The Game Warden's Mate: An Alien Abduction Romance (The Hunt Book 1)

by A. M. Griffin

  She wanted to throw up. She wanted to scream and throw something. While she’d been laid up with him they’d been struggling. “I’ll gain my freedom like everyone else. I’ll stay in and win, then go home. That’s the rule, right?”

  “You can never return to Earth.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his thick nose. “I’m sorry, Esme. I wasn’t expecting any of you to beat The Hunt. It would have never come up again.”

  She deflated. It was gut-wrenching. She was beyond angry. What a fool she’d been. He’d fed her a pack of lies, and she’d rallied the others. Told them to fight to stay in The Hunt. She’d given them false hope.

  “Esme.” He reached out to wipe away her tears.

  She glared at him. “Touch me, and I’ll kill you.”

  He flinched at her words. “If I had the power to send you home, I would. I would do anything for you. It’s not up to me. It’s a Galactic Federation rule. Humans taken from Earth are not allowed to be returned. It would be too complicated. Humans are—”

  “Pathetically weak. That’s what you told me the first time we’d met.”

  He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Esme. I thought that before. But not now. You’ve proven all of my preconceived notions wrong. You’re strong, resilient, confident, resourceful, witty, and funny.”

  “And stupid,” she ground out. “Stupid enough to believe an alien wanted to help me win so I could be free.”

  “If you win, you’ll be free. I didn’t lie about that part. You just aren’t free to return to Earth.”

  “But we’ll leave here.”

  He gave a short nod.

  “Send me back in The Hunt.”

  “I can’t.”

  She eased off the metal bed. Her shoes squished when they hit the floor. She reached for her purse that wasn’t there. She’d been so used to carrying it wherever she’d gone. She’d had it when she’d tangled with the arrancar.

  “Where the hell is my purse!?” She stalked around the room, pushing carts and other items out of her way, opening drawers and rummaging through them and throwing the instruments she didn’t recognize. “Somebody give me my fucking purse! Now!”

  The door slid open. Bradliix whisked in. Xrez gave him a glaring look. “Forgive me, Sir, but I can’t have her tearing up the infirmary and hurting herself in the process.” He retrieved her purse from a closet.

  Xrez plucked it from his hand, about to give it to her.

  “Oh hell no. I don’t want a damn thing from you.”

  Xrez held her purse out. “Esme. I didn’t plan for any of this, and I definitely didn’t plan to fall in love with you. It’s unheard of for a game warden to enter The Hunt and even more so for one to claim prey.”

  She snorted when he’d said love. “You lied to me. You made me believe you were someone you weren’t. You made me think that if we won, we would go home. You’ve taken everything from me, Xrez. My family. Job. Everything that I’ve worked my entire life to achieve and now you expect me to fall into your arms?” Tears streamed down her face. “If you want to take me out, then take them out too.”

  “Esme. I can’t. There would be an uproar. We would be investigated, and if it were found out that we had taken humans from Earth, The Hunt might not recover from the scandal. I cannot be the game warden who fails my family.”

  “I see. So what’s the plan? I’ll be free to be your human plaything while my friends are still in there? I’m supposed to forget about everyone else? You are disgusting if you think I could ever forget about them or what we’ve been through.”

  “That’s not what I’m proposing, Esme.”

  “Give my purse to the other guy.” Xrez didn’t move. “Now!”

  Xrez handed her purse to Bradliix. Bradliix gave Xrez a pitying look then handed the purse to Esme.

  “Can you send me back?” she asked Bradliix.

  “Think of what you’re asking for, Esme.” Xrez’s eyes settled on her, dark and pleading. “What if you’re captured? Do you think a hunter would love and treat you better than I would?”

  She was tired of him and tired of his lies. She held up a hand. “Save it, Xrez.” She pointed to Bradliix. “You. Put me back in.”

  Bradliix glanced from Esme to Xrez. “Oh, my. We’ve never put prey back into the arena before. This is all quite unheard of. It’s against the rules. Against all the rules.”

