by Rosette Lex
Chapter 9: Family Reunion
Tom blinked, startled at May's reflexes and her defiance, and then screwed his lips back up into an ugly grin.
“So there you are, you little whore. I should known you’d still be shacked up with that goddamn foreigner. C’mere! You’re coming home with me.”
She stared at him, and felt a surge, not of fear, but of disdain. What a vile, ugly specimen of a man. And so slow. She dodged another blow, and watched him wince when his fist connected with the tree again. Then she took off back down the hill, heading for the cottage at a dead run.
He lumbered after her, panting like a bear and sometimes roaring after her threats and other things that just didn’t evoke terror in her any more. “I’m gonna beat your ass until nobody can recognize you! You wanna be some foreigner’s whore? He killed two thirds of my boys in town and everyone thinks I blew them up dynamite fishing!”
“Yeah, well, it really does sound like something you’d do,” she pointed out as she dodged around a tree. She felt no fear--no fear at all. “You really come here alone after getting your ass kicked with a crowd of a dozen at your back last time? How drunk are you?”
He bellowed and yanked his pistol from its holster, and she ducked behind another tree. Damn it, she should have waited on the sarcasm until she was closer to the house. Fortunately, he couldn’t chase her and aim at the same time--but the bullets kept biting trees way too close to her head.
“If I don’t get to have you, no way do I let him keep you! Hold still so I can blow out your fucking brains!”
Don’t think so. Damn it. I need a weapon. Corin will notice the trouble soon, I just have to keep moving, but if I only had a damned pistol I could finish this myself!
That was when she spied it, half buried in a drift of needles at the base of one of the pines nearby. Corin’s lost pistol. She lunged for it, two bullets biting the dirt behind her, grabbed it, and ducked behind the tree as another bullet blew chunks of bark off of it.
She held up the pistol and squeezed the grip as she had seen Corin do. The green lights came on...but for some reason they would not turn red for her. She squeezed harder.
“Come on...activate!” Maybe it was coded to only respond to Corin. If that was true, she was in serious trouble.
Corin. He would be so disappointed, so anguished if he came here and found her slain. She had to survive. Even if he had done something to her that she didn’t understand, even if he acted as near-smotheringly attentive as a wolf around a bitch in heat, she couldn’t hurt him like this. Not him. She had to survive. They were together now, she had broken his oath and taken him into her body and heart. She refused to die at the hands of such a miserable enemy, and leave him alone again.
“Gotcha!” Tom ducked around the tree and pointed his pistol, grinning. “Now you stop fussing, drop that popgun and come with me, right now.”
This time she did glimpse what the pistols fired. It was just a shimmer in the air, like a wave rippling through. It caught Tom’s arm with the pistol...and the arm fell into black powder.
Tom screeched and turned to look in horror at Corin standing in front of the cottage, his second pistol aimed and a look of transcendent rage on his face. Her stepbrother kept looking at the stump where everything past his right elbow used to be, and then glancing between the two of them, his horror only growing.
May raised her pistol. The lights were all red now. “Goodbye, Tom,” she said in a wintry voice. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened to say something--a plea, a threat, a last curse, she didn’t know. Or care. She pulled the trigger--and he disappeared.
“Why did you go?” Corin asked softly as they walked back.
“I saw changes in me I did not expect,” she admitted softly, and saw his back stiffen in alarm.
“I don’t know if they’re bad. They don’t feel bad. But they scared me. I didn’t go out there to leave. Just to think by myself for a while.”
Corin looked at her worriedly. “...Changes?”
She lay on the examination table in his medbay, watching apprehensively as he puttered around grabbing instruments and data tablets. Then he came over, parting her robe. He braced himself, eyes closed...then looked down.
Corin’s eyes widened, and he reached out to brush his fingertips over the mark. Her belly fluttered, and she felt the electric tingle grow under his caress. Golden sparks jumped between the mark and his hand, and he caught his breath. “This mark...is a symbiont which we have cultured in our cells for centuries to enhance our abilities. It carries traces of our DNA and is intimately connected with us...it should not have been able to make a home within your body.”
“But here it is.” She looked at the mark, which sat there gleaming placidly, neither painful nor itchy but merely...there. “What will it do to me?”
“I’m...not certain. But if it follows the same course it does with a D’Nari host...you will find yourself enhanced in certain ways, while some of your base instincts and drives...alter slightly. We call it Starweave, and it is interdependent with us. As we have become endangered, so has it, and thus it has adapted by subtly...encouraging...us to mate and bear children. Thus when a compatible male and female with the Starweave symbiont come in contact….” He smiled slowly, his eyes hooding. They had been feeling it for days.
“So that’s what that was. I love loving you, no doubt, and I can’t get enough of you in bed, but that got so intense so fast…”
“The symbiont doesn’t exactly take feelings or comfort into account. It merely survives, and helps us survive. I am sorry if its...assertions...alarmed you.”
