Rescued

by Presley Hall

  Rescued

  Fated Mates of the Kalixian Warriors #3

  Presley Hall

  Copyright © 2020 by Presley Hall

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  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.

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  Fated Mates of the Kalixian Warriors Series

  Claimed - Book 1

  Stolen - Book 2

  Rescued - Book 3

  Bound - Book 4

  Broken - Book 5

  NOTE: Each book in this series can be read as a standalone, but for maximum enjoyment, it’s recommended that you read the series in order.

  Contents

  1. Autumn

  2. Sorsir

  3. Autumn

  4. Autumn

  5. Sorsir

  6. Autumn

  7. Sorsir

  8. Autumn

  9. Sorsir

  10. Autumn

  11. Sorsir

  12. Autumn

  13. Sorsir

  14. Autumn

  15. Sorsir

  16. Autumn

  17. Sorsir

  18. Autumn

  19. Autumn

  20. Sorsir

  21. Autumn

  22. Sorsir

  23. Autumn

  24. Sorsir

  25. Autumn

  26. Autumn

  Epilogue

  Also by Presley Hall

  1

  Autumn

  The alien is back.

  I notice him when I go out for my set, stepping out onto the small, elevated stone platform that serves as a stage for the bar’s dancers. There’s a metal pole embedded in the center of it, and it’s situated in the center of the building, next to the wooden bar where two aliens with long eyestalks and fingers make the strongest drinks in all of Monri.

  Or at least, that’s what this place advertises.

  Most nights, I go through my set without even thinking about it. The band has a small rotation of songs, and I’ve worked here long enough to have memorized a set of moves for every one of them.

  Tonight I’m dressed in a cobalt blue silk bra that makes my eyes look brighter and my red hair stand out, with small gold sequins sewn to it that dance and glimmer in the light. A silk bikini of the same color is held on by thin gold chains at my hips, with long panels of sheer blue chiffon at the front, back, and sides that swirl seductively as I dance. It’s one of two outfits that I swap out depending on the night.

  None of the patrons have ever complained about the lack of variety in my wardrobe—this isn’t a place where people really pay attention to the dancers. I’m window-dressing, a decoration. Something to glance at while they drink or gamble or make shady back-room deals.

  Except for him.

  It’s the same alien I saw last night, and the night before, sitting at the same table in the corner with a drink held tightly between his hands. The one with the bronzed skin, golden horns, and an intense gaze that follows me across the stage.

  I wonder if he’s one of the new aliens in town, the gladiators that the other dancers can’t stop talking about. The way he watches me sends a shiver down my spine—and not in a bad way. It’s the kind of delicious shiver that I haven’t felt in years, not since I was a teenage girl on Earth, getting my first crush on a handsome boy.

  That girl is light years away from who I am now. And that good, delicious shiver is scarier to me than if it felt bad.

  I can run away from bad, escape it, hide from it. I have before. But good? Good is tempting. Good is distracting. It could make me let my guard down, and I can’t afford to do that.

  I tear my attention away from him, refusing to look at him again as I dance. I focus on my bare feet on the cold stone surface of the stage, the gold ankle bracelets that I wear glimmering in the light, on the movement of my body as I sway to the music. I don’t look at him again, but I can feel his gaze on me, and it sends a wave of warmth through my body.

  That feels good too. And it shouldn’t.

  I’m glad when the music finishes and I can disappear offstage into the back dressing room, a tiny space where all of the dancers crowd inside as we get ready for our sets. I’m the only human here—all of the others are humanoid aliens.

  One girl, tall and onyx-skinned with bright blue cat-shaped eyes and dressed in layers of filmy white fabric, is talking to a crimson-skinned alien girl with a shaved scalp dotted with protruding, pointed nubs painted in alternating black and white. The crimson-skinned girl is wearing nothing but a leather strap across her small breasts, with two thin chains connected to another strap that goes between her legs.

  “Did you go to the fights last night?” the girl dressed in white asks.

  “No, I worked a double shift.” The crimson-skinned alien girl leans closer to one of the mirrors, carefully applying her black eyeliner with a pencil that’s down to its last inch. “Who won?”

  “The new gladiators. The Kalixians. They win all the fights they enter.” The girl’s voice is almost reverent. “There’s some grumbling about it. They probably shouldn’t stay long. They should take their winnings and get out of here before some of the other fighters start to get angry about it. But it’ll be a sad day when they leave. By all the gods, they’re gorgeous.”

  “Maybe they’re cheating.”

  “Have you seen them? They don’t need to cheat. I’ve never seen men so muscular, so strong. And not one of them is ugly. All of them are handsome, and they wear almost nothing. I wish they would come here.”

  “One of them did,” a petite green alien girl sitting across from me pipes up. She’s one of the ones who keeps to herself, like me. She doesn’t like the gossip. But apparently she can’t help herself with this bit of juicy information. “The one in the corner, who keeps coming back. With the golden horns.”

