Alien Enslaved IV: Spoils of War

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  The scream—well, she could relate to that, or at least the shock that prompted it—to a degree—but, however young she was, she was full grown. She should have developed some survival instincts in this time—or been eliminated from the gene pool. She should have known better than to scream like that. Aside from everything else, they were in a situation where getting in the habit of setting off false alarms could get a person killed.

  Young and stupid—as in, no life experience to speak of.

  That wasn’t an ideal combination in a survival situation.

  She’d probably end up getting somebody else killed, though.

  She looked absolutely furious at the insult and Lori wondered for a few moments if she was going to stalk over and assault their companion, but apparently she thought better of it.

  She wasn’t completely stupid after all!

  It was at that point that Lori discovered two things.

  The female looked familiar.

  As in, she was abruptly almost positive it was the same bitch that had made the nasty comments about her flirting and causing the fight in the ‘exercise yard’ before when they were thrown together in the crate.

  She was more certain when the girl met her gaze, very briefly, and then looked away guiltily.

  Her second discovery was when she looked across the open courtyard.

  That was when she realized they weren’t as totally cut off from the males as she’d thought.

  At least a dozen heads had appeared above the rim of the wall that was segregating them.

  Drawn no doubt by the screams of distress of the female.

  The naked, dripping female that looked barely legal.

  Not that they would know anything about that!

  She didn’t think.

  “I’m May, by the way,” their new companion offered as the threesome settled down again. “Reckon why they separated us?”

  Jill shrugged. “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I wouldn’t have made it long in the situation we were in before. I couldn’t get to the food or the water.”

  “You were in the middle of the food war?” Lori asked sharply, wondering if she should revise her suspicion that Jill was a newer addition to the pickup. Maybe she’d just been in a different crate?

  For all she knew, there could be hundreds of women captives. Humans.

  The area was huge. It might be a great deal bigger than what she could see, divided up with other captives kept in different sections.

  Or there could be other levels.

  Because now that that had occurred to her and she looked around, it seemed to her that it didn’t look the same, that it wasn’t just a new arrangement, but they might be in a completely different place.

  Because it seemed to her that there had been a suggestion of a curve to the far wall she’d thought must be the outer wall.

  She didn’t know how likely that was, but it certainly wasn’t impossible.

  She had no idea how long they might have been unconscious. It could’ve been plenty of time for the metal monsters to move them most anywhere.

  Jill grunted. “Run down, actually.”

  May was thoughtful. “I suppose that would explain the change in arrangements. We have some value to them and they could see we weren’t exactly equipped to hold our own.”

  “Maybe,” Lori responded doubtfully. “I’m not convinced they would even have noticed. Although it does seem that they watch us pretty carefully.”

  “Yeah. They were just standing around the gurney staring when they were making the aliens take turns on me,” Jill said angrily.

  That caused a flicker of something Lori was horrified to discover herself feeling.

  Jealousy.

  As in it leapt into her mind to wonder if it was the same men forced to have sex with her and she actually felt resentment to think it might be.

  Well! There was something wrong with her mind for sure!

  It was just wrong on every damned level!

  They had been forced to participate. It wasn’t as if they’d chosen her.

  And then had cheated with other women.

  It wasn’t as if it was anything other than just coupling—for whatever purpose they’d instigated it.

  And then it dawned on her that that was part of what she’d convinced herself was just dreams.

  And it had happened before she’d been taken.

  Before this time, she realized, feeling sick, wondering how many times she’d been ‘taken’ and experimented on.

  “Sooo …. You think it might be about … uh … breeding?” May asked hesitantly. “Because I thought that other bullshit was just … maybe curiosity about our reproduction.”

  So, May, too. Probably all of them.

  “Eeew! I’m not about to screw any of those primitive aliens!” the bitch commented—to her friends, Lori supposed, although she spoke loud enough they could all hear. “I’m not in to bestiality.”

  Anger flooded Lori at the comments.

  As if any of them had a choice!

  It was damned insulting all the way around!

  “I rest my case,” May commented. “Only a complete moron would think she had any options. Well, other than death.”

  “They wouldn’t do that!” the girl said, directly to them that time, making no pretense that she hadn’t been listening to the conversation.

  Lori turned to gape at her in disbelief. She didn’t look like a drooling idiot, but she must be brain dead. “Why wouldn’t they?” she asked, almost curiously, deeply disturbed by the mindset the girl/woman had.

  There was denial.

  And then there was this … female.

  She made a sound of irritation and disbelief. “Because it’s against the law, duh.”

  Lori, Jill, and May exchanged a long look.

  Even the girls sitting with her looked uncomfortable. After shifting uneasily a couple of times, one of them shot to her feet and moved to sit down on the other side of May.

  Her ‘friend’ gaped at her in stunned disbelief. “WTF?”

  The girl stubbornly refused to look her way.

  More from curiosity than to try to change the subject—or stupid’s mind—Lori returned to the earlier, insulting comments. “What makes you think the men are primitives?” she asked.

