Warlord Wulf thought nothing could be worse than being tortured and contaminated by the Hive. That was before he’s ordered to transport to Earth and represent The Colony in an unfamiliar horror… a human reality show. The Bachelor Beast is the hottest new program on Earth, but being set up with two dozen clingy females is not his idea of a good time. When his Beast refuses to show the slightest interest in any of the show’s potential mates, he knows he must choose one or die due to his raging mating fever.
His Beast prefers execution to claiming anyone but his true mate. Wulf is resigned to his fate, a one-way trip to Atlan, a prison cell and execution. It is the only honorable thing left to do.
Until one glance, one sweet, feminine scent lingering in the air and his beast rages for a female who is not supposed to be his.
But try telling that to his Beast when his entire body transforms on live television and one simple word thunders from his lips...MINE.
OLIVIA
“This idea was stupid from the start, and now it’s ridiculous,” I snarled.
A woman fluttered behind me with a small brush in her hand and brought it up to my neck. It not only tickled, but it was covered in a pale powder she was applying to my skin.
I swatted her away… carefully—she was small and female, and I didn’t want to hurt her—then looked back at the comms.
“What is the human doing to your neck?” Maxim asked, cocking his head to the side as if that could help him see better. “Why are your cheeks that color? Are you ill?”
My beast practically snarled, ready to rip the comm screen off the wall. The frustration had been building ever since I’d arrived on this far-off, backward planet.
“It’s what they call makeup,” I said through gritted teeth. “The small female assures me that if I do not have this red powder on my cheeks, that I will appear to be unwell and weak on the display screens all over this planet.”
Rachel, who stood behind Maxim, nodded her head. “That’s true. Humans call it stage makeup.”
I huffed in disgust and waved the female forward. In moments she was back at it with her little brushes. I looked down at her, tried to calm myself enough not to scare the shit out of her. The look in my eye must have indicated imminent death if she didn’t leave me alone. She swallowed hard, then climbed down from the stepladder she had to use to reach my face. I was so much taller than anyone on Earth, and she was a small version of a human. She cleared her throat. “I think that’s good enough. Good luck tonight.”
“Thank you,” I replied, trying to practically whisper so she didn’t burst into tears.
She and her ladder scurried away as if she’d used the reserves of her courage to speak to me.
“You look odd,” Maxim said. I was glad he refrained from using a more insulting word.
“While makeup is usually a thing Earth women put on their faces, for television, people of both genders need it or they’re washed out by the set lights.” Rachel explained to Maxim the same thing I’d been told the first day on set.
“I have no idea what any of that means,” Maxim said, turning to look up at his mate. He sat in his familiar chair—even though it was light-years away from where I was—and Rachel stood at his side, her arm around his shoulder. It was a very casual pose for an official comms call between planets.
But nothing about why I was on Earth was official or formal. It was a hot mess, as I’d heard someone here say. It was a disaster. The worst solar plasma storm on record had nothing on my life. I was the unlucky fucker chosen for this ridiculous mission because I’d learned the human language of English several years ago. I’d learned it to try to please my Interstellar Bride. My perfect matched mate.
Look how that had turned out. Back then I’d been a fierce warlord. Whole. Battle tested. In my fucking prime. Still, she’d taken her thirty days and chosen to return to Earth. She’d chosen another. Not an Atlan, but a human male. A man she’d loved more than she could learn to love me. I’d felt nothing but pain every time I’d been forced to recall this primitive language to speak to the females the Earth program paraded before me like gifts. To speak to the annoying man with large white teeth and stiff hair who took every opportunity to shove a voice amplifier in my face.
I held no hope this mission would save my life. If a perfect matched mate had not ended my mating fever, I had little hope that a stranger would now, even if she were willing. I’d rather return to Atlan and be processed for execution than condemn a female to life with me but without the devotion of my beast.
So far, that dark, primitive side of me, my beast, was simply not interested.
