of our race, while you’ll simply be the footnote recorded as a brief impediment.”

  Ryland shook his head as he put his arm around Jada and pulled her nearer. “I believe you’re wrong, Jorvak, but I will not willingly allow such a plan to proceed, and I won’t follow any who would order such action.”

  The Dazon who had arrested Jorvak led him from the room, and his associates fell in line between the aliens taking them into custody. Each arrestee moved with a cocky arrogance that suggested they were certain they had nothing to fear.

  Jada turned to Ryland, grasping his hand in hers. “Are they right? Will they be greeted as heroes rather than criminals?”

  Ryland lifted his shoulder. “I wish I knew. I’d like to believe in the goodness of my fellow Dazon, and that they couldn’t act in such a reprehensible manner, but they’re also desperate, and Jorvak was right. The bonds that hold us together as a people have frazzled and split over the ensuing generations, and we’re a much more selfish society than we used to be. All we can do is wait and see.”

  She didn’t like that plan, and she clung to him tighter. “Do you have to go back?”

  He froze for a moment before lifting a hand to push her kinky curls off her forehead in a tender gesture. “I’ll submit a recording for my debriefing, and I can record my testimony live via our communications link. There’s no pressing reason for me to return to Dazonia Major. I would like to stay here on Earth…with you…but in what capacity?”

  She licked her lips and pressed her body closer to his. “I’d like to have you stay in the capacity as my lover, eventually becoming my husband—or whatever Dazons call that role—and creating children together.”

  His eyes darkened, and he almost purred. “So now you believe in the mating flare, my sweet human?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really, but I believe in you, and how you make me feel. I want you to stay.”

  Ryland bent his head, bringing his lips close to hers when he said, “Forever and always, my dear mate.” A second later, he sealed the promise with a kiss.

  ALIEN’S BABIES (DAZON AGENDA, BOOK TWO)

  Co-Authored By Juno Wells and Aurelia Skye

  © 2015 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.

  JOIN JUNO WELLS’ NEW RELEASE LIST!

  Click on this link (or copy and paste it into your browser): http://eepurl.com/bnMJL5

  Amourisa Press and Kit Tunstall, writing as Aurelia Skye, reserve all rights to ALIEN’S BABIES. This work may not be shared or reproduced in any fashion without permission of the publisher and/or authors. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  © Kit Tunstall, 2015

  Cover Images: Depositphotos.com/clearviewstock; philippe; prometeus

  Editing provided by N.G.

  Blurb

  Jessminda Patel was one of four hundred Earth women kidnapped by a rogue Dazon scientist who used her and the others for his breeding experiments. She’s devastated to learn she’s pregnant with an alien’s babies, and the father is equally surprised. Valkor Tosh is a decorated alien war hero whose DNA was stolen to fertilize Jess’s eggs. They’re strangers brought together under the strangest circumstances, but their mutual attraction and his insistence that she’s his mate might do the impossible—bring them together to fall in love and create a real family for their babies.

  Chapter One

  “I’m what?” Jessminda Patel looked across the desk at the golden-skinned alien doctor who’d just uttered the most ridiculous words ever. “I can’t be.”

  Dr. Wy looked regretful, but insistent. “There can be no mistake, Ms. Patel.” He looked down at her file contained on something that looked similar to a tablet, though semitransparent. “I did check everything three times, though I worked quickly when I was informed you were one of the women who refused to stay at this facility for the next few days while we sort out this mess.”
r />   She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the doctor. “You’re darn right I refused to stay. I was kidnapped and taken from my home, and I’ve been out of touch for two weeks. I want to get out of this place now, and there’s absolutely no way you’re going to hold me.”

  The alien doctor arched his brow ridge, his golden-brown eyes shining, though it was difficult to tell with sympathy or frustration at her recalcitrance. “I understand, Ms. Patel, but I’m not trying to hold you here. I have no reason to do so.”

  She snorted. “That’s not what I’ve heard or overheard, as the case may be. Since my DNA is highly valued by your people, don’t expect me to trust anything you say.”

