His to Steal
An Alien Overlords Novel
Theodora Taylor
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Epilogue
About the Authors
Also by Eve Vaughn
Also by Theodora Taylor
Prologue
He hovers, golden and huge, his violet eyes shining as he gazes upon me lying on his sleeping mat.
I’m wearing the shift dress he gave me and I’m underneath his covers. But I feel naked.
The sound of his harsh breathing fills up the room. His nose flares and his massive chest rises and falls. He clenches his fists at his sides, as if it’s taking all of his strength to hold himself back.
He is outrageously hard, his cock straining so violently against his pants’ leg, I can see the imprint, down to its ridges.
Beast, the word blows into my mind, like an ominous wind. He stands on two legs, but he scans me like a seven-foot predator who has spotted his prey.
And is about to strike.
He says something in clicks and hisses. His voice low and dangerous.
I don’t speak his language, but I somehow completely comprehend the words coming out of his mouth.
He is telling me I am his.
His to steal. His to take. His to breed.
Then he rips the covers away from my body.
Chapter One
Six Weeks Earlier
Zinnia
Fleetwood Mac songs don’t heal bones, but singing is the only balm I have on hand as I tend to Nova’s latest wound. A broken wrist this time. Fury surges through me along with the old planet song about going your own way.
I’m doing the best I can with what I have on hand. But I need more than bark bandages and sticks to set it right. Too bad my brother, Dan, put a moratorium on visits to the settlement doctor after the old man tried to ask Nova’s daughter, Glee, too many questions about her mother’s latest “fall.”
Dan’s escalating, I note darkly as I sing one last chorus of “Go Your Own Way,” and finish wrapping my passed out sister-in-law’s wrist in the bark bandage.
I pounded and cut these bandages myself after Dan declared Nova couldn’t go to the doctor anymore, and on my many trips out to the red woods, I’d been purposefully picking a weed, us settlers referred to as Terrhan Tylenol because of its analgesic properties. I’d also started tapping the trees and collecting other plants that can only be found there to make essential oils. So far I’d been successfully using my hodgepodge medical kit to promote healing and prevent infection. But Nova is going to need more than ground up Tylenol when she wakes up.
“Zinnia…it’s broken, isn’t it?”
I raise my gaze to find Nova’s head half lifted, her tawny brown face drawn tight with the pain of waking up, bruised and beaten. There are no tears in her eyes though. She never cries anymore, no matter how badly Dan beats her. I’m not even sure she knows how, after a life filled with so much sorrow and pain.
I nod in answer to her question and she sighs, laying her head back on her thin pillow. “Moons, it hurts. Always thought he’d break a rib first. Guess I was wrong,” she says with a wry chuckle.
She’s laughing. Laughing at her pain. But all I want to do is scream.
I wish I could do more than set her wrist with make-shift bandages and sticks. I wish I could tell her to leave my brother, to take Glee with her and never look back. But I know that’s impossible. Where would she go?
Maybe before my parents’ deaths in the Great Storm, she could have gotten away. But my half-brother is too powerful now that he’s inherited our father’s spot on the Board of Settlement Leaders. I’d hoped his newly bestowed position would instill responsibility and a sense of duty. Instead, he’s been steadily abusing his power to become an even bigger asshole.
He’d already threatened me earlier today when I’d come home to eat my midday rations. After finding Nova unconscious and broken on our red dirt floor, I’d told him I was taking his girlfriend and her daughter to live with my best friend Kira and her parents.
He’d just sneered and laughed. “See what happens if you try to take her out of this house. You think I don’t have a say in who gets what rations? I’ll let that Kira bitch and her parents starve to death if you try to get between me and my woman. And I don’t care what the Xals are planning to do with all those swirlie girls when they come of breeding age—I’ll make sure that hybrid of Nova’s gets gone, too. You got my fucking promise about that.”
Thanks to our differently colored mothers, Dan’s skin is a much paler brown than my own near black. But though his face was flushed red with all the alcohol he’d consumed that morning while I worked in the fields, his threats came across chilling and unslurred.
All I could do was glare at him. Uselessly. Dan knew I was powerless to truly fight back. He’d just spat and left, slamming the house’s wooden door behind and leaving his crippled half-sister to tend to the woman he’d beaten senseless.
So no…I’m not going to try to convince Nova to leave him. But this can’t go on. I have to figure out how to get her and Glee away from my brother.
“Mama! Aunt Z! Guess what happened at colony school today!”
