Blades of Arris: Atana
Blades of Arris: Atana
Award-winning series
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 63+ 5-star reviews
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Synopsis
Synopsis
I am a lesser from a servant world.
But even before I was taken?
There was no rescue for me.
The night sky isn’t the only place that’s filled with darkness.
And cages look different, but they’re all the same.
I might be fragile as glass, but I shielded my daughter with my own body. I’ll withstand these brutal aliens.
Their leader. The one who has blades in his wrists and a fractured look in his eyes? I’m all that stands between him and Earth.
But now I think I have the advantage.
Because he sees through me, which means he doesn't see what's right in front of him.
And I’m not afraid of anything.
This glass holds oceans. Planets. Stars.
Just try and make me break.
*** Contains unique alien shifters, fierce passion, and loyal warriors who find their fated mates in the stars. Each full-length book is a complete romance with an epic happily-ever-after. Claim your conqueror today!
Look Inside
Look Inside
PROLOGUE
~LIA~
Our bodies move together in the dim half-light of this secret room in his spaceship.
It’s quiet here.
Far from the noise of the engineering office, the bustle of officers on the bridge.
He caresses my nape, draws a finger down my curved spine, grips my hip to better align our bodies for his thrust. And I push to deepen every sensual undulation as he fills my pool of longings, eases my aches, quiets my silent screaming. In his gray arms, I am not a woman anymore. I am nothing but desperate hungers finally being fed.
“Do you love me?” His voice is edgy in the half-darkness. His breath ghosts across my shoulder, shivering with unintentional dominance, thready with buried need. “Do you love me now?”
But this crazed and broken man does not know what love is. The concept doesn’t exist in his celibate, highly controlled race. During this coupling I’ve pushed on him, he tries to understand me, who he rules over.
And he does this only because he too is searching for what he’s supposed to become. He was crushed to pieces by his people. By their rules. He’s no longer an obedient cog in their machine. They haven’t realized it yet, but they will, and then he will face consequences.
How long can a person survive beneath a suspended blade?
How long can you walk on the empty shore, knowing at any moment the unnatural tide will return and the thundering tsunami will wipe out everything beneath you—and there’s nothing you can do to save it?
The unsteady danger is present in his fractured irises, in the surgically embedded blades twitching beneath his wrists, in the way he nibbles on my soft shoulder even though touch is forbidden.
“Do you love me?”
I bite my lip.
And yet, my moans burst through as another body-convulsing orgasm floods me.
I was the one who started this.
It was easy to answer his question then.
No, I do not love you. No, humans can share bodies without sharing feelings. No, this attraction is only chemical. Remove it and there is nothing between us.
That was before.
Now, I remain quiet.
Because I’m terrified of what will change when I say yes.
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
~LIA~
~One year earlier…~
Today’s schedule is too packed for a kidnapping.
“My husband is going to kill you.” I yank on the door handle. “He takes his dinner at exactly seven thirty, which means I have to start it in less than ten minutes, and he’s going to be very irate when it’s late.”
“I am your driver.” The man who’s picked me up from the shuttle port has a young face and sad eyes. “This is a driver uniform. I have my certificate up on your viewscreen.”
“The certificate is supposed to be blue.”
“It is blue. It just looks different.” He nods to the officers waving us through the security checkpoint.
My husband insists we use preinvasion sedans to show off our family’s status. Only the shell of the sedan is old; the engine is unnaturally quiet from the hover technology we received from the Arrisans, and the flattened rubber tires dangle off their metal hubs.
The kidnapper controls the window tinting, along with the locks, so the officers don’t see me frantically waving inside. “Why are you so certain I’m not your driver?”
“You’ve forgotten your gloves.”
He flexes his bare fingers on the steering wheel. “They were in the wash.”
“Your fingernails are too clean. You don’t work on ancient engines. And your lapel pin, the identification of your so-called company, is upside down.”
He touches his breast, then sighs. “Please relax. This will all be over soon.”
“My husband will have you shot.”
“Your husband sent me.”
“Then you can explain to him that tonight’s dinner is not my fault.” I cross my arms and lean into the plastic seats.
My kidnapper winds through the center of New Kiev. The city streets have been emptied again by the familiar sound of bullets. Preinvasion metal and gunpowder, they crack like small explosions in the distance, but can’t penetrate anything alien. He parks beneath a bank of private apartments.
Across the street are the ruins of the old justice building. It survived the brutal Arrisan invasion and subsequent continent-fracturing catastrophes—they unleashed these after we surrendered—only to crumble during the famine riots of my parents’ time.
