I’d hoped that my father had lied to me, or that I could have overcome it. Now that I’ve been with Annabelle, I know that my father was telling the truth.
I am flawed. Broken.
I won’t be able to get her pregnant then?
Why would they put me in the Breeding Games if I had no hope of winning?
The Ulkar who came to me and gave me the warning and head start. Was that really breaking ranks and betraying his brethren to help me? Or was it all part of the plan? Give the competitor who will struggle the most to impregnate the fertile prize the greatest chance of securing her, and then see if he can do it?
They want to come away with the strongest hybrid, and maybe that’s the test. If I can overcome my built-in weaknesses, I’ll have proven my seed as worthy of continuing on. If I’m unable to impregnate even the fertile prize, then one of the others is meant to carry on.
But no. I don’t care who has the stronger genes or seed. Annabelle is mine. I may not have even bonded to her, but she is now my Muru. Even if I can never give her a child, she will be mine forever, and no one will so much as lay a finger on her for as long as I live.
I awake to a pounding on the door.
Somehow I know it’s Kula, but there’s an urgency in his pounding. He’s not knocking as a chef, or as my half-brother who is trying to “cock block” me, he’s pounding on the door as an Aparan warrior.
I leap out of bed, not wasting time to get dressed. I do spare a second to put the sheet fully over my sleeping Muru so that my brother will not see her naked body, which belongs to me and me alone.
I open the door and see Kula shirtless in a black kilt. The scar across his face is pulsing, and he’s looking at me with a grave expression.
“What is it?” I ask.
He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him. When he sees Annabelle sleeping—somehow his knocking did not wake her—he looks at me with questioning eyes.
“I...did not bond to her.”
It shames me to admit this. It makes me feel like less than a man. Still, if anyone can understand not being bonded to his Muru, it’s Kula. I also don’t have time for my own pride. Kula is back as a warrior, and I need to know why.
“What happened, Kula?”
He points toward Annabelle.
“Just speak quietly.”
“I was in the kitchen, and suddenly I sensed something. It was six-dimensional, but it wasn’t Ulkar. It felt like...us, but different.”
My heart freezes in my chest. They’re here. It’s the only explanation.
As I’d started developing hobbies and making friends on Lakria, I’d let at least a small part of my mind begin to hope that maybe the others could never find us. The galaxy is vast, and maybe they’d have been completely unable to track me.
I let my guard down too much. I needed to be more prepared than this. I let optimism make me weak, and now I’m paying for it.
“They’re here, Kula. Did you see them?”
“As soon as I sensed it, I went to go see for myself. When I reached the dining room—which is where I thought I sensed them from—they were gone. One of my waitstaff told me that two humanoids she had never seen before had started to order, but suddenly left without eating. I looked outside, but could not see or sense them on the higher dimensions.”
“Did she describe them?”
He scratches his chin. “She said one had golden skin. The other was tall, but very small for his size.”
“Golden skin. It must be him. Philos.”
“Didn’t you say one of the contestants was some group of little beasts joined on the higher dimensions?”
“Maybe they merged together to form the tall one? Either way, golden skin and six-dimensional presence is certainly the one I fought on Earth. The one who killed the third competitor.”
“We need to get her somewhere safer,” Kula says.
I nod. “I’ll wake her and tell her what is happening.”
Kula frowns. He knows from his experience with Ellie how difficult this will be for a human female. They are strong in certain ways, but weak in so many others. Annabelle has been very strong and resilient given the situation, but this is not going to come as easy news for her.
“I’ll wait outside,” Kula says, “and guard the door.”
I wait until he’s in the hallway, and then I gently wake her.
“Muru, wake up.”
She smiles up at me as a beam of sunlight illuminates her face. Her smile is gone once her eyes focus, and she sees the hard look on my face.
“What is it, Raiska?”
“They’ve found us. We have to move you to a safer location.”
“What then?”
“Then Kula and I will kill them.”
“If I’m going to be pregnant soon...couldn’t we just hide? You don’t need to fight.”
I shake my head. “You are not pregnant. Something is wrong with me. The bond did not take. Still, you are my Muru. I will defend you as if you were a physical part of me.”
We waste no time getting Annabelle into a car. We order the car’s AI to take us to the nearest city.
Thrace is surrounded on the western edge by a massive mountain range. It’s not especially tall, but it’s very wide, and there are few roads that run through it. On the other edge of the mountains, there is a rainshadow effect, and a sparse and barren wasteland for many hundreds of miles. Eventually there is a large stretch of plains, and on a lake within those plains is another major city. This will be our target.
I will not be naive enough again to expect that we will be safe there forever, but the other competitors came too close to Kula, and we don’t have time to set up a defense within Thrace.
The car takes off and moves skyward. I can see the great sea behind us—the sea that Annabelle and I watched the stars over as we first landed on Lakria—and the mountains stretch from horizon to horizon in front of us.
I take her hand as the car climbs in altitude. “It will be okay. I’ll keep you safe.”
Kula is across from us in the other seat. The car is set up so that all the passengers are facing each other. He’s not there to watch us though, he’s watching our flank while I keep an eye on everything in front of us.