  The doctor sighed, and then nodded. “If you would allow me to show you then?”

  She nodded, though her insides were a twisted mass of nerves. She knew part of her defiance and overall lack of cooperation was simply a front to disguise how distraught she was. That, and she was clinging to the belief the doctor was lying to her for some nefarious purpose because she needed that. What he claimed was unthinkable, and she couldn’t face it on top of everything else she had been through the last couple of weeks.

  The doctor used his tablet to call up whatever he was looking for, and a moment later, a 3-D image popped up from the screen, filling her field of vision. “This is from the full-body scan we performed less than an hour ago, trying to ascertain if there was any damage from Dr. Ha’s experiments.” He moved his fingers on the tablet, and the picture went from showing all of her skeletal, muscular, and vascular system in layered slices to just her abdominal quadrant.

  She reared back slightly when the image of her own ovaries and reproductive system loomed in front of her face far larger than life. Literally. As a retired nurse, she knew exactly what she was looking at, and her heart sank as her eyes focused on three little dots that shouldn’t be there. Not that they were small dots at this magnification. They were almost as large as they would be in real life in a few months.

  A wave of nausea swept through her, and she shook her head as she wanted to stubbornly cling to her rejection of the truth. “It makes no sense. I heard Ryland…Inquisitor Breese…say Jorvak Ha hadn’t even gotten to making blastocysts yet.”

  “That’s partially true, but the inquisitor hadn’t had the opportunity to fully explore the facility. There was another, smaller room farther from the main lab. That’s where we found remnants of his experiments with fusing human eggs and Dazon sperm to form blastocysts. Some of those beings are still stored in frozen tanks, but the ones he tried to grow in exo-wombs didn’t thrive.”

  She let out a little moan of denial.

  “According to Ha’s notes, he couldn’t quite adapt the exo-womb to the same environment as the human womb without his full laboratory facility back on Dazonia Major.” The doctor looked disgusted when he said, “He decided to bypass the exo-womb and go straight to the source. Unfortunately, you aren’t the only woman in this position, Ms. Patel. Of the twenty-one fertilization and implantations Ha undertook, fourteen were successful, resulting in a pregnancy.”

  Jess refused to cry, but it was tenuous for a moment. “I’m surprised he only did fourteen,” she said scathingly.

  “I have no doubt he would have succeeded on a far larger scale if Inquisitor Breese and his human mate hadn’t managed to stop this operation and call in Commander Darvig and the armada.”

  Jess slumped in her chair, no longer able to pretend like the alien was lying to her. Her gaze focused sharply on the three little embryos displayed so prominently by alien technology. They were growing inside her at the moment, and it was a bewildering and terrifying prospect. “They’re so much farther along developmentally than they should be. I was his prisoner for roughly two weeks, but these appear to be somewhere around six to eight weeks in development.”

  The doctor looked impressed. “I concur. During our genetic manipulations undertaken the past few generations in an attempt to keep our species alive after the biological weapon destroyed most of our women’s ability to reproduce, our geneticists have increased the rate of fetal development by a factor of five. What used to be a fifteen-month gestational period for Dazon women has been safely reduced to three months.”

  She shook her head again as another wave of nausea swept throughl her. Abruptly, she realized she’d felt nauseated off and on for at least the last four days, but had attributed it to her captivity and perhaps whatever drugs they used to keep her compliant when she was taken to the lab for testing—testing she could never recall afterward, and now had a better picture of what it involved.

  “How long do you think I have until…” She trailed off, barely able to say the words. They felt strange in her mouth, as though her lips and tongue wanted to reject them as much as she did. “…the birth?”

  The doctor lifted a shoulder. “If it accelerates similarly to a Dazon pregnancy, I would estimate three months. Of course, that’s if you choose to continue. Termination is certainly a viable option, especially in your situation.” The doctor looked pained to offer her the choice, and his body language seemed to be imploring her to reject that option.

  Jess refused to do so just to placate him. She understood, at least intellectually, how valuable viable offspring were to the Dazon Empire, but she had been given no choice in the matter, and she wasn’t an incubator for an alien species.

