Warriors Of Cadir (A Sci Fi Alien Romance Collection)

by Maia Starr

  “Aw, Korus, that hurts,” she said, mocking a sad face and slapping her hand over her heart. “Oh, and there's one more thing,” she said.

  I sighed. “Don't make me beg, Naxra.”

  “But you look so cute doing it,” she teased.

  “What is it?” I snapped.

  “The council wants you home.”

  I shook my head. “They'll kill me; you know that.”

  “Not if you bring the girls,” she specified.

  “No,” I said.

  “You're saying you don't trust the council?” she shouted with mock-surprise.

  “I'm saying I don't trust you,” I swallowed, watching her carefully.

  She laughed. “And yet you plan on bringing me five girls by the end of tomorrow. Wow, you must really…love her.”

  “And here I thought you hated human words,” I breathed.

  She waved me off.

  “Tomorrow,” she repeated, snapping her finger at me. “And don’t worry. I’ll take good, good care of your precious Brooklyn until then.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Brooklyn

  Warnings are in place for a reason.

  Rules aren’t meant to be broken, and the thought behind the city-wide curfew being a protection was so very real.

  The only problem was, when you live alone, nobody is there to remind you to look out for yourself.

  The last thing I remembered I was stretched out on the couch, overwhelmed and hurt. I could feel the sadness welling up in a painful ball in my throat. Before it had the chance to bubble forth, I raced up and grabbed my raincoat, throwing it on quickly and storming outside the same way Korus had done.

  The weather outside was cold, with furious spring rain washing down the roads and flooding the sidewalks. Dirt and small debris floated down the roads as the sky darkened.

  I wasn't sure if I had left to find Korus or to be alone, but the outcome would have been the same either way.

  I made my way to Glenhome Avenue, site of my favorite cafe, and felt a hand on my shoulder. I'd fooled myself into thinking it was Korus. Maybe he just happened to see me and was going to apologize. But the hand on my shoulder wasn't him. It was a Parduss.

  A yelp left my body as a man I didn't recognize sunk his claws into my shoulder and fought me to the ground. It wasn't hard for him to get ahold of me since I was going into shock. At first, I thought I was being robbed, but then I saw the red scaling that scattered across his body and then I knew. This was an abduction.

  I screamed out frantically, but there was no one there to help. Or maybe there was simply no one willing to help.

  The next thing I knew I was in a cold blue room with smooth walls and a single bed. I knew from the emblems scattered around the room that we must have been in a spaceport, but I couldn't identify which one.

  "Hello?" I called out stupidly. Nothing like letting the enemy know you're awake. My voice was groggy, and my shoulder was still bleeding, scratch marks trailing down my wounds.

  I jumped back when I looked around, seeing a muscular guard. He stood in front of the doorway with no weapon, which to me was more frightening than if he were holding a gun.

  “Where am I?” I asked, my throat dry and hoarse.

  The man, or…alien, looked at me and raised his brow, a small smirk creeping up the corner of his mouth. “You’re on your way home.”

  I sat upright and pushed myself up, using the wall as leverage to stand. “And where’s that?” I asked.

  He breathed smugly through his nose and simply said, “Home.”

  “To your planet?” I said.

  “That’s right!” he chirped.

  I nodded, disheartened. “To do what?” I swallowed.

  “To do whatever I say,” he laughed.

  “Why are you doing this?” I cried, pressing myself hard into the wall as though I could crash through it somehow and escape. “Why are you helping them? What did they promise you?”

  “Helping them?” he said and turned slightly, revealing the shimmering scales that ran down his neck and the thick wings that protruded from his spine. “I am them.”

  I made an audible gasp, and I could feel the tears filling my eyes. The guard was half man, half Parduss. I had never heard of such things before; his wings were large but held tight against his body, and he had no tail.

  My body began to tremble, and I turned my face from him.

  “I’m bleeding,” I managed to shake out.

