Orion: Arkadian Alien Mail Order Brides #1 (Intergalactic Dating Agency) Read online

  Orion

  Arkadian Alien Mail Order Brides #1

  Tasha Black

  13th Story Press

  Copyright © 2021 by 13th Story Press

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

  13th Story Press

  PO Box 506

  Swarthmore, PA 19081

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About Orion

  Orion

  1. Hailey

  2. Hailey

  3. Orion

  4. Hailey

  5. Hailey

  6. Orion

  7. Orion

  8. Hailey

  9. Orion

  10. Hailey

  11. Orion

  12. Orion

  13. Hailey

  14. Hailey

  15. Tyvarr

  16. Hailey

  17. Orion

  18. Hailey

  19. Orion

  20. Hailey

  21. Hailey

  22. Orion

  23. Hailey

  24. Orion

  25. Hailey

  26. Orion

  27. Hailey

  28. Hailey

  Atlas - SAMPLE

  1. Valerie

  2. Atlas

  Intergalactic Dating Agency

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About the Author

  One Percent Club

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!

  Get your FREE books now at tashablack.com!

  About Orion

  The Arkadian Brides Agency is about to send Hailey to paradise.

  Hailey always thought she was a member of the noble poor in Arkadia’s underworld. Her family’s farm might be struggling, but as the designated produce runner, she is reminded how lucky she is every time she brings donations to the village children’s home. But when Hailey learns that the family business isn’t what it seems, she knows she has to get away fast. The only option is the unthinkable – sell herself off as a bride to a wealthy man in the overworld to buy her family out of danger.

  Orion follows the rules. It’s the only option if he wants to be elected the King’s ambassador. But when a single night of fun in the Outer Rings lands him with an unexpected heir on his doorstep, Orion must take action, and fast. Since the little one’s biological mother can’t be found, he opts to sponsor a bride from the underworld. His daughter will not be made to grow up without a mother figure. And after all, a permanent tie to Arkadia’s working class underworld could gain him essential votes. But he is determined to honor his new bride with his name and fortune, without imposing himself on her romantically.

  The unlikely couple might be planning a marriage of convenience, but their shared love of little Opal brings them inexorably closer each day. When Hailey’s past threatens to catch up with her, they will be forced to face their true feelings. Will Orion sacrifice his career for love? Or will Hailey go on the run again before he gets a chance?

  If you like strong women, hunky aliens, wild adventures, steamy sensual scenes, and happily-ever-afters, then you’ll love the world of Arkadia:

  Arkadian Alien Mail Order Brides:

  -Orion

  -Atlas

  -Titan

  Orion

  1

  Hailey

  Hailey Jenkins guided the low-tech hover-barrow up the narrow path to the orphanage with a song in her heart. This was her next-to-last drop of the evening, and she always loved seeing the kids.

  The barrow stuttered a bit, and she had to stop and give it a bump with her hip to keep it going. It had been listing to one side for a few weeks, but times were hard, and the family didn’t have money for another alignment right now.

  Heck, Hailey didn’t even have pocket money to spend buying the codes and whiling away the evening trying to repair it herself. Pocket money had gone the way of real sugar for coffee and fuel for the carriages.

  Times were pretty tough for everyone in Lower Arkadia, but it could be worse. Most of the residents in the lower sector were refugees from Terra-16, which had been hastily evacuated when Hailey’s grandparents were kids, before impact with a very large asteroid. The citizens of Terra-16 had been spread out among a bunch of far-flung settlements, happy to be where anyone was willing to take them.

  And while the native-born residents of Upper Arkadia lived in luxury, on a huge landmass that literally floated above the lower sector, Lower Arkadia was still a pretty good place to end up, compared to what she’d heard about some of the other refugee settlements. And it sure beat getting hit by a giant asteroid.

  All thing considered, the Jenkins family was still very lucky. After three generations, their family farm was fertile enough to provide produce for themselves, and half the village. While the coffee might be bitter, their bellies were full.

  And they could even afford a little charity, which was the point of this trip up the bluff to the orphanage, and the highlight of Hailey’s week.

  Normally her brother, Chaz, came with her. With crime up in the prefecture, her parents worried about her safety, especially after dark.

  “A hover-barrow of produce can be replaced, Hailey,” her dad would say. “But not my only daughter.”

  But Chaz was back home today with one of his migraines, and after a long discussion, her parents had finally given in to her plea to make her rounds without him.

