Ruwen: Mated to the Alien

by Kate Rudolph

  RUWEN

  Mated to the Alien

  by

  Starr Huntress

  &

  Kate Rudolph

  Ruwen © Kate Rudolph 2016.

  Cover design by Kate Rudolph.

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical reviews and articles.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature readers.

  Published by Starr Huntress & Kate Rudolph.

  www.starrhuntress.com

  www.katerudolph.net

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  ***

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  The planet was called Polai and it sucked.

  When Lis Janyx was eight years old, the idea of traversing the universe and seeing everything it had to offer had sounded great. But now, at twenty-five, Lis hadn’t chosen to come here. Nor had she chosen to leave Earth. They said living in the Wastes, a slum near the hollowed out husk of Old Cleveland, lead to death, dismemberment, or disappearance. Lis had never believed that.

  Not then.

  She’d been coming home from a late night of busting heads and tracking cheating husbands when a mountain of a man had literally appeared in front of her and knocked her out with one blow. At the time, she hadn’t realized they were aliens. Aliens didn’t come to Cleveland—no one did if they could help it.

  But the next thing she knew, she was coming to aboard a spaceship, being examined by the most threatening medical bot she’d ever seen. They’d done tests and… stuff. She didn’t want to dwell on the stuff. It had been bad, some of it really bad, but it could have been a lot worse.

  In the weeks she’d been aboard, she’d only seen the inside of her windowless cell and the little med bay. Day by day, she could feel her sanity and her belief that she’d make it out alive start to fade. She didn’t know what they wanted to do with her, whether they’d make her a slave, eat her, or worse.

  And then one day when she’d lost count of how long she’d been a prisoner, she woke up on Polai with a small pack of supplies and a note written in English.

  Apologies. Wrong girl. Humans can survive on Polai.

  That was it. No explanation, no directions on how to get home. Just five energy bars, a canteen filled with water, and a thin jacket that didn’t do much to guard against the cold nights. Lis had taken to wearing it at all hours despite the lack of warmth. Polai’s sun did something strange to her skin, leaving painful bruises on every inch that she left exposed.

  On her second night it had begun to rain and Lis found shelter under the broad brown leaves of the squat trees that dotted the land. For a few moments, it seemed like the foliage would be strong enough to protect her from the worst of the rain, but then the large leaf directly over her head collapsed in the center and poured all the collected water down over her arms, like a spout.

  Since then her left forearm had been covered in small welts. They were getting better, but Lis refused to risk drinking from the small stream that ran near the woods where she’d been camping.

  Humans in general may have been able to survive on Polai, but she wouldn’t last for long.

  Lis didn’t want to live here. She just wanted to find a ship and get on the first freighter or cruiser headed back toward Earth. And that was going to be harder than she’d first thought.

  Her ever-benevolent kidnappers hadn’t fitted her with a translator, and nothing indicated that Polans could understand English. She’d scoffed at learning Interstellar Common, the language of trade in space, in school, but she’d memorize a freaking dictionary of it if it meant she could get home.

  And the Polans weren’t friendly. Lis had taken shelter in a small swath of woods about two miles north of a small town. She’d tried to approach a pair of Polans once she’d gotten her bearings on that first day. They looked almost human in shape, though they were smaller, shorter than five feet tall. Their skin was a dark green and none of them seemed to have any hair.

  She’d hoped that raising her arms and looking pathetic would give them pause. Instead, both of the aliens had shrieked and charged at her, chasing her out of town and up a tree. Once they’d lost interest in her, Lis had decided to steer clear of the town during daylight. She wasn’t going to risk getting hurt by a lucky hit.

  One night she’d stolen back into town, trying to find food. Nothing looked familiar in the small shop off the main street. It could all be completely harmless or extremely deadly. More out of spite than survival, she’d swiped a small bottle of a bright green liquid. There was an advert on the wall that showed two Polans drinking the stuff.

  It wasn’t poison to them, but she hadn’t been brave enough to try it herself.

  So here she was, nearly a week on the planet, her stomach tied in knots of hunger and her mouth as parched as the desert.

  She clutched her jacket closed across her chest and kept her head down as she walked through the woods. Before, she’d been afraid that if she walked in too deep, she would get lost. Now, she needed to get anywhere. The day before, she thought that she had heard a vehicle coming from somewhere within the forest.

  There could be people, or a house, or a conveniently abandoned spaceship. She didn’t expect the last one, but a girl could dream. While the leaves on all the trees were brown, the trunks themselves were a yellowish-orange. When the sun was up, they soaked up the light, and at night, they glowed faintly.

