Rescued By Their Wife
Wings of Artemis, Book 2
Rebecca Royce
Published: 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62210-358-4
Published by Liquid Silver Books. Copyright © 2016, Rebecca Royce.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Manufactured in the USA
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[email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Liquid Silver Books.
Blurb
A wife. A mother. A rebel.
And now their savior…
When a crazed woman wants to take control of the universe, destroying all that defies her, it's up to Melissa Alexander to retrieve her memories and save those she loves the most. As the bonds of love tighten and the danger increases, Melissa must find the strength to fight in a world that threatens to take everything she's ever loved or needed away from her. With so much on the line, can the Rebel Princess be the savior they all need?
Dedication
To Tamera for making Melissa shine and Liquid Silver Books for wanting me back.
Acknowledgements
Nothing gets written in a vacuum. The author gladly acknowledges the help of her critique partners who loved this book—Heather Long, Chandra Ryan, Saranna DeWylde, Virginia Nelson, and Cara Carnes who loved these characters. And a quick shout out to the ladies of the Hidden Hearts Book Club who made me want to write RH.
Chapter 1
The Last Piece of My Heart
COOPER Jackson, one of the Crown Princes of the Nobles, walked toward me with a determined stride. Standing on the noisy, smelly, overpopulated Truest Space Station, we might have been the only two people in the world. My vision tunneled. There was only him.
He was my husband—one of six, actually. I couldn’t remember anything about him before a month ago. To save my life, he’d given me to the Nobles who had, in turn, erased my memory to make me into what they determined would be a more suitable wife for him. I’d then been kidnapped—they’d say rescued—by my other five husbands. But they’d then been abducted by my mother. The whole thing was a giant mess.
I needed Cooper to help me get them back and I wanted to get to know him, too. He’d been the piece missing, the reason I’d never felt complete on Artemis, the ugliest space ship ever built, which happened to belong to me.
He stopped his approach right in front of me. He was tall and I had to look up to hold his gaze. “Melissa-mine.” He breathed his pet name for me. “You look…Are you okay?”
“I know. I’m as big as a house.”
Thirty-six weeks pregnant, I should not have been running around on space stations planning rescue missions. But I wasn’t going to tell my daughter I’d run away instead of helping her father and uncles. I didn’t have it in me to run away.
“You’re tiny. All belly. Your face is gaunt. Didn’t they feed you?” He took my hand and I let him lace our fingers together to lead me away, even though to me it was as though I’d just joined hands with a man I barely knew. The last weeks had gotten me used to other people feeling like they knew me while I stared at them like they were strangers.
At least with Cooper, he’d come to the rehabilitation center where I’d been held. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him in person.
“I think we should head to Nolan’s safe apartment here. We can talk. I’ve got protein bars in my bag. I can eat there.” I was eating every three hours on the dot. I couldn’t afford to let myself get run down.
“Let me feed you something better than a protein bar. Trust me, no one is going to recognize you right now. I barely did.”
His words slammed into me. “Exactly how gorgeous am I supposed to be, this pregnant and terrified?”
“You’re gorgeous, as ever.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m more concerned about you falling over. Since when do you give a crap what you look like?”
In general, I didn’t. He wasn’t wrong. But this was the first time we were seeing each other since Master’s. Being in his presence brought out my edginess. Knowing I was going to see Cooper had made me as anxious as the next thing I had to do.
“You don’t know me anymore. I could be vain as hell.”
He snorted. “Come on.”
We sat together in the corner of a dark bar. Truest Space Station was a favorite with the Nomads because the people on the station didn’t ask questions unless they were forced to, nor were they Noble friendly. I’d killed a man to save Nolan, one of my husbands, the last time I’d been here. The station’s security force would probably arrest me if they recognized me.
Cooper placed our order with the bartender and sat back in front of me. “You got here. I’ve been having visions of you stranded in space.”
“I practically was. Things got a little complicated. I had to put a body out the airlock and I nearly put myself out with him.”
The bartender set down two sandwiches in front of us before handing Cooper a beer and a water to me. He took a pull from the bottle and I watched, transfixed. He had the most beautiful cleft in his chin. Like the last time I’d seen him, I wished I could reach out and stroke it…
Of course, I probably could. He was my husband. Still, that was pushing familiarity for even me. Maybe later.
“Eat.” He motioned toward the food. “It’s not going to be delicious but it will be good enough.”
“All right. Then we have to go to the apartment. I don’t want to carry around what’s in my bag for too long without using it.”
He eyed the small carrier that I wore basically like a purse. “What’s in there?”
I leaned forward. “One of Geoff’s bombs.”
Cooper choked on his beer before he spoke. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. I’m going to hold the station hostage until my mother shows up to talk to me.”
“I think we can do better than that.” He took a bite of his sandwich.
“I’m Melissa Fucking Alexander. I blow things up. People will believe I’d do it.”
