Craved by the Alien Lord: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Lords of Destra Book 4), page 1
CRAVED BY THE ALIEN LORD
The Lords of Destra — Book Four
ELLA BLAKE
CRAVED BY THE ALIEN LORD
Lords of Destra series, book four
Copyright © 2022 Ella Blake
First edition: June 2022
Stock Art: Depositphotos
Cover Design: Ella Blake
The characters and events portrayed in this book are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system is forbidden without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.
The scanning, uploading, transcription, and distribution of any part of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
Also by Ella Blake
Stryxian Alien Warriors
BONDED TO THE STRYXIAN
STRANDED WITH THE STRYXIAN (free novella)
SAVED BY THE STRYXIAN
CLAIMED BY THE STRYXIAN
POSSESSED BY THE STRYXIAN
CHAINED TO THE STRYXIAN
SEDUCED BY THE STRYXIAN
Virilian Mail Order Mates
TRAK
DREX
VIRAK
NIIR
TARON
KIM & KLAE (novella)
SERIES BOX SET
The Baylan Chronicles
DRACE
RAZE
ARTEN
HARC
ZADE
The Lords of Destra
LOST TO THE ALIEN LORD
BOUND TO THE ALIEN LORD
FATED TO THE ALIEN LORD
CRAVED BY THE ALIEN LORD
DESTINED FOR THE ALIEN LORD
ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN LORD
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
A note to the reader.
If you found this book outside of Amazon,
it's likely a stolen/pirated copy.
Authors make nothing when books are pirated.
If authors are not paid for their work,
they can’t afford to keep writing.
Rayna
If one male remained alive in the universe, and that male was Lord Ledos, I’d let both of our species die out. He looks like a rock star, swaggers like the galaxy’s greatest gift swings between his leather-clad legs. He’s a force of nature. I’m a wallflower. We couldn’t be more opposite. It would be so much easier to ignore him if my body didn’t light up like a display screen every time he was near.
When I’m forced to live on his ship because some marks on his chest mean I’m his mate, I’m furious. I’m not cut out to be anyone’s mate, especially his.
Ledos
I am Ledos, wielder of the longbow and lord of my Sola, my living ship and symbiont. My brothers consider me a waste, and yes, I have been known for indulging in pleasures of every kind. But that was before.
Before an enemy attack caused my ship to become separated from the others. Before I rescued one of my brothers and his Sola from certain death, and with him, the human females under his protection.
Before I met her.
The instant I meet Rayna Lee, my body burns with the mating marks. The little human is mine. My true mate. My love. And for some reason, she detests me.
When an accident causes us to be stranded on the planet’s surface and forced to survive on our own, Rayna begins to accept that she’s my mate, but being away from my symbiont ship for so long is slowly killing me. I can survive anything the enemy Brakken throws at me, but I cannot survive losing her.
Note: This is book four in the Lords of Destra series. My books don’t end in cliffhangers and there is always a happily ever after and consent. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
Rayna
I scrubbed my skin until it was raw. I washed my hair until my scalp ached. But it didn’t matter. I still felt covered in filth, stinking of sweat and urine and feces and vomit.
I stepped from the small bathtub in my quarters and let the cooling water stream off me. My skin tightened and beaded with goosebumps. I knew I would be back in here later, repeating the same process.
And I wouldn’t feel any different.
Still dirty, still stinking, and still so fucking alone.
A voice called my name. I knew who it was, standing at my door. I pulled a towel around me and hastily dried off. “Just a second,” I called from the bathroom.
It was Jetta, my friend, and the only other human on this ship. The word “ship” wasn’t completely accurate. It was called a Sola, and it was a living thing. This thing we lived in was an organism large enough to house a population of aliens. Plus two humans.
We were attached to another Sola and as far as I knew, we were floating, directionless, above an ocean, searching for more Solas. There were seven in total. Or six, depending on who you spoke to. One had supposedly been destroyed when the group of them were attacked while traveling through space in search of a planet to put roots down on—literally. These massive creatures attached themselves to the ground with giant stalks that produced a liquid called lami, which the Destrans drank. It all couldn’t be more alien to me. Ironically, that’s what I was now—an alien to these people.
I pulled on underwear and a loose-fitting shift dress. I hated anything tight against my skin.
My room was simple and beautiful. I had all the basics without clutter. Clutter was Jetta’s thing and she did it very well. She even made it look artful, sometimes. I liked spaces clean, sleek, and minimal. Everything in its place. Less was more, as far as I was concerned.
