Haven: Alien Surrogate Agency #2 Read online

  Haven

  Alien Surrogate Agency #2

  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

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  13th Story Press

  PO Box 506

  Swarthmore, PA 19081

  [email protected]

  * * *

  Cover designed by Sylvia Frost of The Book Brander

  Contents

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About Haven

  Haven

  1. Haven

  2. Kai

  3. Haven

  4. Kai

  5. Oberon

  6. Haven

  7. Kai

  8. Haven

  9. Kai

  10. Oberon

  11. Haven

  12. Kai

  13. Haven

  14. Kai

  15. Haven

  16. Kai

  17. Haven

  18. Kai

  19. Oberon

  20. Haven

  21. Haven

  22. Kai

  23. Haven

  24. Kai

  25. Haven

  26. Oberon

  27. Haven

  28. Haven

  29. Haven

  30. Kai

  31. Haven

  32. Haven

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About the Author

  One Percent Club

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, alien adventures, 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 Haven

  Can he tame her wild spirit long enough to give her his child?

  * * *

  Kai needs a child, an heir for his fortune. But from the moment the big Maltaffian lays eyes on his intended surrogate, he instantly feels an insatiable hunger only she can assuage. If the impatient little Terran wasn’t so anxious to hurry along their conception, maybe he could make her realize she needs him too.

  * * *

  Haven never expected to be a surrogate for an alien, but she’s always up for an adventure. When her best friend decides to volunteer with the top-secret fertility clinic, Haven jumps in right alongside her, with both feet. Though she might be a bit of a party girl right now, she knows she might be glad one day that she took the once-in-a-lifetime chance to restore her fertility.

  * * *

  And the free vacation and cash bonus will be the icing on the cake.

  * * *

  Then she meets Kai.

  * * *

  At first, she’s happy to ogle the mouth-wateringly beautiful Maltaffian male, and secretly very pleased to learn that they’ll be making his baby the old-fashioned way.

  * * *

  But then out of nowhere, he becomes wildly possessive, snarling at anyone who comes near her, making crazy statements about sharing his fortune and his fancy life with her, and swearing he’ll never let her go back to Terra-58 where he can’t protect her.

  * * *

  And that’s when things at the Midsummer Fertility Center start to get weird.

  Haven

  1

  Haven

  Once her prep work was done, Haven turned up the music a little and swiped through notifications on FertileMinds, her infertility chat group.

  The interior of the café was cozy and fragrant. Overflowing bookshelves lined the walls and the pots were all brewing. The only threat to the heavenly peace was the punk rock Haven was currently blasting through the café sound system.

  It was like being in her own world.

  Of course, right outside, a zombie-like crowd gazed hungrily through the glass front wall, furious expressions on their faces.

  They could go ahead and glare at her. Haven was definitely not opening the café early. She had no intention of enduring even an extra two minutes of customer service if she didn’t have to.

  When she spotted a post from one of her friends, she stopped swiping.

  * * *

  AlexisWantsABabyBump:

  AF is here

  * * *

  That was followed by a cascade of sympathy and supportive messages. There was a lump in Haven’s throat, and she felt her stomach clench with sadness.

  Two years ago, she wouldn’t have even known what that short message meant. Now she knew it stood for “Aunt Flo is here” and that it meant Alexis’s recent fertility treatment, the one she’d worked two jobs for half a year to pay for, had been a bust.

  They had suspected it, of course. Most of the women on the forum took early result pregnancy tests starting ten days after ovulation.

  But a negative early test wasn’t completely definitive.

  Not like that unmistakable sight of scarlet, and the full knowledge that your womb was empty.

  Haven hadn’t been dying to have a baby all her life or anything. Unlike many of her friends, she had hoped to have plenty of adventures first.

  But on Terra-58, the matriarchal society was maintained with a hard and fast rule. If you wanted to be eligible for marriage, you had to have a primary heir on your own first. This ensured that wealth and standing were passed down through the maternal line.

  With women in charge, Terra-58 had blossomed and was considered a paragon of compassionate rule, with highly respected international relations compared to other Terran planets.

  But needing a kid before you could have a serious relationship could cramp your style if you were the artistic type. It was Haven’s own mother who had convinced her to start giving it some thought.

  Haven’s dad had died when she was seven. He had been a semi-famous drummer and her mom had danced with the band entourage for concerts and videos.

