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  Andrea placed her index fingers to her forehead so they stuck up. “And they have—”

  “Antennas?” My jaw dropped.

  “More like horns.”

  “That’s worse!”

  “Vestigial horns. Mostly hidden by their hair.”

  “So we’re the court-ordered brides of horned aliens who may or may not have big dicks,” I said.

  “That’s the size of it.” Andrea snickered.

  I got up and moved to the observation window. Without the filtering effects of a planetary atmosphere, stars in space didn’t twinkle. They appeared as solid points of light. We’d traveled far enough that none of the constellations were familiar anymore.

  “Dakon must be very far away.” We’d been on the ship for two months with thirty days left to go.

  “It’s hyper speed compared to the three-year round trip the first contact took. Thanks to the illuvian ore, we’ll do it in three months,” Andrea said. “The Dakonians have been waiting a long time for their mates. After the first contact ship returned to Earth, it took a year to set up the program and recruit the first group of women.”

  Tessa giggled. “They’re going to be really horny by now. In more ways than one.”

  “What happens if they don’t like the brides they receive?” I asked Andrea. She seemed to be in the know.

  “Then we’ll be sent back to serve out the remainder of our sentence,” she replied. “With credit for time served on Dakon.”

  In my case, that still meant life without the possibility of parole, not the usual sentence for second-degree murder, but my attacker hadn’t been the usual victim. Fortunately, despite the Carmichaels’ influence, they hadn’t been able to charge me with first-degree murder because security vids showed Jaxon’s laser pistol falling out of his pocket. But the jury hadn’t bought Maridelle’s self-defense argument. Excessive force, the prosecution had argued and won. Two weeks after being sentenced to life in prison, I’d been shuttled to the SS Australia where a government agent deactivated the electrocuffs, shoved a duffel of my possessions into my arms, and announced I’d been inducted into the Terra-Dakon Goodwill Exchange pilot program.

  Or, as I thought of it, Rocks-for-Brides.

  “I don’t see them rejecting any of us,” Andrea said. “They’re desperate. They have a critical shortage of women.”

  Tessa nodded. “An asteroid killed them.”

  I moved away from the window. “Like the one that hit Earth and killed off the dinosaurs by causing a massive winter that destroyed their food supply?”

  “Just like that. The planet is still suffering the winter it triggered,” Andrea answered.

  “But how would an asteroid strike kill females and not males?”

  “They think it carried a virus to which only women were susceptible, and it caused a genetic mutation. Each subsequent generation has produced fewer and fewer females. The planet is 90 percent men now. No worries, though. Everyone who got the virus died a couple of hundred years ago.”

  I gawked in awe. “You had time to research all that?”

  She shook her head. “It was in the orientation packet.”

  I frowned. “Orientation packet?”

  “On the little disk,” Tessa supplied. “Everyone got one in their cabins.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Vaguely I remembered seeing something like that. I’d found it when I’d boarded the ship but tossed it into a drawer. A depressive fog had engulfed me since the verdict. What difference did anything make? My future was out of my control.

  However, Andrea and Tessa had sparked my curiosity. I would pop that disk into the vid player and watch. Horned? I still couldn’t get over that. Would the planet resemble Terra? An asteroid-induced winter sounded freezing. It couldn’t be that cold, could it? People lived there. Male people, anyway.

  Terra had the opposite problem, although not as severe. Women outnumbered men with more than 10 percent more females surviving to adulthood than males. Another reason female convicts were expendable. “Ninety percent men, huh? That’s a lot of testosterone.”

  “I know, right?” Tessa rubbed her arms.

  “Assuming they produce testosterone. They might have alien hormones,” Andrea pointed out. “In fact, that’s pretty much a guarantee seeing how they are aliens.”

  “But we’re still genetically compatible?”

  “Theoretically, according to preliminary lab tests. We can’t be certain until we start producing children.”

  Even though I’d been in the grips of an I-was-wrongly-convicted funk, I recalled a couple of blood draws. How could my life have come to this? Sent to a planet light-years away to become an alien’s bride. I hugged my midsection. I gave birth to an alien baby. It sounded like a story from one of those cheesy ’net vid-zines that focused on celebrity gossip—and sensational news items like my trial.

  “I can’t believe that the first time we discover intelligent life on another planet, the first action our government takes is trading its female citizens for illuvian ore.” Space exploration had discovered alien life a couple of centuries ago in the 2200s, but they were single-celled jelly-like organisms and bacteria. Another planet had had heat-resistant insects, but that was about as advanced as it got.

  “Terra One World has been quite civilized compared to what happened the last time Earthers coveted a particular metal ore they deemed valuable,” Andrea said.

  She meant the quest for gold. A millennium ago, monarch and church-backed explorers decimated native populations in their avarice to acquire the Earth metal. I was aware of our planet’s ignominious history, even though I was nowhere near as knowledgeable as Andrea. The woman knew her business, and I suspected, everyone else’s. She was sharp—which probably wouldn’t serve her well on Dakon. I predicted that having no ’net access would be her biggest adjustment.

  “You never ran across a single still or vid that showed what they look like?”

  “Not a good one,” she said. “There was a still in the orientation vid.”

  “You couldn’t see much because of the fur,” Tessa piped up.

  “Fur? Good mythological gods, they’re furry?” Horns and fur?

  Tessa and Andrea laughed. “No, they were wearing fur garments with hoods, so you couldn’t see their faces clearly,” Tessa said. “Just a chin and a nose.”

