Korzak's Mate: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Tarnen Warrior Mates Book 1)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Cyborg’s Captive Preview
Vixa Moon
Roxeanne Rolling
Korzak’s Mate
A Sci-Fi Alien Romance
Vixa Moon
Copyright © 2017 by Vixa Moon
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Cyborg’s Captive Preview
Vixa Moon
Roxeanne Rolling
1
Korzak
The wind howls around us we climb Mount Kavkor. The freezing gusts chill me to the bone. It’s so strong that I have to fight each gust with all my strength.
Each gust threatens to knock one of us over. We haven’t lost anyone yet to the wind, but it’s common for someone to die on oracle quests. These trips are very dangerous.
I can barely see three feet in front of me. The wind picks up the snow and swirls it through the air. The icy particles sting my eyes.
My skin is bare. I wear a simple loincloth and nothing else. No furs, and no thermo-suit.
My skin screams out in pain from the cold. We Tarnens are resistant to extreme climates. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain.
We’ve simply learned through training how to not only control the pain, but to enjoy it, to savor it.
The pain on my skin feels incredible. The pain makes me feel a sensation of power running through my entire body. I feel like I can conquer anything, overcome any obstacle.
I take deep breaths of the icy air. The cold sears my lungs, but I love the feeling.
A thermo-suit would keep me at the ideal temperature, regulating everything perfectly. But those aren’t for oracle quests. No, these trips are a test of strength, a test of character.
My provisions are simple, the bare necessities I need for survival. I carry them in an ancient rucksack slung over my shoulder. Inside it, I have some food, an extra knife, and a simple fire starter kit.
All the water I need to drink I will create myself by melting snow over a fire. I will drink it from my hands, as so many before me have done. Our species, the Tarnens, don’t require much water anyway.
Today, I am twenty Tarnan years old and sixty days. On my twentieth birthday, I received permission from the high council to go and seek the oracle.
Only by visiting the oracle will I know who my mate for life is. Only by visiting the oracle will I ever find peace in this warrior’s life. Only by visiting the oracle will I find the woman that I must fight and die to protect.
There are six of us in the party, including myself. We have all recently turned twenty years old, and we are all on a mission together to visit the oracle to find our mates. We seek our fate in the oracle.
But vising the oracle is only the beginning of the mission. The oracle will only tell us who the woman is that we are fated to be with. The oracle will show us her face. The rest is up to us.
The journey to the oracle is dangerous. We’ve already been traveling by foot for sixty days. We’ve hunted and scavenged for our food. We’ve traversed jungles and deserts, and now we enter the mountain ranges in the north, the frozen spikes that jut miles and miles into the sky. But the journey after the oracle, to find our mate—that can be the most dangerous of all.
Mates sometimes exist on Tarnen itself. But those are rare. Our Tarnan history is filled with stories of great warriors who traveled to the edges of the galaxy to find their mates. There are those who even traveled father. The greatest journeys that any Tarnan ever accomplished were all driven by the same principle—to find their mate.
I lead the group. Tornhak, Mekzen, Vikzak, Bozn, and Thlok follow behind me in a single-file line. We don’t speak. The wind is too loud, for one thing, screaming over any words we might like to utter.
We’re almost here. I can sense it. There are no maps on oracle quests. There are no guidelines. I simply feel the directions in my bones. Tarnens have been traveling to the Mount Kavkor oracle for millennia, and over the generations, the instructions seem to be carried in our genes, in our blood, and in our bones.
Shielding my eyes from the snow, I suddenly see an outcropping of rock.
We are almost to the summit of the mountain.
I gesture to TWO behind me to follow me.
There’s a small opening in the ice-covered rock.
TWO is right behind me. I smell his strong musky scent. He motions to THREE behind him.
We have found the oracle. I am sure of it.
I can see that TWO senses it too.
I take off my rucksack in order to squeeze myself between the icy rock. It’s pitch-black inside, and the temperature is just as frigid as outside.
I feel along the rock wall for a torch that I know is there. In the blackness, I fish into my rucksack for my fire starter kit, and I strike a spark against the torch.
A moment later, the torch flares. Flickering light dances across the ice-covered rock walls.
TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, and SIX have entered the cavern.
We stand in a circle. Each of us has a torch now. Our bodies are tired, but our minds are set to our goal. Each of us desires our future mate with every fiber of being. Our mate-quest is our entire existence.