Annabelle squeezes my hand and forces a brave smile.
Just as I’m about to offer her further reassurance, I see Kula’s eyes widen, and he reaches reflexively for his six-dimensional axe.
“What is it?” I ask.
He nods his head, and I look backward.
In the distance behind us, I see the sun catch on something in the air. It’s almost at the same altitude as us.
I close my eyes and sense across the higher dimensions. The signature is faint, but I know it’s them.
“They are following us,” I whisper.
“Is our car faster?” Annabelle asks.
I squint and watch. It takes many seconds before I can be sure, but soon I am. They are moving faster than we are.
Kula is shouting at the AI and asking it to move faster, but it claims that this is the top “safe” cruising speed.
“Override!” I shout. “We won’t be safe if that other car catches up to us.”
“Sorry,” it says, “in these atmospheric conditions, I cannot apply any additional thrust.”
Kula gives me a nervous look, but he pulls a gun out of a holster strapped onto his upper thigh.
“What’s the range on that?” I ask.
“Probably not long enough.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
He hands the weapon to me, and I try to sight toward the car behind us.
“It’s a laser,” Kula says, “you can fire it right through the glass.”
The car that they are in is reflecting a lot of sunlight, which means it will likely reflect a lot of the laser too. I’d need to hit one of them right in the head to do real damage. At this range, I’d be lucky to even hit the car itself, let alone a small target like a head.
Just as I’m getting ready to take a shot, a purple burst of light erupts from the car behind us. It’s not a laser, because it doesn’t move at the speed of light. Our car jerks down, and my stomach lurches. The purple blast misses the top of our car by about six inches.
The AI speaks in an eerily calm voice. “We are under attack. I am now authorizing your request for additional thrust. Even with the additional thrust, within one minute and 12 seconds, I will no longer be able to dodge the plasma bursts.”
Kula smashes his fist into the console. “If you’d sped up the first time we’d asked, maybe we’d have stood a chance!”
“Does that mean we’re going to die?” Annabelle asks.
I press my lips to her forehead and shake my head. “No, we’re not going to die. They are.”
I don’t tell Annabelle this, but they can’t actually afford to crash our car. If Annabelle dies, they do too. Maybe they’d kill her to spite me, but my guess is that they want the fertile prize almost as much as I do, and they will have to work to disable our vehicle and get Annabelle alive.
I would never intentionally use my Muru as a human shield, but we are forced into this situation, and acknowledging the reality that her presence is giving us an edge is a tactical advantage that I will use in order to keep her safe.
As the car gets closer to us, I take careful aim and fire.
I can’t see a thing. There’s no visible beam, and the car behind us doesn’t change course or veer off at all.
“This thing is useless,” I shout back at Kula.
“They are now within range,” the AI says. “I can not dodge if they fire again.”
They don’t fire again though. I was right. They need Annabelle alive, and they are flying closer and closer to our car.
“Kula, take the gun.” I hand it to him.
“AI, do you have some kind of winch or tow?”
“Yes,” it says, “I am only authorized to use the tow for officially authorized towing purposes—”
“We’re going to fucking die! Override and let me protect everyone.”
It sits there thinking for a few seconds, then chirps. “Full control has been given. What should I tow?”
I stand up. “Me.”
Fourteen
Philos
“Just fucking shoot them out of the sky!” Kiveta shouts.
One of his bodies jumps up onto my leg like some kind of disgusting lapdog, and it tries to snatch the plasma rifle out of my hands.
I club it in the head with the butt of the rifle and growl back at Kiveta’s other two bodies. “How is one of us going to get our dick in her if she’s dead?”
“I want to get all of my dicks in her,” Kiveta says, all bodies speaking at once in unison, though the body I clubbed is speaking in a slurred voice.
“Then I can’t shoot the fucking car down. Maybe those Valittu would survive the crash, but the fertile prize wouldn’t. She’s fertile and soft. She’s delicate. That’s why it will be so fun to rape her.”
Kiveta licks the lips on all of his bodies at once, and nods agreement. “Then what is the plasma rifle for?”
We’re close now. I don’t know what the Valittu may do, but if I can get a clean enough shot on one of them, I will take it.
Suddenly a hatch pops open on their car. We’re close enough that I can see a lot of details of their vehicle. It’s an older model than ours, and thus slower. We will be on top of them soon. My plan is to try to board their vehicle, kill the Valittu, and snatch the woman for myself.
I just ate hundreds of thousands of calories in preparation for this battle, and I have various means of reaching the ground safely. I’m hoping that Kiveta does not, and that I can manage to snatch the prize and reach the ground while everyone else dies in the air.
The primary purpose of the plasma rifle is to blow up both cars once I’ve taken the human. Kiveta’s bodies and the two Valittu will die in a hydrogen cell explosion as both cars detonate.
Something leaps out of the vehicle. Six-dimensional light bursts from the figure’s hands. It’s the scythe. It’s him.
He’s attached to some kind of rope or wire, but he lands on top of the car.
