Primal: A Dark Sci-Fi Reverse Harem Romance (Alpha Unknown Book 1)

by Penelope Woods

  Mag’s nostrils widened. I could see his eyes shift into red dots, the first time he had looked at me as a predator in ages. “Don’t make me skin you alive, friend.”

  “End this,” Cadmar said, placing his foot down on the base of Zane’s spine. ”We have a guest.”

  Cadmar glanced at Adeline. She looked bashfully at the ground and lightly coughed. Taking her hand, he led her away from the tussle. “You must forgive them. They are just trying to protect our home,” he said. “And I’m afraid I must also apologize for our encounter earlier. Had I known it was you, well, it’s been some time since we’ve seen a woman.”

  She blushed and stared into his eyes and, next, mine. My heart rocked me, and I felt my chest tighten. Still, she was silent in the presence of that human. It made me wonder if she was living two existences and couldn’t decide what path was right. “I understand,” she whispered, surprising to say the least. “It’s been a long time, but I found a way back here.”

  “You—you remember?” I asked.

  She nodded and stepped forward, extending her palm loosely in front of her. She touched my lips, gliding across my cheeks, smoothing through my coarse facial hair. Her vitals were going crazy, but she did not fear us anymore. No, she wasn’t like the others. She seemed enthralled by us.

  Zane twisted and groaned. “Adeline, don’t just stand there. Do something,” he whined.

  He got her attention, but not in the way he wanted. She kicked his chest and grinned like a child. “God, I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now.”

  Cadmar reached down and picked him up with one hand, swinging Zane’s gangly body onto his shoulder. Groaning, he started to walk. “Come on. We can all talk at camp. It’s not safe to be out here at this time.”

  “Not safe?” Adeline asked.

  “We aren’t the only ones here,” I muttered.

  A howl rang out over the valley. Mag chuckled. “Don’t worry. They are lower level animals. Once we get out of the forest, we will be safe.”

  “Let them come at us. It’s good training,” Cadmar said, grinning back.

  We walked through the forest for about an hour until we hit a dead patch where some fires had ravaged the entrance some time ago. I breathed in the scent of smoky ash and frowned, not because I didn’t like this place, but we didn’t get to share any of the same memories. We weren’t privilege to live a life on earth. We were made to be primitive, made to gather our own resources. The three of us.

  She didn’t know the entire truth yet. I didn’t want her to know. Selfishly, I wanted her to stay as naive as that little girl who found us here so long ago. But I couldn’t do that to her. None of us could. We had discussed this before her arrival. She needed to know the truth about this horrible place. About us.

  Slowly, the burnt landscape turned into a desert. All sorts of odd-shaped cacti and plants littered the area. I had seen pictures of the vegetation on earth, but the atmosphere here shaped things differently. Judging by the way Adeline looked at their twisty arms and purple-prickly thorns, it blew her mind.

  “Wait. I need to collect some samples to bring to the team,” she exclaimed and ran toward one of the cacti.

  She was so excited I didn’t want to tell her not to do it, but a bad feeling ran through my stomach. “The team?” I asked.

  Zane laughed, but Cadmar gave him a hard enough punch to the gut to shut him up.

  Adeline paused near the spiny plant, pinching a pair of tweezers between her delicate fingers. Awkwardly, she bit the edge of her lip and nodded. “A group of scientists. They’re waiting for me on the other side,” she clarified.

  Mag growled and twisted his head. “You work for them?”

  Lowering her hand, Adeline tried to make sense of what she had said. “I work for myself,” she declared.

  “Lies!” Mag roared loud enough to cause the dirt below our feet to stir.

  It did not frighten her. She had spent too much time beside him to be worried about his violence. She must have known we weren’t inherent devils. We had been made to react so harshly. The instincts we wielded had sharpened over time, and we did have certain abilities most humans couldn’t fathom. All of this was as unnatural to us as it was to them. It had something to do with the air, with the effects of this place. It started with the hallucinations, but, over time, it turned physical. The one thing still eluding us was how we had lived for so long without aging.