  “Esme, be reasonable,” Xrez pleaded. “You almost died. I’ll take care of you even if you don’t want to be with me. I can set you up on a planet comparable to what you’re use to and give you enough credits to live comfortably.”

  “Why? Because we had sex? Is being free my consolation prize?”

  “Esme.”

  “If you hadn’t gotten between my legs I would’ve never left the arena. You wouldn’t have had a second thought about me.” Vomit churned in the back of her throat. “Let’s be honest here, Xrez. The only reason I’m out and they’re still in is because we fucked.”

  Xrez opened his mouth, then closed it. Unable to deny the truth. The only thing that separated her from Miranda or whoever else he’d had contact with, was that Esme had been naïve enough to think they’d shared a connection. She wanted to leave, but not like this and not when her friends were still out there fighting for their lives.

  She glared at him, unable to hold her anger in check. “Don’t take me out again. If you have any honor, you will promise me this.”

  “Esme,” he pleaded again.

  “Promise! I cannot…I will not leave my friends in there. I would never be able to live with myself.”

  A twitch formed in Xrez’s jaw. “I promise.”

  She turned away from him. She couldn’t stand to look at him a second more. “Bradliix. I’m ready. Send me back into The Hunt.

  “But…but I can’t.” He glanced from Esme to Xrez, confusion, shock and fear was on his face. “We’ll be found out!”

  She squinted at Bradliix. “All of the help didn’t come from Xrez. I recognize your voice. You told me which way to go when that hunter was following me. What about that shock from my collar when he was enthralling me with his voice? Was that you too?”

  “I’d promised Xrez that I would watch over you,” Bradliix admitted.

  One side of Esme’s mouth twitched. “If you don’t put me back, I’ll tell everyone who’ll listen what you two did. Everyone. Will. Know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Esme sprinted through the forest of light, pumping her hands hard. She was sure it wasn’t the formal name of the third hell hole she’d been spewed into, but she thought the name was fitting. During the day, when it was warm, a vibrant light covered everything in the forest, creating an awe-inspiring light show. At night, when the temperatures dropped to freezing, everything would go dark.

  In this particular arena she didn’t have the luxury of the sun. Instead, she had to rely on the extreme temperatures to guide her.

  In the morning, before the alarm rang, the snow and ice from the night would begin to melt and hot air rolled in on a fog. In the evening, the temperature would drop from an oppressive hundred degrees to below freezing in a matter of minutes. An hour after the evening bell rang the forest would look much different, cold, dark and oppressive.

  Fortunately, by her calculations, she still had about fifteen minutes before the evening bell would sound. But unfortunately, that also meant she had to keep the hunter who followed her off her back until then.

  She didn’t turn to look at the hunter, experience taught her that would only slow her down. She could feel him behind her. His spindly legs stabbed into the ground and kicked up dirt as he tried to close the distance.

  She cursed herself for drawing his attention to her in the first place.

  She’d been checking her traps and urging her new pet to pick a spot and do her business.

  Her new pet, Piper, was a baby arrancar. She’d stumbled upon the arrancar’s den her last few weeks in Level Two. She’d been tracking an anim
al she’d hoped to carve up into little pieces to eat and caught it mid-dinner, taking it off-guard. That’s when she’d found the pup mixed in the blood and gore that had once been its siblings.

  Anger had made her want to leave the pup where it was and let the elements or other animals get it, but listening to its whimper, she just couldn’t. She’d fished it out and stuck it in her purse.

  Piper was a good companion to have. She knew when to be quiet and had stealth on lock-down. It was only after Esme had looked up from pulling their dinner from the trap had she notice the hunter on the other side of the raging river. There was no way to get across where they were, the undercurrent was too strong. She’d grabbed Piper and stuffed her in her purse then ran like hell.