I turn and Nova puts in the effort to sit up on her good arm, when Glee bursts into the house, her usual ball of swirled emerald green and tawny brown energy. “Teacher said ruchis are vegetables, and I said, ‘no-un-uh. Aunt Z says it’s a fruit because it’s got seeds and Aunt Z says vegetables with seeds are fruits even if they taste yucky like vegetables. And teacher said, no that’s not right. And I said, un-huh, it is! Aunt Z’s smarter than you and she reads all the books you don’t. And teacher got mad at me and said I have to come home early. But it’s true, right?”
I wince. Technically speaking, yes, ruchis, a deep pink tomato like plant and one of the few Xalthurian vegetable crops that grow well on our planet, are botanically fruits, but…“Please stop telling your teacher I’m smarter than her,” I say, shaking my head at my little niece.
“But it’s true!” Glee insists, raising her chin, with a confidence a little girl wearing her dark blue hair in pigtails shouldn’t possess.
“Just because something’s true doesn’t mean it has to be said out loud,” Nova says from her position behind me on the mat.
Glee’s face falls when she sees her mother’s bandaged wrist. “What happened, Mama? You fall again?”
Glee comes over to the sleeping mats where I barely managed to place Nova after finding her crumpled on the floor beside our redwood tab
le.
“Yes, I fell. Mama’s so clumsy,” she tells Glee with an apologetic look. “You’re going to have to help Aunt Z finish that pigeon jerky stew I was making when I…uh…fell.”
Glee looks at me, her expression not nearly as happy as when she came in earlier. I can bake like nobody’s business when the grain crops come in, but I’m a terrible cook and we both know it.
She doesn’t complain though, just quietly goes over to the walking stick I left in the middle of the floor. “Here you go,” she says, handing it to me with a somber look in the brown human shaped eyes she inherited from her mother.
“Thank you, sweetie,” I say, using it to get back up to my feet and limp over to the stone hearth. My parents built this hearth with their own hands shortly after the accord with the Xalthurians went through. When they were full of hope, because as it turned out we humans would be able to survive on this harsh red planet after all, thanks to our new alien overlords.
My bad leg is twinging even worse than usual after sitting on the floor for so long as I tended to Nova. But I smile when I look into the pot hanging from the hearth’s metal hook and see that it’s mostly already made.
“We just have to heat it up,” I tell Glee, doing my best to keep my voice light. “I just wish there was a way to make sure I don’t burn it, like the last time I tried to cook. I keep telling Kira she needs to reinvent the microwave.”
Glee doesn’t laugh like she usually does when I point out all the old planet re-inventions my tech savvy best friend should start working on to make our lives easier. Instead she says, “Don’t mess it up, Aunt Z. Not tonight,” with a somber look that makes her appear ten times her age. Five going on fifty.
Which makes it all that more guilt inducing when I do mess it up by setting the fire too high. My mom used to brag about how quickly she adjusted to cooking by fire after our colony ship crash landed on New Terrhan, but apparently her talent skipped me. Throwing Glee an apologetic look after we taste it, I add extra spices to the stew to cover up the taste of burnt meat.
She doesn’t tease me or whine, just says, “Let me take mama her bowl before Dan comes home.”
Too late. We both jerk when the door opens and Dan stomps inside. Face still flush with alcohol, I notice. The pigeons who miraculously survived our colony ship crash and somehow manage to thrive on our hostile red planet are the only source of meat left in the village now that the supplies our alien overlords give us annually have almost completely run out. A few of the seniors have been put on such strict rations, they’re barely skin and bone. But somehow Dan and other leaders manage to keep themselves flushed in alcohol, even after all the other supplies have run out.
I brace at the sight of him, not knowing who I’m going to get. Sometimes he comes in so pissed off about something that happened at a leaders meeting that Nova tells me to take Glee to an entertainment on the colony ship, because she knows there’s going to be a fight. And sometimes he reverts to the hero boyfriend who “saved her” from the village orphanage she grew up in after both her parents died in the colony ship crash.
Dan sniffs the air and asks, “Fucking moons, what’d you burn this time?”
Like I’m the burden he must bear, as opposed to the sister who’s constantly cleaning up his messes. Then, without giving me a chance to answer, he asks, “Who let her cook?”
He breaks off when he sees Nova lying on the mats. “Baby, are you seriously hurt?”
“Her wrist is broken,” Glee informs him. “Mama was really hurt.”
Her expression is the very opposite of her name, and my heart sinks as I realize, she knows…
Glee’s a very clever girl—that’s one of the many things I love about the hybrid I consider my niece, even though we’re not related by blood. Despite our best efforts to cover up Dan’s abuse, of course she’s stopped believing that her mother acquired all those bruises or her current broken wrist from being clumsy.
I’m proud of her for seeing through Dan, unlike the rest of the settlers, who’ve fallen for all his pretty boy politician lies. But at the same time, a sad Fleetwood Mac song rises in my chest as I hand her a bowl of burnt pigeon jerky stew. She’s only five years old, but her innocence is slipping away like red dust through our hands.
