by Rosette Lex
Seduced By The Alien
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
person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First edition, 2015
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Chapter One
Crystal Cavanaugh was a simple girl, and she enjoyed simple things. A quiet morning, a good Scotch on the rocks, a lovely book in the sunlight…
She didn’t need a house full of fancy gadgets, or a vista that could take up a square mile of space, or a job that brought her fame and fortune. She was content with her small cottage on the water, and her bartending job. She had friends and all the comforts she needed.
The bar was a small, cozy establishment within walking distance of the coast, and Crystal had worked there for years. Long enough that she had learned how to flaunt herself—not to excess, but just enough to catch a bit of attention, though she supposed having both a bust and a behind like a goddess helped with that—and deal with the perverts at the same time.
She had every drink on the menu memorized, and she had her own cocktails cooked up for special occasions (and her Fireworks Finale that she broke out on the Fourth of July had a reputation for making people forget their own names). She even had some of the other jobs down pat. She couldn’t fill in for the cook, of course, but she had bussed and served in equal measure. Her true place, though, was behind the bar.
She gave a bottle a twirl before she began to pour with a flourish, and she was quick and efficient as she switched bottles, her long, bright red ponytail all but glowing behind her as she moved. Tanned hands worked quickly, and when she smiled and handed over the drink, her green eyes were bright and her freckles seemed to dance around her dimples.
She set the bottle down as the customer moseyed away, and all that was left for her to do was to wait for the lights to come back on in twelve minutes, and to see if anyone else was going to take advantage of last call. It was a quiet night, though, so she had her doubts.
Indeed, she carried on with the cook through the door into the kitchen, talking about television and the upcoming election, and their conversation went undisturbed until the lights came back on. There were a few drunken grumbles and sighs, but the bar emptied out fairly quickly after that.
Crystal helped clean up, her hips swaying to the music on the radio as she used a dishcloth like an impromptu pompom just to get a laugh out of one of the busboys. Soon, though, she was heading towards the door.
“Careful walking home!” the busboy called after her. “You know what kinds of things are out on nights like this.”
Crystal lifted one hand in a dismissive wave, without looking over her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she called back to him. “I’ve made this walk a million times before.”
The bell over the door jingled as she opened it, and it thunked closed behind her once she stepped out. She would be fine. The full moon wasn’t until tomorrow.
Of course, that wasn’t always a guarantee of safety.
She made it to the streetlight on the corner when she heard someone howling like a dog at her, and she paused as she looked over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing in irritation. Once she recognized what she was looking at, though, her eyes widened in alarm.
There were four of them, all resembling regular men in most ways, save for a few clues. Their eyes gleamed like backlit amber, and as they grinned at her—leered at her—they bared pointed teeth. The leader of the pack made a gesture to the others, and Crystal saw claws.
Werewolves, only a night away from their full transformation. Perhaps yesterday they had been gentlemen, but for a couple evenings, that wouldn’t matter. They may as well have been rabid mongrels. For all intents and purposes, they were.
The alpha took a step towards her, and Crystal didn’t waste any time in gawking. She turned and bolted at a sprint, her sneakers striking the ground quietly.
Her house was to the right, but that was no guarantee of protection. Four of them would have her front door off its hinges in seconds. Instead, she took a sharp left. She could cut across the park and be at the police station in no time.
Assuming she made it that far, at least. She could hear them gaining on her with every step.
The grass of the park muffled her steps, but it also slowed her, and as a gamble, she veered to the side and into the cluster of woods that took up more than half of the park. She dodged around tree trunks, scampering like a rabbit with the wolves on her tail. She was only human, though, and her night vision was not that of a predator’s. It was inevitable when the toes of one foot caught a tree root and sent her sprawling to the ground.
She caught herself on her hands, rocks and twigs biting into the skin of her palms, and she scrambled along the ground as she tried to get back onto her feet and keep moving at the same time. Stones and sticks tore at the knees of her jeans, and low-hanging branches clawed at her face and shoulders.
Crystal felt a hand grab at her ponytail, and she screamed, shrieking out a wordless cry for help. She didn’t actually expect anyone to come, though.
Perhaps the world simply wanted to prove her wrong as many times as possible that night. The hand in her hair abruptly released, and she could hear the wolves whining. She turned, rolling onto one hip so she could see what was going on.
The werewolves had collapsed, writhing on the ground and clawing at their skin as blood streamed from their noses, their eyes, their ears. It left burning trails across their flesh, and steamed and fizzled as it struck the ground.
Crystal stared with wide eyes as the wolves thrashed and cried, until at last they fell still, bleeding from every pore, their skin red and dry as if cooked. She didn’t have long to gape, though, before she heard leaves crunching behind her, and she shifted rapidly onto her knees to see who it was.
She stared up at a man who seemed to be as tall as a skyscraper and as broad as an ox, his gaze focused on what remained of the wolves with all of the malicious glee of a shark. Only once he was well and truly apparent that the werewolves were dead did he look at Crystal, and she gasped sharply.
His eyes were a bright, bright, impossibly bright electric blue, and they gleamed like a cat’s. He grinned slowly as he looked down at her, white teeth standing out in sharp contrast against his dark skin. Crystal thought his hair was black, or very dark brown, but it was too dark out and cropped too close to his scalp for her to tell.
His mouth opened and he spoke, in a voice that shook the earth like a freight train while still managing to glide and scorch like liquid glass.
“Quite the evening you’ve had, haven’t you?” he purred quietly.
Crystal made a small, strangled whimpering noise in the back of her throat and curled in on herself, as the entire mess—had it really only been a few minutes since she had walked out of the bar?—caught up to her. She trembled for a moment, before her eyes rolled back into her head and she knew no more.
