by Lena Grey
Remmel: A SciFi Alien Barbarian Romance
Rakui Warriors - Book 2
Lena Grey
Juno Wells
Copyright © 2020 by Lena Grey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Connect with Lena and Juno
Excerpt from Trauhn
Rakui History
About the Author
Introduction
On Earth, 12 female college students board a starship for A Year of Interstellar Education. Crashing on a primitive planet inhabited by barbarian aliens was not on their itinerary…
I did not want the Terran female as my mate. Now I cannot imagine life without her.
Jill-ee-un has the heart of a warrior and is as stubborn as a wild beast. She says she does not belong to me, that she does not want to be my mate. What she does not know is that she already is.
For my heart to know true happiness, I must convince her that we belong together, that she is my forevermore bond. But first I must save her from the maw of a deadly trappol tree.
Remmel is the second alien barbarian romance in the Rakui Warriors series. This human-alien love story has danger, action and lots of steam.
Each story in the Rakui Warriors series is a complete romance, although there is a continuing storyline that unfolds throughout the series. You don’t have to read Trauhn before Remmel, but you might want to.
Chapter 1
Remmel
I rise just before daybreak to hunt for fresh game, being careful not to waken the sleeping Jill-ee-un. Her enthusiasm under the furs expended much energy, and I wish her to rest as long as possible before we set back out on our search. We have another long day ahead.
Nearby, a small flock of gryzen are feeding on moogah, which the Terrans call berries. In the dim early morning light, where the moons still glow and the suns have not quite begun to brighten the sky, it is easy for me to move in close.
I retrieve a knife from its sheath at my waist and raise it above my head. With a practiced motion, I let the knife fly toward the closest beast. My aim is true, and the gryzen drops while the rest of the flock scatters with indignant squawks.
By the time I dress my kill and return to the cave, the suns have just started to rise. I build a fire and hang the gryzen to roast.
In sleep, Jill-ee-un’s face looks peaceful and serene. I do not remember why I initially considered the Terrans to be physically unappealing. They are very different than the Rakuis, this is true, yet I find Jill-ee-un’s delicate facial features unique and beautiful. Her smooth, golden mane, which grows straight and long, fascinates me. As does the similar patch of fur between her thighs.
Before I can wake her, she stirs with a tiny moan, stretching her limbs before opening her eyes. When her heavy-lashed eyelids finally part, she sees me standing above her and grins.
She sits up, fully awake, and sniffs the air. “Something smells good.”
“Fresh gryzen,” I say. “Good food before travel.”
“I hope it’ll be ready soon. I’m starving.” She throws the rest of the hide off her body, and my cock stirs at the sight. “Let me get dressed and I’ll be right out.”
We eat quickly, then Jill-ee-un points to her lower belly and then toward the trees. “I need to pee before we go.”
I nod, knowing she prefers privacy when relieving her bladder. Rakui females have the same preference, although the males do not. This is understandable given our physical differences. While she is gone, I pack up our camp and use fresh dirt to extinguish the fire.
She is taking longer than is typical, and a flicker of worry makes my scales rattle. I am unsure whether my worry is warranted until she screams my name, a piercing, fearful cry followed by a string of unintelligible Terran words.
I draw my sword and race toward the sound of her screeching voice, praying to the Gods that she has not been captured by a rogue. When I finally reach her, I realize she has encountered something much worse than a rogue. Jill-ee-un is ensnared by the living vines of the trappol tree.
The tree’s many appendages have snaked around her legs and lower body, lifting her off her feet so she is hanging upside, and are pulling her upward toward its gaping, sharp-toothed maw.
“Remmel! Help me!” she cries out, her face contorted with terror.
Her hands, free for now, are gripping a branch from a different tree. Yet the vines are stronger than even a Rakui warrior, and her grip is already beginning to slip. If I do not find a way to free her, she will soon become the trappol tree’s food.
The gryzen I ate churns in my belly as I use precious time considering my options. The vines have drawn Jill-ee-un too high for me to reach her from the ground. My only choice is to climb up after her.
The trappol grows in the shadowed spaces between other trees, a hidden predator waiting to catch its prey unaware. The smallest of kits are taught how to spot and avoid the leafy vines which have taken more than one Rakui life. I did not think to warn Jill-ee-un of this danger. If she is consumed by the trappol’s maw, her death will rest on my shoulders forevermore.
She thrashes in the vines’ hold, her hands slipping even more. “Holyshititsgoingtoeatme. Ohmygodomygodomygod. Idontwanttodie. Notlikethis.”
I know what I must do.
I drop my sword and climb the tree that Jill-ee-un is gripping. When I reach her, I pull my knife from its sheath and hack at one of the vines, severing the leafy appendage. The trappol’s maw hisses in pain but does not release her.
