Her Alien Captor: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Pirates Of Cania Book 1)

by Zara Zenia

  “What are you?” Melody gasped, too shocked to think about how rude it was of her to say something like that. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think she was looking at an honest-to-goodness alien.

  But that was crazy.

  For one thing, there was no such thing.

  For another . . .

  Well, she was having trouble coming up with another reason with the four-armed blue lady giving her a stern yet clearly terrified look.

  “At least tell me what’s going on? Where am I? Why am I in this stupid cage?” Melody growled, kicking at the bars, her neck already stiff and sore from the awkward position she had to crane it in with the low ceiling.

  The girl’s big black eyes darted around and blinked once, then she scurried off, disappearing before Melody could even register it to call after her.

  “Hey, wait!” Melody yelled anyway, her voice echoing off into the mysterious beyond. She grunted and flopped back down to the cold, hard cage floor. No use in making herself hurt when there wasn’t anything going on. She needed to conserve her energy.

  She had no idea how long it had been when she heard footsteps approaching again. Was the blue girl back to let her out?

  The blue girl was back, but she wasn’t alone, Melody quickly realized. She brought with her a man—or close enough to it for Melody to call him that—who was impossible to really see from the angle Melody was looking. He was tall, that much was clear. And athletically built, in fine clothing, with an arrogance in his stance that wasn’t even a tiny bit alien to her.

  Suddenly, the cage door opened and the man growled something that sounded like a command to Melody. Under normal circumstances, obeying wasn’t her first instinct, but at that moment, Melody wanted answers, she wanted information, and she wanted to do whatever the guy was demanding, but she didn’t know what it was, and taking a guess on the wrong thing seemed worse than doing nothing.

  “Is either of you going to tell me what the fuck is—”

  Out of nowhere, pain exploded from her shin, cutting her off.

  The bastard kicked her!

  Before she could even let him know how unacceptable that was, he was barking at the blue girl, and even from the cage, Melody could see the other girl shrinking back, clearly terrified even as she nodded and bowed and basically got on her knees and kissed his ass right then and there.

  Melody had seen it before on the streets. Normally with pimps, the girls they had working for them were so desperate for affection and starved for approval that they didn’t realize what an abusive situation they were in. Not until the guy was beating them, getting them high to keep a tight leash, and passing her around to all his friends.

  It was disgusting how she still looked at the guy with unbridled hunger in her big, black eyes even as he threw her to the ground with a furious snarl. The girl had tears brimming in her eyes as she crawled across the floor, lips puckered as she moved toward the very foot he’d used to leave the giant painful gooseberry on Melody’s shin.

  Just as blue girl’s lips touched his shoe, he kicked her, his toes connecting right under her chin, her head snapping back with a crack that made Melody’s stomach twist.

  “Hey, you can’t—”

  A sharp pinch in her neck was the first thing that alerted Melody to the fact that blue girl had kept on moving after the kick from her man, right to Melody’s side, where she was crouched with a syringe in hand.

  “I will do as I please with my property, as is my right,” the man said firmly, every word crystal clear even though Melody could tell he was still speaking a tongue she didn’t know. “That is your first lesson, Omega. I am in charge. I own you, and you will do as I say.”

  Melody snorted on impulse.

  “Good luck with that,” she muttered, ignoring the gasp of the blue girl.

  “Master Alpha, please, she doesn’t know . . .”

  “She will learn, Three, but unless you wish to endure her punishments alongside her, I suggest you leave us,” the man said, cruelty clear in his voice. Melody’s head swam with all the strange terms—Omega, Alpha—what did they mean?

  “Get out here, Omega. Crawl to me,” he said as the blue girl whimpered and fled without another protest.

  “Sugar, if you think I’m crawling anywhere, you’ve got another think comin’,” Melody said, now more than happy to lie back in her cage without moving. “Especially not before you tell me what the hell is going on and where I am.”

  “I have no reservations about applying extra force if you insist on being obstinate,” the pale-skinned man warned, his voice cold. Melody got the feeling he hoped to use that ‘extra force.’ Just like those pigs who’d had her in the back of their patrol car.

  “Fuck you—” A scream ripped from Melody’s throat, cutting her off as her world erupted into pain and fire. Every nerve ending in her body burned like a lit match, and the only thought her brain could form was ‘please stop.’

  “Please,” she whimpered, her own desperate cry the first thing she heard once the pain ceased. There was a thin metal rod inserted between the bars of her cage, a pronged tip on the end of it dangerously close to touching her hip again.

  “That’s more like it.” The man chuckled darkly. “That attitude of yours will not serve you as an Omega. Not if you want to make your Alpha happy. And you do want that, don’t you?” he asked, menace dripping from every syllable.

  Melody whimpered, every instinct in her body egging her to retort, to be a smart ass, but her body still burned from that cattle prod thing. No matter how much the pain was a deterrent, she couldn’t bring herself to agree with him.

  “You will address me as Master Nor, or simply Master, until your training is complete and a nobleman wishes to complete the bond, at which time you will belong to him until the end of your days.”

  Melody was sure she was going to be sick.

