Stolen by the Warlord: A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Romance (Ash Planet Warriors Book 1)

by V. K. Ludwig

  “Remember how I waded through the yoni with you to lower your fever?” He wrapped his arms around me from behind, letting his breath feather across the nape of my neck. “I was furious when you showed no signs of our bond.”

  I pressed my lips shut. Didn’t dare say a word with the way pressure built behind my eyes, at the back of my throat, inside my lungs.

  Tender kisses brushed along the side of my neck, the caress amplified by the baritone of his hum. Up and down, his tongue trailed, not a single fang daring to clasp whenever he suckled my skin into his mouth.

  Perhaps I would have been angry that he hadn’t told me, was it not for this constant purr lulling me into a state of calm, my voice not even shaky when I said, “Is this the moment when you tell me that Katedo will kill you to sever the bond?”

  The kissing stopped.

  His hum echoed louder.

  Toagi stilled behind me, the only movement the gentle swish of water breaking against our bodies. “Who told you?”

  “Yelim stung Mayala, and it all made sense from there.” When he said nothing for eternal moments, I continued. “I thought about sneaking away tonight. Return to Katedo and ask him for medicine first before I would beg him to accept your claim, or at least let you live, even if it meant giving you up.”

  “My kunazay was plotting again.” His voice held affection, perhaps even some amusement as his arms held me tighter. “Tell me, how did you picture this… sneaking away? Clearly, you readied Canja.”

  “I would have taken her because she’s loyal and would listen.”

  “Mmh.” A nip of fangs before he followed it up with the lightest brush of lips. “And you would have found Katedo by—”

  “Taking one of the captured scouts with me.”

  “Of course,” he rasped, sucking on the thin skin around my sternum hard enough it tingled, and his onyx horns pushed into my vision. “But the scout doesn’t know where he is since we kept him hooded, and they’re not too familiar with the droughty plains.”

  No matter how much I tried to hold it back, a moan broke free when soft lips trailed toward my earlobe. “I paid attention to the landmarks. All I needed to do was get us back to the tree. He would take it from there.”

  “So you know we’re north-west of the tree.”

  “West.”

  He chuckled, but it ended in something akin to a sob. “I have no doubt you would have made it. My kunazay does like to plot.”

  “There’s just one problem with all this.” Despite struggling to keep my voice steady, the pitch rose with each word I said. “Plots, plans, negotiations. If I stay with you, you’re dead, along with many of the tribe. If I return to Katedo, they might live, but you’re… you’re just as…”

  “Shh…” Toagi clasped my chin, wet fingers stroking along my jawline as he whispered, “I love you.”

  With a desperate, choking sob, I wiggled against the hold of his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “When I took you, Ceangal, all I had on my mind was my tribe and the title.” One tug disabled my fight, his kisses along the side of my face so furious they broke down what little anger I’d been able to build. “For the longest time, you showed no bond. No bond, no consequences when Katedo slits my throat, so I saw no reason to tell you.”

  When he slits his throat.

  Not if.

  His lips moved to my temple, lingering there between kisses as he opened up my hair. “Then something shifted… right in here.” His thumb stroked over my sternum but didn’t stay there. Instead, his touch slipped lower, to where my heart throbbed inside my chest. “I didn’t plan to fall in love with you. That’s not what zovazay does. But when I did, when you finally showed the bond, I… couldn’t tell you. Not after I learned of the choice I stole, the chaos I unleashed on your life, the way you tried so desperately to come up with another way.”

  “Desperately is the word,” I scoffed. “I didn’t find shit. Even now, I wouldn’t know what to say if everyone came to the table. I have no idea how to fix this.”

  “This isn’t your mess to fix, kunazay.” His whisper brushed along my neck as his fingers combed my hair down. “I fucked up, Ceangal. All this time, I figured the title of warlord would right my past, but it’s all you. You hummed for me when nobody has ever before. Others told me I am nobody, while you said I have great ideas and am a good warlord. You hold me, offering me the comfort I never received.”

  I placed my arms onto his and leaned my head back against his chest. “Because I love you.”

