Alien Redeemed

by Marie Dry

  “I do not need to explain anything to you. But you should know that you are the least insignificant human on this planet. As my breeder you have a status above all others.” He knew what impressed breeders. The next time he came, he’d bring jewels and silk clothes. And strings of silk to replace her peasant silk.

  “B…breeder?” she stammered. And then in that undertone: “So that’s what Julia talked about? Wonder how she knew?” She sounded disappointed, as if she thought her friend had betrayed her.

  “I give you the privilege to become my breeder.” He manifested and presented the gold eduki pelt.

  “What’s that?”

  “It is the pelt of the eduki that I hunted and killed with my bare hands. You are now my breeder.” Zaar had resolved never to do this again, and yet he felt a savage satisfaction at knowing she belonged to him now.

  She shook her head, her hair swinging back and forth. She ran to the door, but he’d programed it to stay close while he was with her. “No, no, no! Not again, never again.” She slammed her hands against the door.

  2

  Sarah hammered on the door until her fists ached. “Open,” she shouted, but the doors remained stubbornly shut. He’d locked them in somehow. Trembling, her harsh breathing loud in the room, she turned and faced the alien that wanted to claim her. “I won’t be…that.” Her knees threatened to collapse beneath her. She was supposed to be safe here.

  “No one told you of the prophecy?” he asked in that harsh voice that sent shivers over each and every nerve in her body. The first time he’d spoken, his voice had reminded her of planets colliding in a burst of speed and violence, splintering and reforming in a loud bang.

  “What prophecy?” she asked while she frantically tried to find a way out of this room and away from this alien. She associated the Zyrgins with her escape, with safety, but this one was different. Bigger and stronger and much meaner than the others. His presence alone had lowered the temperature in the room. She stood facing him, her hands pressed flat behind her, against the door that wouldn’t open.

  He studied her, cocked his head in that reptilian way the Zyrgins had, and conjured a wooden club out of thin air. Natalie and Julia had told her of their ability to produce things out of thin air. That didn’t startle her. What worried her, a lot, was the club. She wouldn’t survive a beating from that.

  He held out the wooden weapon. “Take this breeder—it will settle your weak human fear.”

  She grabbed the club and glared at him. “I don’t fear you.” Yeah right, she wasn’t trembling in her jeans. But she’d never tell him that. Sometimes it felt as if her life consisted of different levels of fear. Would there ever be a time when she’d feel safe?

  “It was prophesied that a woman with silk growing out of her head, and the mark of two swords, will become my breeder and restore my honor.” He said the last between clenched teeth.

  Sarah touched the birthmark low on her neck. Felt the slightly raised skin. She’d never thought it looked like swords, but she supposed it could look like it to him. “You have no honor?” Sarah could’ve bitten off her tongue the moment the question escaped her.

  He grew until he took on gigantic proportions in her terrified mind. “Never accuse me of that again. My people believe in this prophecy.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Never.”

  Sarah let it go—she had another question that burned a hole in her mind. “Do you really expect me to—” Sarah frowned at him. He haven’t touched her or looked her over in that oily way the raiders had done and didn’t seem bent on forcing himself on her. “What exactly do you expect from me?”

  “I expect you to come to my planet and be my breeder.” Natalie had explained to her that to the Zyrgins, the word breeder meant wife more than the connotation humans put on it. But she still didn’t like the sound of it.

  She was about to shout “no” and “heck no” when Julia’s words came back to her: a chance at adventure. She looked around, at the room she’d rarely left since the months of her rescue. Lately she’d been feeling restless, wanting to do more. But did she dare go to his planet with this strong alien? She’d kicked his…his privates and he didn’t even flinch.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t do this. “I’m not empress material so why don’t you just leave?” Even as she said the words, some part of her yearned to go to another planet and have the adventure of a lifetime.

  “You will come to Zyrgin with me. Within reason, you may state your demands. I will return for your answer.” The silky quality underlying that gravelly voice scared the pants off her. He disappeared.

  Sarah stared around her. “Where’d he go?” It was like those old cartoons. “Poof and he’s gone,” she muttered.

  Sarah wiped her hand over her eyes, but he was still gone. Could all Zyrgins do that? He wanted her, the emperor of practically the whole universe, wanted her. What was there for her here? Her friend’s pity and charity. On the alien planet she’d be sort of married—if breeder meant what Natalie said—to their ruler. Surely that would give her some power. Make her safe from ever being sold by someone she trusted. It was irrational, she knew that, but every time Natalie or Julia invited her out, she broke out in a cold sweat.

  Sarah sank down on the floor and tried to breathe through her panic. What was she thinking—she couldn’t belong to a being so powerful he could appear out of nowhere. Natalie said he ruled practically every inhabited planet in the universe. In the superhero movies she’d watched with Julia, it had looked really cool when they poofed in and out of places. In real life it was one of the most disconcerting things she’d ever experienced.

  For two weeks, she waited, expecting him to poof in and demand an answer.

