Luna and the Balaru (Luna #3)

It’s been three months since Luna Meadows accepted the dual role of Red Princess and Kyun Arbiter. For a girl who spent her life hiking the world over with her dad and living in tents, living in an enormous palace on another planet, walking around with a crown on her head, learning not to look over her shoulder to see who everyone keeps bowing to, and wearing skirts nearly every day, well, it all takes some getting used to. While she was doing her best to at least appear to be taking it all in stride, she was also working hard to learn everything she could from the Royal Council of Elders, performing her many new responsibilities, and repelling an increasing number of wanna-be assassins.

It was all worth it though because she got to spend virtually every minute of every day with Raj, her Mate Eternal, her heart, the touchstone of her life, and the center of her world. (Wherever that world might be) He was also tall, broad shouldered, had more muscles than she could concentrate long enough to count, gorgeous, loving, romantic, and drop-dead sexy both in bed, and in the middle of a battle with his teeth bared, a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

She also has a baby on the way, a best friend who stands by her side (on all four paws) no matter what, and for the first time in her life, a family. With perks like that, she had little to complain about. Sure, it was a little overwhelming at times, but it beat having nothing more to think about each day than how many miles she needed to run to make herself tired enough to sleep.

Then one night she had a dream that wasn’t a dream, and her plate got a whole lot fuller.
It seemed that she was destined to be the conduit through which a race of beings called the Balaru, who were once the Balajaru (Balaja-who?) until the Burning (that doesn’t sound good) after which the Aja (what’s an ah-jah?) no longer existed (nope, not good at all), so now they were just the Balaru.

She was a little confused, as one might imagine, and getting ready to ask Cloud Leaper, (the Balaru who’d hijacked her dream) a number of questions when he spilled the startling news that they (the Balaru), had waited ten thousand years for her to save them from the Velli-Machs. All other questions fell away as she wondered how in the hell she was supposed to manage that one. The Kyun had been trying to stop the Velli-Machs, the most despised criminals in the Five Galaxies, for over twelve thousand years. They also lived in the middle of a star cluster that no one could enter without exploding into flaming atoms.

She was still trying to wrap her mind around that when Cloud told her they had a bunch of information they wanted to pass directly into her mind. Luna thought about that for about two seconds, then decided it was time to wake up. Unfortunately, her favorite goddess, Artemia, didn’t like that idea one tiny bit. So Luna closed her eyes and let the Balaru stuff her head with whatever she was supposed to know. Of course, she couldn’t actually access that information. She had to wait for it to settle in her mind and rise on its own. Great.

By the time Luna woke up in her own bed she knew a couple of things. First, whatever the Velli-Machs had done to the Balaru was very bad. Second, she had to do something to help them since, apparently, no one else could. And third, helping the Balaru just might rid the universe of the plague called Velli-Mach once and for all.

“Luna and the Balaru” is the 219,000 word third installment of LUNA, the newest romance-fantasy-adventure from Laura Jo Phillips. It has the passion, the mystery, the excitement, the consuming emotion, and the romance that her fans know they are going to find in Laura Jo’s writing, but with the added depth that comes from a focus on a single couple.