  The guard looked over at me with little interest. “I can make that worse for you, if you’d like.”

  No sympathy from this jerk; my arm was aching, throbbing in pain from where I’d been attacked. I grabbed it and tried to apply pressure. “I’m a doctor,” I stammered out. “Let me bandage my injury, and I won’t go anywhere, I swear.”

  “I believe that,” he said in a tone that indicated just the opposite.

  “How many others are here?” I asked, wondering if I was the only one who was kidnapped.

  The half-being didn’t speak to me then and I sunk back to the cold floor beneath me, gripping my arm close. If I weren’t in such agony, I would have attacked him.

  Or, at least, that’s what I hoped I would have done if I was well enough. The truth was, I was terrified just sitting there, so the odds that I would have had the courage to run up and try and fight that thing were pretty much impossible.

  The next twelve hours were a blur. I laid on the floor and cried, tears streaming down my face against my will. What started out as solemn, frightened tears eventually turned into all-out sobs as I curled up on the shining tiles. The guard barely noticed.

  When I woke up the next morning, the guard was gone and a new Parduss was stepping in through the vertical sliding doors.

  She had long, ice-blonde hair and blue eyes that were so pale they looked clear. She stepped in with regal grace, and I almost would have thought she was human until I saw the spines and scales that danced around her armor-clad body.

  “You the medic?” she said impatiently, staring down at me.

  I nodded, and she held her hand out for me to grab. I let her help me up and winced in pain as the movement jolted through my injured shoulder.

  “You’re needed,” she said and began to lead me outside.

  Her grip on me was firm, and I was so weak from losing blood that I didn’t even try to run. I looked down at my hand that was stained with dried, red blood and then around the narrow, cold hallway of the spaceport. It was government, that’s for sure, but there were no humans in sight.

  We passed by a door that was sealed shut, and I could hear a woman screaming for help.

  So I wasn’t the only one they’d captured.

  The ice-haired general took me outside to the runway, a vast

  The spaceport had mounted turrets around the area that were probably meant for invasions just like this. I could see the Parduss had soldiers stationed at each one.

  In the middle of the black tarmac was a heaving, wheezing yellow dragon. It had bright wings, stout legs, and a long neck. Stony looking spikes flanked down its back, a darker yellow than the rest of it.

  My whole body started shaking as we approached. The side of the creature was cut open and quickly oozing blood.

  I swallowed in terror and the white-haired woman let go of me, flinging my wrists forward as if to station me in front of the dragon.

  Turning my head to her, I said, “What do you want me to do?”

  The woman handed me a first aid kit. If I weren’t so terrified, I might have started to laugh. I took the bag into shaking hands and walked up to the dragon as though I was on a death march.

  I set my jaw, looking up at the immense beast. I wondered if that was what it was like when Alexandra met the Parduss for the first time, or if they had shifted into their more human forms.

  “Can she shift?” I asked the general, and she tilted her chin up.

  “He,” she corrected.

  I nearly rolled my eyes. “Can he sh
ift into human form? I don’t know how I can stitch this up if he doesn’t.”

  The woman looked up at the creature and yelled something loud and foreign to him.

  With that, the creature began its transformation. The process was so slow that I began to feel anxious just watching. Its wings folded back with effort, pulling themselves close to its body and then snapped and fusing into the man’s spine.

  He lay on the tarmac completely naked, yellow-scaled and emaciated. His tail was still lingering behind, unable to fully transform and it smacked and slipped against the ground like an animal in pain.

  I swallowed hard and reached into the kit. My fingers were shaking so violently I almost couldn’t thread the needle to stitch him up.

  “This will hurt a little,” I warned and then began to push the pin through his flesh, in one side and out the other, pulling the flesh close together in a uniform zipper.

  The gash in his side stretched from hip to rib across his spleen. I tried to disinfect the area as best I could, but I couldn’t say how he might recover.