  “Melita, you went to the fights?” The tall girl laughs. “I’m impressed. You’re such a wilting flower normally.”

  “I had to see for myself,” Melita says defensively. “But anyway, he’s the only one who’s come.”

  I freeze in the middle of pulling on the long tunic that I wear home, over the loose, cuffed pants that are a staple of my wardrobe here. Most of the women prefer the short, cropped wrap tops that are the style in Monri, or thin dresses. But I stick with shapeless, long garments that hide who I am as much as possible. After all, every night I’m nearly bare onstage for strangers. The rest of the time, I prefer to keep eyes off of me.

  “All that masculine power.” The tall girl is still speaking, and her voice breaks into my thoughts. “It’s enough to make me want to take one of them home, straight from the fights. And they’re all winners, so it wouldn’t even matter which one I chose.”

  I think of the alien watching me, of the shiver I felt when his gaze followed me across the room. If he’s one of the alien gladiators, that’s even more reason to ignore him. That’s the last thing I need.

  I don’t say anything. I have no interest in gossiping and drooling over the fighters with the other women. I need to get home.

  The night is dry and hot as I leave Chado’s Cantina and start the trek back home to my pod. It’s not even that late, but the streets are deserted. The shops are closed, the market stands draped with fabric. The fights are yet to start for the night and the crowds that plan to drink inste
ad of going there first are all settled in at the bars. The planet Wauru only gets about four hours of sunlight a day, and even though I’ve been here for four years now, I still haven’t gotten used to it.

  I miss the long summer days on Earth, when it would be nearly nine o’clock at night and still light out, the warm, thick air slowly cooling just a bit, full of the scents of freshly mown grass and hot asphalt and the leftover smoke from family barbecues. Here the smells at night are of dust and dry earth, cooking grease—and in the bars, sweat and less fragrant smoke.

  As I turn down the next street, I hear the faint sound of footsteps in the dirt. A shadow flickers behind me on the wall of one of the buildings, and my heart stutters a little in my chest. But surely it’s nothing. Just someone else going home from the bars.

  I turn the next corner, expecting the footsteps and the shadow to fade away. But they don’t. They turn down the new street with me, and then the next. That’s when I feel my pulse speed up, the familiar sense of fear tightening my throat.

  Someone is following me.

  Is it him? After four years, has he finally found me?

  I can’t think about it. It’ll paralyze me. I have to keep moving forward, not too fast, but a little quicker, in the hopes that I can lose whoever is on my tail.

  But the shadow is still there, still following, no matter how much I pick up the pace. And I can’t lead my follower all the way home. So finally I stop, my heart in my throat, and turn to face whoever is coming, braced for an attack. Ready to fight, rather than let my pursuer follow me back home to the thing that matters the most to me.

  But no one is there.

  I can smell something. The acrid tang of sweat and something else—something sickly sweet, like the scent of rotting food. But the street is empty, the shadow gone.

  You’re overreacting, I tell myself. Jumping at shadows. You need to sleep more.

  But despite the stern words in my head, my heart refuses to slow. Wheeling around, I set off toward home again, moving as fast as I dare without outright sprinting.

  I don’t feel as if I can breathe again until I finally see the cluster of pods where I live. Most of the lights are out, but they’re still on in Taloo’s pod. The neighbor who watches my daughter while I’m at work has waited up for me.

  She and Chloe are sitting on the floor inside her small dwelling, playing with a set of brightly painted wooden blocks. Chloe squeals the minute she sees me, tossing the blocks aside and running straight for me. Behind her, Taloo smiles indulgently. My neighbor is a heavyset alien who strongly resembles a hippopotamus from back on Earth, but with a human-ish face, big eyes, wide lips and a flat nose that barely protrudes from her face—more nostril than nose.

  Chloe takes one look at my face and purses her small lips.

  “Are you okay, Mama? Is everything all right?” she asks, her already slightly wrinkled forehead creasing even more as I squat down to embrace her, pulling her into my arms.

  I lean back, looking at my daughter. She’s just shy of four, old enough to understand my moods better, which just means I have to get better at hiding my worry. All I want is to keep her safe, protected, and free of fear—but in this world, that will get harder and harder to do.

  Because there aren’t many places in all of the galaxy where my child will be safe.

  I stroke her light red hair, looking into her almond-shaped black eyes that are nothing like mine. My half-human, half-alien daughter, who I love no matter what.

  “Everything will be just fine,” I tell her, trying to sound confident as I pick her up and hand a few tokens to Taloo for watching her for the night. “Time to go home, ladybug. It’s too late for little bugs to be awake.”

  “Mama,” Chloe complains, but the word is cut off by a yawn, and I laugh.

  As I walk to my small pod, Chloe already falling asleep on my shoulder, all I can do is hope that everything really will be all right.

