Hey all, AK Nevermore back with you! This month I'm here to tell you that if you're a fan of spicy dystopian romance and haven't started reading the Price of Talent Series in Kindle Unlimited, now's a great time to start, because book 4, Overlord, was just released, and at the back, there's a bonus novella, Conspirator.
About the Series...
On an alternate earth, a cataclysm has altered a subset of the population. Talents are persecuted for their psychic and physical mutations, giving rise to two conflicting societies based upon maintaining genetic purity. And the Source, a shadowy corporate entity dependent upon the exploitation of captive Talents, is hunting them…
About the Book..
Be careful what you wish for...
On an alternate earth, a cataclysm has altered a subset of the population. Talents are persecuted for their psychic and physical mutations, giving rise to two conflicting societies based upon maintaining genetic purity. And the Source, a shadowy corporate entity dependent upon the exploitation of captive Talents, is hunting them…
Twenty-eight years before the events in Breaker, Nora Jester will do anything to aid the Reunification of her people.
Dedicated to the clandestine movement to disenfranchise the Source and unite Talents from the North and South as one free people, conceiving a female heir to marry their two cultures together shouldn’t have involved her heart. But her feelings for the Commandant are undeniable, even three years after their disastrous breaking. When it becomes obvious he’s moved on and that there is something horribly wrong with their son, she agrees to try again.
But entering into a new contract with a broken heart is a recipe for disaster.
This time, the Alpha is nothing like the Commandant. Violent, jealous, and dominant, he’s unsympathetic to Nora’s angst, and brooks no rivals. Shackled to him for the next three months, she’s running out of time, because if she can’t survive his attentions long enough to conceive, the Reunification may never happen. The Source has turned its eyes North, and if there isn’t a child ready to lead the South in rebellion before the Harvest, there may not be any free Talents left.
Excerpt:
Nora closed her eyes, head throbbing beneath the glare of the harsh plaz lights. Why did it have to be so bright? The mirrored plex running the length of the breeding pod amplified the uncomfortable florescence, and if the walls facing them were any whiter, she’d go blind.
Not that there was much to see…for her, at least. The observers behind the plex were about to get a show, but all there was for her viewing pleasure was a bare mattress in the middle of a sterile room. Maintained at 76.3° Fahrenheit and a balmy sixty-two percent humidity; the Source’s breeding pods were touted as the optimal environment for lab-assisted copulation.
Assisted. Mandated. Semantics.
She shivered as she waited, vulnerable behind the thick curtain of mahogany curls hiding her nude form. How silly that a few millimeters of fabric over one’s skin could provide security. The illusion of it, at any rate. But then, outside of this, it was all an illusion, wasn’t it?
There was no security. This was the reality of her existence.
Not the fêtes, or the quiet days at the tower. Her binding skills ancillary to her primary purpose.
Breeding.
Her nails dug little half-moons into her palms as she fought to calm herself. Everything in here was monitored, measured. Her respiration and pulse. Oxygenation of her blood. Moisture content and saturation of her mucus membranes.
Nora’s eyes squeezed shut, exhaling a shaky breath. Calm. She didn’t need them spiking the room with Zanthium or another one of their mind-numbing aphrodisiac cocktails. She wanted to be present for this.
Glory, this.
It shouldn’t be like this. It was wrong—
Metal disengaged and her eyes snapped to the portlock.
It hissed open, and Marcos stepped through, tensing when he saw her face.
He knew.
She fought back tears, rising to meet him, her lips brushing beneath his jaw. Not caring how it looked to the ticket holders gathered behind the plex. Having to say it. To be the one to tell him. Her voice a thread of exhalation. “I’m pregnant.”
His fingers tightened on her hip, fear and loathing roiling through their bond as he pulled her closer. His breath hot on her skin, touch more ardent. Kisses deeper. She arched against him. Feeling him, his love. Everything that wasn’t safe to say.
Everything that was about to be taken away.