I guess Dan’s decided to play it contrite tonight. He rushes over to Nova and falls to his knees beside her mat, his face a mask of concern. “Baby…I’m so sorry.”
“Ahhh!” Nova cries out when he tries to hug her.
He’s jostled her wrist, but obviously that’s not his fault either. “What did you give her for the pain?” he demands, turning his head to glare at me.
“Terrhan Tylenol,” I answer. “But it’s not enough. Kira and I were planning on going to the red woods. I’ll see if I can find some fernie.”
Fernie was another medicinal plant. Not quite like the old planet version of ibuprofen, but as close as we could get to an anti-inflammatory on New Terrhan.
“Yeah, you do that. Get as much as it takes and when you come back, teach Glee how to use it just in case you become not available. The Xals will be setting down any day now.”
I stiffen at his mention of the Breeding Ceremony.
And he shakes his head at me. “Don’t you start sniveling about the BC like your friend Kira. With that legs of yours and your ugly face, a Breeding Ceremony’s the only way you’ll ever get a baby.”
I flinch inside but keep my outside from showing any reaction to his hateful words. I know he’s saying this to hurt me. Dan’s mother died years before our father stepped foot on the colony ship with his newly pregnant bride, and I honestly can’t remember a time when he wasn’t like this. Resentful that our father paid me so much attention, even though I was crippled and not nearly as pretty as his son. He’s been making fun of me since we were kids, that’s just his way.
My best friend Kira says that I’m not ugly. She insists my dark, nearly black skin is beautiful, and that Dan only insults me on the regular to keep my self-esteem low and make sure his maid doesn’t go anywhere.
Still, his words sting. I don’t respond though, and I bite down on the secret I’ve been keeping from him, about just how far Kira and I are planning to go to resist getting bred by our alien overlords.
“The Xals do things to the girls who try to run. Bad things they don’t necessarily recover from,” Jin-Hu, our High Leader’s daughter told me the other day while we were walking to the colony ship for RomCom night. “Wang-Lei got pretty serious with one of the orphanage girls before her Breeding Ceremony. They were planning on marrying, even if she did get knocked up by a Xal. But when he went to get her, they told him, she was punished for running and didn’t survive the night.”
My neighbor Jin-Hu’s words about her brother’s girlfriend ring through my head as I grab my walking stick and the bark cloth bag I made for plant and seed gathering. And my heart pounds with fear even though the Xals aren’t here yet.
Yes, we humans are technically surviving on this planet, but lately it feels like every single day is filled with relentless hard work and abject fear. Fear of starvation. Fear of Dan. Fear of Kira’s crazy plan.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be one of those twenty-one-year-old girls in the old planet entertainments. Full of hopes and dreams. More concerned with completing my university courses and hooking up with my fellow human boys than anything happening on planets, whose suns I can only see at night when the city lights aren’t too blinding.
But I’m not one of those girls, I harshly remind myself. If my parents had been even remotely capable of sending me to university, they wouldn’t have boarded that ill-fated colony ship. And not one of those carefree university girls was portrayed by a dark-skinned freak like me with a crippled leg.
Plus, Kira is my best friend. I have to go through with this…even if it might get the both of us killed.
“Glee, bring over some of that stew,” Dan commands, as I leave. Then he says, “I’m sorry Zinnia burned th
e stew, but it’s better than nothing. Here, you’ve gotta eat baby. Eat it for me. C’mon now.”
Dan’s soft words are the last thing I hear before closing the door behind me.
One thing’s for certain if he knew the real reason I was going to the red woods tonight, he’d call me worse things than ugly.
Chapter Two
T’Kan
Duty.
That word weighs heavy on my mind as I stand in my quarters and tie a ceremonial cloth around my waist. The ship will soon be landing on New Terrhan for this solar’s Breeding Ceremony. I should be excited at the prospect.
Our Xalthurian females were rendered infertile by the Extinction virus that swept through our system several solars ago, and our scientists have continually failed to come up with a cure. Those without male heirs like myself now have no choice but to breed the twenty-one-year-old hu’man females of New Terrhan as agreed upon in the accord between our two races. That means, I will need to implant my seed in as many hu’man females as possible after we set down on the primitive red planet we ceded to the hu’mans in the New Terrhan accord.
Before the last battle of the Three Generation War, this would have been something I looked forward to. Breeding a hu’man female will ensure my family lines continue with the birth of a male heir. I have often heard other warriors speak in hushed whispers about the sweetness between the hu’man female’s legs. Wet and hot. A wonder beyond all description.
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