“This isn’t going to work, Maxim,” I repeated. I’d been saying the same thing since the first day I’d arrived. Three weeks I’d been on Earth. Three interminable weeks. No wonder females volunteered for the Brides Program to get the hell off this crazy planet.
Their vehicles were primitive and smelled of burned fuel, as did the black tar they spread on their roads. The air was brown with pollution and smelled of chemicals. The people were cruel and unkind to one another, with filthy, unwashed humans left to sicken and die on the sides of streets, sleeping in paper boxes while others lived in palaces of stone and crystal. Earth humans were, as the Coalition had been prior to Prime Nial’s decree, unkind to their soldiers who returned from battle damaged. They were ignored or forgotten, denied the honor due them for their service. They were not adored; they were feared. Different.
Like me and every other male and female banished to The Colony. We were damaged goods. Contaminated and shunned out of fear.
Which was one of the reasons I’d agreed to this debacle. Not for me. For them. The others. We needed more brides. Earth females had, for whatever reason, adapted to life on The Colony and accepted our fallen warriors as their own. Claimed them. Loved them. Mated and had children with them. Earth had given us hope, and two of the human mates on The Colony, Lindsey and Rachel, had come up with this insane idea.
Why they believed I would entice human females to apply to be matched specifically to The Colony, I had no idea. I was not the best of us. There were many, many honorable males who would have been happy to be chosen.
But I spoke English, if not very well. I could communicate. Rachel knew I would deny her nothing. She was one of our chosen females, matched to our elected governor, Maxim of Prillon Prime. She was to be honored and protected, in mind and body. When she’d pleaded with me, I could not refuse.
“Can’t you try? I know it doesn’t work that way, but still. Maybe kiss one of them or something? Maybe that would light the spark.”
My beast recoiled at the idea of touching either woman, of kissing them. But Rachel, with her curly brown hair and perky attitude, looked like the hopeful, optimistic Earth female she was. Now, being here and surrounded by females, I understood why she was so small. They were all small. Despite everything I could see wrong with this planet, the humans persisted in their hope. Their optimism. They refused to yield or admit defeat.
“No.” One word was all I could give her as I fought back the rage of my beast. He wasn’t just uninterested; he was furious at the idea that I might try to force him to kiss a female he did not want for his own. Not now. Not when the fever was riding us like fire in our blood and unrelenting rage was flowing in every fiber of our being every moment of every day. As the humans would say, I was holding on by my fingernails.
“Why not? What do you have to lose? You might be surprised, you know?” Rachel tried to encourage me, and I admired her independent spirit. That spirit was tempered by her two Prillon mates, as theirs were by her. She arched a brow at my statement. “I’ve heard the ratings are through the roof and everyone’s dying to find out what’s going to happen next. This is going to be great for recruiting brides.”
I set my hands on my hips and took a deep breath, trying not to burst into beast mode. It wasn’t because the fever raged within me, but because I was so frustrated and out of control. Here, on Earth, I had no control. I ate when they told me to eat. I slept when they told me to sleep. I wore what they told me to wear. I spent time with females they insisted I attempt to woo. I answered to a small, gray-haired human male with a clipboard and dark-rimmed glasses. He was not my commander, not an Atlan. Not a soldier.
He was an executive assistant, whatever the fuck that was supposed to be. As I was not one of these executives, I was uncertain why he insisted on following me from place to place and ordering me around like a small child. Sometimes he even spoke loudly, slowly, as if I were not only contaminated with Hive technology, but deaf and dumb as well.
“I don’t care about human ratings,” I grumbled.
“But you do care about helping us get more brides to The Colony,” Maxim insisted, and he was not wrong so I did not argue. Many worthy males waited for a mate. Too many.
Sadly I knew what the term “ratings” meant and all the other terminology associated with an Earth television program. “Lindsey wanted me to come to Earth to promote alien mates with the hopes of gaining new volunteers to the Brides Program. Fine. That is what I agreed to. They were supposed to interview me. Get some pictures. Send me to the different bride centers around the planet. What you didn’t tell me was that I was to be on some kind of… entertainment program experiment.”