Before I can hack again, she screams at me. “Remmel, watch out behind you!”
Her warning comes just in time. I turn my head and see a vine about to ensnare me. With a single downward motion, I slice cleanly through the vine and it withers as the maw hisses again. But the trappol is not giving up.
Panic squeezes my chest as the vines around Jill-ee-un tighten and she finally loses her grip on the branch. She screams as the deadly tree pulls her higher, ever closer to its jaw.
I have no footing from my perch in the tree and only one arm free. I place my knife between my teeth, grab Jill-ee-un’s ankle, and tug with all my might.
“Yourhurtingme! Youregointotearmylegoff. Thenimstillgoingtodie.”
This pulling contest cannot continue because I will surely lose. My strength is no match for the trappol vines. I let go of Jill-ee-un’s ankle and she looks at me, frantic.
“You must save your mate,” a voice inside my head thunders. There is no time to grapple with the voice, to tell it that Jill-ee-un is my friend, not my mate.
I scramble higher up the tree until I am above Jill-ee-un and perilously close to the gaping trappol maw. If I had my sword, I could decapitate the deadly head. Ins
tead, I will use my knife to hack through all of the vines.
My muscles burn from the effort, yet I bring my arm down on the vines again and again and again. Each time I sever another appendage, the maw hisses, thrashing back and forth. I continue to hack until the trappol begins to lose its strength. I am finally winning the battle.
When there is just one vine left clinging to Jill-ee-un’s leg she flails about, screaming in her native tongue. “Shit! Itsgoingtodropme. Dontletitdropmeremmel!”
It is then that I realize the flaw in my plan. If I sever this last appendage, she will fall to the ground. Her fragile body will not survive such a fall.
I call to her. “Jill-ee-un!”
She twists her body to look at me. I do not have the common words to explain what I want her to do. So, I motion with my arm for her to swing her body toward me.
I think she understands because her eyes go wide. “What? No! No way!”
She must do this or she will perish. It is her only hope. I remember what she said about friends. “Jill-ee-un Remmel’s friend?”
“Yes, I’m your friend,” she says, confused. “Canwetalkaboutthislater? Imabouttodiehere.”
“Then Jill-ee-un trust Remmel.” When she doesn’t answer, I say it again. “Jill-ee-un trust Remmel.”
She finally nods, arches her back, and swings her body toward me.
Again!” I yell.
With her face tense with determination, she uses her head and shoulders to get more momentum. She gets closer to me this time, but not close enough.
“Higher, Jill-ee-un. Higher!”
She swings away from me and back again. This time she is high enough. When she is almost even with me, I push away from the tree and leap toward her, knife still in hand.
Our bodies slam together and I anchor her against me with my legs and one arm. Then, I reach above my head and sever the last remaining Trappol vine.
Chapter 2
Jillian
48 Hours Earlier
“What do you think, Jillian?”
My head snaps up at the sound of Jade’s voice, and I realize I haven’t heard a word she’s said. “Uh, I think, yes? Or, I don’t know, maybe?”
We’re sitting cross-legged at a low, makeshift table constructed of salvaged metal in the Rakui village North Caves greatroom, which has become a temporary search party command center.
Just a few short days ago, me, my best friend Kenzie, and ten other female college seniors boarded an Earth starship for a Year of Interstellar Education. Before we reached our first destination, a solar storm forced us to evacuate the ship using two-person escape pods. Our pods were literally plucked out of the sky and pulled toward UD237, an undeveloped planet with a strong gravitational pull.
We soon realized the planet is inhabited by the Rakuis, a tribe of huge, golden-scaled aliens. Male Rakuis are seven feet tall with black hair, dark eyes, and more muscles than a Greek god. Most of the tribe’s females were lost to illness many years ago, but the few who survived are built similar to the males.
Two Rakui warriors, Trauhn and Remmel, found me and Kenzie and kept us safe. Remmel found four more of our friends, but the other six are still missing.
Jade scowls at me. “Look, if you’re going to be on the rescue team, you need to pay attention.”
“Sorry. Could you repeat that last bit?”
Jade sighs in frustration. She’s not usually this testy, but we’re all exhausted. “I said, if you and Kenzie landed here, and the other two escape pods landed there and there, I think we can use a little math to figure out the approximate locations of the three remaining pods.”
As she talks, Jade points to a crude map she’s drawn on a smooth piece of hide using a charred stick as a pencil. Big X’s mark the known locations of the three escape pods used by me and Kenzie, her and Layla, and Emily and Reese.
Jade is the biggest brainiac in our group, but she’s overlooking an important detail. The Rakuis are leading the search for our missing friends. We’re just tagging along so the girls see a familiar face when the fierce-looking aliens find them.
