The Shifter’s Nanny

by T. S. Ryder

  "I'll get them," Libba said, standing.

  Brask leaned back into the couch again. He would volunteer to go help his mate with the triplets himself, only it wasn't a good idea to pick up and carry the infants in his state. In a few more weeks, hopefully, he would return to peak physical condition. Until then, he had to take it easy.

  "I tell you, one more day of this and I'm out of here," Biryl muttered. "I don't see how anybody survives as a parent."

  Despite Biryl's complaining, Brask knew that he would never leave them. They probably didn't need help, not anymore at least, but it was far more than just a matter of getting day-to-day tasks done. The only reason any of them were still free and not sitting in a Stlozyn prison somewhere–or worse–was because Biryl had faked their deaths.

  There was no way Brask would have been pardoned for killing Nylæq, despite the circumstances. Dying was the only way they would have a chance at living. A large part of the crew that had stood with him against Din had followed them to the planet they now lived on. It wasn't the most welcoming place, but it was survivable.

  But what surprised Brask was that there were still newcomers arriving. The first ones had been farmers sent by Trafin, and like Brask they wanted a place where they could freely practice religion. The next batch were low-ranking scientists who wanted the same thing.

  There was a risk that if people continued to flee to the planet the Science Board would find them, but Brask couldn't turn away people who wanted the same thing from life as he did. They did need a board of government, though, and would be holding elections soon. It was almost certain that Brask would be voted in, and he was already planning what to do with the colony when that happened.

  Libba returned from the nursery, wheeling a basinet that contained their three babies, who were now all crying and flailing their fists. Brask heard Biryl mutter something about needing some silence to keep his sanity. His friend slipped from the house as Libba handed one of the triplets to Brask.

  Struggling to comfort the other two, Libba retook the spot beside her dragon and sighed. "This is a little exhausting. It's a good thing I'm not a quitter, otherwise I'd go running to the Science Board just to get some sleep."

  Brask smiled at her, rocking his son. Three healthy dragons, a little on the small side but still tough as nails. All three of the babies were a strange pinkish color, and the littlest one had fewer scales and more hair than the other two. Brask suspected he would end up a little more human than his brothers.

  "If you had known what was going to happen when I suggested that you get pregnant by me, would you have chosen the same?" Brask asked hesitantly.

  Libba didn't look at him. "Yes. But I would have decided to have your babies because I knew how happy I would be. Not because I was afraid of the Science Board. What about you?"

  "I'd have done it all again in a heartbeat. I have everything I ever wanted now. A family. A mate who respects my beliefs, even if she doesn't share them. A colony away from Bronæl where I can practice my religion, and where other like-minded individuals can gather." The baby he held stared up at him and he smiled. "And what about you? Are you happy?"

  "Yes." Libba leaned against him, her cool gray eyes so full of warmth that there had to be a fire burning somewhere inside her. "Until I met you, I was a drifter. I'm not drifting anymore. You're my rock, Brask. The rock I will build my future on."

  *****

  THE END

  Slave to the Alien Dragon

  Description

  A curvy slave fighting as a gladiator PLUS a hot dragon warrior fighting for his planet PLUS an enemy looking to destroy them!

  The mighty, proud race of dragon shapeshifters, the Kinai, have kept to themselves, guarding their secrets from outsiders and living their lives in relative peace.

  Then, an old enemy begins to haunt their shores yet again, searching for a way to defeat and enslave them so they can use their power to conquer the entire planet of Elamaren.

  Commander Kenner of the elite Darkwing Squadron is his race’s greatest shield against those who would do them harm, but he finds his mission compromised when fate brings him face to face with the only Earthling on his planet – the big, bold and beautiful Teresa Echeveria.

  The victim of an alien abduction, Teresa is sold away into slavery on the strange and amazing planet, all hopes of ever returning to Earth lost forever...

