Alien Hunter's Fated - A SciFi Alien Abduction Romance

by Vivian Venus

  She’ll make a fine huntress.

  Tor slung the kill over his shoulder, and they headed back to the village.

  Kaylee’s mind had gone blank the moment she saw the spear leave Tor’s grasp and fly to its target. She had put on the brave face since the disaster at the escape pod, and now it all really hit her. She wanted to maintain positivity about her situation, but realistically, and Kaylee felt this deep down inside her, she wasn’t going to be leaving this place. Sneaking the through the jungle, killing animals with her bare hands for food, that was her reality now. The life she had hoped to start in the colony, whatever kind of life that was, it wasn’t going to happen. She would never hear from Devlan again. He sure as hell wouldn’t be able to find her here with his vicious put downs and heavy palm. No one would.

  She wiped the thin stream of tears that ran down her cheeks with the heel of her hand. The jungle was dark now, almost too dark to see anything, and she walked closer to Tor to keep from losing him. “How can you see anything,” she asked, steadying her voice. “I’m going to trip over my own feet.”

  His tail, which had been hanging low, straightened up. “Hold on to me,” he said.

  Kaylee found her heart start to hammer fiercely, and she took his tail in her hand. It was covered in short fur or hair like a cat’s, and the puffed end tickled against her wrist. She felt a sudden urge to give it a playful little tug, something she liked to do to the strays that wandered the alleyways by her old apartment, meowing at her for food and attention whenever she passed by.

  Things could be much worse, she thought, staring up at Tor’s broad back, tonight's dinner slung over his shoulders, and she felt a warmth grow for him inside her chest, a warmth that would only grow hotter over the days spent by his side.

  SEVEN

  “Here I go!” Kaylee shouted, and she let out a giddy shriek as she threw herself off edge and hurtled down to the cold, deep pool that lay at the base of the waterfall.

  It had been her idea to try cliff diving off the thing, though she had never done it in her life before, but she checked out the pool and found that it was deep and free of boulders and thought that it probably would be a perfect place for the activity. Her feet hit first and she plunged down into the water leaving a frothy torrent of bubbles trailing up above her, the pounding thunder of the waterfall dulled beneath the surface. When she came up she saw Toovah peeking down over the edge at her, grinning. She swam over to the rocks at the edge of the pool and climbed out. She was wearing nothing but her bra and panties, the only thing that she felt comfortable swimming in. She had abandoned the other clothing that she had been marooned in for a set of hide and fur garments which Tor had put together for her in the traditional Ulduuk huntress style.

  It had been a week since she had come to the village, and Kaylee’s adaptation to life in the jungle had been quicker than she could’ve anticipated. She had her daily routine, going out with Toovah to hunt for edible greens and arglodan grubs, learning Ulduuk things from Tor like how to repair a thatched roof or make various tools out of the environment around them, and in the evenings the two of them went hunting.

  She was getting better at reading the tracks and identifying what creatures they belonged to, and her footsteps were almost as quiet as Toovah’s. She still had not graduated to making a kill, and she didn’t have her own spear – it was something that would have to be earned, Tor had told her – but she watched closely and carefully to how Tor worked and she was confident she would be able to put the finishing knife blow soon. She had learned that it wasn’t just a simple stab. She had to be precise, putting the blade in an exact spot according to the animal in order to painlessly release it, and she would need to say the sacred words perfectly to let its spirit free.

  “Kaylee! Coming!” Toovah shouted, his face disappearing, and a moment later he shot out over the cliff, his legs running in mid-air and his tail stretched out like an excited cat. He seemed to hang in the air for a second before plunging down and landing in the water with a loud splash. Kaylee laughed and clapped her hands, and Toovah surfaced, spitting water out from his mouth.

  “Good jump, Toovah,” she grinned.

  Toovah swam to the edge and crawled out next to Kaylee. He looked up at her and grinned happily, and then the two of them shouted in unison, “Tor! Jump!”

