CHAPTER ONE

 

Get the crystal. Don’t let anyone see you. Get it and don’t look back. Get the crystal. Get it now.

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The voice reverberated around Lucie’s head, knocking all thoughts out of its way. No matter how small. No matter if they were just the potential of a thought. It was too strong to ignore, and she didn’t have the energy to fight it anymore.

 

It was just. So. Persistent.

She’d tried for weeks now. Weeks of ignoring. Of pretending. Of pleading it to go away. Of demanding it to shut up. Only now… it had worn her down. She just couldn’t take it anymore.

 

Oh, she knew what she was going to do was wrong. So, so wrong. She would never be forgiven, not even by these men—aliens—who had claimed her as their exalted mate.

 

After all, the fate of their Homeland hinged on the crystal in the tower. Without the supernatural power of the crystal, Triad males could not find their female mate to form Quads. Without Quads connected through the mate-sync, there could be no children conceived. Their population has stagnated. A whole race of people would die out.

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Her mates had returned the Erion crystal to the tower just after they’d landed on their Homeplanet. Their subjects had lined the streets, cheering, clapping, yelling, laughing. They were saved. They finally had hope for their future. People had come from all over to witness this momentous event. And it had been momentous. After ten years, their race had hope for survival. Only their tower had not lit up, even with the precious crystal put back into its place of honor.

 

The jubilations hadn’t lasted long after that. No one could work out why the crystal had not powered the tower. Even their experts had come up short.

But she knew.

 

The demonic voice in her head that had tormented her since she’d escaped the Reptiles cages told her it wouldn’t light up. Not without its specific authorization. There was a lock on it that only it could undo. It also told her not to say a thing.

 

That it would hurt her mates if she did.

 

Even though she was clearly insane, she listened to it.

 

She was too terrified not to.

 

The three men, who had saved her—treated her with absolute affection and caring—would be harmed because of her. She almost couldn’t believe that total strangers could even act that way. She didn’t believe it could possibly be real. How could it? They didn’t know a thing about her and besides, she wasn’t going to stay here for long. Three weeks, she had been here for, and while they were incredible men, catering to her every whim, this wasn’t her planet, or her home. She wouldn’t be sticking around. When she could, she would return to Earth.

 

Besides, relationships didn’t work that way. Three men didn’t just snap and fall in love with a woman, driven by a mystical, supernatural connection. The idea was beyond absurd when she’d never had one person love her. There was no such thing as fate. There was only haphazard chance at best.

Even when you thought you knew a person, they’d surprise you. And not in a good way. She’d learned that little lesson in the most hurtful way possible.

 

It had ultimately been the hurt that had propelled her to grab her car keys and drive long and hard into the dead of night. Before she’d started to calm down and rationalize what she was doing, she was in the middle of nowhere, driving along the Nullarbor Plain. There had been a flash of blinding light and she’d woken up cold and naked in a cage too small to stand up in.

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Then the nightmare had really started. Until Kyel, Zaen, and Juliran had rescued her—and promptly claimed her. Their hearts had recognized her. Or so they said. She didn’t know how that could actually happen. She’d given up her heart long ago and it was long dead. From what she’d seen, it was a complete liability.

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Still she didn’t want them hurt, no matter how misdirected their intentions were. Or for anything to happen to them, come to that. The voice continually threatened to maim them, kill them, hurt these three men. It didn’t stop, drilling over and over in her mind, filling it with terrifying images brought up from her worst nightmares.

 

Pain.

 

Suffering.

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Torture.

 

The most horrible images she might ever imagine. She couldn’t stand it anymore. It was driving her insane.

 

The voice also told her not to tell anyone about it.

 

So, she didn’t.

 

She was too damned scared to utter a sound about it.

 

So, she’d fended off their attentions. Besides, sexy men were often the opposite on the inside. Good looks could hide a dark heart. She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

 

They’d been insistent though, luring her with an arsenal of kind words. Kissing. Touching. Caring. Thoughtfulness. They were almost too good to be true, making them impossible to trust.

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They’d very nearly succeeded in their campaign—the temptation to give in and just let someone love her was almost too much to bear. The only thing she couldn’t work out was why they wanted her, besides this strange concept of the fated mate bond gifted by the Homeland crystal. She wasn’t right for them. She would never fit in here. She was never going to take another chance with one man, let alone three.

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There were beautiful women on this planet. And these men were royalty. Next in line to the throne. Apparently, she was now a princess. Laughable really, all things considered.

 

She wasn’t going to admit, but being a princess wasn’t a temptation. She didn’t care about that status one bit. If they wanted to treat her as a princess, let her live in luxury and dote on her for the rest of the days, well, then, let them. But then reality would step in and stop that line of thought right in its tracks.

 

If relationships weren’t founded on trust, then the whole thing was a house of cards waiting to crumple to the ground. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait for that to happen again.

