Alien Romance: The Barbarian's Owned: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 1)
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Yet.
Hoping something would fall into place, Rae kept asking questions: what are the deposits made from? Why did Lyr let them cross her boundaries? Vaya was more forthcoming.
She didn’t know much about the Skorvag, but Lyr was apparently a “wild domé” who had no Ythirians living in her borders, no prime, and protected her territory with vicious wildlife.
It put the picture together for Rae. The domé were all part of the Skorvag, but also separate entities competing with one another, using Ythirians like white blood cells to keep out foreign organisms. The planet’s dominant life form—the Skorvag—had a symbiotic relationship with the Ythirians.
From an evolutionary standpoint, breaking the Skorvag into regional entities who competed or cooperated with one another according to their needs would produce a more adaptive, probably healthier planetary life form.
Rae wondered if there was a greater mind; wondered how competitive versus how cooperative each domé was. Most of all, she wondered if she could appeal directly to this “Kaython” entity who ruled Garr. Seemed logical a domé would have veto power over the biological equivalent of her gut bacteria.
And Rae nursed the wild hope that Kaython identifying as feminine was no accident. True, techno-organic forests didn’t necessarily adhere to “sisters before misters,” but to the extent Kaython had an opinion on trivial matters of mating, maybe her feminine identity signaled a different point of view than Garr’s.
Or it was quite possible Kaython was a giant, dendritic bitch.
Once Garr had a lead around the nautilus spire and was nearly out of sight, Rae glanced up at Vaya, whose rangy strides always made her hard to keep up with. “If Kaython’s so powerful, why does Lyr control the portals to Earth?”
Vaya frowned at Rae, eyes narrowing.
Oops. That question might have been too obvious.
The giantess knelt, a top arm wrapping around Rae’s shoulder, the lower one pointing to Garr. “See that guy?”
“Of course I—”
“He’s the prime. If I mess up, I answer to him. So enough with the friendly questions that are plainly designed to glean enough information to make your escape. ’cause I like you, short-stuff, but I work for Garr, and I take my job seriously.”
She had severely underestimated Vaya. Why was it she just assumed huge, athletic people weren’t as sharp as her?
“Not saying I don’t love me a schemer.” Vaya’s English was so good it was clear she’d spent time scouting on Earth. “The best taliyar are always schemers.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“It’s sort of like first lady. The prime’s girl.”
Rae made a belch face. She didn’t want to be first lady of anywhere, let alone an overgrown alien Christmas tree. She’d have taken “chief researcher,” “tenured faculty,” or “senior scientist,” but first lady? Ick. “How about I take your job and you can mate with the arrogant prick?”
Vaya snickered. “Don’t be absurd. I’m not a mating-class female anymore.”
“Mating class?” Rae’s voice came out sharper than she’d have liked. “I’ve been classified? Based on my fertility? That’s disgusting.”
“Relax. It just means you can mate and I can’t. Fertility’s a separate thing.”
That was worse, not better. “So it’s just about who can have sex?” She shook her head. “You had to give up sex to be a soldier?”
Vaya shrugged, a more elaborate gesture for someone who basically did it twice at once. “Naturally.”
Naturally! “I hate this world.”
The criticism plainly stung Vaya, who stood and prodded Rae forward. “It probably hates you right on back.”
Rubbing her poked ribs, Rae turned back to the path and realized she’d just lost the esteem of the only person on Ythir close to liking her. On the other hand, she’d come out with vital information: if Vaya’s afraid I’ll use information from her to escape, that’s good. It means escape is possible.
And increasingly, Rae realized her path home had nothing to do with Vaya, Garr, or even Kaython. The one who controlled the portals and her way back to Earth was none other than the wild domé Lyr.
***
They stopped to eat in a forest clearing. Rae had learned the mineral formations covered in scales were called “crags,” similar to Earth’s stony counterparts.
The honeycomb alcoves were “divots.” There was no English word for the scaled plates that felt like warm sandstone, and so they were translated as squama.