  It was night now, but those trees gave her just enough light to see by. Lis hadn’t seen any Polans out after dark, and she was fairly certain they were a diurnal people. All the better for her. She’d always been a bit of a night owl.

  After a bit of walking, the woods came to an abrupt stop. The trees had been cleared for a hundred or so yards up to a large gray building in the middle of a field. But the vegetation around the building was overgrown, with yellow grass as high as her knees, weeds, and vines crawling up one of the walls.

  Abandoned. Perfect.

  Lis spared a quick look around, but she didn’t hear or see anything. As far as she could tell, she was completely alone.

  She made her way through the high grass, stumbling over the uneven ground underfoot. Her head spun, but she regained her balance without falling over. There had to be food in there. Hopefully energy bars that she knew were safe to eat.

  Lis made it across the clearing and found a door. Of course, it was locked, but she wasn’t going to let a thing like that stop her. She just needed a crowbar or something like it and then she was in.

  The hairs on the back of Lis’s neck stood up and she froze where she stood. She looked back around to check that she was still alone, as if some primal instinct
had sensed danger. Lis looked around again, but it was still quiet and she saw no one.

  But when she looked around for something to pry the door open, she moved with extra care. It felt like something was out there, coming for her. Something big and dangerous that could end her in an instant.

  The apprehension she now felt was different than what the Polans had brought up. Lis felt exposed, and she needed to get inside quickly. In her gut she just knew that whatever was coming was coming for her.

  Chapter Two

  Ruwen NaNaran made landfall on Polai in the bright sunlight of morning. It was nice, as far as inhabited planets went, but he wasn’t there to sightsee. His small cruiser sat hidden under cover of dense foliage, fuel cells recharging and cloaking system resetting itself. He’d be grounded here for a week.

  More than enough time to get the job done.

  He was a Detyen mercenary, contracted out to an anonymous client in need of a piece of information that only the Polans had access to. Getting onto the planet hadn’t been difficult. His ship had one of the most advanced cloaking systems available and Polai had a lax incoming defense system.

  He expected that getting out would be another story entirely. Polans let people in, but all ships and transport off the planet were heavily monitored. Anyone caught fleeing without authorization was summarily executed by targeted rocket.

  That fact had greatly limited the number of mercs willing to take this job, and had greatly shot up the price. At first, Ru hadn’t planned to take it when it came up on the private merc forum where he found his jobs.

  54% chance of failure. 41% change of death or permanent injury. 100,000 credits if completed before the end of the month.

  Only a Detyen—a twenty-nine year old Detyen—could like those odds. He’d be dead in a few months anyway, so what was the harm in taking the risk? If he cut his time short in the universe, at least he’d go down in a blaze of glory.

  And if he survived, 100k would go a long way on Hedonia, the planet dedicated to pleasure in all its forms. There, he’d go out with a bang.

  Some called it the Detyen Curse. Others said it was the denya price. For the longest time, Ru thought it was the biggest bunch of bullshit in the galaxy. How could a species survive if anyone who didn’t find their mate—their denya—by thirty perished?

  A hundred years ago, that would have been a silly question. The planet Detya flourished, the crown of its solar system and a principal planet in the Regek Quadrant. There’d been systems in place to match potential denyai to one another. Less than four percent of Detyens had succumbed to the curse back then.

  Now Detya was an uninhabitable husk, its oceans poisoned and all life extinguished. The only survivors had been the small percentage who lived off planet or had been traveling at the time of the attack. There had been no declaration of war, no warning of violence. One day Detya had been a happy place. The next it was dead.

  Now the survivors had scattered throughout the galaxy, most living in refugee cities on welcoming planets. And the curse took its toll, picking off Detyens one by one as they reached thirty. Only those lucky enough to find their mates survived.

  And women were a scarce resource.

  As a boy and young man, Ru hadn’t liked to dwell. But the numbers didn’t lie. There were at least three Detyen men to each Detyen woman. Sure, some found themselves matched to multiple denyai, but it was so astronomically rare that he’d be luckier trying to garden on a star.

  With less than three months until his last birthday, Ru refused to contemplate the unfairness of his lot for long. There would be dozens of beautiful aliens on Hedonia to ease any suffering he might feel in his final days.

  But he needed to earn the coin to take his place there first. There were no poor men on the pleasure planet.

  He’d been given a map to the Polan outpost and a rough schematic of the building’s layout. It was late summer now, and the building was only used in the winter. It relied on an outdated security monitoring system and physical locks to keep out intruders. For most people, there was nothing to find. The Polans stored no weapons here and few supplies.

  The computers, however, remained in this location even when those manning them left for their summer rotations. This was a government outpost and that gave him access to government servers. The tech-stick he’d been given would do most of the work. All Ru needed to do was plug it in.