“Companions,” I say, my voice booming. “We have come far, and there is farther left to go.”
“We will journey and we will fight,” comes the ritualistic chant from my companions.
“And we will suffer,” I shout.
“We will suffer,” comes the reply. “For what is ours.”
“The oracle will guide us,” I shout.
“The oracle will guide us!”
We travel through the caverns. The passageways are thin and narrow, but the ceilings are high.
I lead the way, my companions following close behind.
After hours of traveling through the caverns, we have finally come to the oracle room.
The room is a cavernous chamber, dug away with rudimentary tools. The celling is high and the room seems to stretch forever. The light from our torches doesn’t reach the walls.
On the rock floor, there is a roughly-hewn hole.
I am the first to approach. After all, I have the highest status of the group. Technically, I’m a prince.
My companions stand aro
und me in a circle, holding their torches high. Their bodies are huge, muscular, mostly naked, and they are covered in patches of ice and snow. Their long hair is matted with ice.
As a Tarnan, I have no fear. I walk slowly towards the hole.
On my hands and knees, I lean my head over the cavernous hole and peer into the dark depths.
At the bottom of a lengthy shaft, there is a rudimentary computer. This is the oracle, installed long ago by some mysterious force that we Tarnens do not know the identity of.
The computer flashes neon green and black static. A moment later, it shows me a face.
It’s the face of the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
She’s a humanoid, like me. She has delicate features and long dark hair, thick and luscious, that reaches past her neck.
The image zooms out, showing her entire body.
She has curves like I’ve never seen before.
Confronted with her beauty, I take a deep breath of frigid air in surprise.
“Olivia Masters, Terrestrial Earth, System 44,” reads the lettering below her image.
She is my mate. Olivia Masters is my mate. I will protect her with all my strength and power. I will fight and die for her. If I don’t, I am not a Tarnan. If I don’t, I am nothing.
All I have to do now is find her.
I rise to my feet, feeling renewed with new strength.
I nod to my companions, who nod back.
Now I am on my own. That is how this pilgrimage works. We travel here together, and when we learn the identity of our mates, we part ways.
I will travel back to the capitol, where my father lives, and where I grew up. There, I will take my ship, the Verdant Falcon, and travel to System 44 in search of Olivia Masters.
2
Olivia
It’s been a long week, and an even longer month.
My boyfriend of four years broke up with me four weeks ago. Todd said he just didn’t see the relationship going anywhere. And the saddest part was that I had to agree.
On paper things looked good, but there just wasn’t that special spark.
One week ago, I got laid off from my job as a paralegal.
I’m not going to be on the streets. There’s always more paralegal work to be found, but I just don’t have the energy to start an exhaustive job search. The breakup took everything out of me. Or so I thought. Then came the layoff.
They didn’t lay me off in a particularly nice way, either. One morning, as I was checking my email before work, I got a message simply saying not to come in today, that my job had been “restructured.”
Restructured? What does that even mean? Over the years, I’ve gotten used to corporate mumbo jumbo, but this is beyond anything I’ve seen before.
So it’s noon, and I’ve just gotten out of bed for the first time.
Breakfast is cookies and cream ice cream, the only thing that my body apparently wants me to eat now.
I sink down onto my couch, holding my bowl of ice cream carefully. I should be updating my resume. I should be cold calling legal firms.
But my first order of business today is to cue up another episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I was never into Star Trek before, but in my post-breakup doldrums, I found myself glued to episode after episode.
Who would have thought I could ever be a Trekkie?
I’m already on the fifth season, and the show just keeps getting better and better.
My sleep-bleary eyes scan over the summary for the episode. It says something about a game and Wesley Crusher.
Groan. Wesley Crusher is probably the only part of Star Trek that I don’t like.
Suddenly, without warning, there’s a tremendous noise outside.
It sounds like some kind of car accident. Something heavy has collided with something else. Maybe it was a tractor trailer.
I rent an old small farm house. The farm is no longer in use, and the owner has been trying to sell the land for the last five years. All they have to do is work out some family disputes about who gets how much money, and then the beautiful open land next to my little house will be turned into a development of McMansion starter castles.
There aren’t many houses around me. There’s really no one for miles.
My heart starts pounding in my chest when I think of the people who might be injured in the crash.