The door was a translucent membrane of sorts. It was thick, rippled, and wavery, reminding me of thick, semi-melted plastic, but all I needed to do was run my finger down the center and it parted like an actual curtain. A living curtain on a living ship.
On the other side stood Jetta. She was beautiful and strong and she had saved my life—twice.
There were days when I wasn’t sure I was glad she had. There were days when I didn’t think I would recover or find my way back from the horrible experiences I’d endured as a prisoner of the Brakken.
I stood before my friend, who always looked at me these days with a hopeful smile and a touch of worry.
“What’s up, Jetta?” I asked as my stomach rumbled loudly.
“That.” She pointed at my loud belly. “Would you like to come to lunch with me? You skipped breakfast.”
Oh, right. I had. I totally forgot, and I was hungry too. It was so much easier to stay in my room. Where it was quiet and clean.
I forced my mouth into something that looked like a smile. “Sure. Let me just put shoes on.”
I threw on a pair of flat shoes and pulled a shawl around my shoulders. I tugged my straight black hair into a simple ponytail, took a deep fortifying breath, and stepped out into the corridor.
Instantly, the many different scents swirled through my nose—the perfume of a female Destran, the aroma of different flavored teas, the bright punch of oil used to sharpen blades, just to name a few. I could smell food in the air, and it made my stomach rumble again, against my will. Hunger was such an inconvenience. I wished I could just…not feel it.
I walked with Jetta towards the main open-air chamber of the Sola, called the atzan. It was immense, with a high arched ceiling and a spectacular window that allowed natural light to flood the atzan. Food was served here. Chairs and tables were arranged throughout the space. A group of warriors practiced their moves to one side, which had been cleared out.
Voices sounded everywhere, laughing, talking—doing normal things that people did. Of course, aside from Jetta and me, everyone was Destran. I couldn’t understand their words. I was living in a place where only one person spoke my language, and while I was studying to pick the Destran language up, I was still very new at it. The Destrans were a beautiful and colorful species—literally. They had a humanoid form, but their skin shifted color like chameleons. They could change at any time, with their emotions or by will. It was easy to tell when a Destran felt something. It was evident by the color of their skin.
Jetta was married to—or rather, mated to—the lord of the Sola. His name was Savair and he was in charge of everyone in the Sola. He was also the only one of them who could speak to it—I mean, her. The Sola identified as a female entity.
Savair was very kind, absurdly handsome, and treated Jetta excellently. I’d never seen any two people more in love. Sometimes, it made me a little nauseous. Not in a jealous way…well, maybe a little bit, but not because I was after Savair. It was just that I couldn’t imagine anyone ever looking at me the way he looked at her. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine feeling so much for anyone the way Jetta obviously did for him. That kind of love just seemed impossible.
We filled our plates with food and were given small cups of liquid called lami. Under ideal circumstances, lami was produced in great quantities by the Sola herself and was the primary nutrition source for the Destrans. They were used to living on it, but the circumstances were not ideal. There wasn’t enough for everyone, so it was rationed out. It was truly a remarkable substance. Jetta was a biologist and I bet she would have loved to get some of it under a microscope to see what it was made of exactly and why it had such nutritive and healing properties. I was a geologist and I was curious. Interestingly, it tasted different to everyone. I thought it tasted like sweet tea, but Jetta said it tasted like a milkshake to her.
We sat down at an empty table, far enough away from everyone else to eat and chat without it being noisy. Jetta knew I was not terribly keen on crowds. Or people at all.
I was shaky from hunger. I had to force myself not to shovel the food into my mouth, but to eat it slowly so I didn’t look like a starving animal.
I needed to stop this. I needed to find a way to break the cycle of stress, terror and…everything else, or I feared one day I would never leave my quarters again.
“There’s going to be a big joint gathering,” Jetta said. “The two Solas are going to shift so they’re stacked up, and they will open up their atzans so everyone can move easily between the two.”
This sounded about like my worst nightmare, but I smiled anyway. “Oh?”
Right. We were attached to another Sola. There was ours, as in the one that Savair ruled with Jetta by his side, and the other one, headed by Lord Ledos. The Solas were already connected on a side and everyone had free access between the two of them. Ledos’ people came and went all the time. You couldn’t miss them.
When the Solas stacked up vertically, it usually meant something important was happening. And now, we were all getting together to have a party. Jetta looked at me with brows raised. “I hope you will come.”
I would rather stab myself in the eye than attend one of these “gatherings,” but I nodded politely. “Let me know when it is.”
Jetta narrowed her eyes. “So you can conveniently fall ill that day?”
