Troy: Alien Adoption Agency #10
TROY
ALIEN ADOPTION AGENCY #10
TASHA BLACK
13TH STORY PRESS
Copyright © 2022 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
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Cover designed by Sylvia Frost of The Book Brander
CONTENTS
Tasha Black Starter Library
About Troy
Troy
1. Eliza
2. Troy
3. Eliza
4. Troy
5. Eliza
6. Troy
7. Eliza
8. Troy
9. Eliza
10. Eliza
11. Troy
12. Eliza
13. Troy
14. Eliza
15. Troy
16. Eliza
17. Troy
18. Eliza
19. Troy
20. Eliza
21. Troy
22. Troy
23. Troy
24. Eliza
25. Eliza
26. Troy
27. Troy
28. Troy
29. Troy
30. Eliza
31. Eliza
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 TROY
Is his heart the mirror she needs to finally see her true beauty?
A terrible accident left Eliza with a troubled heart and an unsightly scar. No Terran man wants a woman with a disfigured face, no matter how kind or hardworking. So when Eliza receives the opportunity to adopt a baby and move to a remote frontier moon, she jumps at the chance. She falls in love with baby Clementine the moment she holds the little one in her arms.
But her feelings for Clem’s tall, dark and handsome guard are much more complicated.
Troy’s active duty as a member of the elite Invicta dragon force ended the day he found out he was assigned to protect an Imberian baby. The tiny creature is helpless, smelly, sticky, and the absolute light of his life – though he doesn’t like to say so in so many words. After all, a brutal dragon warrior would never make a fool of himself over a small whelp. But the moment he lays eyes on Clementine’s new adoptive mother, he knows he is in a whole new world of trouble.
He can’t stop thinking about the small, fierce Terran. But his dedication to duty has him desperate to keep his thoughts, and his hands, to himself.
When a local man comes to court Eliza, she feels compelled to consider his suit. After all, what other prospects does she have? But before she can answer, a neighbor asks for help in the form of a wagon trip all the way out to the mines and back. Many ships have lost their navigations systems and wrecked in Han-2’s Bermuda Triangle-like atmosphere, and the lush planet is now littered with hundreds of wrecked crafts, grown through with trees and occupied by animals. And the animals aren’t the only things lurking.
But Eliza’s got a big dragon warrior with her. What could possibly go wrong?
If you like strong women, hunky aliens, wild adventures, steamy sensual scenes, and happily-ever-afters, then you'll love the Alien Adoption Agency!
Set on the moon of Clotho:
-Noxx
-Kade
-Tyro
Set on the moon of Lachesis:
-Zane
-Rexx
-Odin
Set on the moon of Atropos:
-Arik
-Jett
-Zyon
Set on the world of Han-2:
-Troy
-Jace
-Luka
TROY
1
ELIZA
Eliza clung desperately to the armrests as she gazed out the rickety spacecraft’s tiny viewport, observing the wreckage of another small ship below.
The wrecked ship looked like a small, white potato bobbing in an ocean of pea-green soup. But a closer look showed Eliza that the soup was really a lush collection of ferns, grasses and young trees, growing up from inside the ruined craft.
It must have hit the ground with a force massive enough to split the entire hull like a melon.
A memory of screeching metal and sparks invaded her thoughts, a vision of a very different accident. She closed her eyes.
“Eliza, are you okay?” her seat mate asked.
Susannah was blonde and bubbly, but she was also prone to occasional bouts of sudden silence, and she never talked about her past. Eliza hoped it was only because she was so eagerly looking forward to the future.
They all were.
“I’m fine,” Eliza said, unconsciously rubbing her thumb over the scar that bisected the right side of her face.
She caught herself and pulled her hand away as if she’d touched a heating element.
“Does it hurt?” Susannah asked.
“No,” Eliza told her. It hadn’t hurt for a long time, at least on the outside. In her mind, the pain was relentless.
But she didn’t tell Susannah that part.
“Sweet Mother, is that the Night Parade?” their third companion breathed, pressing her hands to the glass.
Apparently, that wasn’t close enough. To Eliza’s horror, Charlotte unbuckled her safety straps and flung herself into the aisle between seats, moving from row to row for a better look.
“It’s massive,” Charlotte gasped, pushing her flame-colored hair out of her eyes.
“Charlotte, sit down,” Eliza barked through a clenched jaw. “We’re about to land.”
“I’ll never be able to see this angle from ground level,” Charlotte said distractedly. “I just need another minute to get a real sense of the scope, and the damage. I’ve never seen a ship that big.”