  Hope I’m not lying when I make that promise.

  2

  Sorsir

  The shadows in the street grow darker as I look down at the still body of the alien man who was following the dancer home from the bar. He’s unconscious, not dead, but I drag him into an alley anyway, where his dark green body will blend in with the shadows until he either wakes or is found by someone else.

  I can feel my anger rising as I look down at him. If I had been even a minute or two later, he would have pounced on the girl—he was right behind her. It was nothing for me to bring him down, a quick scuffle and a few blows to the head after I snatched him from the shadows, but the girl couldn’t possibly have fared as well if he’d managed to attack her.

  She looks fragile to me. Slender. Delicate. A porcelain face with huge eyes and a body not made for fighting…

  I growl deep in my throat as I push the alien’s body deeper into the shadows with my foot. I don’t know what he wanted with the girl, but if he was following her through the streets of Monri at night, it couldn’t have been for anything good. This is far from being a safe sort of city.

  But of course, I think wryly as I turn away, I was following her too. So maybe I’m not much better.

  Except… I didn’t plan to touch her, or even speak to her. I just wanted to see her. To make sure she was safe. Which makes no sense in and of itself, because I don’t even know her. She’s just another face in a crowd, a dancer in a bar. But I’d had a feeling… and lo and behold, it turned out to be true. She did need a shadow, one that could save her from the other shadows.

  I know I shouldn’t be doing any of this. I shouldn’t be taking an interest in anyone on this planet, interfering, or getting into fights with strangers that aren’t for money. If I get caught or entangled in anything nefarious, I could get the other men of Alpha Force in trouble. I could endanger our cause, which is to earn enough money to get a ship and get back to Kalix. Period.

  After my fighting force was overpowered and captured by Orkun warlords, we planned our revolt for months. And when we finally won back our freedom, we rescued the women who had been sold to the Orkun as “tribute brides” by the Terran governments. The hapless women were traded by their own people in exchange for protection from Orkun raids, and the thought of it still makes my blood boil.

  What kind of monsters would do that to their own kind?

  When we rescued the Terran women, they became our responsibility—not to mention that Tordax formed a mate bond with one of them. Our mission now is to get them safely back to our home planet.

  Nothing else matters. Not my hot temper or a beautiful dancer that I can’t seem to get out of my head.

  But I had a strange uneasy feeling after she left the bar, and when I saw that she had a tail… what was I supposed to do, exactly? Stand by and watch while the alien did whatever he wanted to her?

  That’s not in my nature, nor is it in the nature of any Kalixian warrior I’ve ever fought beside.

  But still, I shouldn’t feel so drawn to her. I don’t know why I feel this way, but ever since the first night I stopped into that bar for a drink and saw her, I’ve gone back every chance I’ve gotten. And every time, I look for her. Just her, and no one else. It’s like a craving, a desire to see her that I can’t shake.

  I can’t think about it now though. The danger is taken care of, and I have places to be, a match to fight in. I stride away from the unconscious alien’s body, heading toward the fighting rings where the other warriors will probably already be, preparing for the night’s matches.

  As suspected, all of the Kalixians fighting tonight are already there when I arrive. Tordax gives me a hard look, his eyes narrowing as I can see him calculating in his head how late I am. Punctuality is important to Tordax, part of a well-oiled force, and I grimace as I slink into the crowd of warriors. I’ll hear about it from my commander later, I’m sure of it.

  It’s not as if I’m not aware of my own flaws. I can be reckless and impulsive—but there are times when my ability to make a snap decision has co
me in handy during the battles we’ve fought. I’m one of the youngest on the force, but I wish often that Tordax and Malav would see that as a boon and not as a fault. I may be young, but I’m devoted to our cause, and as good a fighter as any of them.

  It bothers me that Tordax doesn’t trust me more. That after all that we’ve been through, I’m still on the outskirts of his inner circle, part of what feels like the B-team, even though I’m a member of one of the most elite fighting forces in the galaxy.

  I try to shake off the feeling. Everyone is on edge as it is. A week ago, Malav—our second in command—disappeared. Harper, one of the Terran women we rescued from the Orkun, vanished that same night. There’s been no sign of where they might have gone and no word from them, and on an unregulated trading planet like this, that could mean any number of things… none of them good. But with no clues as to their whereabouts, there’s no way to know how to narrow it down.

  So we’ve kept our focus for the time being on our primary objective—to fight in the rings and earn enough tokens to pay for a ship that will take us to Kalix.

  I’m one of the first up tonight, and I stride into the arena for my fight, my oil-slicked skin gleaming in the torchlight as I raise my arms over my head, shouting at the crowd to rile them up. I know the picture I make—bronzed and shining skin, curved golden horns, dark green eyes, muscular body bare for the eyes of the crowd except for my loincloth and the leather armor that covers my right shoulder and arm.