  They thought he wasn’t going to go when a minute later, Tor dove over the edge, holding his knees to his chest, shouting so loud that his voice echoed over the roar of the waterfall. His ears were pressed down and his tail was tucked flatly against his behind, and he hit the water with a crash, showering his audience with a cold rain. He surfaced and swam quickly to the edge, his ears drooping with water like a wet dog’s.

  “I’ll never get used to that,” he said, pulling himself out.

  “Again, again!” Toovah shouted, hopping up and down, and he ran off down the path that took him back up to the cliff.

  Tor sat next to Kaylee and shook the water off his head. “You can swing on vines across an open crevice, but you’re scared to jump into a pool of water,” she said, laughing.

  “Leaping off a cliff is different from swinging on vines.” He gave her a smile back.

  “I suppose I’m not scared because I used to do this kind of thing when I was a kid,” she said. “Not off cliffs, but diving boards. My community block used to have a huge swimming pool that all the kids would visit, and we would jump from way high up. Thinking back on it now it probably wasn’t that high. But back then, it seemed as high as that cliff.”

  “Earth is a strange sounding place,” Tor said. “One that I can’t even imagine.”

  “One thing’s for sure, it’s nowhere near as beautiful as here. You’d probably hate it there, Tor,” she said.

  “If you were there, then it wouldn’t be so bad. You could teach me your ways.”

  Kaylee laughed. The thought of Tor trying to learn how to live a modern life was amusing. He would probably be more lost going there then she had been coming here. “You’d probably be put in jail for hunting pigeons with a spear,” she said. “You’d never make it.” Besides, she was coming to enjoy life here. It was simple, but fulfilling. She had something important to do every day, and her mind had never felt so focused before. That was the effect of constantly being vigilant for things that could kill you, she supposed.

  And she had Tor.

  The brawny alien hunter was often serious, with her human way of doing things sometimes going straight over his head, but he was also patient and kind. He never got upset with her, never belittled her, and always seemed to trust in her strength. Tor made her feel confident and capable. It wasn’t anything she was used to having with a human man, and Kaylee was beginning to think that maybe living here wasn’t going to be such a bad thing. Every day she had spent time gazing up at the sky looking for some signs of a rescue party, but her motivation to do so was starting to wane. Today was the first morning where she had completely forgot about it.

  That little flame that had ignited in Kaylee’s heart for him had now grown to burn brightly, and though she did her best to ignore it she found her pulse racing every time they were alone on a hunt, his body crouched close over hers as he showed her how to read a track or move without disturbing the leaves. She did her best to resist it because he was an alien and she thought that what she felt was wrong, that she shouldn’t be having these types of feelings towards something not human, even though she found his ears to be irresistibly adorable and his fanged grin to be wildly sexy.

  Surprisingly, Kaylee was unsure about how Tor felt about her. He had not brought up his belief that the Great Ones had sent her to help him bring back the Ulduuk people since the nights when she first arrived, and though their gaze seemed to linger when they spoke, and though he seemed to bring his body extra close to her when he was showing her how to use a spear, Tor was mum about his feelings.

  Kaylee did her best to keep her attraction to herself, but often times she found her body givin
g herself away involuntarily – her face flushing when their eyes held each other's glances for a moment too long, or when she felt the heat of his skin coming close to hers during a hunt. She was sure she’d been caught staring at him a couple times, but how could she not when he walked around all day in nothing but a loincloth, his perfect muscles bulging every which way.

  Maybe a part of her was resisting how she felt because of the still living bit of hope that a rescue would come and take her away from this place, and that she’d be able to continue her old life. If a rescue party did come, what would she do? Continue with her plans to start life at the off world colony? Or go back to Earth…?

  No, she could never go back to Earth.

  “Yaaaah!!” Toovah leapt from the ledge again, this time doing a cannonball dive like Tor had. He hit the water with a hearty splash, and both Tor and Kaylee laughed as they were showered with spray.