  Forced to fight in the gladiatorial arena, she’s holding on to the last reserves of her will to keep going when Kenner swoops in on his majestic wings to save her.

  But treachery and jealousy lurk in the shadows, and the unlikely lovers must fight for both their love and their lives against impossible odds. All they have left is their faith in each other... but will that be enough?

  Chapter One

  In a stone-walled underground cell with a small, barred window and a strong wooden door locked from the outside, a woman stood in front of a mirror of polished bronze and donned her weapons with meticulous care. She was tall and possessed the strong musculature of an active athlete generously padded with a thick layer of fat, most of it distributed on her ample breasts, stomach, backside and thighs, forming a voluptuous figure of eight. Her dark hair was cut a handbreadth under her shoulders and woven into a tight French braid. Her caramel skin boasted several scars, mementos of wounds made by swords, trigons and spears, all of them sustained within the past year, month and seventeen days, except the one on her right thigh. That one was from a bullet that grazed her in a drug bust in her rookie year at the Houston PD.

  She wore armor made of layered brown leather. Many fighters preferred metal, but she found it too clunky. Leather was lighter, more flexible. It breathed, and was just as effective as steel, provided it was properly made. And hers was. No fighter ever stepped out onto the sands of the Pit of Wallaria unless they were of sound mind and body and properly equipped both offensively and defensively. Hers was a composite consisting of a scale cuirass with faulds made of wide leather strips, pauldrons on her shoulders, greaves on her legs, and vambraces with hand and elbow guards, the underside of each hiding a retractable dagger. Whereas the majority of other fighters used knives and daggers as secondary weapons, she used nothing but them, which is why she had a pair strapped to her forearms and her thighs, and over a dozen throwing knives stashed away in the secret folds of her armor.

  Outside, she could hear the masses chanting.

  “Hele! Hele! Hele!”

  An understanding of the Common Tongue of Elamaren was one of the first skills she acquired since her abduction, but the name she had been given was a word of her mistress’ native tongue.

  Hele.

  Behemoth.

  Pain shot through her, and she closed her eyes tight, counting backward from ten before she opened them again, looking at herself, at this person she had become to survive. She felt her heart clench.

  “I am Teresa Luz Echeverría, of Houston, Texas, USA,” she said, in English, hard determination in her clear, deep voice as she willed herself to remember the one truth no one could take from her. She touched the bullet scar, the sole anchor to her old life. “I am twenty-seven, a human woman of the planet Earth. I am a soldier. I am a policewoman. I’ve survived foster care, high school, a tour in Afghanistan and six months of hazing my first year on the Force, and I’ll be damned if I won’t survive this, too. This wretched hive will burn to the ground one day... but I’ll still be standing.” Eyes firmly on the mirror, she repeated her mantra, in Spanish this time, and then again, in Pashto and Dari each.

  They could take her from her home.

  They could enslave her.

  They could beat her, starve her, give her a derogatory name.

  They could force her to fight others for their entertainment, and then slap a pleasure-collar on her and sell her to the highest bidder.

  But they could not take who and what she was. Never.

  “Listen how they call for you,” a smooth, lilting voice called out from the hallway, and
Teresa mentally reminded herself that killing the woman the voice belonged to would be counterproductive to her goals. After unlocking and removing the beam that both closed and fortified the door to her cell, the door opened and two... well... let’s be generous and call them men, walked in. They were twins, and by far the largest of all the different sentient beings Teresa had become acquainted with since her abduction. They were at least a foot and a half taller than her and built of nothing but solid muscle. Their skin was a sooty dark gray covered in thin, coarse hair, and their enormous heads, which had large jowls and mean teeth that seemed to always be bared in a snarl, grew directly from their shoulders.

  The Garn could be called many things, but easy on the eyes wasn’t one of them.

  They positioned themselves on each side of the door, both dressed in chainmail and leather and armed to the teeth, watching her as if they couldn’t wait to be given the order to rip her apart.