A tablet of crag with divots sprouting soft toadstools took up the clearing’s center. Nearby trees bore a fruit in a hard, turtle-shell shaped rind and while Garr and Vaya had no trouble with theirs, Rae was left pounding hers against the crag to get it open.
Garr shifted nearer, took the shell from her hands, and popped it open with slight pressure from his thumbs. He offered it, and for a few moments Rae burned while staring at the shiny, orange marbles of fruit clustered inside the rind.
She took it from his hands and it seemed to satisfy him somehow.
Sneering at Garr, she nibbled on the fruits inside, which had a sweet citrus flavor.
Vaya used the lunch break to commune with Lyr for further instructions. The Ythirian giantess knelt with eyes shut in a meditative pose.
She cast pinches of sand into the air, seeming to interpret its direction as the way Lyr wanted them to go. Rae was surprised by the shamanistic ritual.
Were she a domé, a simple command line interface would have sufficed.
***
How, precisely, would Rae talk to a sentient woodland? She’d been to church as a girl, but wasn’t really a meditative, free spirit type. Nevertheless, she had to try something.
Her opportunity came while working their way along a rocky goat path that ran parallel to a steep ravine, an earthen wall rising sharply on her left and sloping off to her right.
If she was going to escape, there was a relatively quick, largely gravity-driven route available. That maybe wasn’t the best idea, but it had the obvious merit of being her only one.
It might have helped if Garr hadn’t taken rearguard while Vaya scouted ahead. She could feel the rake of his gaze whenever it caught her. Sparing a backward glance, she noted his attention’s focus on her foot placement and the narrow path. Worried his chattel will get injured, she fumed.
He met her gaze. The intensity of his black eyes made Rae reflexively lower her head. She hated herself for the show of submission, trying instead to meet his stare head-on.
Garr’s eyebrow rose at the challenge. He stalked toward her. “Staring at a prime only means one thing.”
“A challenge?” she asked, inclining her jaw.
“For females, an invitation.”
Rae tossed her braid over one shoulder. “From me, it’s a challenge.”
He narrowed his eyes.
Pricking his ego seemed to get a rise from him. She decided to keep pushing it. “I’ve got your species figured out. Your domé is the advanced intelligence. Your lot seems a few generations behind humans, to be honest.”
He started toward her. “Watch where you’re stepping. There’s—”
Ah, but that was also part of her plan. Fake a tumble off the ravine wall, so that it looked like an accident instead of an attempt to get just a few moments alone to speak with Lyr.
That she’d goaded him into stepping toward her only made it better. Rae stepped back, intent on landing her foot askew so that she could wobble and fall, bracing to tuck and roll with the her chosen path down the steep slope.
Instead, her foot sank into empty space and she pitched faster than she’d wanted to.
Garr shouted. The world spun end-over-end. Soft leaf padding thumped into her shoulders, and after a few rolls, Rae lost track of the angle of her descent. Would she strike a tree trunk? Her whole body braced for impact.
The ground fell out from under her entirely. Her stomach leapt into her throat and she plunged twenty feet, hitting a
soft, wet pool of sticky mud.
Groaning, Rae propped herself up on her elbows, body half swallowed by the dark ooze that cushioned her landing. When the forest stopped spinning, she noticed two green pods the size of pumpkins growing from the mudhole. They were shaped like cabbages, though paler, and much larger.
Both cabbages bent toward her and their leaves flared open like the night blossom, except…
Those aren’t flowers. Inside each cabbage were eight serrated, curved knife blades evenly ringed around the plant’s center, as though protecting the pistil.
From the razor gleam, she could tell the Skorvag had generated plants with metallic components. Apparently I’ve found Lyr’s claws. Just how would a wild domé react to her going suddenly off the recommended path?
Garr dropped into the mud hole beside her, sinking shin deep into the muck beside her. He snatched Rae’s shoulder and dragged her upright, pressing her chest-first into the earthen wall.