  Instead of taking the sample, Adeline put her tools away and walked off in a huff. “I didn’t come here to get berated for my work,” she said, clearly hurt. We had overstepped her boundaries.

  I ran up beside her, anxiously trying to keep the peace. We had waited a lifetime to see her again, and, if she left us now, it would ruin us. “Adeline, wait,” I said.

  “Who the hell are you?” she scoffed. I didn’t think much of it. She was having a hard go of it, but I would never want to take her from her studies.

  “Donovan,” I said.

  She stopped, quietly sighing. “Oh,” she said. “The one with the healing herbs. I guess I should thank you. They really do wonders on the bruising.”

  “They took me years to cultivate. I’m satisfied they got to be used properly,” I said. Someday, I would show her the greenhouses I’d made.

  A small tight-lipped smile revealed she wasn’t as mad as she put on. After hesitating, I reached into my satchel and pulled out another small vial filled with green powder. I ushered it forward, insisting she take it. “I am something of an explorer, myself. I made this for you,” I said. She didn’t know how to react. “Go on. Take it. It’s safe.”

  She took the thin vial and inspected it before enclosing it tightly within her fist. “Thank you, Donovan. You have a gentle soul.”

  I smiled and felt a level of pride encourage me to do more for her. She was so beautiful, and we were simple ogres. We were pushed into this world but slowly mutated. Yes, we were still handsome, but our bodies were different. Depending on our emotional and mental state, we glowed different colors. Our bodies were triple the size of a normal human soldier. A part of me couldn’t believe she could look at us so normally.

  Cadmar pressed forward, pointing toward a set of large and towering rocks. Together, they formed a safe space in the center of the desert landscape. “There it is. Our home for the time being.”

  “Just for the time being?” she asked.

  He nodded, alert. “We are forced to move around, depending on the season.”

  “Gets a bit dicey out here,” Mag said. “You never know what weather will form next. The forces of nature are different here. It’s difficult to discern reality from delusion.”

  We walked in silence until we reached the enclosed encampment. Once there, we showed her the large tent we had built out of the hide of a wilder beast. ”Inside,” Mag said. “We can rest up here.”

  “What about Zane?” she asked. Zane. My lip twitched as soon as I heard his name.

  The three of us looked over at a rusty cage, big enough to fit a few animals inside. Blood spatter had dried across the metal bars as well as the floor. “He gets the cage,” Mag said.

  Adeline’s neck stretched tight, and her eyes darted open, wide open with guilt and fear. “But—”

  “We won’t hurt him, for now,” he said. “But we hold the right to question his intentions. Do you agree?”

  The words caught on the edge of her throat, but she finally gave her answer. “It’s your home. You can do as you please. But if you kill him, I won’t ever be able to forgive you.”

  “Yes,” Mag whispered, eyes melancholy. “Yes, I know.”

  It still didn’t make sense that she covered for the bastard, but we wouldn’t go against her wishes. So much had happened to us over the years. If she turned her back on us, it would mean betrayal. However, it was her call, and we would trust her until that trust was broken.

  The three of us h locked his unconscious body inside, checking the chains to make sure he couldn’t escape. To
block out the sounds of his cries, we stretched a thick cloth over the cage itself. He wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Adeline walked into the tent and sat on the beast-skin rug in the center. The area was much bigger looking on the inside, and I was sure she’d find it adequate in comparison to the old and decaying hostel building near the edge of the forest.

  She placed her bag between her legs. As she unzipped it, she kept her eyes focused on us in silence. Finally, she grabbed a simple brush and began combing her hair. “You see the hallucinations, too?” she asked, plainly.

  I bowed and nodded. “It’s not something I enjoy admitting,” I said.

  “But this is your landscape. Why can’t you live in peace here?” she asked.

  I turned to Mag who then turned to Cadmar. It was hard to know what to say without freaking her out. He sat next to her and placed his hand on her thigh. “We should not exist. We are an abomination.”