  The female gave her the duh look. “Long hair, tattoos, piercings—and those nasty looking skin things they’ve attached all over. And then there’s the flapping, skirt-like thing they wear down there.”

  Lori frowned. She supposed she could see the girl’s point—to an extent. Any or all of those points could add up to primitive practices. There wasn’t really anything, that she could see, that was a lot different than she’d seen plenty of people doing on Earth, though, and they certainly didn’t consider themselves primitives. “The loincloths? We don’t even know if that’s theirs. I mean, I sure as hell wasn’t wearing this shapeless thing when I got here—or before.”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t! Anybody can see these aliens are very advanced.”

  “So … they mistook us for primitives?” May asked tightly.

  The woman looked disconcerted, but Lori had to hand it to her, she was damned good at coming up with non-threatening possibilities to support her denial. “They took us because Earth women are beautiful—well some of us—and they needed women that would appeal to the primitives.”

  “Oh my god!” May exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that? Wait! Because it’s stupid?”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Be glad you’re with your posse,” she growled. “Otherwise I’d kick your fat ass.”

  May snorted. “You mean you’d try? Come on, bitch! I’d feel better stomping your skinny ass.”

  Lori put her hand on May’s arm to stop her from getting up. “They gas us every time there’s a problem,” she reminded her. “And move us while we’re unconscious.”

  May stared at her for a long moment and finally settled
back. “Not that I think it’s really going to change anything—they’ll knock us out and move us anytime they feel like it—but I’m starting to like the one I’m with.”

  She craned her neck to look over at the troublemaker. “The primitive, warrior guy.”

  “Debi isn’t so bad,” the ‘friend’ next to them said quietly. “She’s just … crazy scared, I think.”

  All three turned to look at her.

  She smiled faintly. “I’m Eleanor. My friends call me Elly—and I know she has no idea what she’s talking about and I don’t want her to get me killed. So, can I hang with you guys?”

  “Oh honey!” Lori said unhappily. “Not that I don’t think we have a better understanding of what it’ll take to survive. And I don’t mind at all if you hang with us. But nobody can guarantee anything.”

  “Except we’ll do whatever it takes,” May said pointedly.

  “To help,” Jill added, giving May a disapproving look.

  May looked like she might argue, but in the end she just shrugged.

  Because, Lori thought unhappily, it wasn’t likely they could help themselves let alone others.

  Chapter Six

  Jarek was on fire.

  And he was worried.

  He was losing control and worse, he was losing his mind.

  From one moment to the next it seemed his control slipped another notch.

  It was the woman, the one he thought of as the tiny warrior.

  He just was not certain why it was that he had seemed to lose all reason almost from the moment he set eyes on her.

  He was fascinated by her, true.

  Mostly, he thought, because she was so tiny—and yet as beautifully made as any female he had ever seen before—maybe more beautiful.

  The color of her skin, her hair, her eyes were like nothing he had ever seen before and yet, he was not put off by any of those things. Rather, they fascinated, drew him as nothing he had ever experienced.

  Why her?

  Specifically.

  Because he had seen that there were many of them, captured as he and his people had been—slaves bound for whatever task their buyer desired.

  Rage suffused him at that thought.

  Because he could think of only one reason a male might desire to acquire a slave like her and it infuriated him to think of any other male touching her—owning her.

  It made him feel ill with helplessness.

  He hated all of it.

  But mostly he hated what it did to him, the way it turned him into something he barely recognized.

  The fear that it could bring him to his knees was worse.

  Particularly in light of the fact that he would be shamed for nothing, that he would give up the one thing he could never get back for the one thing he wanted most and he would only lose both.

  He shook those thoughts, wondering where they came from.

  Madness?

  Undoubtedly.

  His thoughts were so far from the customs and acceptable social behavior of his people it was if they belonged to someone else.

  It was the woman’s right to choose the male she wanted as a lover and even more importantly as father to her off-spring.

  Although the last was hardest to enforce since the male in spawning was mad with need and not terribly particular about where he spawned so long as he did.

  Which was why, he had to suppose, the female customarily decided. They had the wit to make a logical decision when the male did not.

  The Sheloni were trying to force them to breed on the tiny, pale humans.

  He had resisted. They all had—not because they did not want the females—in his case, certainly, that could not be further from the truth—but because they refused to yield to the species that had enslaved them.

  He had thought it humorous that the Sheloni believed they could control nature, that they could make the Hirachi breed when even the Hirachi had no control over when they entered their spawning cycles.

  He was not nearly as amused as he had been.

  He was, in point of fact, deeply worried that he might be entering his spawning cycle. Even though he was completely certain that he should not be anywhere near the time of spawning.

  That would account for the lack of a will to resist and the illogical path of his thoughts, he knew. And nothing else would.

  And it was a dangerous distraction at a time when he needed his wits about him to have any chance of surviving—of escaping the fate the Sheloni had planned for him.