His body encompassed her totally, and she heard a distinct puff noise from the plants. She guessed the alien cabbages had pressurized tubes and were firing murderous knives at them both.
Instead of skewering her, they rang off Garr’s otoya. He must have armored himself with it. However, at least twice, she heard a distinct wet thunk that suggested they’d found a gap in his defenses. He shuddered against her.
For a few long moments after the puffing stopped, Garr held tightly onto her. Then he slumped away and buckled to his knees. Rae turned and held her hand over her mouth at the sight of two gleaming knives embedded in Garr’s right shoulder blade. His violet blood ran in tiny streams down his back and dripped into the mud.
Above them, Vaya crashed through brush, headed for their location.
“This,” Garr growled at her, “is why you do what I say.”
“Noted.” She looked from him to the spent cabbages. Lyr certainly has trust issues. Swallowing, she scanned beyond the muddy pit, noticing the bladed foliage only seemed to grow in the muck. Vaya would be here momentarily, and Garr’s injury would distract her. With Garr too wounded to give chase, this was her only shot.
But a glance to his nasty shoulder wounds gave her pause. She felt a swell of pity for how he’d accrued them. Her logical mind, though, broke in with the obvious: He wouldn’t be wounded if he hadn’t kidnapped you. This is no time for Stockholm Syndrome. You’ve got a home on the other side of the galaxy. Run!
She lurched from the mud, hit solid ground, and took off at a sprint.
“Stop!” hollered Garr.
Not for anything. She ducked beneath vines, wove out of sight, and veered sharply another direction. The change in trajectory would make it harder for them to catch up.
She put on as much speed as she dared in the treacherous, shadowy pathways, which were filled with unfamiliar and maze-like flora. She needed at least a hundred yards if she wanted time to petition the wild domé who just tried to murder her.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” she panted. “I get it. You’re sentient, maybe a little overprotective. And I’m sorry I can’t do that ritual crap to ‘talk’ to you. I’m an alien here. Cut me some slack.”
Huffing, she leaped over some roots. “That’s my point. I don’t belong here, Lyr. Don’t know why Kaython brought me here, but the portals are your thing.”
Rae stopped running when she hit a thick tapestry of hanging vines that blocked her way. She knew them from earlier in the day—there were millions of microscopic saw teeth hidden in each vine. Get wrapped up in those, and they’d slowly cut her to ribbons.
“No Ythirian lives inside you,” she called into the forest. “You’re wild. I know what it’s like to want freedom, to need distance. I’m not cut out for being some prime’s taliyar. I don’t want it. Please, Lyr. Send me home.”
The forest was silent. Even more silent than Rae had expected—no chirps or chitters, no buzzing insects. She couldn’t hear Vaya in the distance and the only noise was Rae’s thumping heart.
For the first time since her arrival on Ythir she felt alone, and it was terrifying.
Gulping, she scanned the canopy. “Please, Lyr. If a domé can rewire my brain to speak the native language, if a domé can control local weather enough to billow Vaya’s dust in the direction she wants, I know you can understand me. Just show me the way to a portal. They took me from my world! Send me home.”
The curtain of vines surrounding her rose all together as though a play had begun.
At the sight of what lay beyond, Rae crumbled to her knees. There were forty of those cabbages, already flared open with their knives glinting and bent her direction.
“I mean,” Rae said, mouth dry, “the phrase ‘send me home’ might not have gotten across how alive I’d like to be when I get there. S—sorry if I’ve offended you, Miss Lyr, ma’am.”
Except they weren’t pointed quite at her. The cabbages puffed and a glittering wave of sharp steel launched into the air. Rae had time to hit the soft, earthen ground only because they’d been pointed over her head.
The blades sank into a dark shadow high in the forest behind her. Tucked onto her side, Rae stared at the dark patch and wondered what had happened…
…when the shadow moved. It peeled from the background of the forest, snarled, and she wasn’t certain what she was seeing at first. It was as though a patch of forest uprooted itself and glided silently from one crown of branches to another, retreating. It left a trail of indigo-hued blood in its wake.