“Reality TV,” Rachel clarified. I could tell by the way she was biting her lip that she was holding in a laugh. She was not my mate, but I wanted to paddle her ass for finding amusement in my discomfort.
I’d learned all about the concept of reality television the moment I stepped off the transport platform when the producer, the director and two staff underlings met me with ridiculous enthusiasm and wide-eyed stares. Turned out, I wasn’t a representative from The Colony answering questions about life on the planet and the various fighters who were possible matches. I was a tiny, fat Earth animal with a lot of fur. Once Rachel used the term, I had searched Earth’s primitive computer to look up the animal in question. I was, apparently, a rodent kept as a pet by small children. A… guinea pig.
“This is not reality. Why didn’t you tell me I was to be the subject of an entertainment program where a gaggle of females were preselected to spend time with me in organized activities? Females I am not interested in. Why did you not tell me that I would be forced to spend time with them until I narrowed down the females to one to be my mate and receive my mating cuffs?” I asked that last, long question in one huge breath.
“Because you wouldn’t have gone,” Maxim said.
“Would you?” I countered, eyeing the Prillon governor. His brown hair was as dark as his mood. As leader of The Colony, he had a lot of responsibility and only seemed to smile when Rachel was about. He wasn’t smiling now.
Good. He’d given permission for this mess.
“It was necessary, Wulf. The warriors here watch the broadcast as well. They are smiling. Laughing. They are excited on your behalf. There is hope.”
Low blow. I could not let them down, and he knew it. Still I felt the need to warn him. “With all due respect, what if I fail? Would you want to be in my place?”
He shifted in his chair, his cheeks turning as bright a pink as mine probably were from the ridiculous amount of colored powder the frightened female had brushed onto my face. “No. Thankfully I already have a mate.”
“I’m sure volunteers at the brides center must have increased. Let me end this. Get me the hell out of here. All I have to do is walk down to the transport room and I’ll be gone.”
“You can’t!” Rachel practically shouted. “It has to go well, because what about the others? I mean, you’re not the only one who’s yet to be matched. And no, there has been no increase in brides, not yet. I think they are all watching, waiting to see how the show ends.”
“Fuck.”
She tried to smile, but I wasn’t buying it. “Think of the females on Earth who will volunteer because they see you claiming a mate on their TVs. You are handsome and honorable. A human woman’s dream. They’re going to want a Wulf of their own.”
 | An Atlan Warlord in Mating Fever with two choices: Be the latest bachelor beast on an Earth reality television show to find his perfect mate or face certain death in an Atlan prison. Braun's not sure which is worse... until a female enters his hotel suite with towels and cleaning supplies. She isn't part of the television show. She isn't available. She isn't interested in mating with an alien. She isn't his. Try telling that to his beast, because one look at the maid and Braun knows he will do anything... anything, to claim her. |
 | No one denies the beast. I am a Warlord. A beast. An assassin for the Intelligence Core. Even so, I've been sent to Earth for a simple mission: Find a mate. I hold no hope. Who would want me? I'm scarred... inside and out. But one look at the human beauty and there is no question, she’s mine. When she is taken from me, I will use all my training to save her from my enemies. Nothing on Earth—or any planet in the universe—will keep me from her. |
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Great cover and excerpt. Sounds like a good book.
ReplyDeletecool
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting. Great cover!
ReplyDeleteI love the cover, it sounds like a great series.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, torture and all...okay, a reality show is definitely worse.
ReplyDeletesounds like a fun one
ReplyDeletei really do love that cover.
ReplyDeleteSounds really good
ReplyDeleteGrace Goodwin is a new author to me, but I look forward to reading this. I always love meeting new authors. Thanks to this blog for the introduction.
ReplyDelete