  He was afraid he would hurt her.

  Or worse.

  A Hirachi female did not lack much in size or strength of being the equal of the males.

  Except during the spawning and at that point their intelligence so far outstripped the male there was no real contest regarding who would win their way.

  They were careful of them, however, because they cherished them, not because they had to be overly concerned that they might break them.

  As was the case with the tiny alien women.

  The little one certainly spirit.

  She had ‘discouraged’ Meena when she had attacked.

  She had also used her weapon to kill three of the Sheloni, blowing the head off of one and then shooting one in the chest and one in the gut even as she fell.

  He thought it was likely that she was strong for her species.

  But it did not take a huge intelligence to see that her bones were frail—tiny like she was, like all of them were.

  If he was in control, in complete possession of his reason, he knew that she was safe with him because he had no desire to cause her any harm.

  But he did not trust his ‘other’ self.

  He could only do his best to subdue the mating urge until the bastards moved her.

  That was his closest approximation of reasoning, at any rate, until it dawned upon him that if the Sheloni removed her, they would be moving her to another warrior—not returning her to the crate where she had been kept before they had decided to attempt to breed her again.

  She was his to breed.

  If he did not breed her then another most assuredly would.

  * * * *

  Lori kept telling herself that the alien warrior sharing her cell was just exerting strenuous self-control by refusing to touch her sexually.

  He hated being controlled by the aliens as badly as she did and he was stubbornly refusing to perform just because he was expected to.

  But it was hard to get it out of her mind that she had been put with him to be bred by the aliens that had taken them and that it could be very bad for both of them if they didn’t comply.

  She didn’t want to die to defend her virtue.

  Not under these circumstances.

  Maybe in another time and place, yes, but there was no cavalry to ride to her rescue here. She was going to have to figure out how to save herself.

  It certainly didn’t hurt that she didn’t find her companion repulsive, that, in point of fact, she’d managed to find a great deal to admire about him in the nights she slept with him.

  Sleep being the operative word.

  His restraint was probably number one even while it frightened and frustrated her and made her worry he just couldn’t bring himself to screw her because he was repulsed.

  His ‘alienness’ still shocked her, and yet she didn’t think she’d ever actually been appalled by it. Unnerved, yes. Especially his size, but she’d gotten used to both and didn’t find either nearly as frightening as the thought of what the grays might do to her next.

  He was protective.

  He’d not only rescued her when she’d nearly choked to death, he allowed her to get close enough to absorb some of his warmth and keep from freezing to death.

  She could tell, unfortunately, that he didn’t want her to get that close.

  What she wasn’t certain of was whether he’d always been that way, from the first, or if her being too close bothered him now because he was trying to refrain from fucking her br
ains out.

  She talked to him.

  He didn’t talk back and, in point of fact, often acted like he had no idea she was yammering.

  She’d begun to wonder if she’d imagined he’d spoken English to her, if her mind had conjured that to reassure her, or give her hope.

  He didn’t want to play the ‘me tarzan, you jane’ game with her so she had no idea what he was called.

  She tried again when the food arrived and they settled on the sleeping platform to share it. “I sure do wish I knew what to call you. It just doesn’t feel right to keep calling you asshole,” she said with a sigh. She held her lump of bread-like food up to study it. “I mean, you always give me a way bigger piece than I need and that’s so generous of you to give me the big piece of ‘tastes like shit’ that I feel like I should call you something nicer.”

  She slid a sideways glance at him to see if he was pretending to ignore her like he usually did and was jolted to discover he was looking right at her.

  Speculatively.

  And there was so much heat in his gaze her mouth and throat dried right up and she thought she was going to choke on the piece of food she had in her mouth.

  Her whole body tensed, responded with so much heat it was as if he’d stroked her rather than simply looked at her.

  She struggled to gather enough moisture to swallow and finally dove for the vessel of water and gulped enough to wash her crumbs down.

  He was frowning at the food in his hand as if surprised to find it there when she glanced at him again and she wondered if she’d totally imagined that heated look.

  She realized she’d completely lost her appetite, but she knew this was all they would get for a full day and she’d be starving later and have nothing to appease it.

  Shaking her focus on her companion, she nibbled at the ‘bread’ until she’d eaten most of it. Then she gave him what she couldn’t eat as she generally did.

  He caught her wrist instead of simply taking the bread as he usually did and she sent him a startled look as he tugged lightly to draw her closer. She didn’t resist, however. She yielded to the tug as if she was hypnotized, without will, allowing him to guide her slowly, gently onto his lap so that she was facing him.

  “Am Jarek, war chief ob de Hirachi peoples ob de Zota tribe.” He settled his hands on the fabric covering her thighs. Faint tremors traveled through them and into her thighs and then her belly, the only indication he gave that he wasn’t completely in control of himself. He stared at his hands on her thighs for a long moment before he met her gaze. “You no want—say.”