  All air sucked from my lungs.

  The bond vibrated so violently it disabled my next heartbeat, and a gust of bright warmth hushed around my core before it burst. One tingle after another, it spread across my body, touching me in a million places at once.

  “You once told me while half asleep.” Toagi slowly turned me around, his purple eyes glistening as they locked with mine, forming a connection that I felt deep inside my soul. “Say it again.”

  I cupped his cheek. “I love you.”

  A thousand different emotions fleeted across his face, lips pouting, parting, trembling, before he lowered his forehead to mine. “Now I know what that feels like.”

  His nose nuzzled mine and, before I knew it, I had my legs wrapped around his waist. Toagi stroked my back, raked his fingers through my hair, traced a thumb along the arch of my brow. His mouth chased mine as I moaned, and my pelvis shifted in search of that smooth crown that veered between the junction of my legs.

  “Urizayo…”

  Nafir’s voice made Toagi swing around, water splashing as he turned his back toward the entrance of the yoni, blocking me from view. “What is it?”

  “I apologize for my intrusion,” Nafir said, his gaze averted, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that, every now and then, he called his pupils back whenever they strayed to search for mine. “There was a drone. We shut it down but, um, we have troubles locating it. Perhaps we should… consult with a technician.”

  “I understand,” Toagi ground out, and his attention settled on me again once Nafir’s footsteps faded away. “As much as I’d hoped for more time with you, I need to ride out.”

  The moment he lifted me out of the water and placed me onto the stony edge, I swallowed past a lump of despair. “We need medicine, Toagi. Unless I ride for Katedo and organize us some, many will die.”

  He climbed out of the water and put his loincloth back on. “Spoken like a true urizaya.”

  “It would give you time to escape.” I clasped his face between my hands, stroked them upward to feel the base of his horns. “I can’t bear the thought of what will happen to you when he comes.” And he would come. Drones were Empire equipment and short range, likely transmitting live footage, which meant Katedo loomed on the doorstep. “I need you to leave right now. Hide. Perhaps… I can convince the Empire to offer you asylum.”

  I didn’t like how his eyes narrowed. And that nod of his? It didn’t match the excruciating pain thrumming along our bond.

  But I hated how he kissed my forehead before he said, “Nafir will accompany you, along with two of my warriors, while I flee for the wastelands to hide until we figured something out. I love you, kunazay. Will love you until we reunite and beyond that.”

  Twenty-Two

  Ceangal

  Yelim sat cross-legged in Mayala’s nabu, working purple tendetu feathers into his braids, and yet his hum never trailed off-pitch. While Mayala rarely gained consciousness, her ribcage expanded wider at each inhale than before. Color returned to her face, seemingly draining it from her mate, who turned more ashen by the second.

  “I will get you and the others medicine,” I whispered into her ear. “You just hold on until it arrives.”

  “She will, urizaya,” Yelim said and, when I frowned at his braids, he tapped a feather. “Warriors use them to show that we yield from afar. Saves us all bloodshed and protects the innocent.”

  “Take care of her,” I said with a final nod, then
lowered myself from branch to branch.

  Once I reached the ground, Nafir walked up to me, fingers wrapped around the reins of a yuleshi. Not any yuleshi, though. It was Canja, her mane braided with the same feathers, which also decorated Nafir’s braid, and those of the mounted warriors beside him.

  “There is not much light left, urizaya.” He stroked over Canja’s black, furless muzzle. “A parting gift from the urizayo. He wants you to have her.”

  “He needs her speed more than I do since you’re riding with me anyway, and I’ll have to slow her down,” I said. “Where is he?”

  Nafir’s head lowered quickly, ripping his gaze from me. “He rode for the wastelands like you requested.”

  Perhaps it was the way he avoided my eyes or how he shifted from one leg to the other, but a quiver stirred beneath my navel. Not sure why. I had asked Toagi to leave right away, hadn’t I?

  I swung myself onto Canja. “Where is our scout?”

  “We do not require one,” Nafir said and mounted his yuleshi before he ordered the other two warriors to set into motion, one riding before, one behind us. “Katedo’s camp is close, easy to find if one knows the area.”