“So I can prepare myself,” I answered honestly.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “If it’s too much…”
“I’ll go,” I said quickly. “I do have to get out more.”
Jetta nodded. “How are your Destran lessons coming?”
“Fine, I guess.” I stabbed a piece of meat and popped it in my mouth. The food here was good. “Learning new languages doesn’t come easy to me, but I’m getting there. Slowly.”
“We can work together, if you’d like.”
Jetta had learned Destran with far more ease than I was learning it. When she and Savair had become mates, his Sola had given him her language—Solas had weird powers that way—so they could communicate. She’d learned Destran the same way I was trying to, with tutors.
Darta and Ertan were a bonded couple who were kind and patient teachers. I was sure they considered me dimmer than Jetta when it came to learning Destran. The truth was, Jetta had a strong motivation to learn it. I didn’t. She’d accepted life on the Sola with these people and had set aside thoughts of returning to Earth.
I hadn’t.
Not that I had a clue how we’d get home.
“You’re busy,” I said to her. “Besides, Darta said that—”
“Hello, ladies,” said a deep, drawling voice from behind me.
I knew the voice. Knew the Destran male it belonged to, and what he said since it included basic Destran words I had learned. Every part of me tightened with awareness in response to that voice. The rough timbre of it moved over me like a purr. My body lit up like a damn lamp whenever he was around. It felt like a betrayal of my own self and caused my brow to snap into a frown.
“Hello, Ledos.” Jetta smiled up at him with raised brows, as if waiting to see what he would do next. You never knew. Jetta found the lord of the other Sola an amusing curiosity.
I didn’t. He was shameless, arrogant, flamboyant, and good god, he wore too much scented oil. My nose wrinkled to match my frown as I turned and looked up at him. Glared, probably.
He was…hard to describe. Overwhelming was the word that came to mind. He was tall, obviously. All the Destran males were tall, muscular, and attractive. They were built like fucking Greek gods, with burnished bronze skin that shifted colors. Ledos stood out, however. He had a shoulder-length fall of purple hair, although I thought it was gold when I first met him. His face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He had brilliant purple eyes, a straight, narrow nose, and lips that had a perpetual sensual curl to them.
Ledos didn’t look like a warrior, like Savair did. Rather, he had the look of a hard-partying rock star, about a decade out from his prime. Still unreasonably hot, but with the sharp edges worn off of him. Jetta thought he was more of a contented satyr, minus the goat legs, who’d had his fill of rutting and drinking but was always up for more of both.
He wasn’t as broad as Savair and his warriors, and certainly not as serious. Ledos looked as if everything and everyone held the potential to amuse him…if he could just tweak them in the right way.
He tweaked me, that was for sure. My breathing reduced to shallow gulps. My pulse skyrocketed. I was sure my face got red. It was utterly embarrassing.
He’d taken to wearing a vest over his bare chest. That was something. My gaze desperately wanted to roam over his rugged, rangy form. It took sheer force of will to keep it on his chiseled face or off him completely.
“Ri allan-tik laud sandri, em Rayna,” said Ledos with a slight bow. “Han dian trok orri-la.” His purple eyes twinkled as they moved over me.
“He says you look lovely today,” Jetta translated. “And that he’s looking forward to seeing you at the gathering.”
I dropped my gaze. “I’m not going.”
“But I thought you said—” Jetta began, then cut off abruptly. She said something to Ledos. I didn’t know what.
“An danni lok mecso.” Then he reached toward me, hand extended.
As if controlled by an external force, I lifted my hand and placed it in his. The movement was jerky, awkward, and not entirely intentional. It was my body defying my brain, again, wanting his touch. Sure enough, those strong fingers grasped mine. His lips curled in triumph. I shivered as a sprinkling of pure pleasure raced under my skin.
He lowered his mouth and brushed a kiss over my knuckles. It was like something out of those old books of romance and chivalry, which I’d only heard about but never read. “Lalina,” he purred, then released my fingers.
I drew in a shaky breath. “Lalina” meant “beautiful” in Destran. It wasn’t the first time he’d said that to me, but each time that word came from his mouth, my usually organized mind went to complete chaos. This time was no exception. I balled my kissed hand on my lap. “Good day,” I said in Destran. Or, I think that’s what I said. It may have come out as something different. My thoughts were like a flock of startled birds, flying wildly about.
He withdrew with that smirky, sexy smile again and walked off. I watched his tight, perfect ass move through the atzan. I wasn’t alone, either. Plenty of heads turned to watch the lord of the purple Sola swagger toward the corridor that would open to his Sola. He drew attention wherever he went.