  This guy had to be joking . . . right? He made it sound like she’d been kidnapped and brought into some kind of sex trafficking ring. That she was going to be someone’s slave.

  But that . . . that didn’t happen in the twenty-first century, did it?

  “Now,” Nor said, the cattle prod waving too close to Melody’s body for her comfort. “Crawl to me,” he commanded.

  The promise of that excruciating pain returning was enough to quell Melody’s inherent rebellious streak long enough for her to roll onto her belly and drag herself out of the cage.

  “Much better,” Nor said, cold satisfaction in his sneer.

  Now that she was out of the cage, Melody got her first look at the man. He was even taller than she’d thought, with long, slender limbs, lean but with tight muscles that spoke to a hidden strength. His skin was nearly silver, and his hair just as pale, eyes the color of glacial ice. His ears were pointed, Melody noticed, adding to the alienness of him.

  You’re so not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

  “Kiss my feet,” Master Nor commanded, those large, pale eyes unfeeling and cruel.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Melody said, pulling herself up to her feet unsteadily instead of obeying his instructions.

  Nor’s eyes narrowed, and Melody held her breath in anticipation of the cattle prod again. So be it. She’d rather take the punishment for being disobedient than the punishment she’d wage on herself for the alternative.

  “I have trained thousands of Omegas for Canian elite, keeping only three for myself in my selflessness. Three among thousands. Mind you, they have all been quite unique and special specimens, but a lesser man would not have such restraint. Were it not for my efforts, the Frenzy would have destroyed our society ages ago. I have never failed to break an Omega—”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Melody sneered, folding her arms over her chest—when had the handcuffs disappeared?—and glaring up at the guy who easily had a foot on her in height. He looked strong and mean, but he also looked old. There were wrinkles in his pale face that she couldn’t see from the ground, a hardn
ess in his eyes that spoke to an advanced age.

  To her complete and utter horror, Nor’s face split into a grin at her challenge.

  “We’ll see about that, Number Four.”

  3

  How long had she been on this spaceship, traveling through the stars, hurtling toward the unknown?

  Days?

  Weeks?

  Longer?

  Melody couldn’t say. Without a day to night cycle to signal the passage of time, she was left to try to tick off the seconds on her internal clock. Egeon—Nor’s first name, she’d learned from the other Omegas—made that difficult.

  He’d made it his mission to break her spirit, to get her to submit to him and hand herself over to him freely.

  Fat fucking chance.

  When he wasn’t torturing her into acquiescence, Nor kept Melody locked away in a room that wasn’t much bigger than the cage she’d been in before. It at least seemed more like a cell than a cage for an animal, though Melody was pretty sure he’d only made the switch after taking a personal liking to her.

  She shuddered at the way he called her Four, as if she didn’t have a name. As if he hadn’t robbed her of that name.

  Possibly the most disturbing part of his pet name for her was the implication. Melody had met Three—the blue girl with four arms—the first day she’d come aboard. It was maybe a few days later when she’d met One, a diminutive girl with a fearful hunch in her shoulders and a hollow sound in her soft voice. One came to tell her about their role as Omegas.

  What a crock of shit that had been.

  “It’s an honor to help the Canians fight the Frenzy,” One had said after explaining the monthly lust-fueled fever men of noble lineage faced on Nor’s home planet.

  “If it’s such an honor, why kidnap people and force them into slavery?” Melody had quickly challenged. One looked startled at the question, her iridescent eyes looking everywhere but at Melody.

  “Inter-species genetic compatibilities are rare. They can’t accept refusal,” she said, still not looking at Melody. That was the part that made Melody most suspicious. She sat there and considered what the alien woman had said before it all clicked into place.

  “Genetic compatibilities?” she’d pressed. “That only matters for . . .” She couldn’t even bring herself to say it out loud. The thought was too terrible. Too impossible.

  “Reproduction, yes,” One said, nodding sagely.

  “No,” Melody said, shoving the other girl away. “No fucking way am I going to carry some alien freak’s baby. Or anyone’s baby, for that matter!”

  The other girl had looked at her sadly, slowly shaking her head as she retreated toward the door.

  “It would be better if you didn’t fight,” she’d said. “You shouldn’t fight. You won’t win.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Melody growled, folding her arms over her chest and baring her teeth at the poor girl who wasted no time scurrying out of the room. Once the lock had re-engaged on the door, Melody sank back on the bed and dwelled over her fate.

  Maybe Egeon Nor thought sending one of his broken flowers in to talk some sense into Melody would work. Maybe he thought it was a good idea to show her the inevitability of her subjugation.

  He was wrong.

  He’d accomplished nothing aside from convincing Melody how desperately she could not give in.

  The one time she’d tried to get away from him, Nor dragged her to a window, leaning in close behind her, his breath hot on her ear, unpleasantly moist.

  “Take a good look at this, Omega,” he’d said. “Look at where you are,” he cooed, holding Melody too tightly for her to be able to wriggle away from his grasp like she wanted. He threaded his fingers through her hair before he yanked. Hard. He jerked her around to face him, tears pricking in her eyes from the pain.