He placed his food on the plate. “First off, if you’re going to say that—and I assume you learned it from the stupid footage they keep running on the stations—you need to own it. The way you said it right then, no one would believe you’d blow up anything. Not to mention, I think we were hoping that was behind us. A one-off mistake. You and C.J. fooled around with a personal recording and for some reason, you put it out there to the general public without any of us being aware until it was too late.”
His words pushed at the exhaustion I’d been keeping at bay. “The other option is I call my mom and offer myself in exchange for their safe return.”
“Mine, there are about a million different options between your two plans. Finish eating. Then you’re taking a nap. You’re pregnant. We’ll talk after. And for the record, you won’t be turning yourself over to her. To do so would be a very bad idea. The guys would kill you—and me—if they thought you were even considering it.”
I dropped my sandwich. “There is a third idea.”
“Am I going to like this more or less than the first two?”
I liked it less. I didn’t know how he’d feel about it. “I get my memory back.”
“That would solve our problems. At least we would then know what you were running from. I’ve done some research in the last months, trying to make sense of
this crazy. I thought, when we were attacked, it had to be the Nobles, my father’s men, only it wasn’t. They weren’t behind it. That’s when I finally had to give in to the idea it was the Nomads. No local shipping group could have destroyed our ship…” He shook his head. “That’s when I told you not to go to The Bridge. At first, I thought you needed to run there. Then it was like please, Mine, don’t go there.”
I finished my sandwich and sat back in the chair, feeling stuffed. The baby wasn’t leaving me a lot of room on the inside for much else. “There have to be other memory machines. Couldn’t you get us into another one?”
“I could. But, I’m wondering if that’s at all necessarily. I hate to do that to you without Dane’s supervision or another trusted doctor. I’m not going to simply stick you in one and stand there not knowing what’s going on.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “There might be another way.”
It occurred to me right then that I really knew nothing about Cooper. The others I’d been able to rely on simply by the fact that they all seemed to like each other. Nolan was the only one who had initially wanted to rescue Cooper. The others had gone so far as to want to slash his throat. They’d eventually gotten on board with the idea but really, could I trust him?
“If you could get out to meet me, why didn’t you do it earlier? Why not come before?”
He raised his dark eyebrows. “Are you starting to question my motives?” When I would have answered, he sliced his hand in the air to stop me. “You’re right to. The answer is that for the beginning months you were at Master’s, I thought I could help you better if I stayed where I was. I had to make arrangements to get the guys there to rescue you. Things were tighter for me then. It was harder for me to get around. Manipulating things so your face ended up in public, relaxing the background checks so Geoff—who I assumed would be C.J.—could get to you. That was a quick mess I had to solve.”
His words shocked me. It had never dawned on me to wonder about how Geoff had found me. He was Geoff—he was so capable I’d assumed it somehow just happened. “Then? After I was back?”
“Like I said, there were things to find out. You didn’t remember me. I did make that trap ship stop for you and I would have found a way to get you off Hall if you’d needed that, too.” He leaned forward until I couldn’t look anywhere but straight into his dark eyes. “All the time, using the wireless to check your vitals. Knowing when things were happening—like with an obsessed man—and that they weren’t with me.”
He meant sex and I decided to ignore it. If he’d been on the ship and we’d reconnected when I had with the others, we’d probably be having sex, too. Also, he’d be kidnapped and who knew where, possibly suffering tortures that made me feel sick to think about.
“How did you monitor my vitals?”
He pointed to my wrist. “The same way Dane could.”
“Dane couldn’t anymore. I wasn’t connected to Artemis.”
Cooper rolled his eyes. “Dane must be gun shy after seeing our vitals vanish before. You’re hooked into the computer. He just didn’t turn it back on. Here.” He took my wrist, running his finger over it, before he pressed down hard. A jolt sparked in the spot and then immediately stopped. “You’ve been hooked to the computer this whole time. Dane just had to make it public again on the ship.”
He didn’t take his hand off my wrist, stroking it lightly. My pulse jumped under his finger. “I wanted you to remember me so badly, to call me home, to tell me I didn’t have to stay there anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I had known.” I shook my head. “They’ve been very angry with you.”
“In their minds, I didn’t only take you and run, but I betrayed them. We’re family. I can see how it would be awful. They thought we were dead. They had no answers and then we both pop up perfectly fine, alive, your memory gone, and me back wearing my princely crown. What an evil bastard I must’ve seemed. I didn’t dare reach out to them. In the back of my mind, there’s always been the chance one of them betrayed you.”
I didn’t have anything to say. When Cooper spoke about them, his eyes were sad. I couldn’t make this better for him—or me—until I got them back. “What was your suggestion?”
“We need to find out what you were running from. I don’t know and you don’t either. Short of a memory reboot, there is one person on any planet who you might have told what you knew. We need to go see her.”
Oh. Now this was news I could get behind. “Who is she? Where can I find her? Why didn’t the others mention her?”