She’d seen something like it before. The way it had peeled from the forest and escaped made her think of the mimic octopus she’d found while scuba diving in Australia.
Its malleable body could transform into limitless shapes, textures, and colors, so that one moment it would look like a normal part of some coral reef, and the next it would scurry, as though a piece of the reef itself had broken off and slithered away on tentacles.
That arboreal version of the mimic octopus had also pulled itself along on tentacles. The major difference had been size: she couldn’t be certain, but it was at least as big as a Buick.
Terror sank its icy claws into her heart at the realization some predator had nearly ambushed her. It was only Lyr’s amazing cabbages that had saved her. All those pods behind her closed tight and stood straight. Whatever else was going on, Lyr didn’t want her dead.
Glancing at one of the knife-cabbages, Rae whispered, “Okay, I’m still mad at Garr and Vaya. But you and I? We’re cool.” She gave the plant a thumbs up.
The plant shivered once. Rae couldn’t translate that. She hoped it meant, “Got your back, honey,” but she couldn’t help notice that no portals were forthcoming. Instead, the vines draped back down, disguising the knife-cabbages from view.
Vaya and Garr broke through the brush line together, glancing wildly down at her. Vaya’s forearms were scratched and Garr bled freely down his right arm, purple blood dripping from his fingertips.
The prime collapsed in front of her and used his clean hand to feel along her torso for injuries.
Rae wormed from his touch and shouted, “I’m fine!”
Garr’s darkening, enraged expression suggested she might not stay that way long.
Chapter Four
Rae kept the treetop octopus to herself, since it also gave away that Lyr had saved her—which in turn might have prompted Garr to tighten his guard. She was holding out hope Lyr would still come through for her.
They scaled the ravine wall, with help from Garr’s otoya coat, which he stripped off and transformed into a liquid, coiling it gradually into a long rope. Anchoring one end into a far-up tree trunk, the line helped Rae make her ascent.
This meant Garr climbed shirtless, though, and Rae could see the two knives buried in him. Apparently no one else had noticed, because the brute paid his wounds no mind.
At one point, she nearly apologized, but couldn’t bring herself to. She hadn’t done a single thing wrong. All this sprang from the fact of her kidnapping.
During their climb, Garr paused to pluck roots, flowers, or in one case a wrinkled fruit that looked like a dried fig. He was probably collecting herbs for a poultice.
Once on the trail, they hiked a quarter mile before stopping at a waterfall that emptied into a pool. It was ringed with tablets where the squama grew fuzzy blue moss.
Vaya slunk away to scout and commune with Lyr, while Garr pried loose a squama plate that was concave on the inside. He used it as a bowl to mix his poultice.
It amazed Rae how thoroughly Lyr provided every component, down to the bowl. Garr never blinked at the good fortune of finding everything he needed along his path.
It occurred to Rae that the Skorvag might provide for her residents more thoroughly than Amazon did for the humans of Earth.
“Do you, uh, need some help?” Rae’s voice was softer than she’d expected.
Garr, his profile to her, methodically ground herbs together with a round stone, the corded power in the muscles of his forearm obvious from the motion.
He put everything into the mortar except that dried fig. Rae was so entranced by the creation of the poultice that Garr’s voice caught her unawares: “You are stubborn.”
“Maybe you should get to know a girl before you kidnap her. Might have saved you some trouble.”
“I could tell you were stubborn right away. A good quality for my taliyar.”
She sighed, blowing a loose strand of her hair from her eye. She was caked in mud, exhausted, and didn’t have the heart to fight him on it while staring at those ghastly knives stuck in his back. “You need help or not, big guy?”
Glancing at her sidelong, the severity in his face finally softened. “Pull them out. This poultice is ready.”
Rae had interned at a veterinary clinic one summer while putting herself through her undergraduate.
She swore she wouldn’t get squeamish now, but the idea of doing this to a non-animal still roiled her stomach. “Just grab and pull?” She wrapped her hands around the unsharpened root of one knife.