  “That was a really good splash!” she called to him as he surfaced and swam over. He giggled as he climbed out and then ran back up to go again.

  Afterward they finished their cliff diving session, Toovah curled up by himself inside the hut to take a nap, exhausted. Kaylee practiced throwing a spear by using pointed sticks that Tor had carved or her, and she chucked them clumsily at a target made up of piled up mud. Tor sat on a rock to the side, watching her.

  “Remember what I told you about your arm. There. Now throw.”

  She twisted her upper body, keeping the spear as level as she could, and then released it when she felt she had maximum momentum. The spear wobbled in the air and landed flat at the foot of the dirt mound, failing to even stick into the ground.

  “Damnit,” she said, scratching her head, and went over to retrieve the spear.

  “You’re improving,” he said. “In another week, maybe you’ll be able to get it to stick into the ground.”

  “You be quiet,” she said, throwing the spear again. This time it sailed in an arc, hit the dirt at the foot of the mound, wobbled, and then fell flat. “Damnit.”

  She went and picked up the spear, and then Tor came over to her. “Get into your stance,” he said, and she did, her heartbeat picking up. He stood behind her, and he adjusted her arm a bit, then touched her on the waist to shift her positioning. She swallowed. “Alright. Try again.”

  She heaved the spear again. It flew truer than before, but bounced harmlessly off of the mud target and clattered to the ground. She retrieved it and came back and got back into her throwing stance. “You need to move smooth, like the water flowing from the falls. You’re too stiff. Do it like this.” He held her hips and guided her through the movement, like a dancer. “Understand?” She looked back over her shoulder to look up at him. He was so tall, and from this angle she felt like a little girl in his hands. He looked down at her and caught her eye, and she blushed.

  “Don’t look at me, look at the target,” he scolded her. “Eyes straight. Good. Very good.”

  He let go of her hips and took a step back, and for a second Kaylee considered purposely screwing up her stance just so he would put his hands on her again. Don’t be an idiot, Kaylee…

  With a grunt she swung her body and let the spear fly. It flew straight and strong, only wobbling slightly at its end, and stuck firmly into the ground at the base of the target.

  “Very good,” he said, and as he walked past her to sit back on his rock, he touched the small of her back. Kaylee felt as if she had been poked with a live wire, and jumped. Tor sat back on the rock, hunching over his thighs. “Now, try again.”

  Kaylee failed to have the success she had managed the last time. Maybe part of her had hoped that Tor would come up and help her again, but he didn’t. He was mostly all serious when he was teaching her, and Kaylee wondered if he even knew what kind of effect he was having on her.

  Tor did. He enjoyed their lessons because it was an excuse to get close to Kaylee. He would’ve happily guided her again, but held himself back because of the heat that built between his legs the last time he touched her. Tor and the Ulduuk had fantastic senses of smell, and whenever he had come close to Kaylee he found himself becoming almost woozy with her scent. He had never smelled anything so alluring in his entire life, even from an Ulduuk woman.

  And the speed and ease with which Kaylee took to everything he showed her…it was incredible. He kept it to himself because he didn’t want to make her overconfident and possibly careless, but she had been able to learn certain hunting techniques – moving quietly, how to read the animal tracks, and even throwing the spear – at a pace that far exceeded the usual for an Ulduuk.

  He wanted her for his mate even more than ever now, and he had sensed that she had attraction for him too, but with reservation. He didn’t know what it was, but he could only assume it had to do with her home.

  In another three days Kaylee was able to land her practice spear on the target. Kaylee jumped up and down and shouted in excitement, and Toovah joined her celebrations. Tor grinned proudly, and Kaylee ran up and hugged him until she stepped away, face red, realizing what she had done. Tor wasn’t blushing – Ulduuk couldn’t blush – but his ears were bristling and his tail stuck straight out like a surprised cat. “Well done,” he said, and she only blushed harder. Toovah looked back and forth between them, eyes wide with interest.