  He’d been able to pick the lock on a door on the south side of the building. It was too dark to get a good look around outside, but he hadn’t heard any guards or animals. His own bio-scanner didn’t pick up any Polans, though he did scan other alien life in the area.

  It was too big to be an escaped pet, and he’d heard of the large felines that stalked the Polan highlands. It was possible one had come down from the mountains looking for food. His blaster would be defense enough against any wild animal, and as long as the Polans didn’t catch him, he’d be fine.

  The station had been powered down before it was sealed up for the summer. That meant no light, no temperature adjustment system, and no electronic security. He wore night-vision goggles to see down the dim hallways, everything cast in an eerie orange glow.

  The halls were narrow and the ceilings low to accommodate the short, lithe Polans. Detyens all stood tall and broad, which meant that Ru needed to stoop so that his head didn’t brush against the roof.

  According to his map, the control room was located in the center of the building. He’d need to follow the central hall until it intersected with the cafeteria. From there, he could cut through a series of small offices and meeting rooms to reach his destination.

  But his first order of business was to find the control room power breaker. He didn’t need to power up the entire facility, but he needed those computers turned on and connected. He headed to the central power station located near the cafeteria.

  The power breakers had all been shut off and secured, but he was able to use a circumvention method that he’d picked up on another job. He bypassed the passive security measures and the independent alarm that was supposed to trigger when he switched on the power.

  When he heard an engine spin up, he knew that he’d been successful.

  But he froze when he heard a clatter from within the kitchens. It sounded like a person or possibly an animal had stolen away inside. Ru bit back a curse. He should have checked more thoroughly before switching the power on. It shouldn’t have affected the cafeteria, but if someone was in there and wandered any further into the facility, they’d see the lights and know he was there.

  He needed to handle the situation.

  Ru slid his blaster out of its holster and backed away from the breaker box. He slipped out of the small utility closet and took two steps down the narrow hallway to the cafeteria. He tried to get a good look at the room through the window in the door, but all he could see were a dozen long tables bolted to the ground and stacks of chairs piled up against the walls. Beyond those tables he spied an empty food dispensary, but there was no one in the room.

  He pushed the door open and entered, moving with caution through the empty room. He made his way to the storage room behind the food dispensary. That was where he found her.

  Ru froze where he stood. Something within him cracked. The room suddenly brightened, white light nearly flooding his eyes. It had nothing to do with his goggles. He forgot that those existed.

  Everything was secondary to the woman crouching in front of the storage closet in front of him. She wasn’t Detyen and she certainly wasn’t Polan. He could tell from her hair and the beige skin peeking out from the tattered edges of her dark jacket. Human, he thought, based on the ones that he’d met in his travels. A hardy species, similar to his own in so many ways.

  She turned toward him and Ru was conquered. Suffering and desperation were painted across her beautiful face, her skin nearly gold and eyes wide and dark. Brown hair tumbled down over her shoulders, some matted and tangled from time lost in the wild. Shock suffuse
d her face, her mouth falling open and eyes getting impossibly wider.

  This was not possible. His fate had been sealed a century ago, long before he was even born. But the planet shifted beneath him, the stars realigning, until the only thing that mattered was the woman before him.

  “Denya.”

  Chapter Three

  Who was he?

  What did he want?

  Could she keep him?

  The last thought should have shaken Lis out of the crazy that was riding her. She needed to take off before this strange alien could call the Polans down. But Lis found herself rooted in place.

  She knew him.

  Not by any means so trivial as acquaintance. She was certain that they’d never met. Lis didn’t know his name, nor could she name his species. He was well over six feet tall, forced to stoop by the low ceilings in this building, and his shoulders were as broad as a soldier’s. His skin gave her pause. It was a vivid yellow and his hands were covered with either scales or spots. The rest of him was covered by his clothes, but she wondered how the pattern fit across his body. She couldn’t tell from all the way across the room.

  His eyes were larger than a human’s, completely black except for a bright spot of red in the center. She should have been scared, especially when she spied the wicked looking claws protruding from his knuckles.

  But this alien was no danger to her.

  He was hers.

  How could she know that? What made her stand up, the three energy bars she’d found clattering to the ground? Why did she cross the room in broad steps until she stood in his shadow?

  When her hands clenched his hard biceps and her lips brushed against his, the questions washed away. Why she did it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she could not breathe one more minute without sharing her air with him.

  The kiss was everything. She broke apart and reformed under its spell. The alien’s fingers were soft when he cupped her cheek, tilting her head back and taking all control. Lis was powerless to stop it. She didn’t want to stop it.