“You are a woman of secrets and some things you keep to yourself. Some truths you only share with certain people. This was one you told me. The only problem is she hasn’t been willing to speak to you in over a year.” He shook his head. “Well, Jayne is going to have to get over it. There’s too much at stake. The worst case scenario, she kicks us out on our asses.”
Secrets. Everywhere I went it was nothing but secrets. Who I told, when I did. Cooper had been my confidant over the others on this. Why? What was it about him that inspired me to confide?
“Where is she? How soon can we call her or speak to her?”
He stood, offering his hand. “Tonight, actually. But not ‘til one in the morning. That’s when she gets done for the evening. She won’t want to speak before then.”
“What?” I took his outstretched fingers and rose. “What is she doing ‘til that hour?”
“She’s your aunt, Mine. Your father’s younger sister. A widow. Wealthy. She runs and owns the brothel here. Aunt Jayne. A year ago, she threw you out on your ass. You wouldn’t tell me why. Locked yourself in your room for two days and when you came out, you refused to acknowledge it happened at all. Maybe you two fought about something benign or maybe she knows why you ran. One in the morning, we’ll ask her.”
I walked with Cooper, my mind trying to digest all I’d learned. I must have been quiet for too long. He squeezed my fingers. “You look pale. Are you shocked?”
“When Geoff came and got me from Master’s, I told him I didn’t want to be a whore. He objected to the word, told me there weren’t any.”
Cooper laughed, throwing his head back. “You better not let Jayne hear that word. She’ll throw you out the airlock. She is a business woman, plain and simple. Didn’t want another husband and if every man in the universe was going to proposition her, she decided she might as well get paid for it. Biggest heart. She was crazy about you, and then…it was over.”
“Hold on.” I stopped walking. “Is this the brothel I brought Nolan to…so he could practice?”
He smirked before he answered. “Told you about that, did he? Why yes, it was. Your aunt and her ladies taught Nolan all about the finer parts of life, so he could know what to do with you in bed.”
“Does he know it was my aunt?” Seemed like the kind of thing Nolan would have told me right off. Hey, baby, I slept with your aunt.
Cooper shook his head. “Nope.”
Secrets. Everywhere I looked.
Cooper knew exactly where Nolan’s apartment was, he even had the key to get in. Someone had cleaned it since I’d been there last, which didn’t concern Cooper at all. When I mentioned it, he shrugged. “There are Nomad friendly people here. They help when they can.”
I stopped short, staring at the bed. I’d lain there with Nolan. It had been the first time we’d been okay with each other since Geoff brought me back to them. He’d told me about the Pit and what his childhood had been like. After that, things had been better, for such a short period of time.
Then it had all been over. I sank onto the bed. I’d not slept since I’d woken up to find the guys taken. Where were they? What happened? C.J.’s message to me had been so vague. They’d all been taken. Were they hurt? Were they worrying about me? C.J. told me to go somewhere but it had cut out. Were they well, escaped, and waiting for me somewhere else? Did they think I was gone again?
Cooper sunk onto his knees in front of me. “Your face. You look like so
meone has died.”
I tried to breathe through my nose to stop from crying. “Maybe they have.”
He shook his head. “No. They still want something from you. The guys will be alive as long as they are useful bargaining chips. They don’t know you’re here with me. That is how we will beat them. If they’re somewhere I can find them, I will. I’ll bring them to you. I will. I promise.”
I hugged him, pressing him to my chest. I saw the same pain reflected in his eyes I felt in my soul. Right then, I could believe him. Even if I knew I was deluding myself. The universe was too big. If they weren’t on The Bridge with my mother, I might never see them again.
And even if they were there, I couldn’t be sure they would be kept alive.
“Tonight.” He brushed my hair from my eyes. “We’ll get some answers. I promise you.”
“Thank you. For saying all the right things. For wanting to do this with me.”
“Lay down, get some sleep. I’m not going to go far. I want to talk to my contact to see what the Nobles know about my disappearance at this point. Then I’ll be back. You’re safe here.”
I rolled onto my side. “Right.”
As Cooper left, it was clear to me how little we knew about each other. The guys wouldn’t have left, they all understood about my problem sleeping alone.
Lights from the space station flashed through the window. I sat up and waddled my way over there to look out at the scene.
Down below, people were just living their lives. They had no idea mine had been shattered. Dane had put me to sleep so Wes could try to do something about the bomb attached to my heart and when I’m woken up it had all gone to hell. I leaned my head against the windowpane. It was hardly a pressing thought, but I vaguely wondered if the operation had worked.
Were they all together? I wanted to think they were. I hadn’t been stupid when I’d chosen my husbands, not that I could particularly take credit for it. The other Melissa, the one buried inside me, had been responsible for those choices. Nolan knew how to survive. C.J. was smart, sharp, a man who could plan, a natural rebel. Dane was a healer, brilliant and caring. Wes could outthink any problem. Geoff made weapons people couldn’t disarm. They were all soft inside, all loyal, all mine.