  Another three days after that and her accuracy, range and power had all improved by an incredible amount. That entire week she had taken up practicing nearly the entirety of each day, only taking breaks to eat, sleep and follow Tor out on the hunt. Toovah volunteered to take over her foraging duties.

  Tor thought that she now had the skill of a fledgling huntress in training, achieved in a fraction of the time it would’ve taken an Ulduuk. During the evenings when Kaylee went to go enjoy the hot spring pools, Tor had taken to working on a surprise for her. Toovah watched with interest as he worked quickly, and Tor made him promise to not say anything. “I won’t say anything,” he agreed.

  On that sixth day after she had finished her training, Kaylee went around to the hot springs for her bath. She stripped off her hides and placed them on the rock by the pool and then slowly dipped herself in. The water was piping hot, with curls of steam rising off the top and drifting off into the air. She waded off to the spot at the edge of the pool where she liked to sit and look out over the jungle. She sighed, rubbing her sore and now calloused palm. It was a contended sigh, and for the first time Kaylee felt completely alright. She was content with this place, and if she had any trace of desire to leave it was now buried deep down and dormant. She was content with herself and how she had grown and found something she could be good at, something meaningful. The setting sun cast a brilliant hue of orange across the jungle, and she sighed again.

  There was only one thing lacking.

  Her want for Tor to be her man had grown to a painful ache now, one that she couldn’t ignore or just will away. It was always there, though it ached the worst when he came near her filling her senses with his musk, or when he touched her to give her guidance. She had to do everything she could not to gaze at him while they were eating or during downtime, and the times when she looked at him and saw that he was looking at her made her heart feel like it was going to pop. During the first week, she had moved out of the hut that she shared with Toovah and Tor into her own small private one, saying that a girl needed her privacy – which was true, but mostly it was because she thought she’d go crazy if she slept so close to him every night.

  And Kaylee still wasn’t certain how he felt about her, which drove her mad. He seemed to flirt with her at times, but often she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t know if it was because he was purposely trying to restrain himself, or maybe she didn’t know how to read an Ulduuk’s signals, or maybe there was just nothing there at all to begin with, but Kaylee knew that if nothing happened soon she might just jump him from her own frustration.

  She gazed absently out at the jungle, her chin resting on her arms which were folded over the rock
edge of the pool. Some creature’s guffaw echoed from below. She sighed again.

  Just then, something far off in the distance caught her eye. She frowned, standing upright. What was that…? Had she imagined it? Far, far off, Kaylee thought she had seen a flashing of light, like the sun bouncing off of glass. She borrowed her eyes, being careful not to blink, and stared until she couldn’t hold her eyes open any longer. She must’ve just imagined it, or had seen light reflecting off of leaves or something, though Kaylee had never seen that happen before, and she had spent quite a lot of time looking out at the jungle.

  Her fingers were starting to get wrinkly, so she got out of the bath and sat on a rock while she waited for her skin to air dry. Then she slipped back into her hide clothing and walked the path back up to the village. They were out of meat, and so it was time to go on their evening hunt.

  Tor was sitting by the fire pit, staring into the flames. Toovah saw her, grinned, and ran over, and then took her by the hand and led her over to the fire. “What is it, Toovah?” she asked. He let go and sat next to Tor, who looked up at her.

  “Kaylee Mentz, sit,” he said, gesturing to the stone next to him. He had that strict tone of voice he used when he was training her. He hadn’t used her full name since the time she corrected him when they first met.

  “What is it?” she asked. She suddenly felt nervous, like she was about to receive an intervention. She sat on the rock, and Tor turned to face her. He looked into her eyes, and she felt her heart jump. Usually when they locked eyes for a long amount of time she’d notice that his ears would go a bit funny, but right now his face was completely serious. “What is it?” she asked again.

  He pointed to the sky. “Under the eyes of the Great Ones, who sent you to this world, you have proven your worthiness as a huntress initiate. You have gained the knowledge and the skills to walk the path to become a master huntress of the Ulduuk.”