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  Prime Target, The Prime Chronicles, Book 5

  ISBN: 978-0-9973565-2-6

  Copyright, 2018, Monette Michaels.

  Cover art: Copyright, 2016, April Martinez.

  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.

  By purchasing this e-book, you have purchased a single-use license, meaning that this book is for your reading pleasure on your personal devices alone. Please do not transfer this e-book to other people or place on a file-sharing site; such actions violate the author’s copyright and the contractual agreements she has with third-parties.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  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.

  Former Prime sex surrogate Susa Anghard has never been off her planet, let alone out of the Cejuru solar system. While she isn’t naive about men and what they want, she isn’t prepared for the predatory males who now have her in their sights. When she’s kidnapped on her way to a galactic rim jump station to visit her cousin Borac, she has no expectations of being rescued. She vows to free herself or die trying.

  When Borac Anghard asks Damon Martin to intercept his cousin Susa’s transport and escort her to their jump station, Damon agrees. When he arrives to meet Susa’s ship, he finds she’s been kidnapped by Dorian mercenaries. He goes in hot pursuit and prays he finds her before she’s delivered to the person who paid for the kidnapping.

  When Damon catches up with the kidnappers, he hadn’t expected to find the resourceful Susa in the act of getting away. And he really hadn’t expected to be so attracted to her. An attraction that can go nowhere—she is his business partner’s cousin and Damon still isn’t over losing the only woman he’d ever loved.

  Take one alpha-male with a slightly broken heart, add in one Prime female finding her courage and self for the first time—throw them together in close quarters on a trip across the galaxy and love will find a way.

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a village to create a book.

  As always, many, many thanks and much love goes to my critique partner, Cherise Sinclair. This woman always has my back and pushes me to the next level.

  Thanks to Ezra Solomon, for an early critique on the first third of the book; his insight helped me fine-tune scenes and characters.

  For my beta-partner Valerie Samouillan who went above and beyond the call of duty and read this massive manuscript, not once, but twice. Her comments on both drafts were much appreciated.

  To Marci Clark from Nerdy Kat Book Services for doing both a copy edit and a final line edit in record time. You are the best.

  Much love to my cover artist April Martinez from Graphicfantastic. The cover is exactly what I envisioned. You are the platinum standard in cover design.

  And finally to my husband, who puts up with me when I am talking, yelling, and screaming at the computer monitor. Love you, baby.

  Prologue

  Cejuru Prime

  Susa Anghard strolled the labyrinthine paths of her home’s extensive hillside gardens. Peak growing season had arrived in this part of Cejuru Prime. The never-ending job of dead-heading spent flowers, pulling weeds, and harvesting the fruit and vegetables kept her busy and should’ve kept her mind occupied.

  But these weren’t normal times, and her gardens weren’t the calming distraction they’d been in the past.

  And no wonder. A lot had happened over the last three standard months, and she was still reeling from the drastic change in her life’s path. What had once been a constrained and narrow life, one forced on her by fate and circumstance, was now open with infinite possibilities. The concept stopped her in her tracks. She placed a hand on her fluttering stomach and forced herself to swallow past the lump of anxiousness lodged in her throat. Mentally, she repeated what had become her mantra—take one day at a time, Susa, and breathe.

  Her new life had begun with one little conversation to right an egregious wrong. That conversation snowballed to reveal a traitor and his vicious plan of revenge that eventually would’ve wiped out the Prime race. Yeah, when Susa wanted to fix something, she went all out.

  Her good deed had resulted in her testifying before a Prime tribunal. As a result of the hearings, Susa had suffered flashbacks to a time when a man who should’ve shown care for her beat and degraded her. The defense counsel had accused her and the other sex surrogates of smearing the man’s good name and those of his associates.

  Rage threatened to bubble up and take her back to a place she never wanted to revisit. Susa took out the violent emotions eating away at her gut on a pernicious weed and yanked it up by its roots.

  Eventually, truth had won out over the lies. There’d been too much evidence collected by Dr. Bria Martin-Caradoc and her medical research team which proved Tenar Caradoc and his associates had deliberately plotted to kill off the Prime race.

  Susa’s role in the case was finished, thank the One. The knowledge that the guilty would be punished for their crimes against their people lightened her soul. While her nightmares had not gone away, they came less frequently.

  Now, she was free and could focus on living her life. She planned to take her very first trip off-planet to visit her cousin Borac, his Terran wife, and their children. She should be excited and packing for her travels, but instead she was pacing her gardens and fretting.

  Stopping at edge of her property, she took in the distant waterfalls and, even farther on, the Cejuru Prime ocean. An overwhelming pang of homesickness brought tears to her eyes and she hadn’t even left yet. She wiped away the silly tears.

  Susa really wanted to go on the trip—she did. But she might as well admit it, if only to herself, she was scared of the unknown. She’d be all alone, a stranger in a huge galaxy in which she hadn’t quite figured out how she fit. At least here, she had her home, her gardens, and her friends. But she no longer had a role—since Prime males were finding mates among Terrans and Volusians, there was no longer the pressing need for sex surrogates to service unmated Prime male’s needs as there had been in the past.

