*Author's Note*
This novel picks up where Star's Ships leaves off. If you've read the first book, then this chapter is just a recap to refresh your memory. If you haven't, don't worry! You don't need to have read Star's Ships in order to know what is going on. This chapter is meant to bring you up to speed with a few spoilers.
Either way, I really hope you enjoy this novel!!
Please check the trigger warnings posted on the summary page. This one will be dark with dark themes that, while they won't always be there, will play a big role in making our FMC who she is.
Ariel has not had the easiest of lives, but her men are more than willing to make up for it.
The first few chapters will have a lot of the trigger warnings, but after she meets the guys, all that changes.
In case you missed them:
Trigger Warnings:
Sexual Assault (Past and Present)
Physical Assault
Physical Abuse
Child Brides
Abusive parents
Thoughts of suicide
Cults (high religious content)
Now that I haven't scared you off... Onto the good stuff...
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The Universe Hated Me
Have you ever woken up and just known that the entire universe had it out for you? Yeah, that seemed to be my life lately.
One human woman gets abducted by aliens almost three years ago, discovered to be some long lost descendant of universal breeder royalty, and suddenly it is open season on human women.
I'll admit, it wasn't that bad getting abducted at first. Sure, I was alone on an AI-powered ship with only the computer to keep me company, but it could have been worse, right? I could have been back on Earth, on the run from the super religious cult that I was born into.
There, I was married to a 63-year-old man as his 33rd wife, so finally, being alone in the vastness of space was a Godsend. I might have been scared and in pain, but at least I was safe onboard my ship.
That was, until it all changed.
My ship, L-17666, or Lucifer as I called him, received orders that I didn't know about. Hell, there was a lot that I didn't seem to know about. Anyway, that night, I fell asleep on my bed, and the next morning, I woke up strapped to one of the steel tables in the med lab, my ovaries and womb in a container beside me.
I was forced to drink vials of liquid as Lucifer tried to make me the next Ethawain queen and a universal breeder in my own right. I didn't know just how that would work, seeing as what I needed to be able to carry offspring was on a table next to my head, but I wasn't about to tell the AI that.
He wanted to sell me at the highest profit on the basis that I could have over 200 children, all Gods, and world seeders, according to him. I had no idea what he was talking about. He might have been an AI, but he was starting to sound a lot like the Prophet. I was more than just my womb.
I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up again. I was tired of just going with the flow as wave after wave of torment lashed down on me in one way or another. But that would be admitting that what the Prophet had said about me was right. That I was nothing more than a breeder for his flock.
Since I wouldn't lie down and submit, I had to stand up and fight.
My mother used to read me a banned book when I was younger. It was about a mermaid who fell in love with a human man and traded her voice for the ability to be with him. She named me after her, Ariel, to remind me that a woman could do anything to earn the love of a man. Her man.
I mean, I was pretty sure that wasn't the moral of that particular story, but when you didn't have a choice in who you took into your bed or what age you did it at, I guess it would do.
Unfortunately, all it did was give me the idea that I wanted to find a world where I could be myself, where those who loved me accepted me as I was, with no need to change.
I told that to the Prophet once.
He tried to beat that thought out of me and then burned that precious book in front of both Mom and me. It worked for a while. Until I grew up big enough to escape over the walls of his kingdom.
There, I had a week of freedom before Lucifer found me.
Then it happened. The true Ethawain Royalty, Queen Bai Mei Xing, destroyed the Alliance, freeing herself and every other human female. She brought them to the planet she had discovered, and her ship, Jun Li, patrolled the galaxy she called her own, searching for human women to bring back to safety.
Unfortunately for me, no one knew I existed. Lucifer had deleted all records of me being on his ship. When asked if he ever had a human, he told Jun Li that he did, but that I had requested to be dropped off on some planet or other soon after I was freed from the lizard freaks, and he, being the loving AI that he was, did as I asked.
Instead, not wanting to get caught lying to the most powerful ship in the universe, Lucifer sold me to a pleasure house a few galaxies away where everything red was considered to be good luck.
Yeah, did I mention that I had bright red hair, just like my namesake? Look at me, being a walking good luck charm.
And the fact that I bled red, too? Well, that was a bonus for whoever could get it out of me.
The only thing that would have made me even more valuable to both Lucifer and the pleasure station I was sold to would be to have children.
Too bad Luci forgot to put the organs back inside of me. Oops. I guess I forgot to remind him of that little fact as he was counting the money.
But that transaction was months ago. And every day since then, I bled.
The Prophet once told me that God hated me, that He wanted the world to know just what a harlot I was by giving me red hair.
I used to scoff at that idea. After all, God was a loving God, right? How could He have created me only to hate me? I was sure that the Prophet had it wrong, and as soon as I found the one place where I belonged, a world that was mine, life would be everything that I prayed about and more.
I was still waiting. For that world or for death, I wasn't sure at this point. But I was waiting.
Staring at the bright red ceiling on top of me, I closed my one good eye again, falling back to sleep. Maybe, just maybe, the next time I woke up again, things would be better, and the universe wouldn't hate me for simply being me.