But in a weird way, I’m a little relieved—finally, after a week of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I have something to do. Maybe I can help them.
I’m wearing some tight leggings that I like to sleep in, and an old t-shirt that I got at some state fair my parents dragged me to at least ten years ago. It’s quite the change from the super professional skirt and button-up that I always wore to the office.
But this outfit will have to do in an emergency.
I rush out the front door, where the noon sun greets me.
Wearing my slippers, I rush off towards the road, where I assume the crash must have happened.
I ignore the driveway, and take the shortcut through the tall grasses that swish as I run through them.
The road isn’t far, and I can see it from where I am as I approach. There’s nothing there, but maybe it happened a little ways down the road, just past where the trees start and the view is blocked.
But when I reach the road, I look up and down, and there’s nothing there.
I stand here, perplexed.
I know I heard something. Something very, very loud. What could cause that other than some kind of truck accident?
There’s a swishing sound behind me. It’s a strange sound, unlike anything I’ve heard before.
I spring around, looking for the source.
There’s nothing there, except a brief bright blue flash in my peripheral vision.
What in the world is that?
Someone grabs me from behind. Impossibly strong arms seize me. One of them is around my neck.
I cry out.
“Help! Help!”
Horrible guttural noises come from somewhere. They sound otherworldly, alien.
I’m panicking. My heart rate skyrockets. My vision goes into a tunnel. The adrenaline is rushing through me.
My instincts kick in. I jam my elbow back into whoever grabbed me.
It doesn’t do anything.
The only thing I hear is laughter. But it’s not normal laughter. It doesn’t even sound like human laughter.
I’ve definitely been watching too much Star Trek. Do I really think that an alien is trying to kidnap me or something?
More guttural noises. It definitely sounds like a language, just not any language I’ve ever heard before.
I still can’t see my captor, but as I struggle, his arm briefly flashes into my line of sight.
And it’s not a normal arm.
It’s blue.
Wait, that can’t be right. There’s just no way.
Maybe it’s just a shirt or something.
I’ve definitely been watching too much Star Trek.
But then again, a blue arm, a weird guttural language—it sure sounds like aliens.
OK, I’m definitely going crazy, I guess.
I struggle as best I can, but my arms are completely locked down against my sides. Whoever is holding me from behind is incredibly strong. And I’m no wimp. I work out, or used to, before I fell into this Star Trek binge watching depressive episode.
There’s movement across the road. Something is emerging from the trees across the street.
I can’t believe my eyes for a moment.
It’s a man, but he’s not like any man I’ve ever seen before.
I’m still held firmly in place, unable to move, by my attacker.
The man across the street is huge, at least seven feet tall. He’s muscular, and wearing clothing like I’ve never seen before. It looks like some mix of medieval armor with modern technology. The armor bristles with threatening spikes. The armor flashes with little lights that dance across i
t.
He walks swiftly and confidently right towards me and my attacker.
I can’t believe my eyes. There’s a chance he’s wearing some kind of blue makeup, but it looks so real.
He’s definitely not human. His eyes are jet black and strange. His hair is long and wiry, falling crazily down past his shoulders. He looks unkempt, like some kind of savage.
On his belt is something that looks like a huge ax. And something that looks unmistakably like a large gun.
As he approaches, I can smell him, a horrible smell like an animal.
He speaks to the man holding me, using their guttural language.
He has something in his hand, and he holds it up to me. It looks like a can of aerosol, except that it’s covered in strange alien characters. And a ring around the bottom is lit up fluorescent purple.
Almost in slow motion, I see him press a button on top of the canister.
I smell something strange, chemical.
I black out, losing consciousness completely.
3
Korzak
Being the son of a Tarnan leader has its benefits. Being a prince has its benefits.
The ship I’m piloting isn’t any normal Tarnan ship. It’s state-of-the-art, the kind of ship you normally only get the chance to fly if you’re in a secret branch of the military.
My ship, the Verdant Falcon, may not look pretty on the outside, but its engines are better than almost anything else on Tarnen. Its weapons and shields are a match for nearly anything we Tarnens know of. Except of course the CAT, whose weapons and armaments are as sophisticated as our own.
The CAT are our sworn enemy, committed to wiping every last Tarnan from the face of our glorious planet. They are committed to stopping our reproduction, preventing us from reaching our fated mates. What they lack in intelligence, they make up for with their brutish nature.