  “Grow up, Susa,” she muttered and yanked out another weed.

  Worrying about what would come was fruitless. She wasn’t a coward, and it wasn’t as if she couldn’t turn around and come home when she wanted.

  But something niggling deep inside kept telling her home would never be the same. The feeling was a bit like grief—she’d lost the role for which she’d trained and reached the upper echelon by serving the leading family for the last fifteen standard years. She felt as if she’d lost her basic identity.

  Susa bent to smell a lolly flower. Inhaling deeply, she took the scent inside, let it calm her, and then memorized the sweetness. There wouldn’t be lolly flowers or any flowers growing where she was headed. The thought was depressing. Maybe she shouldn’t—

  “Susa,” a feminine voice called out before Susa finished the thought about calling off the trip.

  She turned and found Mel, Nadia, and Bria approaching her. The three women were recently mated to the three sons of Ilar Caradoc, the leader of the Cejuru solar system. The same Caradoc sons who’d been Susa’s former lovers. She still couldn’t believe these women had become her close friends.

  Their brave acts in helping to expose Tenar and his evil plans were why her life—and the lives of the other former sex surrogates—had changed for the better. The three and their mates had also accompanied her to the tribunal’s hearings eve
ry damn day and supported her through the horrible experience.

  “Why are you crying?” Nadia, the tall, blond science officer on the Starship Galanti, came to her and gave her a hug. “Do I need to beat someone up?”

  Susa laughed. “No, I’m homesick, and I haven’t even left yet.” She waved a hand around. “I’ll miss my gardens. Who’ll take care of them while I’m gone? I can’t leave—”

  “Unh-uh. Nope. Don’t say it.” Mel, the co-captain of the Galanti along with her mate Wulf Caradoc, waved a bossy finger to go with her bossy tone. “Wulf’s mother, myself, Nadia, and Bria will take care of the gardens and keep an eye on your house. Everything will be fine and will be here when you return home.”

  Bria, the leading Galactic Alliance genetics researcher, came to stand in front of Susa. “My brother says Borac is looking forward to your visit. He wants you to meet Cissy and the children and to show you the jump station they’ve made into a famous, or maybe it’s infamous, galactic rim destination. So, you’re going, girlfriend, and we’re here to help you pack.”

  “We even brought wine and snacks.” Nadia put her arm around Susa’s shoulders and aimed her toward the steps leading to the terrace. “It’s a packing party. We figured you wouldn’t have a clue on what you’ll need for your stay on Tooh 2 or for your time on the ship, so we’ll be your expert guides.”

  “Um … thanks?” Susa allowed herself to be led. She wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Her friends, while beautiful, intelligent, and all-around wonderful, weren’t what she’d call clothes-conscious. All three women worked for the Alliance military in some form or another, so jumpsuits, uniforms, and lab coats in Bria’s case, were their normal everyday wear.

  Mel snickered. “You don’t sound too confident in our abilities.”

  “Well…” she began.

  “Don’t lie.” Bria laughed. “You aren’t. But we might surprise you. Plus, we want to get into your closet.”

  Susa shrugged. “I’ll appreciate any advice offered.” But she would be the final decision-maker.

  Two standard hours later, Susa and the trio of nosy packers had polished off one bottle of wine—and had broached the second—and eaten all the finger foods, but not one single bag had been packed.

  Susa might not have to worry about being homesick, because at this rate, she’d never leave. She reclined on the chaise in her normally organized bedroom and viewed the chaos with a mixture of amusement and dismay.

  Her three, now slightly tipsy, friends couldn’t agree on anything and had pulled out every piece of clothing Susa owned. They’d created piles labeled “going” and “not going.” It was all she could do to stay put, sip her wine, and not indulge her need to put everything back in order.

  “Blessed One! She can’t take that outfit.” Bria glared at Mel who held up a patterned body suit that was sheer enough to show everything beneath it. “Every male on the jump station would have her flat on her back and legs in the air before she said ‘hello.’”

  “It’s meant to be worn under something else, Bria, or in the privacy of her quarters,” Nadia pointed out. “Now, this…” She held up a leather jumpsuit with cutouts that more than hinted at a woman’s curves and private places that Susa had worn out and about in the capital city. In fact, she’d worn it when dining out with Iolyn, Bria’s mate. Not that Susa would share that information. “…is asking for sexual attention.” Nadia winked at Susa. “May I borrow it?”

  “Sure.” Susa chuckled at the look of horror on Mel and Bria’s faces.

  All three women stopped sorting and stared at her.

  “What’s so funny?” Mel held the sheer body suit close to her chest.

  “Not funny, but amusing … in an ironic way.”

  “Ironic in what way?” Mel asked.

  “You’re going through my clothes, trying to find sexually nondescript clothes for my upcoming trip. All of my clothing is sexy. Looking sexy and having sex were a major part of my life.” But not any longer.

  “I can see why you think it’s amusing … in a weird sort of way,” Mel said. “But you really had no choice about what you did. Things will be different now for Prime women who don’t mark with a Prime male.”