Just as I open the window again for another shot, the scythe begins flying toward us.
Our car makes a drastic movement to dodge, but I lose my grip on the rifle. It flies out the window.
“Fuck!”
The car shakes violently, and there’s a sudden rush of air as the scythe slices open the cockpit.
“Full speed!” I shout. “Hit that car!”
“Engines have been damaged,” the car’s AI says. “I cannot maintain enough thrust to stay airborne. Initiating emergency landing sequence.”
I close my eyes and begin burning all of the food I ate. When I burn excess calories, I send the energy into the higher dimensions. I begin to flare with higher-dimensional light.
Kiveta looks at me. “What are you doing?”
“Make yourself useful,” I hiss at him, pointing toward the Valittu.
The scythe is in his hand again.
I jump out of the window.
Fifteen
Annabelle
I try to look out the window, but Kula grabs my arm and pulls me back into the car. “Don’t Stay down! If you get hurt, Raiska will fucking kill me.”
Raiska’s scythe clips across the car behind us, then disappears in a burst of higher-dimensional light.
Smoke starts to come out of the pursuing car, and it wobbles and begins to sink.
“Raiska,” I shout, “you did it!”
Kula looks back nervously.
Higher-dimensional light bursts out of the car, and a few seconds later, Philos leaps out of the window. One of the little goblin things is wrapped around his waist, clinging on for dear life.
Raiska’s scythe flies forward as the gold-skinned alien’s hand grows and his arms stretch, bringing the massive fist toward us.
Raiska’s scythe hits the car just before the golden-skinned alien’s hand grabs hold of our car. His scythe doesn’t just graze the car this time. It’s a direct hit, and the car explodes. The explosion hits Philos just as his massive hand grabs hold of our car.
I don’t see what happens next. Some kind of emergency siren goes off, and the seat completely wraps around me like a piece of foam. It cuts off all light and sight and sound. I feel only the violent g-forces trying to jostle me around. My stomach feels like it’s on a rollercoaster, and I hate roller coasters.
I soon feel weightless, but not for long. My weight comes back fast and hard, and the seat wrapped around me tightens even more as I get much heavier than normal. The car must be making some kind of insanely sharp turn, or it’s managing to stabilize after dropping like a brick.
Just as my weight goes back to normal and I start to wonder if we made it out alive, I’m jolted again, and this time it feels like my body is trying to fly sideways. I nearly bite my tongue off.
I’m jostled around like this for the next several seconds. They are long seconds, because each second I’m almost certain it’s my last. I’m just waiting for us to hit a mountain or the ground, and for the seat wrapping me up like a big balloon to no longer be enough protection.
I don’t die though. Everything comes to a fairly abrupt stop, and then I see light leak in. Higher-dimensional light.
A hand comes in and pulls me out. It’s Raiska.
“Are you hurt, Muru?”
I look down at my body expecting to see blood and bruises, but I’m fine. “I...I don’t think so?”
“Come,” he says.
He’s holding his scythe, and everything around us is starting to burn. There’s a big sphere across from us, but it cuts open in a blast of higher-dimensional light, and Kula emerges with his axe in hand.
Raiska throws me over his shoulder and navigates us through the burning wreckage. Only after we’ve cleared all the shrapnel and debris does he set me back down.
We’re on a mo
untain. I can see the lights of the city far in the distance, and the fire from the other vehicle almost a mile away from us.
“Did you kill them?” I ask.
Raiska grinds his teeth together. “I don’t know. I want to think I did, but I’m not 100% sure.”
“It was a long fall,” Kula says, looking at the burning wreckage in the distance.
“So was ours,” Raiska says. “We’re all still ali—”
He grunts and doubles over in pain.
“Raiska?” I ask, putting a hand on him.
I look down and notice there’s a twisted piece of metal going through his leg.
“Raiska!” I look behind and see the piece of metal jutting out the other side. It’s going straight through his leg.
“He’s probably bleeding internally,” Kula says.
“I’ll be fine,” Raiska says, but his voice is strained. “We need to go down into that wreckage and kill them while they’re injured. Make sure they’re dead.”
“You’re injured,” Kula says. “You can’t fight like this.”
“I am Valittu!”
I put a hand gently near the point of entry, and Raiska’s entire body tightens. Every muscle flexes, and he grunts in pain. “You can’t fight, Raiska. You’re strong, but this isn’t the time.”
“This won’t kill him,” Kula says, “but we have to get that thing out of him, and then he’ll need to rest. I’ll carry you, brother.”
“You will not.”
“Stop being stubborn,” I plead. “This isn’t the time for pride.”
He summons his scythe and makes the blade disappear until it’s just a long stick. He starts hobbling forward with his bad leg off the ground.
Kula sighs and rolls his eyes. “Follow me.”
“The city is that way,” I say, pointing back.
Raiska shakes his head. “We cannot go into the open. If they are still alive, they will see us. If we go further through the mountains, we can lose them. They’ll have to follow us into rough terrain. We may be able to ambush them.”
The Breeding Prize: A Scifi Alien Romance (The Breeding Games Book 2) Page 10