  “You’re nowhere. There’s no place to run, no place to hide. You wouldn’t live a minute in the vacuum.”

  “I think I’ll take my chances,” Melody growled through the pain. She narrowed her eyes and spat at him, a glob of her saliva just missing his cheek, hitting his pointed ear instead.

  Nor roared, reeling back, his open palm connecting with Melody’s cheek with a resounding crack that rang through the corridor. Her head spun, ears ringing the whole journey back to her room, and it wasn’t until later when she was examining the imprint left by Nor’s hand that she realized he had six fingers instead of five.

  Was that why it hurt so much more?

  But no matter what Nor tried—not sending in Trojan allies, not intimidation, not fear, nor pain—Melody wasn’t caving. She would not. Could not. Not even if it meant the alternative was death.

  And it could have been, for all she knew. In all her time on this ship, she’d never seen or heard any sign of Two—the last of Nor’s trio of slaves. What happened to Two? Maybe she escaped.

  Maybe she died.

  Time dragged on forever between the sessions where Nor tried to force her to perform like a trained poodle. It all blurred together, and Melody was sure he’d be giving up any time now, sure he had to see he’d met his match in determination.

  So when the door opened to reveal both One and Three on the other side, neither of them making eye contact with her, Melody sucked in a breath.

  Was this it? The day they finally said fuck it and threw her out of an airlock?

  “Why did you fight?” One asked, her throat tight.

  “One,” Three hissed, glaring at the other girl. “She would not have avoided the treatment anyway, and you know it.”

  One’s throat quivered as she swallowed and shook her head. “You have to come with us.”

  “Like hell, I do. What treatment are you talking about?”

  Three gave Melody a grim look and shook her head. “It will be easier after. You’ll see. The less you fight it, the better.”

  Melody growled, hands balling into fists. She was pretty sure she could take these two alien girls, even if one of them did have an extra set of arms. Melody was a scrapper. She’d grown up on the mean streets of Memphis. She wasn’t a stranger to fighting dirty when necessary.

  “Please,” One pleaded, and it was then that Melody noticed the thin pronged rod in her trembling fingers.

  Shit.

  Hand-to-hand combat was one thing, but with that cattle prod thing in the mix, Melody wasn’t liking her chances as much.

  She sighed and hung her head, fists relaxing as she followed them out of the room. Both alien girls seemed slightly more at ease, but Three didn’t take her eyes off Melody for a moment.

  Smart girl.

  “Finally! There you are,” Nor proclaimed as Melody was escorted in. “I am disappointed in how long you took,” he added with a harsh look at each of the other two. They both visibly winced as if they’d been struck, retreating with their heads bowed. This guy was a sick fuck, controlling them, brainwashing them like that.

  Melody wouldn’t let it happen. She would not become Four.

  Egeon yanked her to a set of restraints against a wall, deftly securing her wrists before she had a chance to register what was happening. Her ankles were cuffed in quick succession, and then Melody was helpless and restrained, chained to the wall, blood rushing through her veins with real, true panic.

  Being locked up was one thing. Being threatened with violence and pain another.

  But this?

  Being chained up and helpless with a malicious alien determined to make her his willing sex slave? How the hell was she going to get out of this?

  “It’s so much more satisfying to do this the organic way before administering the treatment, though I’ve begun to lose my patience with you,” he said, casually fiddling with small items on a work bench, his back turned to Melody so she couldn’t see what was happening. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the chill sprouting goosebumps up and down her arms.

  “What treatment?” she found the courage to ask, her voice cracking halfway through. Damn it. She hated when her bo
dy—or her voice—betrayed her poker face.

  He’d heard it, too. She knew he had, because when he turned back to face her, he was sporting that terrible, awful grin. The same one he’d had when he decided to keep her as his.

  The grin held Melody’s attention only briefly, because then she spotted what he’d been fiddling with, a large syringe, gleaming in the bright, sterile environment.

  “You’re chaining me up for a shot?” Melody scoffed, still trying to play it cool though her pulse was so quick her heart was practically vibrating rather than beating.

  “For the side effects, little one. The treatment . . . well, it can have a potent effect, and as eager as I am for your adoration, giving you what you want right away isn’t teaching you a lesson at all, is it?”

  Melody wasn’t sure which part of his gross little speech did it, but there was bile pressing at the back of her throat, the taste of it sour on her tongue as she swallowed, forcing her face not to betray her fear.

  What was in that syringe?

  “There’s nothing that could make me want you,” she spat, satisfied with the flash of rage that sparked through Nor’s glacial eyes.

  “We’ll see about that, Omega,” he said, jabbing the needle into her flesh.

  Melody gasped, expecting pain, expecting heat or cold or something.

  But after the initial jab of the needle, it might as well not have happened. She looked at Egeon Nor suspiciously and pulled on her bonds, wondering what the hell their purpose could be. They’d frustrated her at first when she came in, but now they were just kind of . . . inconvenient.

  Nor said nothing as he stepped back from Melody, watching with that same smug grin.

  “Well, how do you feel?” he asked, something about the way he looked at her making Melody feel . . . warm inside.