  The mark Mel referred to was a mating mark. On a male, it appeared on his chest over his heart. On the female, over her right ovary. The marking was historically said to identify a Prime’s perfect complement, a mind-spirit-body mating. Tenar Caradoc had taken that theory and used it, along with lies and false science to attempt to end the Prime race once and for all. The hypothesis now was the mark was based on neurochemistry and was Nature’s way to prevent inbreeding in the small, isolated population. Males who marked were called gemats; females, gemates.

  “You all will be able to choose who and what you want to be. Choose with whom you wish to have sex. Even more importantly, with whom you wish to make a family.”

  “Well, I had a choice, it was merely limited,” Susa corrected.

  Mel, while Prime, hadn’t been raised on the home planet. She and Bria had been among the Lost Ones, women and children who hadn’t returned after a mass evacuation during a time of war.

  “When I hadn’t marked by eighteen…” Susa said.

  A devastating event. She could still recall the hollowness in the pit of her stomach and the ache in her heart when she’d participated in what had been her last mating ritual and failed to mark. Because for as long as the Prime had been isolationists, the rule had been “if you don’t mark, you don’t mate.” With no gemate marking, Susa had been destined, by law, to never have a family of her own.

  “…and since I had no parents or relatives to take me in, my choices were to live in a communal home for unmated and widowed females and remain celibate for the rest of my life, or to become a sex surrogate for a family group. I don’t regret choosing to be the Caradoc family sex surrogate, even with the abuse Tenar and a few others dished out, because that choice brought me to this point in my life.”

  Mel shook her head. “Makes me glad I was a Lost One and grew up with Terran parents who encouraged me to do whatever I wanted.”

  Bria nodded. “Me, too. I can’t imagine being anything other than a doctor and a researcher.”

  “Makes me glad I’m a Terran,” Nadia said. “While I’ve always had to fight harder to garner respect in a male-dominated galaxy, I still had the freedom to make my own decisions about where I lived and what I wanted to do.”

  “Susa, in the end, it was your knowledge and assistance that helped us take Tenar and his kind down,” Bria said softly. “So, thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Susa raised her glass in salute. “Maybe it was all meant to happen in this very way. And, now, I have the freedom to do what I wish with what remains of my life. Even if the opportunity is scaring the hell out of me.”

  Of course, she didn’t have to make any long-term decisions at the moment. Due to the generosity of the Caradoc family, she now owned her house and the extensive gardens she’d laid out and planted and had enough wealth to maintain the property and live her life without having to work or find a man to support her.

  “You’ll be fine,” Mel said. “You’re smart and have guts. Plus, you have us and our men to back you up. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and I’m grateful.”

  Mel was correct. Whatever came Susa’s way, she’d deal with it. This trip and the time spent away from Cejuru Prime would give her the opportunity to think about what she wanted out of life and to discover what lay outside of the insular world she’d lived in for most of her thirty-three standard years. She’d have time to figure out how men and women met, decided to spend their lives together, and how to make a family outside of the former, rigid protocols of the Prime mating ritual.

  And making a family was important to her since she had no one left outside of Borac.

  But before she had to make any momentous decisions about her future path, she first had to survive the trip preparations.

>   She thought about confessing to her friends all the inchoate fears floating around in her head about the upcoming trip, but discarded the idea. She wasn’t sure they could relate to why she was scared—the three women had faced far worse dilemmas and dangers as they’d found their way to their gemats.

  “Wulf, Iolyn, and Huw are so lucky to have found you,” Susa found herself saying without any conscious thought of doing so. “They’re good and honorable men. They deserve the happiness and the children you will give them.” Which would happen in about six standard months or so. All three women were pregnant with almost back-to-back due dates.

  Bria and her medical researchers had discovered that any Prime female could conceive a child with any Prime male—or any male of a compatible hominid species—and had also developed a cure for the manufactured infertility issues that had threatened to kill off the Prime race. Susa yearned for a child of her own now that it was an attainable goal.

  For that to happen, she needed to find a man she could trust, love, and care for. One who’d not only love her, but also protect her against all the bad things in the galaxy.

  Susa planned on keeping her eyes and heart open while she explored her new life’s choices. Maybe her mate—her life-partner—was out there, hunting for her, too.

  “You do know we think of you as our sister-kin, right?” Nadia’s soft comment was unexpected since she was Terran and sister-kin was a Prime construct normally used to designate kin by marriage. The other two women nodded their agreement.

  Susa flushed with pleasure. Nadia had actively disliked Susa in the beginning since Nadia’s gemat Huw had rubbed the surrogate relationship with Susa in Nadia’s face. He’d been an asshole and, thank the One, Nadia understood and forgave him—and Susa.

  “I’m honored. Thank you.” Susa looked at each of the women. “All of you. I feel the same. I treasure your friendship.”

  “Heck, we should be thanking you.” Bria snatched the transparent body suit away from Mel and tossed it into the “not going” pile and then picked up a day gown that was just as sheer. “I can’t speak for the others, but I realize that Iolyn is a superb lover, because you wouldn’t accept anything less. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.”