  How long did she have to think about it before he appeared, expecting her to leave with him? She agonised over this decision. It haunted her while she untangled the hand-spun wool Julia brought her, when Julia came to her, when she used the material Natalie gave her. Sarah thought about it when she went to sleep at night and it was her first thought in the morning when she woke.

  But she knew, even while she tried to think it through, that she was going to do it. Before she’d been sold, she had done really well designing and making sexy underwear. She’d had several clients and was well on her way to realizing her dream of having her own business. Instead of leaving with Charles, she’d played it safe; she’d planned to pack up her things and go with Charles during her stepmother’s annual visit to her sister.

  Sarah held up the cream-and-blue, lace panties she’d designed, and frowned at them. Where had her caution gotten her? Sold and abused until sometimes she barely felt like a human being. Julia and Natalie were so happy with their aliens. Maybe she could be, as well. She bunched the silky material in her fist. She’d be trapped on an alien planet if things went wrong. No quickie divorce for her.

  Fed up with her pathetic indecision, she threw the panties across the room. They landed on the face of the large Zyrgin that had appeared out of nowhere. She moaned softly and clapped her hands over her burning cheeks. This was not happening.

  He grabbed the scrap of cloth and, holding it open with the forefinger and thumb of both hands, stared from the scrap of material to her. The way his eyes dipped told her he knew exactly what it was. Of course it had to be panties she threw at him; it wasn’t a shirt or scarf she’d woven. Sarah’s face burned even hotter, as if she’d been in the sun for days without protection. “Don’t you knock?”

  “No.”

  She tried to look calm and collected. “How did you get in here?” she asked, and was pleased to hear how steady she sounded. She pointedly held out her hand, but he ignored her wordless demand and rubbed the scrap of satin between his thumb and forefinger, the powder-blue fabric appearing delicate and feminine in his large claw.

  Sarah’s breath caught and for a moment, just a moment, she wondered what it would feel like if he rubbed her flesh like that. “That belongs to me—please give it
back.”

  It disappeared into a pocket in his jacket that appeared and then disappeared. It was disconcertingly as if his pocket ate her panties. “State your demands.”

  Sarah stared at the jacket where the pocket was now gone. “How did you do that? Give it back.”

  “No.”

  Wait, did he say her demands? Sarah forgot about the panties his pocket had eaten. “My demands?” She hadn’t thought up any demands. Her lips pulled down. Being held captive in a raider camp had a way of lowering your standards.

  “Yes, within reason I will allow them.”

  “Say we agreed on my demands, what happens next?”

  “You come to Zyrgin.”

  “And then?”

  “You will be my breeder.” He said it as if it was self-explanatory. But it couldn’t be that simple. It wouldn’t be that simple for her.

  “I got that part. What I want to know is if I will have status and power?” No one would be able to sell her or take her away from her home.

  He stepped away from her and his claws lengthened and retracted so fast, she doubted that she even saw it happen. “You will be the most powerful female in the empire.” There was an expressionless quality to his voice for the first time.

  “I have only one demand. I want a home where I’m safe, where no one can walk in and sell me.” Physically she’d never be strong, but she could be too powerful to ever be sold again. Panic threatened to knock her out; black spots invaded her vision; was she really doing this?

  “No one will sell my breeder.” He flashed his incisors. “I will kill anyone who even thinks to do such a thing.” He stepped forward, clasped the nape of her neck with those fingers that reminded her of a raptor’s. Chills rippled out over her body from where he touched her. “Who is Charles?” he asked and the temperature in the room dropped.

  “How do you know about him?”

  “Zurian’s breeder talked to you about it while I stood listening camouflaged.”

  The way he held her, the change in the atmosphere, all told her that it was a good thing her former fiancé had disappeared. “Charles was my fiancé.” It hurt so much to think that he was either dead or he’d stopped searching for her and gone on with his life.

  “Where is this Charles now?” He tried to appear casual, to put her at her ease, so that she’d tell him, but she heard the menace in his voice. Even if she knew she wouldn’t tell him.

  She bit her lip. Deep inside she knew Charles would never accept her now. He was a good man, but he had strict views on what was proper. “I don’t know where he is. He tried once to find me and then he was captured. Julia told me, while she was searching for me, she and Zurian freed him and the other captives, and Charles just disappeared. No one has heard from him since.” She looked down at her clutched hands. Her knuckles were white, but she didn’t feel the pressure.

  “He will be a very clever human if he stays lost. I will not tolerate other males near my breeder.” He slashed his hand through the air and her whole body jerked, glad for the table she used to cut her patterns that stood between them. “We are done talking about males with ugly long hair—state your demands.”

  She touched her hair before she clutched her hands together again. “What do you mean ugly—”

  “State your other demands,” he interrupted.

  Her lips pulled down. “I told you, my only demand is that I be safe. Unless you have some miracle alien technology that can take my memory of the camps away.”

  “We have such technology,” he said as if he didn’t just hand her, her biggest wish.

  “You do?” she whispered. She clutched her hands to her chest and leaned toward him. Oh, to be able to function without constant nightmare memories ambushing her every moment of every day.

  “It cannot remove all your memories. That would result in you losing critical functions. But it can make the memory recede so that it feels like an old memory.”