  While threading the wound, I looked up at the woman who brought me here, almost indignant as I said, “I heard you’re supposed to be rare.”

  “Of course you did,” she said evenly.

  “Is that true?” I asked.

  She tilted her head from side to side, weighing her options. “Yep,” was all she came out with.

  “You’re very pretty,” I said, looking down again.

  She raised her chin to me again, studying me. “That’s an odd thing to say.”

  I swallowed. “You’re also very rude.”

  “That’s a brave thing to say,” she said in the same inflection, though smiled this time.

  “What happened to him?” I asked, focusing my attention back on my patient.

  “What? You want to know if your little soldiers hurt him?” She scoffed. “Not a chance.”

  “One of you, then?” I said curiously. If it wasn’t my people who took him down, then it had to be one of their own.

  “Does it matter?” she asked, suddenly sounding genuinely curious as to the answer. “Medically, does it matter?”

  “No, I don’t suppose it does,” I snapped.

  “Then do what you were asked to do,” she hissed and cocked her head to the side to get a better look at what I was doing.

  My hands were still shaking as I tried weakly to stitch him up. I could tell there wouldn’t be enough thread to finish the job, so I was trying to do wide connections.

  “Please let me go,” the words rang out of my mouth before I even had a chance to stop them.

  “Just keep stitching,” the woman said.

  Then a thought occurred to me. What if I just…stopped?

  With that simple phrase my hands frozen and for all my strength I couldn’t make them continue to stitch him together. The Parduss cried out in pain, and I set my jaw, dropping the needle and looking up at the woman who was clearly in charge.

  “What's wrong?” she said in a panic, her brows narrowing furiously. “What are you doing?”

  “I want to be let out. Or he dies,” I snapped, standing up and facing her.

  The woman gnashed her teeth together and gave me a wicked look. “You humans really love to make things complicated,” she sighed and looked around at the other soldiers who were out on the tarmac. They looked worried, but she wouldn’t show any emotion. “How long's he got?” she asked.

  “Minutes, if I don't finish right now,” I answered honestly.

  The alien shifter looked at me, her silver and pale blue scales shimmering under the sunlight. In one single movement, she shrugged and kicked the bag of supplies across the runway. “Let him die then,” she snapped.

  The sound of the supplies crashing against her boot caused the lot of us to jump back in surprise. My heart was racing nonstop. I looked up at the strange woman and wondered what kind of horrible group she led if she was willing to let one of her men die.

  But, that was fine by me. One less Parduss was one less monster to ruin our lives as far as I was concerned.

  And then I looked down at him again, wheezing and crying out in pain. I thought about the oath I took as a doctor and wondered if this nonbiased practice could stretch out to kidnappers and foreigners. The longer I thought it, the more anxious I felt.

  “Son of a bitch,” I whispered through gritted teeth and grabbed the needle, hurrying my pace into the beast and sewing him up with haste.

  “Aw, that's cute! She can't let him die!” one of the male shifting Venerem yelled, laughing to one of his associates. “Humans!” he snorted.

  “Shut up,” the white Parduss female said firmly, and the man immediately quieted. She crouched down to me, watching my stitching. “What do you need?” she asked, softening just a bit.

  “More thread,” I snapped, completely hostile as she set another spool in my hand.

  I stitched him tighter this time. It took a few more minutes until the wound closed together and all the while I just pretended like he was any other patient of mine. Trying to put out of my head that he was an alien.

  “He can’t transform,” I warned the woman now standing beside me. “If he does, it’ll burst.” Then I stood, handing her the needle and thread. “It needs to be disinfected with the wipes in that pack you kicked, every morning and every night.”

  The woman swallowed, “Alright.”

  With that, she grabbed my arm and took me back to my makeshift cell, guarding me in silence. It felt like there had been a shift in the air since this time it was the woman who was guarding me, and she seemed…special, somehow.