  Her argument had been the run to the orphanage. Those kids and the volunteer Brothers and Sisters who ran the place relied on the Jenkins Farm contribution to get everyone fed. And Hailey promised she could do the full run and still be back before dark. But it wasn’t until her mother pointed out that the last stop was the Tyvarr place that her father relented.

  The Tyvarrs bought tons of produce from them - so much that they couldn’t possibly eat it all. Hailey had even seen trays of ice-berries in their dumpster. When so many were hungry, that kind of waste was borderline obscene.

  She shook her head and continued up the path. The malfunctioning barrow was making the rounds take longer, but hopefully she would still have time to say hi to the kids and get back down the hill for her last drop and home before darkness hit.

  “Hailey Jenkins,” a little voice cried when she reached the gate.

  “Hey, Hyrrie,” she told the little boy with a warm smile.

  “Good evening, Miss Jenkins,” Brother Zeff said, striding up behind Hyrrie to enter the gate code.

  Hailey looked down at her feet and tried not to blush. Brother Zeff was only a little older than she was, and handsome in a clean-cut, wholesome way. She had always liked him.

  “Can you teach us the new dance moves?” little Hyrrie asked, as two girls sprinted up to join them.

  Hailey smiled. She knew the kids never got down to the village, so she regaled them with fun tales of everything that happened down there. She even kept them apprised of all the latest dance moves. And though her stories were cleaned up and embellished, and the dance moves were one hundred percent her invention, she figured they would forgive her one day when they grew up and went down to the village themselves. Life was hard enough. Hailey believed in having a little fun.

  “Ye
s, I would very much like to see the new dance moves too,” Brother Zeff said with a smile.

  “Well, I don’t have a lot of time tonight, since it’s getting late,” she said. “But I’ll show you just one of the latest bits. It’s really catching on down there.”

  She lowered the handles of the hover-barrow and when she turned back, she could see they had all spread out to give her some space. Five more kids had joined the first three, and all their little faces were looking up at her expectantly.

  “It’s called the hat toss,” she told them as seriously as she could. “You pretend you have a hat on your head, and you pull it off, toss it, catch it, put it back on your head, and then do a quick spin.”

  She demonstrated, letting herself get silly. Her mother would die a thousand deaths if she knew that this was how Hailey used the skills she had learned back in the good times, when she took her to dance class at the prefecture rec center.

  But when she spun and then winked at the kids, they all howled with delight. Worth it.

  She watched for a few minutes as they worked on their own interpretations of the move.

  “Hey,” Brother Zeff said quietly, moving closer. “You’re alone today.”

  “Chaz wasn’t feeling well,” she told him, while watching Hyrrie put his spin on the hat toss move by pretending to throw the hat under his leg.

  “It’s getting dark,” Brother Zeff said. “And this is no place to be on the streets after sundown. Do you want to stay the night here?”

  A shiver of anticipation went down her spine, but she shook her head.

  “My parents will freak out if I don’t come home,” she told him. “Besides, I only have one last stop after this one.”

  “Look at me, Hailey Jenkins,” a little girl shrieked, pulling off a flawless hat toss.

  “You’re going to be a star,” Hailey told her. “An absolute dancing star.”

  The girl giggled and made a deep bow while everyone cheered. Hailey wished she could stay longer, but the sun was already sinking.

  Most of the light in Lower Arkadia was artificial, since the mass of Upper Arkadia blocked all but the edges of the sun’s path. She had always loved the few hours of actual sunlight that managed to reach them. But Brother Zeff was right. And if she didn’t want to be on the streets once the sun went down, she needed to get moving.

  “Okay, guys,” Hailey said. “Who is going to help carry the food?”

  All of the children were eager to help. They organized themselves into a line without arguing. Their expressions were so earnest, it nearly broke her heart.

  She began passing out the sacks of produce. At last, she got to the ice-berry boxes.

  “Ohhh,” the remaining kids all moaned appreciatively.

  Ice-berries were a bit of a delicacy, small, cold, and sweet as the sugar no one seemed to have anymore.

  Her parents had allocated only one small box for the orphanage this week.

  Meanwhile, she was looking at a stack of twenty boxes tied in string for the Tyvarrs.

  If Chaz had been with her, she never would have done it. But on impulse, Hailey loosened the string to slide one box out of the stack and handed both to Hyrrie. This way, each child would at least get a taste of sweetness this week.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Brother Zeff murmured.

  “They deserve it,” she told him. “They deserve all of it.”

  “Thank you,” he said softly.

  “Okay, guys,” Hailey called out. “Work on that hat toss, and I’ll see you next week.”

  She drank in one last moment of their good-byes, and then headed back down the hill with the hover-barrow.

