Kidnapping His Rebel: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Zalaryn Conquerors Book 2)

by Viki Storm

  But Universe, you don’t know everything. The Universe sees things in terms of black and white. Everything is simple. These two beings, the Universe says, they were created in order to mate with each other. Easy as that, because all the universe cares about is reproduction and continuance of all the species.

  But life, the day-to-day affairs of the aforementioned species… it’s not that easy.

  Because Lia’s not coming back to Lekyo Prime. And I’m sure as shit not joining the Three-Star Rebel group.

  I don’t know where I found the restraint the other night in our rented room, but I’m glad that I found it. If I had claimed her—if we had exchanged genetic material and bound our fates together—then this problem would be infinitely more complicated. At least this way, painful as it is, we are still able to leave each other.

  If we’d bonded in that dingy rented room on Irji? No way. It’s not called bonding as a figure of speech. The physical act, when between fated mates, will change the chemical and molecular composition of each partner. Changing the body and chemistry—and in turn, the mind—so that it craves the other being as if it is just another element essential to life.

  If we had bonded, to be without her would be to be without water, without amino acids, without carbon.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” I say. “Bryn would love to see you.”

  “Don’t use Bryn to manipulate me,” she says. Her eyes are cast downward, and I know that this is hard for her, too. I know she feels the connection between us—of course she does. I wouldn’t desire her so much if she didn’t feel the same way.

  “I’m not trying to manipulate you,” I say. “I just don’t want to leave you. And Bryn really would want to see you. That’s no exaggeration.”

  “I can’t go back there,” she says.

  “You can,” I say. “I can’t imagine the pain of your past, but I know how strong you’ve become. I’ve seen it firsthand. Maybe once you didn’t have the strength to go back to your home planet, but now you do. It will be closure.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need to do,” she says. “And that’s not my home planet anymore. You don’t understand. There’s only Before and After. And anything Before is dead and gone to me. I had to seal off that part of me to survive. To go back… No.”

  And that’s when I realize it’s a hard no.

  “What about coming to Zalaryx with me?” I ask. “You’re making me beg, but fine, I’m begging. I can relocate to Zalaryx, or any other planet for that matter.”

  “No,” she says. “This is who I am. When you first met me, you said I was a professional liar and thief. You were right. I’m a part of this, the smuggling and the black-market deals and the open-air firefights. This too is what I had to do to survive—turn myself into a Rebel Captain that no one fucks with. That’s how I can make it day after day. And you’d have me go to some far-flung planet to, what, raise goats?”

  “I don’t know what a goat is,” I say truthfully, “but I’d prefer to raise offspring.”

  “Children?” she says with a bark of derisive laughter. “I am not mother material. Children? No. That’s not who I am. Rebel Captains can’t waddle around the ship with a pregnant belly. Rebel Captains can’t broker deals with a baby sucking at the tit. Children? Are you insane?”

  “I guess so,” I say. It crushes me to hear her say this. She has no desire to raise offspring? Isn’t that the biological imperative of all species? Could I have a life with Lia if there was no offspring? I don’t know. Maybe not. Probably not. “Then I’d better leave.”

  “No sense drawing this out,” she says.

  “Goodbye,” I say and storm off to my stealthcraft. She’s probably right, no sense drawing this out. I lift open the door and slide into the seat. Already I can feel her absence as a real thing, like I’d just lost a leg.

  I risk a glance behind my shoulder and watch as she walks back into the main ship.

  Damn.

  I knew leaving her would be bad, but I didn’t expect this. There’s a black void inside me, instant and deep. And somehow I know the pain won’t subside with time—if anything this pain will only grow with each day that I’m away from Lia.

  “Fucking Void,” I say and slam my fists against the instrument panel, not giving two screaming fucks if I break something. I swing my legs around and hoist up the door again.

  I can’t just leave.

  Not like this.

  Maybe not at all.