  I tried to remain stoic, to earn some respect from her, but eventually, the tears came. Lack of food and the loss of blood in my arm was breaking me down.

  It took almost an hour, but the woman eventually moved toward me. She handed me a first aid box and watched me with calculation as I began to disinfect my wound.

  “My name is Brooklyn.”

  I don’t know why I said it, but there it was. My first, formal introduction to the Parduss.

  “Naxra,” she said. “Why'd you do it?”

  I set the bandages against the wounds on my shoulder, pressing them tightly and then wrapping a new set of gauze around the area. “What, save him?”

  She nodded, still standing before me and kicking her feet impatiently. “Yeah,” she said.

  “It's my job,” I said mechanically. I looked up at her, and she shook her head, disbelieving. Then I finished, “And, I guess I hope that you'll remember that I did something for you once and repay the favor.”

  “Ah,” she said, and it was the first sign of a smile I saw from the beautiful woman. “And what favor might that be?”

  “I don't know yet,” I said.

  Naxra stared and then laughs a beautiful, feminine laugh. “Brokering deals already. I like that.”

  “So…is it true what they say about you?” I said, looking up at her meekly.

  She leaned against the back wall and extended a booted foot against the wall behind her. “That I am as stunning as I am strong?” she joked with a cocked brow.

  I was taken aback by her sudden humor and cleared my throat. Something about her demeanor was different now. Enough to make me feel comfortable enough to lay back.

  “The females are dying?” I asked, echoing Korus’ statements from days earlier.

  “Not entirely,” she said, moving her hand in a ‘kinda/sorta’ gesture.

  “Oh,” I breathed and waited for her to continue.

  Reluctantly, she did. “There was a virus going around a long time ago. Some of the pregnant ones died. Those who were left were made sterile. So, you're kind of right.”

  I swallowed, feeling dizzy as I stared up at the ceiling. “And that's why you're taking the women back with you?”

  She winked and made a clicking noise with her cheek. “You guessed it.”

  So that was what they wanted my sister for. I desperately wanted to ask about her,
but I didn’t want to give myself a weakness in front of her. “You know, if you took back some doctors or scientists, they might be able to help your people.”

  “And look here, a doctor just for me!” she laughed. My face fell at the statement, realizing that as nice as she was now acting, I was still her prisoner. My lip began to tremble, and she must have seen it because she said, “Alright, alright, look, since I don't hate you, why don't I show you where you're going? Least I can do.”

  I sat up, curious if she was going to let me out of the room. Instead, she took a disc projection out from the ammo belt around her waist and clicked it on. The 3D projection came out in a life-like rendered model of a beautiful green and brown planet.

  “That's Cadir?” I asked.

  “That's home,” she said with a nod. “Complete with a host of problems, a dying race, and plenty of assholes.”

  I made an amused noise and raised my brows. “Sounds a lot like here.”

  The woman looked at me pointedly and then smirked. Clearly, I had amused her.

  Naxra stretched the projection with her fingers and narrowed in on a sky city set on top of a great, thin spire. The futuristic cityscapes were built in tiers with rushing waterfalls cascading throughout the land.

  It was…surprisingly beautiful.

  “That's where you're going,” she said, zooming in further on the floating city district. The lights of the buildings were glowing a pale purple and looked almost ethereal.

  “So you don't…kill us?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Well,” she shrugged, snapping the device closed and tucking it safely back into her belt. “Some haven't been so cooperative, and they've had to go bye-bye, but, mostly they do as they're told.”

  “Some died?” I asked, my heart sinking.

  “Yeah,” she said with a sarcastic, almost humorous tone. “That's what I said.” She paused. “But don't worry, you'll be fine since, you know, now I’ll have your back.”

  I blinked and looked down into my hands, facing my palms upward and inspecting them quietly.

  “Hey! Not for nothing!” Naxra pushed my shoulder jovially. “You're just lucky you made yourself useful, got it?”