  “Would an abomination help me so eagerly?” she asked.

  “What he means to say is we weren’t always this way,” I said, knowing I had already told her too much.

  She stirred, unable to sit still. “I’m tired of everyone hiding things from me. Please, I need to know the truth about this realm. About you. About... everything,” she pleaded.

  I turned my eyes away. All I wanted to do was fix all that had been done to everyone involved, but I couldn’t. The hard truth was, despite my strength, I was still ultimately powerless. We all were.

  Cadmar had been better at dealing with what had happened than any of us, but he was a man who accepted the cards life gave him. He had always been like that, even before it all happened. “We have had a long night. We should focus on nicer things,” he said. And before she could protest, he swayed his hand over hers. “There’s so much to show you.”

  The three of us gathered around her, lying across the floor like Neanderthals. We had been waiting for her to come back for decades. In the grand scheme of things, it might not have seemed that long. But she was a godsend. She broke through the barrier when no one else would. “You woke us,” I said to Cadmar’s dismay. He didn’t want to get into the heavy stuff, but she deserved to know, and I knew she could handle bits and pieces if we started slow.

  She perked up, leaning forward on her kneecaps. Taking my hand, she squeezed and gave the sexiest smile I had ever seen. Her eyes even seemed to glow in her excitement. “I remember!” she exclaimed. “There was a rock or something. And blue electricity. Your eyes opened. It was all so peculiar. My father never talked to me about it. For the longest time, I thought it might have been a dream.”

  “It was no dream,” Mag said.

  Every single day. Every single night. Hour after fucking hour, we’d waited for her. We knew it would take time. She was far too young to jump back in. The effects would have destroyed her brain had she tried. Now, she was a grown woman. She was tall, curvy, and capable. Her eyes were a healing heather green. Not to mention, she had the most delectable scent imaginable. She was the most exquisite creature I had ever laid my eyes on, and it wasn’t due to my years of anticipation either.

  “What if I told you this place, this world, was engineered?” I asked her.

  I could feel the burning of Cadmar and Mag’s eyes, but I didn’t care. The more I told her, the more attention she gave. And the more she knew, I thought, the more she would want to help us.

  She shook her head in disbelief. “I’d tell you it is an impossibility. There is no architect with such genius.”

  A tear ran down Cadmar’s cheek. I tried not to look at him, but it broke my fucking heart. “There was,” I said, staring right at him. “He was the best damn architect this world has ever seen.”

  “No,” Cadmar said, gritting his teeth. “He wasn’t.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Mag growled and flexed his forearms.

  Cadmar wasn’t shutting anything. “The architect abused a naturally occurring phenomenon. It was a complete accident this place was made.”

  The glow in her eyes intensified. She needed to know more, and she practically fell into his arms with curiosity. “My God,” she muttered a few times, incredulously. “It was you.”

  “We don’t need to talk further,” Mag said, angrily.

  She ignored the brute and focused on Cadmar. “You were the one who made this place,” she said.

  Tears welled in his eyes, but he did not let himself cry any more. She didn’t know the half of it. He’d punished himself for years. It had been quite some time since he’d mentioned his experiments. Even I was interested in hearing about it, despite how much it hurt me.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said. “You have to understand. Things were different on earth then.”

  Sweat compounded on her forehead as her eyes tried to read his. She began putting the pieces together as much as she could. “You’re not aliens.”

  I smirked. “Nor are we monsters.”

  She looked at the ground with embarrassment. Clearly, she had thought hard about what we were, but I couldn’t blame her. At times, we could seem like massively terrifying brutes. All we wanted to do was show her we could be normal.

  “You’re human,” she said, eyes suddenly watering. “I’m so sorry. How could I be so stupid?”