  Losing him had brought Haven and her mom closer than ever.

  Her dad’s last words to her were, “Bring art to the world, baby.”

  And she had been trying. Trying, and failing miserably, to the detriment of every other aspect of her life.

  Two years ago, her mom had pulled her aside and said the words that turned her around.

  “Do you know what would have been worse than losing your dad?” she had asked, brushing her long, silvering hair out of her face so she could lock eyes with Haven.

  “What?” Haven had asked, surprised at her normally laid-back mother’s intensity.

  “Not having you,” her mom said. “I know you want to pursue the arts, but if you have a baby, I’ll retire early and take care of him or her. We can do it together, even if you’d rather try to find your art than find a husband.”

  Haven shrugged it off at the time, but those words haunted her.

  A few months later, they made her first appointment at a fertility clinic to start the process of conception with the best genetic materials money could buy.

  And it didn’t work.

  They tried again, and again, and nothing.

  She took six months off from treatments to eat only her mother’s special vegan stew and meditate five times per day, facing Old Terra.

  Her mom, always the hippie type, began dancing naked on her condo balcony at midnight to beseech Mother Stars for help.

  The association fined her mother, and told her if she kept it up, the neighbors would lodge an official complaint with the city.

&
nbsp; And still, after the next treatment Haven was visited by her own Aunt Flo.

  Haven had always been a devil-may-care person, more interested in having a good time than stressing out about the details. But infertility suddenly made her feel like she was walking through her life with an anchor attached to her heart. While many of her friends on the forum seemed to feel only pain, Haven was often angry. And always exhausted.

  The patience and the suffering had forced her to slow down and get to know herself and her desires better. In a cruel twist of fate, she learned that she really wanted a child. Not for her mother, but for herself, for a future she hoped would be filled with the happiness she remembered from her own childhood.

  And the way the doctors talked, it always felt like her baby was just out of reach, certain to be in her arms if she tried one more treatment, and then one more…

  The only bright side was the extra time she was spending with her mom, and the friends she had made in the online support group, one of whom she had on background mode right now.

  Her best friend, Piper, had decided to give up her treatments and spend her money on travel. Though she knew Piper’s decision had to hurt, Haven was happy to cheer her on. Piper deserved to be free of the endless emotional and financial drain of treatments, even if that freedom wasn’t coming the way she had hoped.

  Right now, Piper was headed to the fertility clinic to cash in her remaining credits there. She had Haven on background mode comms, in case she needed support.

  The old-fashioned clock on the wall chimed, letting Haven know it was time to open up the café.

  She reluctantly swiped her bracelet to mute herself so that talking with customers wouldn’t activate her background mode to swap to foreground.

  “Wow, you were working hard to get this place opened up,” a woman in a blue suit snapped aggressively.

  “Have you considered switching to decaf?” Haven suggested as she moseyed back behind the counter.

  The woman made a noise like air being let out of a tire.

  “I don’t know why I even come here,” a guy said, pushing to the front of the line from his place in the crowd. “It’s overpriced, and you guys don’t know how to make a real cappuccino.”

  “You want to come back here and show me how it’s done?” Haven offered in a too-sweet voice.

  He rolled his eyes and placed his order.

  She began taking more orders and prepping drinks as fast as she could.

  The mean customers didn’t deserve it, but she did feel a little bad about how long everything was taking.

  Her manager, Grelft, had a new girlfriend who lived on the far side of the park. He had taken to arriving ten minutes after the shift started instead of fifteen minutes before, presumably so he could gift the poor love interest with his gross body an extra time each morning and catch the later hush-rail.

  It meant that instead of one employee on the cash register and the other on drinks, Haven had to do it all during the busiest time of the day. She also had to do every bit of the prep herself.

  Her comms came to life in her ear as Piper began talking to the receptionist at the fertility clinic.

  But with all the noise in the café Haven couldn’t really hear her. It was just as well, nothing much would happen in reception.

  She poured out coffees and mixed orders with ingredients from all over the galaxy. The café advertised that it had A Wake-Up for Every Race.

  Haven wasn’t sure that was possible, but she definitely had a ton of machines and carafes to clean out when she worked a closing shift.

  People were getting rowdy and rude by the time Grelft slid in the door, looking disheveled and disgustingly happy.

  He was half Terran, half Bergalian, as he told anyone who would listen.

