A must-listen prequel novella in the Stolen Warriors series from USA Today bestselling author Ella Maven. Contains mature themes.

The blue alien warrior pacing in his cage terrifies me. His long dark hair is wild and messy, and his scarred body looks made for murder. I deliver food to him every day, and I'm sure by the way he stares at me that he'd rather eat me. Yet there's something about him that captivates me, and I can't stop watching him. When he lets the snarling, fearsome mask slip, I start to see there's a cool calculation to his actions. I would be risking everything to help him escape, but do I dare let this monster free from his cage?

Space ship travel when you've been kidnapped sucks. I don't get a pillow, there's no snacks, and worst of all—the whole ship crashes. Except, it doesn't crash on Earth, or even Mars. Nope, I'm in a whole new galaxy on a foreign planet and some body-builder-looking blue horned aliens with lots of piercings have decided I'm their new play thing. And not in a good way. Until one alien decides he's not going to share, and maybe I have a concussion from the crash, because I'm all about the possessive way he protects me. But there's no way he'll fight his whole clan for me . . . right?

When space pirates attack the exploratory spaceship I work on and I'm forced to evacuate in an escape pod, I never expected to crash land on an alien planet. I have no idea where any of my fellow crew members are or if they even got away. I'm entirely alone. Or so I think. Instead, I'm rescued from a fierce predator by a towering purple alien with a tail and color-changing tattoos who ignites strange feelings inside me.

Abducted off the space station where I teach the standard galactic language, I'm imprisoned with two other women in a cold, dirty cell on an alien ship. We're destined for something worse than death until a fierce, blue-haired alien male rescues us. We recover on his ship with his group of Heveian pirates. There, the attraction that formed when he first carried me in his arms grows into a force neither of us can deny. But something else has taken up residence on the ship. Something that will stop at nothing to destroy us all.

As if being abducted by space slavers wasn’t bad enough, I’m sold to a species of aliens in need of extras for their immersive entertainment moons, where their privileged citizens can hunt or battle or bed us at their leisure. When I’m separated from my crew and dropped into a lush alien jungle, I have no idea which fantasy moon I’m on—until the first arrow nearly impales me.

As the first humans allowed in Suevan space, there’s a lot riding on my all-woman team. Earth desperately needs their tech, and I’m determined to prove we can negotiate the price. Without their planetary defense systems, Earth is a sitting duck, ripe for invasion. Except the Suevan culture is nothing like ours. When I take part in what I think is a welcoming ceremony, I leave with more than I bargained for: a husband. A mate. Apparently, we’re there to marry them as payment—something the top brass on Earth doesn’t bother denying. Fantastic.

As merchandise heading to an intergalactic auction, Ashe’s future looks grim. So when a too-sexy-for-his-own-good alien outlaw solicits her help to break them out of lockup, she jumps on the chance. Ashe only needs to survive long enough with the known criminal to get her end of the bargain: freedom. She trusts the clawed and fanged Tallean warrior to keep her safe, but who will keep her safe from him?

Penelope: One minute I'm conducting important research on a distant planet, and the next, I've fallen through a crack in the surface and am transported to an underground world with terrifying fanged creatures who want to eat me, an army of feathered warriors who rescue me, and a massive horned demon leader who gains power through pain . . . except he's only giving me pleasure.

In the blink of an eye, my whole world has collapsed around me. Headed towards my dream vacation, I was snatched right out of the air. My husband, the love of my life, was destroyed right in front of my eyes. He fought bravely trying to protect me from a horror neither one of us could have ever imagined. I find myself standing in the spotlight on a stage.