  Hope, terrible hope bloomed inside her. She’d promised herself never again to hope for anything. Still it made her heart beat faster. “Why would you develop a technology like that? I thought you were mostly focused on weapons?” she asked, suspicious. It seemed too good to be true.

  “We developed it to assist warriors,” he said and it was clear he wouldn’t tell her more.

  She rubbed her hands on her pants that sat loose on her. No matter how much she ate, she just didn’t gain any weight. “If you can lessen my memories and promise I’ll be safe, I will agree to come with you to your planet.” Maybe when she was there, she’d find out what Destiny had planned for her. Because she had this weird feeling that her whole life had led up to this moment. That no matter what she decided, she’d end up on that alien planet.

  One moment, they stood with the table between them, and the next, he stood right in front of her. He clasped her delicate nape, moved it to cup her shoulder, and rubbed over her collar bone, over the birthmark, with his thumb. Goose bumps broke out over her skin, and it wasn’t all fear.

  “It will be difficult breeding small warriors with you. Your body could break if I am not careful with you.”

  “What?”

  He stared down at the junction of her thighs. “The doctor will have to measure your female channel to ensure we will fit.”

  3

  Sarah’s heart hammered so loud, she couldn’t hear anything else. She jerked out of his grip and stumbled away from him. Her whole body burned and she was sure she was redder than the canned tomatoes Julia had brought her. No one was measuring her there. No one. “I can’t do this. You don’t know what happened to me. I just can’t—”

  “I know you were held captive in the camps and suffered abuse because my warriors took too long to find you.”

  Sarah tightened her ponytail to keep her trembling fingers busy. Was that how they saw it? “You don’t understand, they kept moving me. It’s a miracle they found me at all. I will be forever grateful to your warriors for rescuing me.”

  “You will come to Zyrgin?”

  “I can’t tolerate being touched.” She shook her head. “I can’t go with you. It wouldn’t be fair to you.” Being measured like that would be just one more item, in a long list of things that she couldn’t tolerate.

  He looked at her, just stood there and looked at her, and she had the oddest feeling that he knew exactly what she struggled with. “It takes a year to reach my planet. You will be in stasis during that time.”

  “Stasis? You mean I’d be asleep, like in the movies where people are frozen for long periods of space travel?” A few months ago, that would’ve sounded like heaven, but she wanted to get on with her life. Not lie around in stasis for months on end. “Like sleeping beauty,” she muttered.

  “Yes, you would be asleep for a year and during that time our program will assist with fading the memories of the camps.”

  It was her personal fantasy offered to her. “All right, but that still leaves the problem of us, you know—”

  “Know what?” he asked and she gritted her teeth.

  She shrugged and looked down at her hands, her face hot. If she kept this up, she’d spontaneously combust. You’d think after the reverend and the camps, she’d be able to say the words out loud. “Would you want children?” She heard the longing in her voice. The loneliness.

  “Yes. We will have one small warrior.”

  “Unless I have twins like Natalie.”

  He cocked his head, but didn’t respond.

  “What about the prophecy you talked about? What if I come to your planet and it doesn’t come true?”

  “I will see to the prophecy—the vagueness leaves it open for interpretation.” His disdain for the prophecy was obvious, but she had a hard time just discounting it. Not if she was going to get blamed if whatever miracle this prophecy foretold didn’t happen.

  “All right.” She bit her lip and sidled backward, out of reach of those huge fists. “There is something else we have to discuss. You have advanced technolo
gy. Maybe we could use artificial insemination.” If this conversation lasted much longer, her face was going to be stained a permanent hot red.

  “Never again say that to me,” he said silkily. The temperature dropped, became charged with danger, and she shivered. “We will make our small warriors with me inside your body.” He looked at her slender hips, cocking his head. “After the doctor has measured your vagina to ensure that we fit.”

  “Stop saying that.” She forced herself to stay calm, to think. “Will you give me time to get used to your planet and to know you before we, before we, uh, become intimate?”

  “I will allow you as much time as you need to know me before I fuck you,” he said.

  She recoiled. “You don’t have to be that crude.”

  “It is called fucking. Why should I not say it?” he sounded curious.

  She planted her face in her palm. “Never mind.” What other options did she have—going back to live in town? She shuddered. Even with the Zyrgins keeping an eye on her, she couldn’t go back there. At the same time, she couldn’t stay in this room forever. She squared her shoulders. Maybe it was time to see what Destiny had in store for her. “All right, I will come to your planet,” she said. She mumbled, “If I don’t die in stasis.” Inside her mind, a small rational voice screamed Stop, what are you doing?

  “Our stasis machines are superior to any other—you will not die in it,” he said.

  She bit her lip, tried to step away from him, and she knew she only managed it because he allowed it. For now. “What happens next?”

  “You pack your belongings. I will allow you to bring as much decadent Earth possessions you want,” he said.

  “Decadent, that’s me,” she joked feebly. Her bedroom in her stepmother’s house had been spartan. The camps horrific. This room in the guesthouse was the nicest she’s ever lived in.