  I enter The Golden Plague, remembering the passcode from before and inwardly chastising her lazy crew for not changing it after I breached it. The common area is dark, and I don’t hear anyone rummaging around in the mess area. I remember Lia said that they keep Earth time on the ship, and I see a timepiece on the wall displaying two in the morning. Local time is late, too, so her crew is probably asleep. It explains why they didn’t come to the docking bay to greet her—and thankfully didn’t witness the scene that ensued.

  I told her before that I would beg, but I haven’t even started to beg. Being away from her for two minutes was enough to make me realize that, bonded or not, we are supposed to be together.

  She is my mate.

  I must claim her. Now.

  The rest will figure itself out. The rest is unimportant.

  Most beings are never lucky enough to find their bonded mates—and I’m about to walk away from mine? What a stupid fucking bastard I am.

  As I go deeper into the ship towards the sleeping quarters, I hear a murmured voice. Lia? I try to walk more softly so I can listen. It’s a male’s voice.

  I hurry to her captain’s quarters. Surely either Pior or Sorren will just be checking in on her, asking for directions for what to do next.

  Except there’s someone on this ship who tried to betray me to the Rulmek—and in doing so put Lia in grave danger. I wouldn’t necessarily fault the traitor for trying to sell me out—I’ve said it before, I wouldn’t trust me, either. But doing so almost got Lia captured by her old tormentors. My blood begins to boil at the thought.

  I speed up, and at first I confuse the noise for the sound of my footfalls in the metal corridor. But it’s not. It’s the unmistakable sound of a fist on a door.

  “Lia,” he says. It’s Pior. “Let me in.”

  Let me in? Into her bedchamber at two in the morning? Not a fucking chance.

  I see him out in the corridor, head pressed against the door as if waiting to hear her response. The door doesn’t open, and my heart gladdens at that.

  I reach out and pull him back by the shoulder.

  “What are you doing here?” he says.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” I say.

  “Bantokk?” Lia calls from the other side of the door.

  “Stay in there,” I tell her. My sensory pads are picking up something bad. A foul aura around Pior.

  And all of a sudden, I know that he’s the traitor.

  “What’s going on?” Lia calls.

  “Stay inside,” I say, but my last word is cut short. There is searing pain on the side of my head, the color of sunslight, the color of hate.

  “Are you okay?” she says. I try to speak, but everything is going dark.

  Her door opens a crack. No, faithless Void, no.

  Pior reaches inside and yanks her arm, pulling her out.

  The last thing I see before the blackness takes over is Lia’s body in a crumpled heap beside me.

  LIA

  The first thing I recognize is the smell. It fills my nostrils, my lungs, my mouth—my brain. I lean over and retch, but nothing comes out. Just a sickening convulsion that grips my entire torso, giving me a little runner of spittle to show for my efforts. Which is good, I suppose, because I’ll be needing my strength. Who knows when these bastards will next feed me.

  I look around and can’t see much because there are no windows and the only source of illumination is an inch-tall crack underneath the door. I must be in a room somewhere on land; no ships
have doors so ill-fitting as to leave an inch gap.

  But I don’t need to see to know where I am. The smell tells me everything. Urine, sweat, tooth decay, the accumulated film of oil and dirt on a body that is denied clean water in which to bathe.

  I’m alone in a holding tank.

  They’re waiting to figure out what to do with me. Who to sell me to. Hopefully they decide I’m too much of a risk and just slide a knife into the side of my throat. Most buyers don’t have tolerance for a disobedient slave, and ‘disobedient’ doesn’t even begin to describe the trouble I’ll give whatever sick fuck decides to purchase me.

  All I remember is Pior banging at my door last night (at least I think it was last night). He was telling me that we had to talk, but I was trying to put him off until morning. I’d been too drained after saying goodbye to Bantokk to have an intelligent conversation with my crew about our next job. I knew that Bantokk was going to leave eventually, but knowing a thing is going to happen is usually quite different from the thing actually happening. I wasn’t prepared to feel so hurt, so alone. I knew he wasn’t going to stay on The Golden Plague, and I knew I wasn’t going to leave my ship—but again, knowing is one thing. Your brain can understand something and interpret it one way, but the heart will feel it a different way that has nothing to do with the careful logic and reasoning your brain has constructed.