  “How did those look?”

  Tessa shrugged. “Like a chin and a nose.”

  “Like a Terran chin and nose?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Be thankful for small mercies, anyway. If the dude looked too alien, I would focus on the lower half of his face.

  * * * *

  Alien Mate is available from all online booksellers as single title download and in a boxed set with the other three books of the series. Keep scrolling to check out the complete title list and find out how you can get Married to the Cyborg for free!

  Get Married to the Cyborg: http://carabristol.com/get-your-free-book/

  Glitz. Glamour. Kidnapping.

  Anyone who is anyone attends the annual Association of Planets gala, the largest, fanciest soiree in the galaxy. Escorted by her husband Brock, Penelope “Pia” Aaron attends the event, to mix and mingle with the galaxy’s power elite to further her career as an AOP ambassador.

  Brock Mann isn’t there to serve as his wife’s plus-one. A cyborg and a field agent with the covert force Cyber Operations, Brock knows the glitzy, glamorous evening isn’t going to end happily for one individual. An intercepted partial communique has revealed that one gala attendee will be the target of a kidnapping. Who the intended victim is, why the person is being taken and by whom—that’s what Cy-Ops must find out to stop the abduction.

  And then Pia is taken.

  Without knowing who or why she was targeted, Brock must race against the clock to find his wife before she’s killed.

  Saving the girl and the galaxy just got personal.

  Get Married to th
e Cyborg FREE when you subscribe to my reader newsletter: http://carabristol.com/get-your-free-book/

  Other Titles by Cara Bristol

  Alien Mate series

  Alien Mate (Book 1)

  Alien Attraction (Book 2)

  Alien Intention (Book 3)

  Alien Mischief (Book 4)

  Alien Mate Complete Series Boxed Set

  Dakonian Alien Mail-Order Brides

  Intergalactic Dating Agency

  Darak

  Aton

  Caid

  Sixx

  Kord

  Braxx

  Cy-Ops Cyborg Romance series

  Stranded with the Cyborg (Book 1)

  Married to the Cyborg (Book 1.5)

  Mated with the Cyborg (Book 2)

  Captured by the Cyborg (Book 3)

  Trapped with the Cyborg (Book 4)

  Claimed by the Cyborg (Book 5)

  Rescued by the Cyborg (Book 5.5)

  Hunted by the Cyborg (Book 6)

  Breeder sci-fi romance series

  Breeder (Book 1)

  Terran (Book 2)

  Warrior (Book 3)

  Alien Dragon Shifters

  Under Fyre

  Under Fyre Prequel

  Other titles

  Destiny’s Chance

  Warrior’s Curse

  Longing, a vampire romance

  Naughty Words for Nice Writers (A Romance Novel Thesaurus)

  Audiobooks

  Stranded with the Cyborg

  Mated with the Cyborg

  Books in Print

  Alien Mate

  Captured by the Cyborg

  Claimed by the Cyborg

  Naughty Words for Nice Writers

  About Cara Bristol

  USA Today Bestselling Author Cara Bristol writes character driven science fiction romance with humor, heart, and heat. She loves introducing new readers to science fiction romance, and likes to say she writes sci-fi for readers who don’t like sci-fi. When she’s not writing (ha ha ha – she’s almost always writing) she enjoys traveling to exotic destinations and chillaxin’ with her favorite reality TV shows. Cara lives in Missouri with her own alpha hero, her husband.

  Cara’s Website: http://carabristol.com/

  Reader Newsletter: http://carabristol.com/get-your-free-book/

  BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/cara-bristol

  Bristol’s Book Babes: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1761424733891183/

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cara-Bristol-Romance-178661122147994/

  Twitter: @CaraBristol https://twitter.com/CaraBristol

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  Looking for love that’s out of this world? Strong, smart, sexy aliens are seeking mates from the Milky Way. Just hop on board with your local Intergalactic Dating Agency and become an alien mail order bride! Join the IDA authors as we explore the friendly skies and beyond with trilogies of astral adventure and otherworldly lovers. Warning: abductions may or may not be involved.

  The Intergalactic Dating Agency is a multi-author series about aliens who come to Earth lookin’ for love. Each participating author writes her own series under the IDA umbrella.

  See all the IDA romances and meet your alien hunk here on: Romancing the Alien.

  Acknowledgements

  This year, 2019, is the 10th anniversary of my writing/publishing career. I signed my first publishing contract with in July 2009, and had my first book published in September 2009. The publishing industry has changed dramatically since then, but one thing hasn’t: the professionalism of my colleagues and the support of my friends. I’m fortunate that they are one and the same! I first encountered my editor Kate Richards when she edited a story I’d submitted to Decadent Publishing in the early days of my career. When I went Indie six years ago, we reconnected and she became editor on all my books. Through Kate, I met Nanette Sipe, a lovely lady and line editor extraordinaire. Proofreader Celeste Jones and beta readers Lisa Medley and Ann Littel Mills are friends I met years ago. Beta reader Fern Robin Manor is a reader who joined my support team. I would like to thank all of them for their assistance not just on this book, but all the books they’ve worked on. And last, but not least, I owe a big thanks to author friend Tasha Black who first invited me to write for the Intergalactic Dating Agency series, to Croco Designs for the gorgeous cover, and to my awesome advance review team. You all rock! Thank you so much.