  No matter how hard I tried, letting my pelvis swing with Canja’s gait seemed more difficult than usual, as if she carried a hitch in each step. “How long do we ride?”

  “An hour at a sprint, mostly. Two, perhaps.”

  That couldn’t be right. Drones had enough power for what? Thirty minutes? Forty? We had to be much closer than that, especially at a sprint.

  At the edge of our camp, males and females had gathered, purple feathers dancing in their hair as they reached their hands toward me, fingers splayed, but they didn’t touch. Some of the sick had gathered enough strength to stand between them, their cheeks sunken in.

  “Before he left, he told them that he stole you,” Nafir explained. “It is their way to ask for forgiveness.”

  Something skittered across my heart, like dozens of hairline cracks, which came together at a gaping hole. I hadn’t felt like a captive in a long time. If anything, Toagi had freed me from the restraints of my own mind.

  I didn’t want to, but I turned and glanced back at them as our yuleshis trampled down the narrow path along the cliff, which lead back toward the plains. Familiar faces stared behind me. Save for the two scouts, bound and hooded, unaware of—

  “Where’s the third scout?” No matter how I clenched my eyes, he was nowhere to be seen.

  Beside me, Nafir cleared his throat. “Who?”

  “The third scout,” I repeated. “The one Toagi and I captured who belongs to Razgar. He’s not there.”

  “Hmm…” Nafir’s throat bobbed with his swallow, eyes once more breaking away from mine as he let them go adrift where the sun melted with the horizon. “He managed to escape.”

  But he’d been there only hours ago. I should know because I’d tried to figure out a way to take him with me. “While the sun stood high?”

  “A very resourceful scout.”

  Either that or Nafir was a terrible liar. Why else couldn’t he look at me? Something was going on here. I felt it in the way the hairs rose on my arms, how my pulse quickened. Most of all, I sensed it the moment Nafir steered his yuleshi around a formation of wind-worn rock.

  Because my bond gave one, unforgiving tug, so sharp I glanced down at myself. Scanned my chest for a stab wound, blood, or anything that would explain this searing pain that spread beneath my breastbone.

  “We’re riding the wrong way.” The words just blurted out of my mouth, and whatever anxiousness spread across my muscles seeped into Canja, who danced around even after I reined her to a stop. “Zovazay wants me to go that direction.”

  Nafir followed my pointed finger, his jawline stiff when his gaze returned to me. “Of course, urizaya. It is the way toward the wastelands. Your bond is calling you to your mate.”

  I had no idea where the wastelands were, but not that way. Five rock spires lining the horizon. A young mother tree that had grown crooked. Two ravines coming from a small incline, combining into one a few feet from the droughty plains. I recognized it all. That way led south-east, back to where we’d come from, and straight into Katedo’s main warband.

  All of a sudden, my pelvis rocked.

  Nafir’s tail gave a pat on Canja’s rump, urging my mount to follow along. “You are weary and tired. It is only natural that you are confused about our location.”

  Weary and tired?

  I’d spent countless hours mapping landscapes during overnight ruck marches, sleep-deprived and sore. Wherever it was Nafir was leading me to, it was not Katedo.

  Because Toagi had been one step ahead of me again.

  My hand flung to my chest, fingers grabbing that stone he’d given me. I ran the clasp along the golden chain of my necklace, letting it clink against the engraved charm beside it. He’d once told me he’d had to scheme his entire childhood.

  Proof offered itself as the monotone squeak of leather drew my eyes to the pouch dangling from Nafir’s loincloth. A tooled one I’d seen many times. On Toagi. That com cube had been in there all this time, hadn’t it? Now Nafir carried it so the Empire and Katedo could track my location, making sure I was far away from my mate.

  Because he was about to yield.

  Hand over his tribe, and die.

  He never intended to flee.

  Internally, I scoffed at myself. Given how Toagi had proven repeatedly that he was a male of honor, fighting for the dignity the past had robbed from him… I was stupid to believe he would run and hide. But I’d been desperate, willing to believe just about anything, even this plan of his. And how nicely he’d worked out the details once more.