  In my room, alone, I was aching all over. My stomach was a knot, my head was a spinning wheel and my body was a spent dishrag. I hadn’t felt that hopeless in a long time. And not just hopeless, I was seized with a sense of injustice. If anyone knows that life isn’t fair, it’s me, but I still couldn’t help that childish part of me screaming ‘it isn’t fair!’

  My entire adult life, I’d never even entertained the notion of a romantic relationship with a man. That whole ideal was spoiled for me on a Rulmek slave ship. And the one time I think I could have been wrong, that perhaps I was doing myself a disservice from closing off that part of me, that perhaps the only way to heal myself fully was to give myself to another, to form a partnership of body and soul and live for someone other than myself—the one time I start to believe all that nonsense, it cannot be. Another cruel joke the Universe is playing on me.

  But Pior kept knocking, and it was really annoying me. Then I heard Bantokk’s voice, gruff with anger and jealousy. My stomach had done somersaults when I’d heard him, overjoyed that he’d come back for me.

  Then there was the unmistakable sound of a fist crashing into a face. Bantokk shouting not to open the door. He must have had a concussion if he thought that I was just going to sit back behind my locked door and wait patiently while he was getting attacked by Pior. Bantokk could take Pior in a fair fight… but if Pior was the traitor on my crew, there was no way he was going to fight fair—and there was no way I was going to sit back and let Bantokk fend for himself.

  I’d opened the door and… that’s where it gets a little hazy. Like a night spent with too many cups of wine, at a certain point your memory just stops.

  Then I woke up here. Wherever this is. Caught by them. Whoever they are.

  My hands are bound behind my back, but I can’t identify the material. I grope with my fingers, but it feels like it could be metal or polymer or even some other alien element that I’m unfamiliar with. My ankles, too, are bound, and when I try to roll over, I get two rotations before I’m stopped. My ankle bonds are attached to the wall with a short length of cord.

  At least I still have my clothes on. But my boots are gone. The old slaver’s trick is to take away your shoes so you can’t run away. As if running away would do any good on half the planets in the Universe that are nothing but jagged rocks and scorching heat. Most planets, you’d be dead in forty-five minutes, boots or no boots. But still, they take them. Females, they usually take the clothing, too, for psychological torment mostly. But depending on the race of slavers, it can also be for the titillation of the slaver crew. Or to easily sort the females into grades, the way a farmer sorts his eggs or his potatoes. Grade A, Grade B, Grade C. Like farmers sorting potatoes, sometimes the slavers decide that a particular piece of merchandise is worthless and the best course of action is to grind it up for fertilizer. In the case of slaves, not actual fertilizer, but a blast to the head and a toss out the docking port and some old or infirm or unattractive woman is left to fertilize the universe, her elements dispersing and returning to the exploded stars from whence they came.

  My eyes have adjusted a little to the darkness, but there’s not much I can make out of my surroundings. I’m the only one in here. The room seems small, but not too small, about three meters square. The floor is cold concrete, rough and unfinished. I can feel the hot wind blowing from underneath the crack in the door. I’m outside, some sort of outbuilding. I imagine a farmer’s barn or a miller’s silo, but then I realize that those are just images from home, from Lekyo Prime.

  Just like last time, I think, trying to comfort myself with memories from home. Except I would have been better off cutting all ties with that place—cutting all ties with hope. This time, I know better. This time, I’m not a pampered princess scooped up in a raid.

  This time, I’m ready.

  I know how to fight, and I know the weaknesses of a hundred races in the universe. I have contacts on numerous planets. I know how to fly a ship.

  So let these fuckers try.

  Just as I’m trying to pump myself up, I hear footsteps outside the door and my blood runs cold. Maybe I still am a pampered princess. Maybe I’ll always be. Maybe all this time, I’ve just been playing at Rebel Captain, an elaborate child’s fantasy to keep the nightmares at bay.