  But the woman who entered after them would never give that order, at least not while she could still make money out of Teresa.

  She was the most beautiful creature ever created, a resplendent sample of the Skatian race. Tall, taller than Teresa, and built to willowy perfection, her features were exquisitely delicate, and her silvery hair, straight as an arrow, cascaded down her back all the way to her hips, always behaving perfectly, as if she were an anime goddess. Her skin was a powdery, pale beige hue that marked her as a member of the noble caste, flawless, and perfumed with a fresh, flowery scent Therese would’ve loved if she did not associate it with her current fate. The woman wore, as always, a long, flowing gown of gossamer silk in pale, pastel colors, strategically layered to tantalize the observer’s imagination yet reveal nothing, and no jewelry save for the long, layered necklace of painstakingly thin chains that cascaded from the graceful column of her neck to the tips of her demure bosom.

  Her name was Esplyn of House Rida, and Teresa hated her with all the passion of the undying fire of a thousand suns.

  “My Hele,” the woman cooed, as she observed her property. Teresa did not correct her. It was not worth the pain and humiliation of the punishment she would have to endure for it once the fight was over.

  She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  “You must be very careful to put on a good show today,” her mistress instructed her, in the tone one would usually use on a mentally underdeveloped child, and petted Teresa’s cheek. “We have special guests in the audience today – a diplomatic envoy from Kinai – and we want them to have fun.” Her face scrunched in disgust. “Filthy barbarians,” she sneered but reverted quickly to her usual graceful serenity in a second. “But, alas, we must play nice with them,” she sighed, the sound of a long-suffering person resigned to their fate.

  Personally, it made Teresa want to punch her (more so than usually, that is). There were many people in Wallaria who deserved to feel sorry for themselves, but not this woman. As a scion of a noble family and the favorite lover of the High General, Lady Esplyn had lived a life of splendor and privilege since the day she was born, and probably would until the day she died. Even this – buying, training, and working slaves for Pit fights – was nothing but a hobby to her, a game to pass the time and indulge her sadistic urges.

  But Teresa knew better than to say or do anything that would give her mistress any reason to be displeased with her, so she just stood there and waited to see if this conversation had a point.

  And, when Lady Esplyn snatched Teresa’s chin in her spindly fingers and pulled her head up to face her, she knew she was about to find out.

  “You must win today,” she ordered, in that cruel tone of voice Teresa knew to dread, “That bitch Sangra paid off the Pit Master to pair you with that Firuzian bitch-boy of hers, and I want to see you annihilate him. Do you understand?” Teresa nodded. She understood, perhaps better than her mistress thought. No matter how hard their masters tried to isolate and desensitize their fighters to prevent them from forming bonds amongst themselves or organizing a rebellion (as had been the case a few times in the past), they still found a way to communicate amongst themselves.

  More to the point, though, her training had conditioned her to be observant, vigilant and always aware of her surroundings, and she gathered information in her head like an ant gathers food for the winter.

  She knew, then, that the reason Lady Esplyn was on edge today was because her main rival in the High General’s bed, Lady Sangra of House Chenei, had issued what was tantamount to a public challenge by influencing the Pit Master to pair up the fighters to her liking. In itself, this was not strange, but when it happened without the mutual agreement of the fighters’ masters... oh, yes. Lady Sangra could not have made her motives any clearer if she had hired all the criers in Wallaria to shout it from the rooftops.

  Teresa also knew the reputation of the man she was about to take on, and that only added to the pressure she suddenly found put upon her.