The war against the Arrisans was fought with nuclear weapons, but those afterward were fought with hopelessness and sticks. And yet, even something as soft as a loaf of bread—or the lack thereof—can break a human body.
The kidnapper pulls me out of the back seat. “This way, Liliya Nazarivna.”
How respectful. This is one of the many reasons I know he doesn’t work for my husband.
His fingers curl around my upper arm as he forces me into the empty elevator. Our movements crush the corsage gifted to parents of new college students. Its cloying sweetness battles the sensations uncoiling from my center like sticky, invasive ivy.
Obsessive desire thrusts up my nose, pierces my tongue, slithers down my legs. My muscles go taut. My mind winds up like a coiled clock.
Even though I have so recently satisfied these urges, like the raw wound beneath a bandage, there is no true relief.
Time, in my case, heals nothing.
My only defense is using my brain.
I’m supposed to be home. Dinner will soon be served. Then I’ll supervise the packing of my husband’s suits for the assembly tomorrow. A delivery driver will arrive at nine bearing the documents I must summarize for his speech. He won’t let me eat until after he’s practiced and refined his talking points, and if we go past midnight, he’ll rage that I’m deliberately tripping him up to make his opponents win.
In between these bouts of frustration, I must pack my own bags in secret.
I have duties.
But I also have plans.
This ebook is currently in Kindle Unlimited, an exclusive program on Amazon. You can read it here: Kindle Unlimited single ebook or you can read the entire series in Kindle Unlimited in the beautiful Blades of Arris Complete Collection: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GHZT3TDD/
* * *
Yes, I’m all that stands between Earth and these brutal aliens.
But the night sky isn’t the only place that’s filled with darkness.
And I might be fragile as glass, but this glass holds oceans. Planets. Stars.
Their obsessive leader, with his beautiful fractured eyes, will never make me break...
"My favorite so far. Fast paced and steamy. Love Atana and Lia's story. Love the crazy that are the engineers!" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Reader
Read if you love:
- Primal Mating Mark/Bite💜
- Obsessive Hero⚔️
- Diverse Heroine🦋
- Spice 4 out of 5
"This is the fourth book in the Blades of Arris series. It's a fast-paced and standalone book that will keep you engaged from start to finish. There's action, adventure, drama, danger, suspense..." ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Reader
"This book was simply AMAZING!! I think one of the very best things about this addictive series is that each book and every new couple brings a breath of freshness with it and that helps keep you deeply invested, highly entertained and anxiously wanting more." ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Reader
Sample from Chapter 3:
(He's just saved her by taking a shot to the chest - I edited this a little but THIS SAMPLE IS STILL A BIT NSFW!!!)
~LIA~
Atana enters a smaller, very cluttered room, shoves aside a stack of crates with his shoulder, and sets me down on the edge of a crowded platform. The door closes like a portal of knives that stab into the center and melt into a textureless wall.
He sets a medical kit next to me, hooks a finger in his collar, and pulls down. The gray leatherlike fabric separates and falls off him, coiling at his feet, and revealing a nude male body.
Instantly, the ivy takes hold.
My arms itch.
He has gray skin, a medium build, and short black hair like all the others. Four small spikes form just past the top curve of his ears. Black lines are on his nail beds.
His [body part] looks small in comparison to his muscular thighs. I could hold it in one hand if I had a death wish. And thanks to the ivy, I do.
Black chevrons on his wrists mark the edges of his skin sheaths. They look smooth, ordinary forearm tattoos, until he peels one open, revealing the silver tip of his embedded weapon.
Dread squeezes my belly.
He’s a conqueror.
Musk hits my nose.
Male.
Physical pain unfurls within me [hunger] harsher than anything I’ve ever felt, and it winds tight, giving me pins and needles in my tender areas.
Oh, no.
I’ve never really tried to resist my urges. I’ve only delayed them slightly while searching for a compromise, and my body has been good about enduring the ivy’s pain until I can slot a man into my schedule.
But it’s been a long voyage on the all-female cruiser, and then in the escape pod. So long since that kidnapping, that distant law office. I must be a billion light-years from Humana now. What’s that in Arrisan standard units? Millions upon millions of actungs?
Atana rests his palm on the medical scanner. It chimes and displays a message in easy-to-read Arrisan Standard. Mild irradium burn. Neutralize with cream. He opens the medical kit and picks through the supplies.
A low rumble growls outside our small room. The ground trembles.
“Move faster, men,” Atana murmurs as he uncaps a tube.
I lean my thigh against the platform. “Is the ship going to blow up?”
His silver irises play across his injury, then the medical screen again. He’s not going to answer me. I’m only a lesser to him, a servant world resident. Nothing and nobody.
But then he murmurs, “Not if they get it contained in the next ten clicks.”