  There are voices, but I can’t tell how many or what language they speak. I can only make out the rhythm, the talk, pause, talk, pause, of conversation.

  Underneath the crack in the door, I see the shadows of two feet. The legs are wide, or perhaps it’s just a trick of the light. There are plenty of races with squat, wide physiques, but I know my luck, and I know what I’m going to see when the door finally swings open.

  Rulmek.

  It’s got to be the Rulmek.

  No other race could inspire such terror, could reduce me to a quivering, frightened mess. Could strip away every ounce of training, skill, violence and ruthlessness I’ve learned in the last twelve years.

  I’m like an attack dog, fierce as they come, but conditioned to flop belly-up at the command of one word and one word only: Rulmek.

  The voices are clearer now, and yes, I can pick out a few words in their guttural, choked language. Girl… last night… and not for sale.

  Not for sale? Like last time I wasn’t for sale? Kept caged and captive for two years while they tried to find the highest bidder for my virginity? I don’t remember much about what happened last night after Pior immobilized me, but I do know the Rulmek, and if they peeled off my suit to check my virginity, they most certainly would not have bothered to put it back on. Not for sale? It must be for some other reason—and nothing good I can think of.

  The door opens slowly, and I bite back the fear. Lock it up in a cold metal vault and push it away, out of reach.

  “Princess Lia,” a voice says. It’s creaky, low and sounds like the speaker has his tongue wedged inside his throat making the sounds.

  I know the voice. Oh yes, how could I forget when I hear it in my nightmares?

  “Commander Krwlg,” I say. His name tastes like a mouthful of dirt.

  “Your pronunciation is good,” he says. “Most aliens cannot grasp our intricate and complex tongue.”

  “I want to grasp your tongue and yank it out of that foul hole in the center of your ugly face,” I say. I brace for a kick to the ribs but instead am surprised by a bray of laughter.

  “I bet you do,” he says. “And trust me when I say I know the feeling. You are not the only one who is plagued by thoughts of revenge…” He lets his last word out of his mouth slowly, lets it hang in the hot air between us.

  I bet
he wants revenge on me. The day I escaped, I killed four of his soldiers. I’m sure he couldn’t care less about their lives, but I did it while he was meeting the ruler of the Guuklar planet, and the loss of face he suffered must have stung greatly.

  The Guuklar are a vicious race, made even more horrifying by the fact that they are humanoid and descended from the same common genetic ancestor as humans and races like the Zalaryns. Guuklar are tall and muscular, strong and cunning, but lacking in brains and compassion. They worship power and cruelty, laugh at things like love and charity. Their skin is a muddy green, the color of a baby’s loose and stinking stool, an adaptation that allows them to synthesize glucose from sunlight and water under extreme conditions. Their noses are flat against their faces as if they were punched in by their uncaring mothers when they didn’t stop crying in their cribs. They have scales covering their torsos, necks and faces. Their eyes are huge, twice the size of a human or Zalaryn’s, and the pupil takes up the entire eyeball, allowing them to see in very low light. In bright light, their eyelids close vertically, covering up all but the barest slit, giving them the appearance of a demonic cat. Adding to that appearance are the thick, yellowed claws that grow from their thumb and forefingers. I’m not sure if it’s biological or if they trim the claws that grow from their other fingers, but the effect is eerie. They can flick the two claws together like a pair of shears and sever ropes and cords and other things, like viscera and arteries.

  That’s who the Rulmek finally decided to sell me to, the leader of the Guuklar. He had decided that as the ruler of the fiercest, most bloodthirsty race in the universe, he should start a harem of exotic females. As a girl on Lekyo Prime, I had only passing knowledge of the Guuklar, but as a captive slave, I got to see the Guuklar in person and can testify that they live up to their reputation. They kill each other as often as they kill others, their race split into warring factions that quibble over anything and everything. The females of their race are just as bad, often abandoning the children as soon as they can feed themselves.