For the last time, she lost herself in him, and was brought back too soon.
He lay beside her, fingers tracing her face like he was trying to fix it in his memory. Would she see him again? Bitterness filled her. Across the room at a fête. Passing in a hallway. What they had now, gone. Ripped from them and assigned to another.
Their bond—broken.
It had been so unexpected…exhilarating and unwelcome…undeniable. Why did she have to love him? The thought of someone else’s hands on him, their fingers riffling through his honey blond hair… Would those crystalline blue eyes look at them the same way?
A sob choked her.
“Shh…” He pulled her against his broad chest, anger simmering deep inside him. Everything she was feeling, echoed and repressed. “Titus will send me south.”
Nora’s stomach dropped. Marcos was her first—her only—contract. She still wasn’t entirely certain how it all worked, aside from them being kept apart now that she was bred, and the inevitable breaking once the child was born. The legalese was confusing and no one liked to talk about the actual mechanics. “When will you come back?”
“They won’t recall me until our breaking is scheduled. Until then, I’ll do my duty, as will you.” It was a bald statement of fact, belied by what she felt from him. He was so controlled. Nothing like the animal she’d expected, been warned about, the depths to him… Her gut twisted, and he laced his fingers through hers.
“I don’t want this to end,” she whispered.
“Here it won’t.” He placed her palm over his heart. “You’ve marked me.”
Despair stabbed through her. “All of this is wrong. What they do to us—it shouldn’t—”
His lips stopped hers, then murmured against them. “Your passion is dangerous, Nora. For the both of us.” His eyes flicked to the mirrored plex.
An impotent rage filled her. She pushed him away. “I don’t care!”
He flipped her onto her back, and she slapped him. His eyes flew wide, a different kind of tension running through him, darkness licking at their bond. His breath came fast, pupils dilated. Fighting with something. Nora swallowed, afraid to move. And then like a cloud passing across the sun, it was gone.
His exhale was slow. “If they ever mate you to another Breaker, don’t do that. You’ll get hurt.”
“Nothing can hurt more than this.” She hoped she died when they broke their bond—
“Don’t tempt fate,” he said, kissing her. “As Beta, I’m entitled to a bellwether when I’m retired from field service. I swear I’ll earn the merits to request you.”
Tears pricked at her eyes again. Twenty years. If they granted it. If he didn’t die in some conflict—
If he didn’t promise the same to someone else.
Marcos nuzzled at her neck, his voice a rough whisper. “There will only ever be you…”
She smiled, their ability to read one another uncanny. She softened beneath his caresses, her calf sliding up the length of his thigh, breath catching as he rocked into her.
“Tell me you’d say yes…”
“Yes…” Her head dropped back, watching their reflections move together in the plex. Glory, in a different world…tears tracked down her temples.
The plaz lights pulsed, and Marcos’s pace sped. She gripped his shoulders, kissing him desperately as he spent himself.
The portlock rolled back. “Time.”
Marcos raised himself up on his forearms, breath heavy, licking the sweat from his lip. He caught the towel the tech threw into the room and met Nora’s eyes as he cleaned himself.
“Time won’t matter.”
Want more? Download the Breeder, the series prequel, for free here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/91ffk852qo
and get your copy of Breaker to start the series click here: https://books2read.com/BreakerOne
AK Nevermore enjoys operating heavy machinery, freebases coffee, and gives up sarcasm for Lent every year. A Jane-of-all-trades, she’s a certified chef, restores antiques, and dabbles in beekeeping when she’s not reading voraciously or running down the dream in her beat-up camo Chucks.
Unable to ignore the voices in her head, and unwilling to become medicated, she writes Science Fiction and Fantasy full time.
AK pays the bills writing a copious amount of copy, along with a column on SFF. She belongs to numerous industry organizations, volunteers for far too many committees, teaches creative writing, and on the rare occasion, sleeps.
2 comments:
Mmm, Conspirator sounds delish. Congrats on your latest release! :)
Thank you so much!
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