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If it wasn’t for that damned crystal, she wouldn’t even be here. If only the stupid thing hadn’t lit up like a Christmas tree when those hideous Reptiles had made her hold it. That’s when the attention she didn’t want started, along with the voice in her head. Whatever was meant to be so magical about it had made a mistake with her, which apparently had never happened before in the history of the planet and its civilization.

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Well, there was always a first time.

 

There were three crystals, one for each Homeland on Negari. That was where she was, on a planet called Negari—a place she’d never heard of before—living with a race of people she never knew existed. She had been claimed as wife on first sight.

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These crystals were somehow the life blood of the planet. The very future of the people living on it depended on them. A decade ago, they all had been stolen and no one knew who took them, or where they had gone.

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The Ozar Triad had spent years tracking their crystal down, only to recover all three. It had united a planet where infighting mainly prevailed. The Ozar had returned their crystal to their tower and their mate Riley was pregnant. Everyone was in awe. Quads had even started to form again, the first pregnancies announced. The Ozar Homeland was thriving.

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The Arabis Triad had also recovered their crystal and they’d found their mate in Evelyn, another of the abducted women Lucie had been caged with by the Reptiles. It seemed human women were their prize.

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The Negarian Triads had been able to track their crystals because of the unique energy field of the human body. It was extremely strong, particularly so for human women. It was why the crystals had been stolen by the Reptiles who were guided by a larger inter-dimensional entity from the beginning.

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They had no idea that human females would initiate the mate-bond and that it would be so overpoweringly strong that it would power their lost crystals and renew their population. The Negarians had no idea that humans existed and inter-species bonding had never occurred before, however they wrote it off to the tremendous power and ultimate knowledge of their Fates rewarding them in the best possible way.

 

It was all completely amazing to them. Perhaps it was because they had never seen a human before. They certainly had no idea where Earth was. They had no idea if there were any other human females who had been abducted, which was why Lucie was so desperate to talk to Evelyn. She needed a familiar face. A familiar human face.

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Evelyn’s mates had set up a comm-link from where they’d crash-landed on another planet. Lucie couldn’t believe she’d seen her friend again. She would have given anything to hold Evelyn’s hand and speak to her in private, but she was stranded until a rescue ship could pick them up and bring them back here. It would be weeks before Lucie could see her friend face to face again.

 

Evelyn had told her something about what had happened to her after they’d been saved, but the voice in her head had started up again and she’d missed most of what Evelyn had said.

 

She just had to get the voice to stop.

 

She would do anything.

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Desperation led to stupid deeds, but she was worn down. The voice was relentless. She had to do what it told her to before she lost her mind, which was why she found herself hurrying down one of the palace corridors, trying to distance herself from the palace guards behind her without being too obvious.

She knew her mates had told them to keep an eye on her. They were worried about her and didn’t know why she wasn’t responding to their attentions. But she wasn’t one of them. She was human. Humans didn’t have mate-bonds, crystals or higher mystical powers to guide relationships. If they had, perhaps she could have saved herself a lot of pain, but they didn’t, and she couldn’t see how a crystal would ever work for her. She told them numerous times it didn’t work that way, but they didn’t believe her. They either didn’t understand or didn’t believe that she didn’t feel the bond that they obviously did. Nor had they given up. It was an obsession she didn’t have the headspace for.

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She felt the guard’s presence looming behind her, catching up.

 

Go turn in here. Now. She didn’t resist the voice, merely followed its command and stepped into a darkened palace room. Go through that door and close it behind you. Quietly.

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She darted through the shadows to the closed door at the back of the room and slipped through, closing it silently after her. Open the window and go out into the garden. Quickly, before the guards come.

 

Lucie hid behind the gauzy curtain and slid open the window. She swiveled on the sill and jumped the short distance to the grass below. Two moons hung heavy and bright in the sky, casting the garden in a silver glow.

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The tower was a massive dark presence in the middle of the garden. It was the main garden in the palace and had been beautifully tended, the plants well maintained, the structure symmetrical and perfect. It reminded her of the gardens in old French palaces scattered around the French countryside. But there were differences. The plants weren’t quite the same. The color of the trees too dark. The grass a little too blue. The leaves a little too bright. The moons—one too many.

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She’d seen pictures of the garden in full glow along the palace walls. If they were glowing now, as they did when the tower was lit from the power of the crystal, then she wouldn’t be hiding in shadows. She would be swathed in deep blue and aqua greens. Kira, the Princes’ little sister, had told Lucie that there were flowers here that only opened when the tower glowed. They had been shut tight for ten years. They should be open now that the crystal was back. Only they weren’t.

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There was a noise in the room she’d just left. A voice called for her. “Lucie?”

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Crap. It was Kyel. The guards must have alerted him. He was the last one she wanted to be caught by. Nothing ever got past him. He’d known something was up with her—well, more up with her—and he hadn’t let up asking her about it. The more he questioned her, the more the voice told her if she said anything, that it would hurt him. Kyel was overbearing and incredibly bossy, but he didn’t deserve to get hurt. None of them did.

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“Lucie. Come here.”