  The Firuzian, whom Teresa had never heard referred to by his name, was as famous for his fighting prowess as he was for his beauty and extravagant style, and a recent addition to the Pit roster. He was an Adonis among bog monsters when compared to all the other male fighters she knew, with his powerful, perfectly chiseled musculature set upon a tall, wide frame. Teresa found the combination of his athletic, humanoid features and the defining traits of his race – completely smooth, hairless skin the color of oiled bronze, sharply angled cheekbones and slanted, almond-shaped eyes with irises of sparkling gold, roughly three times as large as that of an average human – extremely attractive. And she was not the only one, for it was said that his mistress charged obscene amounts of money to those who wished to indulge in that impeccable body, and there were rumors he spent every night he was not rented out in Lady Sangra’s bed.

  There was no doubt that the Firuzian was an expert killing machine as well as a skilled showman. Teresa honestly wasn’t sure she would come out of this fight alive, let alone win – especially not in the spectacular fashion her mistress had demanded.

  “Win, my Hele,” Esplyn hissed in her face, “Or I shall grant a week’s worth of playtime with you to the twins.” Teresa gulped, terrified and disgusted at the memory of the last time the mistress had put the pleasure-collar on her and let her attack dogs have her way with her, and nodded again. “Excellent,” Esplyn smiled, all gentleness and sweetness again, and began to walk out.

  “Oh,” she said, pausing, and glanced at Teresa over her shoulder, “And do try to cut up his face.” With that, Esplyn left the cell, and her goons with her, but the door did not close. Instead, four guards entered, wearing armor in red and tan, the colors worn by all those who worked in the Pit.

  The time had come.

  They would escort her to the Pit, where she would fight for her life yet again.

  May God grant her mercy in this merciless place.

  Chapter Two

  Kenner of the Darkwings sat on the gilded chairs their host, the High General of the Skatian Empire, had offered them when they joined him in his section of the Imperial Loge, the thick canopy of white silk embroidered in silver protecting them from the harsh Wallarian sun. His First Lieutenant, Arul, chatted with the lady who was seated between them, while Kenner carefully drank his chilled wine and observed the audience attending the day’s fights.

  He would’ve preferred never to have set foot on the Empire’s soil, but the more reports of Skatian ships circling the Obsidian Ridge reached his hands, the more obvious it became that the Empire seemed to have forgotten what had happened the last time they had tried to make slaves out of Kinai. Putting up with these pampered fools for a few days in order to remind them the Kinai were still just as capable of turning their forces into ash as they were close to a millennium ago was preferable to an all-out war.

  There was a reason why the Kinai kept to themselves, and that reason was best kept behind the jagged teeth of the Ridge.

  And so, after the Council of Elders had arranged for landing and lodgi
ngs, the Darkwing Squadron had flown to the desert shores of the Skatian Empire and Wallaria, their capital. They had made a spectacle gliding over the city, their mighty wings manipulating the air currents for maximum effect, inspiring awe in their audience, before descending on a clearing made for them at the Central Square, shapeshifting mid-landing. No sooner had the Squadron settled down in the inn they had rented than a missive from the Imperial Palace arrived – an invitation from the Emperor himself, offering them his hospitality.

  Personally, Kenner would rather eat a bag of nails, but it suited their purposes to accept the invitation, so the Squadron had packed up and moved into the luxurious suite prepared for them in the guest quarters of the Palace.

  The suite was a study in opulence, but without much substance to it – a fitting representation of an Empire that had once had ambitions of planetary domination, but lost everything they had gained in the first wave of sweeping success because they allowed themselves to become engulfed in petty internal squabbles and vain power games.

  Valuing trade over labor, the Skaians were the first and only nation of Elamaren to institutionalize slavery, and their dreams of conquest came from the need for a larger workforce. Since it was against their law to keep Skatians as slaves, they turned to the remaining four nations of Elamaren: the sooty Garn, who excelled at physically taxing labor; the limber, downy Makish, whose skills lay in hunting and woodwork; and the decorative Firuzians, a nation of artists, scholars and masters of fine crafts.

  Only the Kinai had successfully fought them off, after showing the Skatians just how ill-equipped they were for the task of conquering a nation of people capable of shapeshifting into enormous, flying, fire-breathing lizards, of course.