  I glanced up at the sky, gray and colorless like almost everything on this planet. Too dense to offer much reception, if any. And those two warriors riding with us, both so perfectly placed around the com cube? Yeah, Toagi had planned for this eventuality ever since the beginning, once more making certain I was safe. Always safe.

  Gripping Canja’s reins tighter, I jutted my chin toward the warrior riding ahead of us. “There’s one thing I can’t figure out, Nafir. How by the Three Suns did Toagi get his hands on a com cube, and those two signal boosters I bet my ass those warriors are carrying?”

  His face slackened, pupils flicking nervously about the sandstone which drilled down along rock, as if those noisy kernels whispered him another lie. “Had we such technology, we would employ it to lure Katedo into an ambush.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. One of the first things that made me question the little bit I knew about Toagi was how he said he wanted no innocent to die for his cause.”

  “My urizaya, I assure you—”

  “Can you look into my eyes and assure me?” One tug and I reined Canja into a stop, forcing Nafir to turn and face me. “Look at me and tell me Toagi isn’t riding toward Katedo to surrender this very moment.”

  His head tilted toward me.

  His chin lifted.

  His eyes never connected with mine.

  Adrenaline seeped into my blood, quickening my pulse and heart alike. “What exactly were your instructions?”

  His eyes finally locked with mine, his voice raspy and hoarse when he said, “To take you as far away from him as possible.”

  “So I wouldn’t feel his suffering,” I choked out, the words suffocating. “What about the escaped scout?”

  “My urizayo released him earlier, so he may ride for Katedo and inform him of the com cube, as well as the bond.”

  My throat thickened more with each swallow, but I wouldn’t cry. “Does that mean we’re just riding into nowhere?”

  He shook his head. “Around the plateau, back toward Noja. He always planned to return you should this fail, letting the com cube send out a random signal to whoever might pick it up in search of you. That we happened across Katedo’s satellite code only made it more convenient.”

  Chances were Katedo would execute Toagi right out there in the
plains, far away from Noja, far away from me, far away from any risk of causing me harm. Not a physical one, at least.

  Oh no, far worse.

  He would take my mate from me, the only male where my dreams went hand in hand with my duties. The rebel who’d stolen my soul and conquered my heart. The bastard who might have been nobody to many, but he was somebody special to me. And I would lose him if I didn’t claim my own damn life, and become what I was always destined to be.

  A bridge.

  Not between worlds.

  Between warlords.

  Closing my eyes, I listened to zovazay, a chord strung tight between Toagi and me, calling me to him like a chime mastered together in hums and whispers. Perhaps it was the way my body shifted left because Canja turned underneath me.

  If I rode for Toagi, Nafir would undoubtedly follow. As would the two warriors, informing Katedo of my arrival via the com cube. There would be pain. I’d never been someone to shy away from it. I was a trained warrior, after all, functioning nano armor and all.

  But there wouldn’t be death. Not yet.

  Not until I stood up for Toagi, for us…

  … for myself.

  “Urizaya…” Nafir’s voice carried something too harsh for a plea but too brittle for a warning. “If she figures it out too early, my urizayo said, do whatever it takes to keep her away from me, even if you have to swing her over your shoulder.”

  “Ah, but his plan has two flaws.” Oiled and smooth, Canja’s reins conformed to my tightening grip. “First, I told him once before that nobody just swings me over a shoulder. Not him. Not you.”

  His posture stiffened along with his tail as if he readied himself to tie me down with it. “You have no scout. Neither are you familiar with the plains ahead.”

  I tapped against my sternum. “Who needs a scout if I have zovazay?”

  “Urizaya, with all due respect, he ordered me to keep you from him by all means necessary.”

  “He also said I would never outdo his plots, schemes, and plans. Which brings me to the second flaw of his plan—” With one kick, Canja thrust herself into a sprint, and I leaned forward until my chest pressed into the saddle, letting the wind drive tears into my eyes. “—he put me on the fastest yuleshi!”