The little craft lurched, and Eliza screamed involuntarily, clasping a hand over her own mouth to stop herself.
But it was too late. One of the crew scurried out, his talons clinging to the forward most seat.
He glanced at Charlotte, who was standing by the refresher door now with her face pressed to the glass, and he did a double take.
He yelled out something in his native tongue that sounded a lot like a string of curses and pointed Charlotte back to her seat.
She scowled and scurried back to sit.
Then he moved to Eliza, reaching his hands out as if to touch her breasts.
She cowered back, but it didn’t stop him.
He grabbed hold of the odd, shiny vest she was wearing and tugged on it twice, then moved on to do the same to Susannah.
“Thought he was going to grab your boobs, didn’t you?” Susannah asked over the guy’s shoulder as he gave her vest another tug.
“Can you blame me?” Eliza joked weakly.
“Yeah, that adoption training program meant a pretty long dry spell,” Charlotte joked as he gave her vest two tugs.
Eliza laughed. The adoption training program had nothing on her own personal romantic drought.
“I hate to break it to you two,” Susannah said, gazing down at the moon below. “I don’t think that dry spell is going to let up anytime soon.”
She was right. Han-2 had an electromagnetic anomaly that caused problems on the navigational systems of old-fashioned ships.
Until the invention of the Bhimani Drive, this place had been a bit of a Bermuda Triangle, with ships going missing when they ventured too close.
Of course, those ships weren’t really missing. Most of them had crashed, and were resting now under the dense forest growth of the lush moon.
The largest such ship of them all was the Night Parade. Eliza had read about it in school, and learned even more from Charlotte, who had a low-key obsession with the history of the massive craft.
Designed to host a thousand people for a thousand years, the Night Parade was the largest generation ship of its time, moving with regal slowness as smaller ships leapt and whizzed all around it.
There was no hurry. The Night Parade’s only aim was to find the ideal home for its scores of passengers. And whether it took a century or five, they would live comfortably, ensconced in the spacious apartments, luxurious ballrooms, and well-stocked biblio-tecs of the ship. Children would be born and die, never having set foot on solid ground. Its beautifully manicured indoor gardens would provide more than enough fresh air and food, and it even boasted luxuries like a statue garden for romantic lovers’ strolls, and a carousel and climbing park for the children to enjoy.
It sounded like a wonderful place to live, honestly. Until it wasn’t.
Which was a story in itself. None of it had made it into the textbooks, but Charlotte had told them all about it.
Apparently, the Night Parade’s main computer received a satellite scan from one of its minion ships alerting it to a possible haven. The secondary system should have bypassed the command to investigate when it brought up background info-scans, showing that the planet in question was ac
tually not a planet at all, but the dangerous moon, Han-2.
Unfortunately for the citizens of the floating city that was the Night Parade, the chief programmer was sniffling in bed with a terrible cold, and his deputy was at the controls, or so the story went.
No one knows if he rejected the secondary system command because of his inexperience, or if he was distracted by a rumored romantic entanglement. Some said the secondary system must have failed altogether. Others said it was because something about the strange moon called to him, making him override the system to get a closer look.
But no matter how it happened, by the time they realized they were heading toward Han-2, it was too late. Once the ship’s ancient instruments got within range of that alien magnetic field, they were scrambled and useless. A crash was inevitable.
Someone woke the chief and the other engineers, preparations were made, and the last comm received from the Night Parade was:
Controlled crash landing a success. Hull and body damage appear heavy, but all life support systems sustained and operational. All passengers and crew survived. Details to follow, after full assessment.
Only there were no further messages from the Night Parade, other than a single line of text in no known galactic language that came nearly a week later.
No additional communications were ever received. And since Han-2 was so far off the beaten path, no one investigated for centuries.
Not long after the invention of the Bhimani drive, a wealthy young holo-poster made a quick stop on Han-2 as part of his series on unsolved mysteries. He found no sign of the passengers, but reported that the moon was indeed habitable and lush, with rich imanium deposits.
It wasn’t a scientific study, but that had been enough to send a small rush of frontiersmen and women to Han-2, eager to tame the forests and find a new life while scrounging for the valuable imanium found in its virgin soil and rivers.
From what Eliza had read, the settlements on Han-2 were small, but hopeful. This was why the Alien Adoption Agency was sending the women here to claim their new babies, plus a generous parcel of land for each of them on the frontier moon.