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Double crap. That was Zaen. Where two went, there would be a third. Juliran was never far away. She’d come to call them the three musketeers. Her own voice in her head was louder this time. Only there were four musketeers, weren’t there? They’ve accepted you as their fourth, haven’t they? She didn’t accept them back, though. She could never shut up that snarky little voice in her head either. Now she had two voices she was trying to ignore.

 

She continued speaking to herself. You must get away. Get back home. Get back to normal. Go and let them find their true mate. It isn’t you. I’ll make sure the tower is lit and then everything will be returned to the Homeland. The voice was very persuasive.

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An unexpected little pang jabbed her heart., but that was illogical. She’d argued with herself about going home. Back to Earth. She’d been arguing with all of them for weeks now, and for weeks they’d told her they’d never heard of Earth. They didn’t even know where it might be. She didn’t know whether to believe them or not. Then the voice had told her it knew where Earth was and could return her there.

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She crouched low behind a shrub in the garden, waiting for the voice to tell her what to do. Hide behind that large tree and follow the path to the tower. Do not get caught.

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She darted across the garden hunched over, making the cover of the tree just as Juliran stuck his head out the window. “Lucie?”

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She held her breath, her heart skipping beats as she waited to see if he would go back inside or come out to find her. Her fingers dug into the bark, tension gripping her. The voice had told her not to get caught. There was no telling what it would do to them if she did.

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Thankfully, Juliran disappeared back into the room. In front of her was a tree-lined graveled pathway. She stuck to the deep shadows at the side and crept along as quietly as she could.

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Two shadows appeared— palace guards—walking along the path towards her. She jumped over the small hedgerow of spiky-leaved plants and curled into a ball behind the closest tree.

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“Yes, sirs. I’ll keep my eyes out for her.” One of the guards spoke into a wrist comm as his shrewd eyes peered about. She knew that guard—nothing got past him. She would have to be doubly careful.

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Two sets of footfalls passed directly behind her, crunching in the gravel. She held her breath, not wanting the sound of breathing to alert them. She didn’t move a muscle as they passed. When they rounded a bend, her breath whooshed out of her.

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She dashed beneath the tree line, keeping to the deepest shadows as she made her way towards the tower. Distant voices became louder as more guards started to search for her.

 

Go to the side door.

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She knew where it was. Kira had shown her one day. It was an entrance the Royals used when the crowds were too large on the public side of the tower. She darted between bushes and jumped over several hedgerows. Sticky sweat trickled along her spine, feeling like tiny insects walking over her skin.

Luckily, the door was well hidden between a line of carefully tended hedges that framed the back of the tower. A shout from nearby had her clinging to the trunk of the nearest tree.

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They are getting closer. Do not waste time.

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Licking her dry lips, she darted through the slight gap between the shrubs, her trembling fingers finding the panel on the wall. She slammed her palm to it, guiltily thanking Kira for plugging in her handprint, and the door slid silently open. She slipped through into darkness.

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Go up the stairs to the top room. You will touch the crystal.

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Stumbling in the darkness, Lucie pictured the spiral staircase in her mind. She traced her hand along the wall, taking shaky steps in the direction of the stairs. Her toes found the first step. She clutched the wall with one hand and the banister with the other and slowly made her way up the sharp incline. It was like climbing the stairs in a lighthouse. They were steep and went around in a tight spiral leading ever upwards.

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The absolute dark gave way to grays as light filtered into the top room through magnificent floor-to-ceiling windows. In the pictures of the tower, the windows let the light of the now-dead crystal shine in all directions, like a massively powerful glow stick. Now, however, the crystal remained dark in its cradle on a plinth in its holder in the middle of the circular room.

 

She crept up to the plinth. The holder the crystal rested in was a magnificent work of art. The design was intricate and made from a delicate filigree of shining gold. She thought she heard a whisper of a voice close by, but she wasn’t sure if it was real or if it was the voice in her head. Sometimes she heard things that weren’t there. Whispers in the dark she couldn’t quite catch. Sounds and not words. She was slowly going crazy, if she wasn’t there already.

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Take the crystal in hand. Do it. Now!

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The voice was sharper. Clearer. There was a heavy presence nearby and she cringed away.

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I will hurt them if you do not take the crystal. I will not hesitate!

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Dragging in a shaking breath, she undid the glass door to the crystal’s encasement. It was right there. All she had to do was reach out and touch it and then everything would be better. She would get to go home. There would be no more voices. The brothers—her mates—would be free of her to find their true match. Someone good enough without all the excess baggage she came with. This was all for the best.

 

She reached forward, her fingers curving around the gem. The overhead lights blasted on, soaking the chamber in vivid harshness.

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“Lucie! Don’t!”

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Gasping, she spun to see Kyel, Zaen, and Juliran emerging from the hidden doorway into the room. Their three huge bodies filled the space. The air seemed to be sucked right out of her lungs. Heat prickled her skin as her heart pummeled empty veins.

 

She’d been found.

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