  Mag shifted uncomfortably. Out of the three, he was someone who dealt with what happened the worst. Chance brought him here. Or, maybe, it was a terrible trick of fate. If everything went according to plan, he could be walking freely on earth without a care in his heart. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “The myths surrounding this place are enticing. Incredible giants, psychological effects, and of course, the idea that, at the center, is a place where all of your wildest wishes come true... the only thing that’s true is the fact we’ve lost ourselves to madness.”

  I looked down, but it angered me. I didn’t care how real his statement was. It hurt to hear. “We have evolved,” I said.

  “Whatever you want to call it,” Mag quipped. “But we know the truth. Some horrible shit has occurred here. We have to own those experiences.”

  Somehow, despite the dark truth, she didn’t leave. Best of all, it didn’t seem like she was here out of self interest. Plenty of people had wandered this terrain in search of some holy-grail-like-object. They were the ones who died with their hearts frozen in their chests. Their electrons would never be able to disintegrate. They were truly lost to the sands of time.

  “I’m not giving up on this expedition,” she said, heart so full it made me feel hopeful. “I thought I came here to help earth. I thought this discovery would transform the scientific community, government— the people.”

  “The ones with power cannot be bargained with,” Mag said. “And the people turn their backs on the ones in need. You are different because your life started with the image of our suffering.”

  For a long time, she sat and wept. I held her, along with the others, and I felt her grief. I bonded with her psyche and experienced her memories as her, the girl I had wondered so often about. I saw how the experience left her groundless. The fear that struck her heart forced her into a world of unknowns. Her parents drifted away. The one lover she had opened her heart to never listened, never cared. She left to find us, and though I was grateful, it broke my fucking heart.

  She was the girl who fixed us. But a part of me wished she didn’t have to be. I just hoped we could give back an ounce of the joy she had given us.

  “I can’t go back home,” she said, tears falling near her feet. Her mouth tensed as she swallowed, and her eyes wavered between the others and mine. “I can’t go back there to those people. Not after what they did to you.”

  I didn’t want to tell her more, but I had to tell her this one thing. “Adeline, you can’t stay here.”

  Her expression changed from sadness to defiance. “You can’t make me go back there.”

  We had come to the predicament I had been anticipating with dread. I wasn’t in the position to make her do anything, but I
sure as hell wasn’t going to let her kill herself. “The effects of this place are too much strain. You could die,” I said.

  “Could? She will die,” Cadmar said.

  Frantically, she looked around the tent. Her eyes fixated on the lab tech logo above our heads. “You didn’t die,” she said. “You made it through everything.”

  Flashbacks to our horror show. I remember walking into my team’s laboratory with its stark white lighting, the clean smell of iodine and butanoic acid. I remember smiling with absolute satisfaction. We’d found a new energy source. Cadmar had made something from nothing. We all had a purpose. Together, we were going to change the world.

  The trials took longer than expected. Test subjects were erratic and ill-tempered. When they stepped into the dark and ominous light, the gateway as it was called, their bodies seized up. Their bones twisted and cracked. The noises were horrible, but the images we were forced to document were even worse. Some of their bodies popped like overblown balloons. Blood splattered and lined the walls. Their entrails expunged from their mouths. Our laboratory, once divine and sacred, was now a horror show.

  “I was sure we’d found the gateway into hell,” I whispered, nearly choking on my words. Knowing my words confused her, I continued. “Not everyone can enter. Many tried, but the effects are too strong for some.”

  “This is how we know you are different,” Cadmar said. “Strong like us.”

  “But we have not completed the proper tests to know if you will be safe,” I added.

  “Even if you were, you’d change forever. Like us. You’d lose your mind,” Mag muttered.

  “I don’t care. When I’m home, I feel like a tourist. I want to stay here with you. We can make this work,” Adeline said.

  She was acting so naive, it was hard to argue with. As a clearly accomplished scientist, she knew the data pointed against her making a home here. But she wasn’t the only one behaving in this fashion. We were just as naive to think we could leave.

  “There is a place near here. Approximately thirty-three miles to the south. There is, in fact, an exit there,” Mag said.