“I think Remmel has a pretty good idea where to search and we should follow his lead. He’s familiar with the terrain and watched all the pods land. We don’t even know if the other girls have stayed near their pods.”
Math won’t help us find them if they’re wandering aimlessly through the woods. Or if they’ve been captured by dangerous rogue aliens who, like us, crashed on UD237.
“Forgive me for not wanting to rely on a bunch of barbarians to find our friends,” Jade says. “They don’t understand concepts like wind shear, trajectory, and coordinates and have never even seen a compass. Besides, we can barely communicate with them.”
The way Jade talks about the Rakuis pisses me off. They saved our lives. Twice. “For fuck’s sake, they’re primitive, not stupid. And it’s not their fault we don’t speak their language.”
“I’m with Jillian on this,” Layla says. She’s become the leader of our group. None of us nominated her or anything; she just stepped up and the rest of us let her. “We know very little about this planet. We need the Rakuis’ help to find the other girls, and we need Remmel’s input to complete the map.”
Almost on cue, Remmel enters the North Caves, and the air wooshes out of my lungs. Like all the Rakui males, his muscled torso is bare, and his scales glisten in the dim light. His lower half is covered by a kilt-like wrap made from animal hide, but he might as well be naked. I’ve seen what’s under that kilt, and the memory makes my mouth water.
Our eyes meet and, for an instant, heat arcs between us. Remmel’s grumpy look softens, and his dark eyes smolder, which makes my lips part, my nipples harden, and my panties practically melt. Then, just like that, the moment passes. I look away, wondering if I’m imagining a connection that doesn’t really exist.
Layla waves him over to the table. “Over here, Remmel. We need your help drawing a map.”
He kneels beside her, and a twinge of jealousy flutters my belly. “What is map?”
“It’s a diagrammatic representation of the land that we’ll use to help find our friends,” Jade says in Galactic Common. She slides the map in front of him, and he gives her a blank stare.
The Rakuis only speak a bit of Old Galactic, which is the more simplistic precursor language to Galactic Common. Jade knows this, and it feels like she’s intentionally speaking over his head.
Remmel studies Jade’s sketch and points to the X on the beach. “Jill-ee-un flyer here.” What we call escape pods they call wingless flyers. He points to the other two X’s. “More females found here, here.”
“Right,” Layla says, excitedly. She grabs Jade’s stick pencil and hands it to him. “Can you mark where the other flyers landed? The ones we haven’t found yet?”
In a surprising move, Remmel adds rough details to the map—mountains, caves, trees, rivers, animals—before adding three more X’s. Then he draws a circle on the map that encases two of those X’s. “Rogue land. Danger.”
The possibility that our friends have been captured by rogue aliens fighting for survival on UD237 makes me feel sick. We need to get this search party going.
“Can you mark the spot where we’ll split up?” Jade asks. The plan is to start out as one big search party but eventually break into smaller groups to cover more ground.
Remmel nods and adds another X.
Vauss enters the North Caves and converses with Remmel in the Rakui language. The tribe’s elders, Morkon and Cyana, put Vauss in charge of the rescue effort. Vauss has a gentle demeanor and a steadying presence that commands respect. He’s one of the older Rakui males and probably considered middle-aged by Earth standards, but he’s just as fit and strong as the other warriors.
“We go soon,” Vauss says to me, Jade, and Layla. “Hard journey.”
Layla stands up and faces him, leader to leader, although he towers over her five-foot-five-inch frame. “We’re ready. Our friends are out there, alone and sca
red. The sooner we leave, the better.”
Vauss smiles at her determination and pats the top of her head like she’s a puppy that just performed a trick. “Lay-luh good chief of Terrans from Urth.”
“I’ll feel more like a good chief once we find our friends,” she says.
Vauss nods. “Remmel best Rakui tracker. Find more females.”
I glance at Remmel who’s observing the conversation with a slight scowl on his face and his arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t think we should be part of the search party, that we’ll slow the Rakuis down. He’s probably right, but we’re going anyway.
“We’ll grab our weapons and our packs and meet you at the communal fire,” Layla says as she carefully rolls up the map and hands it to Jade for safekeeping.
Vauss nods and exits the caves. My heart aches a little when Remmel follows him without so much as a glance in my direction. It’s like I don’t even exist.
“We’d better get out to the fire before the Rakuis leave without us,” Jade says, which I take as another dig at the them.
I decide to confront her. “What’s your deal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” I argue. “Yesterday you were grateful that the tribe took us in. Today you’re acting like the Rakuis’ protection is a hardship.”
Jades face turns red. “What’s a hardship is SPECIES SURVIVAL MODE.” She rubs the area of her left wrist where a microcomputer is implanted under the skin.