“Humans tend to get alarmed when we don’t know what the hell is going on, that’s all.” She touched the mark on her belly again. “Can we figure out how it got there?”
“It is carried in my emission, as part of my genetic code. It should not have been able to take root in someone without any D’Nari DNA, however. That is a mystery I am hoping my scanners will help me solve.”
She closed her eyes and lay back as he worked over her, passing a whirring scanner over her, taking another slide of her blood, taking a skin sample where the symbiont was growing. Then he helped her off the table and she dressed, at least hopeful now that he or the other D’Nari would be able to determine what had happened to her.
That night, she dreamed of vast columned hallways in pale colors and brushed steel, and of a four-mooned sky of soft blue-lavender staring down at a warm and endless sea. Something like small dolphins played in that silvery water.
Robed and armored figures with blond or silver hair walked the hallways, which she knew were part of a great city built out over the placid sea. She walked to the edge of the water, hand braced on one of the columns, and saw one of the little, pastel-colored creatures swim up to her and poke its head out of the water. It chirred at her softly, and she felt a strange warmth inside of her. Where was she? Home, came the sense, and she touched her lower belly gently and felt golden sparks dance against her fingertips.
She woke in Corin’s arms, and saw that his Starweave was shining in the darkness across his shoulders and belly...and that answering gleams rose from her own skin. The warmth inside of her blossomed outward, and she fit herself against him, kissing him awake.
The search party came back the next morning, roaming through the hills with baying dogs.
“Corin,” May said softly as they watched them on the scanners. “They will only keep returning. And your mission’s a success. There’s no reason for me to stay here, and now no reason for you to. Let’s leave, Corin. Maybe your home will be kinder to me than mine.”
He nodded. “I will...speak with the Commander in Chief and receive clearance.”
Late that night, messages started coming in for Corin, the communications room beeping insistently. She heard him giving a report in his own language, his voice livelier and warmer than she had heard it before. The other voice, a woman’s, sounded surprised and pleased. A third was a mechanical-sounding vo
ice, and it rattled off brief statements in answer to queries by the two others. Some of those statements seemed to surprise the others, so that their voices rose. Once Corin sounded so boyishly excited that the woman chuckled gently.
Finally Corin came in, smiling a bit awkwardly. “She...wishes to speak to you.”
“Wow. Uh, I’ll try to make a good impression.” She followed him back to the communications room...where a handsome older D’Nari woman’s face filled one of the screens. The woman wore a delicate pattern of Starweave in the center of her forehead, and her hair was the same shade of silver blond as Corin’s.
“I am Darin,” the woman said very formally, and gave the ghost of a smile.
“Commander in Chief of the D’Nari forces. General Corin has spoken very highly of you. We appreciate your cooperation in this desperate matter. I am willing to grant you a visa to our planetary cluster, which will endow you with the same rights as a citizen for the duration of your stay. In return, we wish your continued cooperation in this program.”
“Thank you, Commander in Chief. I am willing. But...there’s a condition.” Corin looked at her in mild shock, and she looked back at him firmly, then turned her face back to the screen.
“No one interferes between myself and Corin. Not even you. I don’t wish to be separated from him. Transfer his duties planet-side, and you’ve got my full cooperation.”
The ghost of a smile became a real smile, and Corin coughed into his fist. When Darin looked back up from entering something on another touchscreen, she nodded. “Done. You are cleared for takeoff in fifteen minutes, pending full local sensor blackout. The conditions of your cooperation have been accepted, and I will be assigning dual quarters planet-side. Also, we’d like a medical team to have a look at you as soon as possible post-landing. Corin, handle the scheduling.” Corin inclined his head and grabbed another touchscreen.
May looked between them, at their long, handsome faces, that same shade of golden hair, those same green eyes and quick, efficient movements. And she blinked over at Corin and wondered. Wait. Is that his mom? Did I just get the future mother in law meeting and he didn’t even tell me?
Darin signed off, and Corin stood and took her hand. “Come, we must strap into the gravity couches. We can’t enter hyperspace until we are outside the atmosphere, and escape velocity is...unpleasant...without proper body support.”
There was a door at the far end of the communications room, and he led her through it...and straight into a cockpit. A single massive, curved view-screen lined the front wall, and a rank of padded full-body chairs leaned back to face it. She stared around as he led her to a chair and helped her get strapped in. “This was your spaceship all along.”
“Of course. We wouldn’t possibly transfer that much of our technology into a permanent installation. Too much risk of discovery.” He hit a few buttons on a panel, then settled into the couch next to hers. A touchscreen swung into place in front of him and he started manipulating it rapidly.
“And that woman. Your Commander in Chief. When were you going to tell me that you just introduced me to your mom without telling me that you were introducing me to your mom?”