  As far as Haven was concerned, he had inherited the worst of each race. His furry body was Terran height instead of towering, and he was covered in limp blonde fur. Instead of Bergalian muscles, he had a distinctly Terran paunch.

  “Finally,” one of the customers said.

  A handful of others applauded, un-ironically.

  Haven felt like screaming at them. She had dragged herself out of bed before sunrise to be here on time.

  “Not so easy handling the place on your own, is it, Haven?” Grelft asked with an expression of smug satisfaction.

  “Nice of you to show up, boss man,” she shot back.

  He frowned, but she turned and took another order and soon, they were too busy to remember the argument.

  When things started to slow down, Grelft changed the music to a low octane blend of digital mush.

  “Wow, is this your favorite station?” Haven asked him sarcastically.

  “You’re not supposed to play that other music,” he told her, a look of distaste on his face.

  She would have gotten into it with him, if Piper’s feed hadn’t activated again just that minute, revealing that the finance department at her fertility clinic was offering her some kind of shady off-the-books treatment. It would all happen off-planet, and they were even making her sign a non-disclosure agreement.

  Haven tried to stay quiet and listen in, but customers kept annoying her with their inane chitchat.

  At last, there was a short break in the line.

  She leaned against the counter, listening in to an unbelievable conversation.

  Her best friend was being offered a chance for an unprecedented treatment. The agency was saying that infertile Terrans could have their fertility activated with the alien sperm used in a fertility treatment.

  The catch was that the Terran woman could only obtain that sperm by acting as a surrogate for the alien male. Using her own genetic materials.

  That’s not how any of this works, Haven thought to herself.

  But then she looked at her manager and thought there was probably a whole lot she didn’t really know about alien fertility. It seemed pretty far-fetched, but maybe it was possible. And it wasn’t like any of the current methods she’d been trying were doing her any good.

  The woman on the other end kept talking, telling Piper that space travel had exposed Terrans to all kinds of new possibilities, including the possibility that acting in this capacity to help an alien male might allow her to one day have biological children of her own.

  But the most surprising thing happened at the end of the conversation, when the woman offered Piper time to think it over.

  “I’ll do it,” Piper said, in a clear, calm voice.

  “Holy shit balls,” Haven murmured just a little too loudly.

  She shook her head in disbelief, and looked up to see an elderly lady standing in front of her with a look of horror on her face.

  “Excuse me, young lady?” she said, in a scandalized tone.

  Grelft was already striding over to her, a furious look on his face.

  “Yeah, don’t bother,” Haven told him, taking off her apron. “I’m gonna take a couple weeks off.”

  “B-but, you don’t have that kind of vacation time,” he spluttered angrily. “You just started here.”

  “Then… I guess I quit?” Haven shrugged, pressing the apron into his hands and sliding out from behind the counter to grab her signature leather jacket off the hook.

  “Haven,” he yelped out as she headed for the doors.

  No doubt he was remembering that without her, he’d have to open up and serve on his own, instead of canoodling with his new girl.

  She didn’t even break her stride. She pushed open the glass doors and was out on the moving walkway a moment later, drinking in a deep breath of relatively fresh city air.

  Businesspeople were striding along the walks, street vendors were singing, and nannies were pushing hover buggies and playing with kids in the city park. The dim peace of the coffee shop was gone, but Haven found herself enjoying a rush of happy energy she hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Sliding her bracelet to comms, she started calling her closest friends from the forum, hoping they could take adv
antage of the same program Piper had just joined.

  Piper might have signed an NDA, but Haven hadn’t.

  And with any luck, she would have herself signed up with the Alien Fertility Agency in no time.

  2

  Kai

  Kai tapped his fingers on his thighs under the table as his Head of Finance droned on.

  Every month there was a presentation, but the quarterly reports were endless. And they were inevitably dismal.

  “Sir, I beg your pardon, but are you even listening?” the young man asked suddenly, lowering the hand that held the holo-remote.

  This was a major break in protocol. No one ever talked to Kai that way.

  The other executives sitting at the floating mahogany slab all turned to look at him.

  In fairness, he wasn’t listening. He was looking outside at the reflection of the trees in the glassy window of the original factory.

  He didn’t have to listen to know the purpose of this presentation, and all the others, was to tell him that his great-grandfather’s candy manufacturing business was on the brink of collapse.