It was a wonderful opportunity for Eliza to have a new life and a family of her own.
Ever since the accident that resulted in her disfiguring scar, she had slowly accepted that she was unlikely to find love on Terra-13. It wasn’t just that she was ugly. It was more that no one wanted a woman whose face reminded them of the dangers of life that waited around every corner.
She had gotten used to the look of revulsion that flickered across people’s faces when they first laid eyes on her. It was always there, even if some people were better at hiding it.
So, she’d resigned herself to being single. But with the stipend and land from the adoption agency, she wouldn’t need a second income to sustain a life of independence for herself and the child.
A speaker buzzed, and the pilot squawked out something anxiously. The translation sensor wasn’t working, so Eliza could only guess at his meaning.
“They’re just nervous because they think Han-2 is haunted,” Charlotte said.
She obviously meant to be reassuring, but it sent a shiver down Eliza’s spine anyway.
The disappearance of the passengers and crew of the Night Parade, and the subsequent holo-posting, had resulted in rumors of ghosts on the moon. It was nonsense, of course, but the Alien Adoption Agency had been forced to contact multiple services before finding one that agreed to do a drop-off.
Looking around, Eliza could see this ship was in desperate need of repair. Desperate enough to take the credits for a trip to Han-2.
“I don’t think they’re landing,” Susannah said, staring out the window.
She was right. They were at the landing site, but they were just sort of hovering.
The crew member with the talons scuttled out again and began gesturing for them to stand.
Charlotte shrugged and got up, and Susannah and Eliza followed.
This time when the talon guy tugged at her, Eliza was ready. She turned her face away slightly from his rancid breath as he examined her vest.
A cold talon scraped her chin and she gasped.
He was trying to get her attention, showing her a tiny screen on the vest in the shape of a pair of wings.
She moved to touch it and he squawked at her, batting her hand away and pointing to the window.
A horrible thought began to dawn on her.
“No,” she breathed. “No, no, no…”
“What the hell, Eliza?” Charlotte asked immediately.
The talon guy was pointing to Susannah’s touch screen and to the window as well.
“Susannah was right. We’re not landing,” Eliza said softly, as Charlotte got the same instructions as the others. “They expect us to jump.”
“No, no way,” Susannah said, her voice higher pitched than usual.
“Far out,” Charlotte said, nodding. “I guess that keeps them off the haunted ground of Han-2.”
“I’m afraid of heights,” Susannah moaned. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Don’t you dare,” Charlotte said, spinning to face their friend.
But Susannah’s usual smile was gone, replaced with a wan look of terror.
Charlotte started to say something, but then the hatch flew open, blasting cold air into the ship and putting an end to any conversation.
The talon guy strapped himself into a seat and began scolding them, arms waving. His words were sucked away by the air, but they wouldn’t have been able to understand him anyway.
And besides, his meaning was clear.
Eliza glanced over at Susannah, who was clutching one of the seats.
The hatch opening was fairly wide. She knew what she had to do.
Taking a deep breath, Eliza grabbed Susannah’s hand and yanked her toward the open hatch.
Susannah shook her head.
Eliza tugged at her, but she wouldn’t budge.
Charlotte moved to them and grabbed onto Susannah’s other arm.
Together, they dragged their terrified friend toward the hatch.
Eliza could see the ground beneath them now. It looked soft and green, and very, very far away.
Susannah clutched her hand hard enough to hurt, and Eliza turned to her just in time to see her heave.
She ducked and the vomit flew past her and into the seating area.
This time the taloned crew mate screamed loud enough they could hear it.
Susannah turned back to see the damage she had done, and Charlotte winked at Eliza.
Trying not to think too hard about what they were about to do, Eliza yanked hard on Susannah’s hand.
She stumbled forward, unable to struggle as Eliza and Charlotte dragged the three of them over the edge.
Eliza felt weightless for a moment, her hair and clothing lifting. The oddly revealing purple gowns they had all been made to wear under the vests flapped like the wings of a strange, six-legged bird.
To her surprise, it was actually quieter than it had been in the wind tunnel created by the open hatch in the craft.
If it hadn’t been for Susannah looking like she was about to faint, it might have even been fun.
Charlotte screamed to them, pointing at the wing-sensors.
The ground was closer now. When she glanced down, she could differentiate the trees from the undergrowth.
Charlotte took her free hand and used it to count down from three.
When she got to zero, she and Eliza each tapped their screen. Then Charlotte shot out a hand to strike Susannah’s sensor, fast as a sand viper.