“Hmm?” He glanced over, brow furrowing. “It didn’t seem relevant. My mother is also my Commander in Chief, and it was in that function that she addressed you.”
“Oh come on, Corin. You’re such a guy sometimes.” She pulled a face--and then gasped as the whole building shook. “Whoa.”
“I’m not certain what else I would be.” He tapped the touch-screen a few more times, and the vibrations became a steady thrum. “There, we are clear of the false front. The building will look as if it collapsed.” The screen in front of them flicked on--and revealed the ground falling away beneath them. She felt faint pressure on her body as they rose...and an unexpected pang.
Goodbye, Earth. Not sure when I’ll be back.
The ground shrank away beneath them, and she closed her eyes against sudden tears. She needed to be tough. She had the biggest adventure ever ahead of her--and there was no room in it for regrets.
Corin looked over at her, and reached out to squeeze her hand reassuringly. “Are you all right?”
“Just saying goodbye for now,” she said quietly, and watched the view-screen turn slowly from the Earth to the stars.
Sold To The Alien Alpha
Rosette Lex
Copyright 2015 by Rosette Lex
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced
in any way whatsoever, without written permission
from the author, except in case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews
and articles.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any
character, person, living or dead, events, place or
organizations is purely coincidental. The author does not
have any control over and does not assume any responsibility
for third party websites or their content.
First edition, 2015
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Chapter 1
The sun was too orange, Ellie thought as it lit the cell that she shared with three other young women. Everything looked muted and dull because the sun was wrong. How can the sun be wrong? She wondered. As she woke fully, the memories hit her.
Driving home in the afternoon, her car had died in the middle of nowhere and refused to start again. Her cellphone was blank too and she had to start walking. The sun had been hot, even in the shade of the trees and she had worked up a sweat within a few minutes. She barely had time to see her abductor, after glancing down at the ground, Ellie had virtually crashed into him. She caught sight of a tall, broad shouldered man before everything went dark.
She had woken alone, in a cool metal box without windows. Dim light came from somewhere and she'd screamed herself hoarse before coming to understand that no one was coming to help. Her cellphone was still useless as was her watch so she had no idea how long she had been there until another girl turned up.
“Who are you?” The new girl squeaked. Ellie's head had snapped up.
“How did you get in here?” She demanded.
“I don't know.” The new girl sniffed, tears dripping down her face, I was walking home, then this man turned up and I was here.”
Her name was Juanita and she didn't know any more about what had happened to them than Ellie did. Juanita sat in a corner with her arms wrapped around her knees and wept into her elbows.
The third woman had joined them sometime later and flatly refused to speak to either of them. Ellie had given up eventually, feeling hungry and thirsty. Hammering on the walls did nothing but make her hands hurt, so she'd spent her time looking for some kind of door or window but came up empty.
How did they put us in here?
An unknown amount of time passed and a wave of violent nausea and sickness hit them all. Ellie tried to keep her stomach under control but lost the battle, retching so hard that her belly hurt. She sat back on her haunches and watched in shock as the contents of her stomach disappeared cleanly into the floor.
“What the hell's going on?” She asked, looking at the other two. Juanita, wide eyed and pale with shock, shook her head while the other girl just stared.
There were strange sensations of movement and deep thumping sounds which made their ears vibrate. This carried on for what felt like hours until Ellie thought she'd go mad. Silence settled eventually, which made Ellie wish for the noises back.
In the end she had slept, curled up in one corner of the cell, her dreams filled with dark, formless shapes, making her whimper and struggle against them.
When she had woken to the orange sun, hanging like a pregnant belly in the odd sky, Ellie knew she was somewhere else, someone had somehow moved all three of them to this new place and this new place had a window.
Juanita stood on shaky legs and approached the opening, taking in the
landscape outside. Her knees nearly buckled when she saw what lay beyond and she took a few steps backwards with her hand over her mouth. Ellie stood and moved to the window wondering how there was no glass but no breeze from outside either. A gasp escaped her as she looked out on a land which couldn't possibly exist.
Varying shades of purple and violet painted the world beyond the cell wall as far as her eyes could see. Pools of dark blue shadow swirled here and there in the abnormal light from the massive sun which hung in low in the atmosphere. Buildings, which looked as if they had come from the mind of a Daliesque artist, created a forest like city of immense proportions.
“What the h..?” Whispered from Ellie's lips as she staggered back from the window. Her eyes met with Juanita's and she saw her own expression of fright mirrored on the other girl's face.
Something odd was taking place. In the wall opposite the window, a line appeared, getting darker as it seemed to form a depression in the material forming the wall. Ellie's fright was forgotten for a second as she watched a door materialize from nothing. It slid to one side, rather than opening in or out on hinges, to admit a single figure.