  In an attempt to distract herself from his imploring gaze, she forced herself to ask the question that had been hovering at the back of her mind since she had started to reluctantly accept the alien doctor who had arrived with the rescue party a few hours ago was telling her the truth. “So who is the father? Was it that mad scientist, Ha?” The idea chilled her, and she was certain she would lose the battle against the surging nausea creeping up the back of her esophagus for a moment.

  “No, it wasn’t him. Dr. Ha was methodical in his pairings, selecting the optimal genetic match for each of the women whom he experimented on from the Dazon DNA database.” The doctor tapped on his tablet again, and the picture of a golden-brown alien appeared before her.

  She caught her breath at the handsome male specimen before her. The skin color was a little strange, as was the fact he had no eyebrows or hair on the sides of his head, but his features were pleasing, if a bit roughhewn, and he had an impressive physique from what she could tell from the image that showed him from mid-chest upward. He wore the same silky black jumpsuit as the others, and she knew that allowed him to transition to the Mr. Bland disguise, as her friend Jada called it.

  It was an apt descriptor. In his current form, there was nothing bland about him, and she was startled to realize she found him attractive. She grimaced at the thought. “He’s the rapist, huh?”

  Dr. Wy frowned at her. “Valkor Tosh had nothing to do with violating you, Ms. Patel. That was all on Ha and his team. Valkor is a distinguished warrior, and he had no knowledge of his DNA being used for such a purpose.”

  She arched a brow. “And how does that work? Someone jerked him off and didn’t tell him?” She took a small bit of pleasure in the doctor’s flinch at her crudity, though she wasn’t entirely certain why she was being so blunt about it, other than it distracted her from the reality of the situation. Or perhaps it was because lashing out exercised her verbal control, which felt like the only kind of control she had over this crazy situation at the moment.

  The doctor looked slightly offended as he touched his tablet yet again, removing the image of Valkor Tosh to bring up a picture of a laboratory that appeared to be a hybrid of alien and human technology. “Ha wasn’t able to transport his full laboratory and technology with him on his supposed hiatus when he sneaked here to Earth, because it would have been too suspicious.

  “What he did manage to bring easily allowed him to manipulate Dazon DNA. All he needed was Tosh’s genetic profile, and he was able to manufacture cloned sperm. Valkor Tosh was nowhere near Earth or you when your eggs were stimulated to overproduce, and then you were impla
nted with the three most viable blastocysts a few days later. He was as shocked as you to learn about the existence of the offspring.”

  Her eyes widened with shock at the news, and then a second wave of shock hit her. “You told him? What about my patient privacy?”

  Wy looked confused. “He is the male contributing genetic partner and has as much at stake as you do, Ms. Patel.”

  She shook her head. “Oh no he doesn’t. He’s not the one who was forcibly impregnated with an alien kid. Three kids,” she corrected as her eyes scanned the embryos forming in her womb when Wy brought up the image again. Damn his manipulations. It didn’t matter if she was staring right at them. She wouldn’t be forced to continue this experiment unless she chose to do so. “I want to go home now. My friend Jada and Inquisitor Breese are waiting for me, and I’m leaving.”

  Dr. Wy inclined his head. “Of course, but I hope you will permit me to monitor your progress, should you decide to continue with the pregnancy.”

  She was surprised that he offered no attempt to dissuade her from leaving, and she was moderately grateful for that. She got to her feet with a nod in his direction without promising anything. And then she walked quickly from the makeshift office they had set up to speak with and examine each of the four hundred women being held in this facility before they were released.

  It felt amazing to walk again after spending three years in a wheelchair, and at least one good thing had come out of all this. As soon as she exited the room, she saw Jada pacing in the antechamber, while her apparently alien mate—that was the strangest concept ever, considering her friend had barely known Ryland for little more than a couple of days, but had already seemed to form a deep attachment to him—stood slightly off to the side, watching Jada’s curvy form tear up the same path as she paced back and forth, her kinky curls bouncing with each step. As soon as Jada saw her, she paused midstride before turning and detouring to hug her again.