  2

  Hailey

  At her final stop of the day, Hailey rang the bell at the Tyvarr place and backed up a step. It had been a long day, and she was looking forward to being done and heading home.

  A moment later, a hologram popped up, a familiar man’s face appearing in it.

  “State your business,” he said.

  “Hailey Jenkins,” she said patiently, wondering why they had to play this exact game every week. “Jenkins Farm delivery.”

  The heavy door slid open, and the man stood in the threshold, arms crossed, watching Hailey, just like he always did, while a woman scurried out to pick up the first box of produce.

  “You’re really growing up,” the man remarked, looking Hailey up and down.

  She fought off a shudder of revulsion and willed her expression to stay polite and neutral as she gazed down at her feet.

  The first woman disappeared into the house, and another came out for the second and third boxes.

  “And the ice-berries?” the man said, stepping down to pick them up.

  “We only have nineteen boxes for you today,” she told him. “It was a low harvest. We can deduct it from your bill.”

  “What?” he hissed, straightening and fixing her with his dark eyes.

  “Nineteen boxes is still a lot of ice-berries,” she told him, blinking in surprise. She’d seen half of them get thrown away often enough to know that even nineteen was still more than they actually needed.

  “Where is your brother?” he demanded.

  “He wasn’t feeling well,” Hailey said.

  “Go home and find him,” the man said darkly. “And get me my last box of ice-berries now. Do I make myself understood?”

  Suddenly, Hailey felt very alone. The road outside of the Tyvarr place was dark and foreboding, and it struck her that there wasn’t another residence in shouting distance.

  She nodded quickly, taking off with the hover-barrow, not even waiting for the envelope of credits Mr. Tyvarr always handed her.

  She had only gotten a few feet away when she heard the heavy blast door slam shut behind her.

  Home was still a fifteen-minute walk, and the shadows seemed more threatening by the minute.

  Why would a rich family like the Tyvarrs live out on the edge of the industrial part of the prefecture like this? And why was their house built more like a fortress? Seriously, who used a blast door as the main entrance?

  She sped up her pace, trying not to think about who or what else might be out this late in this part of town.

  The trouble was, no matter how smart or tough she was, at this time of night, the only thing anyone would notice was her street value.

  Hard work on the farm since a young age had given her a strong physique, kept slender by tough times. But it was her unusual lavender eyes and dark, silky hair that made her stand out, even when she most wanted to blend into the background.

  Hailey had taken to looking down at her feet to avoid unwanted attention. But when you were the only woman out at night on a deserted street…

  Well, women had value some places in the system, especially pretty ones. And times were hard, so people might get desperate enough to consider kidnapping, if it could get them a full belly and a roof over their head for a time.

  Something scuttled across the road in front of her and she nearly jumped out of her skin. But it was only a hog-rat.

  She picked up the pace, determined not to lose her mind.

  Chaz has taught you martial arts since you were four, she reminded herself. Even if someone tries to grab you, you know what to do.

  So long as they didn’t have a weapon…

  At last, the empty industrial roadway melted into the edges of the rural community where Hailey lived.

  When the silhouette of the farmhouse came into view, she pushed herself even harder, breathing a sigh of relief as she entered the gate code and heard it clang shut behind her.

  “Hailey,” her father called out, his voice sounding relieved.

  “Sorry,” she said. “The hover-barrow is really acting up. It took forever to get up the hill to the orphanage.”

  “As long as you’re okay,” he said. “We were getting worried.”

  “Hailey,” her mom called from inside. “I made your favorite.”

  Her dad helped her connect t
he barrow to the power hitch, and they headed inside together.

  “Packet is light,” he said, looking down at the packet with credits from her deliveries.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, feeling a pang of guilt. “The Tyvarrs are really mad at me. I gave an extra box of ice-berries to the orphanage. He was livid, and I kind of ran away before he could pay me. Maybe we can bring them an extra next week, and I’ll get them to pay then.”

  Her confession was met with silence. Her mother’s face had gone slack and colorless.

  “You gave one of the Tyvarrs' ice-berry boxes to the orphanage?” her father asked in an expressionless voice.

  “Uh, yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  “Chaz,” her father bellowed, dashing into the other room.

  “What’s happening?” Hailey asked her mother, who was wiping tears from her eyes.

  Chaz and her father were scrambling around in the other room, speaking in low frantic voices.

  “Do not tell her, Charlene,” her father shouted suddenly.

  “She needs to know,” her mom said. “If you had told her sooner, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “We need to get up to the orphanage now,” her father yelled. “We’ll take the carriage.”