Ten clicks until the end of the world.
Atana doesn’t seem worried. Is irradium really that dangerous? What did Sewar mean that my blood was diseased? Do they know what this sickness is? Where’s everyone else? Did they survive?
The ivy twists and pulls.
Ten clicks. So much time. It’ll be easy. I’ll be quick.
“And ten clicks is not much time,” he continues, again, mostly to himself, as he applies a thick layer of cream on the inner edge of his sheath. “Not much time for clearing a hazard area. Not much time for repairing the containment field.”
I lean forward and cup [him]. “Plenty of time for [this].”
He pauses.
Another long rumble shakes the room. I feel it all the way under my tongue.
Nine clicks until the end of the world.
He flicks his silver gaze at me. “I could cut off your hand before you could blink. I could carve you into small pieces and make a mosaic out of your decaying body. I could peel off your face and wear it for a mask and give Sewar new nightmares.”
“You don’t have time for that.” I hold [him] more firmly. “But you do have time for [this].”
His eyes narrow. “Why haven’t you learned fear?”
“You said you weren’t going to kill me.”
“I never said that.”
“You haven’t yet.” I squeeze.
He caps the cream, tosses it in the medical kit, then picks me up at the waist and sets me on the edge of the platform. The movement causes my hand to drop from his body. He rests his palms on either side of me and looms over me, his silver eyes circled with a thin black line.
“You’re infected with our lusteal. But so long as I have this,” he thumps his clear face mask, “I don’t sense it. There’s no way for your sickness to enter my blood. And I don’t need it. I’m sick enough already. Be a good lesser and sit tight. Someone will rescue you shortly.” He returns to the medical kit and dabs ointment on the black bruises crossing his chest where he shielded me from the laser. His voice lowers to mutter, “A real hero.”
“What’s lusteal?”
“The metal required for us ‘celibate’ Arrisans to breed.”
I scoot closer. “You could breed with me.”
“This isn’t the arena.”
“It could be.” Seven clicks until the end of the world. “How is it at the arena?”
“I wouldn’t know. Engineers don’t go. We’re not worthy.”
“Then this is your chance.”
“Forbidden knowledge is the only knowledge worth having. But I don’t care for this. The cost is too high.” But his eyes drift, almost unwillingly, to my lower regions.
“I could teach you.” I pull off my pants and underwear. They pool at the floor next to his suit. Then I lick my fingers. “Did you want to know?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll show you.” I wet my palm and spread the saliva between my fingertips. “Humans do [this] every day. I know all about it. And after I teach you, then you too—”
He moves lightning fast.
His hand closes around my jaw, his mouth separated from mine by the thinnest sheet of formfitting clear plastic. His eyes flash, and his lips curl back to reveal even, white teeth. “Arrisans eat planets like yours. We enslave your people. We suck the very marrow out of your bones, and here you are, offering your body as if I can’t just take it and destroy it if I want to. The other humans infected with our lusteal knew their place. They feared me. Where is your fear?”
Fear is an instinct of self-preservation.
And although he’s gripping my jaw, it’s not hard enough to bruise. He’s not strangling my neck.
He said I have a sickness.
But I knew that already.
A healthy person would feel fear.
I curl my wet fingers around his [body part].
He gives me a little shake. “I don’t sense your lusteal, lesser. Touching me does nothing…”
[It] hardens in my hand.
He stares at a spot over my shoulder, and his jaw moves side to side as if he’s mulling over a surprising turn of events.
He focuses on me again. “How did you do that?”
“You forgot something.” I hook my leg around his thigh. “Another way chemicals can enter your body.”
“Which is?”
“Through your largest organ.” I put my presumably infected saliva on [him]. “Your skin.”
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
"Love the madness that is Atana. The Engineer's are live by their own set of rules. The are the backbone of the Empire. My favorite so far. Fast paced and steamy. Love Atana and Lia's story. Love the crazy that are the engineers!" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Reader
"The main character is such an unexpected I guess he's more of an anti-hero in this situation. And I love anti-heroes. And I honestly didn't expect him and Lia to make a good connection. But The best way I can describe this book is bruh. I don't even want to describe what makes this book good. I love this series. It's so unexpected that it's great. So do me a favor, just read the book and decide to eat breakfast before you read..." ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Reader
"Hard to follow at certain points but another good one. Good couple. Psycho guy is always my favorite. Very cathartic read if you’ve ever felt chronically unwanted." ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Reader
"I absolutely adore Atana’s character. Out of all the Arris males so far in the series he is my absolute favorite (of course I do tend to think that after each book, so that tells you a lot about the characters right there)!" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Reader
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