  As she booked it out of there, her breaths came out as hard pants and turned into white puffs in the air. The freaky squirrel she clutched was long dead. She’d slammed its head against a tree as she’d run by. Usually, she would’ve taken a more humane approach to killing her dinner, but its constant squawking was signaling the hunter and alerting her position.

  She dropped to the side, making a conscious effort to hug her purse to her body as she did and slid between two bushes.

  Esme pushed through the broken branches, receiving a fair amount of scratches, and fell the six feet out the embankment on the other side. She hit the ground with a crunch. During the day, the embankment would be muddy and the foot wide stream that fed off the river would be teeming with activity from the small crustacean that made their home there. She usually crushed them and used it for bait.

  The cool air had already hardened the usually soft ground, and the stream had a small layer of ice forming at the top. Soon the animals within would be frozen as well.

  If she’d been on the planet under different circumstances, she would’ve loved to study the luminescent microscopic ecdysozoa that covered everything, including her, and made the forest as bright as it was. Without those little things that looked like bright, blue mites, she wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

  But she hadn’t the luxury to take samples. She wasn’t brought to The Hunt to use her chemist’s brain. She was there to survive and survive she would. When she escaped, she might look back on her adventure here and come up with theories, but now wasn’t that time. During the day she was battling the heat, bugs, and predators while trying to catch edible food, secure water and gather firewood for the evening. And at night she was too busy trying to stay warm by tending to her lone firestick and trying not to freeze to death.

  She’d been in Level Three for two weeks and she hadn’t gotten more than a few hours of rest at a time. She didn’t mind not sleeping. She would get plenty of it when she finally beat The Hunt and was freed from this planet and freed from her constant thoughts of who was to blame for her being there.

  Esme let out a growl as she launched over a rock. Her feet hit the ground, and she slipped. She righted herself before she fell on her butt, but not before she jerked and twisted her back. Pain flared up her spine. She clenched her teeth, the only thing stopping her from screaming out. She knew perfectly well that the ground where the water puddled between the rocks would be covered with ice by now. She’d gotten distracted.

  Esme pushed the thought of Xrez out of her head. Nothing ever good came from thinking about him anyway. She couldn’t get distracted. Even for a second. If she broke any bone in her legs, she was as good as caught.

  She skated across the ice, making her way to the other side of the stream. When the ice gave way to the pebbles that lined the bank, she took off once more. She finally turned around to look and found the hunter was still pursuing her, following along on the other side of the riverbank. There was a good distance between them, but the hunter had that look of determination in his eyes. Like he would risk it all and brave the undercurrent.

  She’d seen that look on him and the other hunters before. The hunter would throw all of his energy into catching her before the alarm sounded because he didn’t know when he would find her or anyone else again.

  It had been two days since she’d run into the other hunter and a week since she’d last seen another human. Min. They’d spent the night together, keeping each other warm and reminiscing about home. The following morning, Min had bid her farewell, and Esme was on her own once again.

  “Stop, human!” the hunter called.

  “You stop first,” she yelled back.

  He kept chasing her, so she really didn’t feel a reason to stop running.

  “I’ll make a fine mate!”

  A hysterical laugh burst from her mouth. Mate? He thought that would make her stop, turn around and run into his arms?

  He was all skin and bones. He didn’t have the perfectly honed muscle of someone who could keep her warm. She knew by the way his bones jutted under the thin skin that stretched over them, that he wouldn’t make a comfortable pillow.

  He was greyish pale and smooth as a baby’s butt. Not a single piece of hair that she could see and nothing to run her fingers through. At the thought of fingers, her gaze dipped to his. Long and thin, like the rest of his body. Six digits in all and not a claw in sight. She curled her lip

  “I will provide well for you. Be a good protector,” he said.

  He had a gleam in his eyes—all four of them. She’d stopped running, probably leading him to think his words were convincing her to give up and go with him willingly.

  But his words had the opposite effect. She knew what a good protector looked like. Six and a half feet tall, about three-hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, fur, sharp teeth and claws. Nothing like the hunter in front of her.

