The Monster's Bride: Sweet & Steamy Mail Order Brides

The Monster’s Bride THE MATCH PROGRAM SERIES RENA MARKS Copyright © 2023 by Rena Marks All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Contents Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Isabel Chapter 3 Bronan Chapter 4 Isabel Chapter 5 Bronan Chapter 6 ISABEL Chapter 7 BRONAN Chapter 8 ISABEL Chapter 9 BRONAN Chapter 10 ISABEL Chapter 11 BRONAN Chapter 12 ISABEL Chapter 13 BRONAN Chapter 14 ISABEL Chapter 15 BRONAN Chapter 16 ISABEL Chapter 17 ISABEL Chapter 18 BRONAN Chapter 19 ISABEL Chapter 20 BRONAN Epilogue The Match Program Series Zearn Maddie Mine My Alien Baby Space Babies Xeno Sapiens Alien Stolen Abducted Artificial Intelligence Stargazer Series Untitled The Monster’s Bride RENA MARKS I will never marry again. Not after my first taste of freedom in over a decade. Thankfully, I’m also not qualified to enter the Match Program, where I would be forced to mate with an alien. But I do want children and the leader of the Brona tribe offers me the chance to become a Breeder, a coveted position within the clan to reproduce with qualified males. No strings attached. I pick and choose who seeds me. What could be more perfect? Isabelae has visited our planet to be with her daughter and we’ll do anything to keep her here. She’s determined to become a breeder. The sweet female has no idea she is meant to be mine. But I will agree to her ludicrous idea. She just has no idea I refuse to let anyone but me plant babies in her womb. * The Monster’s Bride is book seven in the Match Program series. Trigger warnings: Past abuse, forced marital sex, though as a reference to the past and not detailed. The tale ends with a happily-ever-after. * Prologue Planet Earth, long after World War III: Music blasts from the speakers set up outside the house I’m staring at in utter shock. When the public bus dropped me off at the front gate of the farm, I’d had to trudge up to the house. This monstrous paved road, the trees, the lights…look nothing like the childhood home I’d grown up in. When I’d finally reached the house, it looked bigger than what I remembered too. From the backyard, where we used to have a huge patio, comes the sound of laughter. Like…a party. There’s a splash that sounds like water, more laughter. Surely it’s not a pool party. A pool? What must that have cost? This is my daddy’s—father’s—house, yet there’s barely anything familiar. Father. I must remember to call him that now, since he forbade me to use daddy when he shipped me off to Aunt Elsa’s. But that was years ago and for some reason, maybe because I had a hard time accepting so many changes in my short life, I can’t seem to get myself to call him father. It feels so cold, so distant. But what do I expect…since I forever shamed him? The lawns have been extended into a rich, fertile green that surround the house as far as I can see. A water fountain stands in the middle of the yard. More waste. Professionally done, obviously. New trees, and not stick-like saplings, line the drive up to the property. Lights are strung along the trees, which would cause a whopping electric bill. Unless he’s been lucky enough to score one of the new-fangled contraptions that pull energy from the sun. Maybe that’s it. Even the house itself is a brand-new color—a brilliant white with majestic blue shutters. The front door isn’t the old plain brown one I’d left behind, either. Now they’re double doors, giant monstrosities to welcome visitors instead of to hide from debt collectors. I can’t believe this is the same home I grew up in. Quickly I check the numbered letters of the address, but of course, they didn’t change. How has father been able to afford this? I’ve been gone twelve years now, ever since he married me off to Trevor Fontaine. Not that my name is Isabel Fontaine. Trevor refused to give me his name. It was within his right since I was shunned. Now that he’s dead, father’s attorney—it should have been my first clue to his new status that he had an attorney—sent me a request to change my name from my maiden to my dead husband’s, since Trevor is no longer around to refuse. I came to talk to him about that. It costs money to change your name, and Trevor had nothing in savings. In fact, all we have is the house, which I’ll sell to pay for the funeral and hopefully have enough left over to buy me a tiny cottage near the commune not far from here. And to invite him to the funeral, of course. Besides, I’ve used Isabel Milles my entire life. I don’t feel like Isabel Fontaine. In fact, I don’t even feel like Milles, since father doesn’t allow me to use it. I just let people assume I was under my married name. What did it hurt? I never had to use my signature. “What are you doing here?” I gasp and back up, right into my small suitcase, which topples over. There isn’t a person on the porch, just a voice. I look upward and blink when I see a camera. He has a security system? I guess it makes sense, with all the new touches to the house. Then the huge front doors open and father strides out, quickly closing the double doors behind him so I can’t see inside. Or they can’t see out. “What the hell are you doing here, Isabel?” His voice is shaking in his fury. “I-I”—I kind of drop into a half-curtsy, and I’m not sure why. He is my father, after all,