  “I’ll give you anything you want. I have enough credits in my account to fulfill your every need.”

  “Can you get me back to Earth?”

  “Of course! We can go together.” He motioned her toward him. “Hurry now, time is running out.”

  She glanced at the river. It was beginning to slow as ice formed over it. One side of her mouth lifted into a smile. Any time now. “You’re not the first hunter who promised to take me home.”

  He took a step forward, and when she didn’t run away, he took another. “Those other hunters are liars. They can’t take you home, but I can.”

  “Yes, he lied to me and so are you.”

  She turned and launched herself at the hanging branch and climbed. It was the only way to get out of the embankment she was in, climbing up the side wouldn’t get her anywhere. The thick ice covering the dirt would make climbing futile.

  She heard his steps, the clicking of his hoof-like feet on the ice, fast approaching. The evening alarm rang out as she swung her feet over the edge and landed on a narrow path. The hunter was no longer her problem, but the rapidly dropping temperature was. If she didn’t find shelter within the hour, she would be frozen to death, and she was still so very far away from the treehouse she called home.

  * * *

  “Why do you do this to yourself?” Bradliix asked with a tilt of his head.

  “Do what?” Xrez asked, not taking his eyes off the scene playing out from the hologram projected over his desk.

  Bradliix let out a sigh that was both exasperation and boredom then he flicked his slender, ring-clad fingers at the hologram. “This.”

  “Because I…” Because what? He’d promised her that he wouldn’t interfere with her life anymore and he’d already broken that promise twice already.

  On her second night in Level Three, he’d sent her a protein bar and a water canteen. She hadn’t eaten in four days. The traps she’d set were poorly made, and the animals hadn’t been interested in the berries she’d used as bait. He’d thought the nourishment he’d provided would serve as a peace offering. Esme had taken one look at the mini-pod that popped from the ground, raised her middle finger to the sky, said some words that his translator had registered as obscenities and kicked the pod and stomped away.

  His second attempt of making up hadn’t gone better. All of her efforts to start a f
ire using the tree limbs she’d collected hadn’t worked. She hadn’t known that for the branches to burn she’d needed to remove the ecdysozoa from the wood.

  The ecdysozoa had a chemical in their microscopic body that radiated light so bright that it projected through its blue-tinged skin. That chemical also made it nearly impossible to burn. He’d sent her wood so she wouldn’t spend another night curled in a tight ball and shivering. She opened the pod, saw what was inside, then closed it without taking out the wood.

  “The hunter just spotted her,” Xrez said through clenched teeth and purposefully not finishing his prior sentence.

  “He’s not fast enough to catch her,” Bradliix replied matter-of-factly.

  Xrez relaxed his fist and tapped a claw on the desk. “He’s been trying for a very long time.”

  “He sees her as the easier of the two. He originally had his sights set on the other, but she’s more than he can handle.”

  Xrez snorted. He’d also underestimated the mother.

  “Does she still have the arrancar pup with her?” Bradliix asked.

  “She carries it in her bag and has named it.”

  “That’s interesting. I thought for sure she would’ve killed it, seeing how its mother had almost killed her.”

  “She’s compassionate.”

  Bradliix made a noise in the back of his throat. “That animal will weigh more than her soon enough.”

  “She’ll be long gone before that.” Gone where? Claimed by a hunter? Xrez growled at the thought. His mood turned sour.

  “Do you mind turning this off? We’ve much to discuss, and I need your full attention.”

  Xrez didn’t turn away from the hologram. “You have it. Proceed.”

  Bradliix let out another exasperated sigh. “Very well, Sir.” He laid his tablet on his lap and tapped the screen. “A hunter from the planet Scankied has submitted an official application to join The Hunt in one of the Arachnida arenas. I don’t know why invertebrates who want to test their skills always think to do so by petitioning to enter that particular compound.”

  There was a fast succession of taps as Bradliix typed on his tablet.