Crystal woke slowly, and it felt as if she was floating on a cloud. A rather warm cloud that surrounded her from all sides. It was a r
ather far cry from passing out from shock in the woods, so she reluctantly peeled her eyes open.
She sat up quickly once she realized she was in a room she had never been in before, and she looked around wildly, bringing both hands up to shove loose strands of her hair out of her face.
She was lying on a bed—a massive, somewhat oval-shaped bed that probably could have held eighteen people—so she could only assume she was in a bedroom, but it was the biggest bedroom she had ever seen. In fact, she was fairly certain her entire, single-story cottage could have fit in it. And everything was lavish, as if the room had been designed with only the best in mind, from the rich, deep red carpets and blankets to the dark stone of the walls to the rich wood of the vanity and the armoire.
Crystal kicked the thick blanket off, regardless of how comfortable it was, and she stood up. Immediately she paused, once she realized her clothing had been changed. Gone were her work shirt and her worn jeans and sneakers.
Instead, she was barefoot, and someone had dressed her in a formfitting halter-top dress, as if they were trying to use the bright red fabric to…display her. She shuddered slightly, but dragged her attention away from it and back to the room.
She crossed the floor to the window, and as she stared through the glass, she marveled at the view. The sky stretched out overhead, but it was…off, still blue but just a hair too dark. The sun seemed too bright, and when Crystal pushed the air open she found that the air outside was so hot that breathing made her light headed for a few seconds, like getting into a car that had been sitting in the sun all day.
Leaning partially out the window, she looked around, and found a wall to the left, a wall to the right, and a wall straight ahead, with trees, gardens, and ponds far below, meaning she was looking out over the courtyard of a massive, square building.
She pulled herself back inside and closed the window, and she instead turned her gaze to the vanity, which confirmed her growing suspicions.
Sitting on the vanity’s surface was her purse, which was something of a relief and yet also almost comically out of place. More than that, a crown sat on a red cushion; it was just a simple golden circlet, inlaid with red and black gems, but it was still rather obviously a crown.
So she was in a castle…somewhere. Somewhere where the sky was the wrong shade, the sun was too bright, the air was too arid, and the leaves were all golden-red. Slowly, Crystal sat down on the bed and brought her hands up to cover her face as she took a few slow, deep breaths.
She didn’t have much time to gather her thoughts, though, as the door opened. Crystal shot to her feet and whipped around to face it, and found herself staring up at the man who had killed the werewolves.
In the light, it was more obvious that his hair was dark brown, and his eyes, impossibly, seemed even brighter. His ears, she noticed, were also slightly pointed.
“Who are you? Are you going to hurt me?” Crystal asked after a moment, her voice surprisingly steady even to her own ears.
The man scoffed, as if the idea was ludicrous and Crystal was a fool simply for asking, regardless of the kidnapping and the previous murders.
“Of course not,” he replied. “I am Gerralt, and I hardly would have brought you to my home if I simply wished to be rid of you.”
“Where are we, then?” she asked, determined to get answers while she could. “And if you just say ‘my home,’ then I will do…something. Drastic.”
Gerralt snorted. “Heraclastia,” he answered simply, as if that answered everything.
“Is it a city?” Crystal asked, though she was beginning to suspect the answer.
“Larger,” Gerralt answered, amusement creeping into his tone.
“Country?” Crystal tried again, her voice getting smaller.
“Larger,” he repeated, sounding blatantly entertained.
With a small whimpering noise, Crystal brought her hands up to hide her face, and her voice came out muffled as she asked, “What’s the sun out there called?”
“In your tongue?” he clarified, as if there was even a possibility that Crystal might know his language. He didn’t wait for an answer, though. “Beta Hydri.”
Chapter Two
A different planet. Crystal had been dragged to a different planet without even a ‘by your leave.’ Though so far she felt safe in assuming that Gerralt didn’t actually care whether or not he had her permission. So the only question that left her with was why.
“Why?” she asked simply, her voice quiet, despairing.
“I visit your world frequently,” Gerralt replied, “when the heat here grows too oppressive. But on my numerous visits, during the numerous things I’ve seen happen, some terrible and some simply unfortunate, never has a voice struck me as yours did.”
Gerralt fell silent for a moment, observing Crystal quietly before he resumed speaking. What he said next, though, sounded utterly absurd.
“I believe you are meant to be my mate.”
Crystal stared at him blankly, before she burst into hysterical giggles, clapping her hands over her mouth in a belated, ineffectual attempt at quieting them. She laughed not out of humor, but out of stress and nerves, and it was almost a full minute before she could rein herself back in.
“And—“ Her voice broke off into a few more lingering giggles for a second. “And what happens when I say no?”
Gerralt looked remarkably unimpressed, his eyebrows rising slowly. “I am the king of this world,” he confirmed. “This castle is mine. This room is mine. This world is mine. I can boil someone’s blood simply by looking at them for no other reason than because the gods decided so when I was born. The word ‘no’ only means as much as I decide it does,” he informed her coolly.
A chill chased itself down Crystal’s spine, and she found herself thinking, ‘So that’s what happened to the werewolves,’ in an effort to avoid thinking about his actual point. She couldn’t actually bring herself to say anything in response, though, and she couldn’t do much beyond stare at him in slowly dawning horror.
Gerralt scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Please,” he drawled flatly.
“It’s not as if I’m going to throw you down on the bed this instant.” With a small shake of his head, as if to silently say ‘how ridiculous,’ he turned back towards the door and motioned for Crystal to follow him.
When she didn’t immediately move, still staring at him with her feet rooted to one spot, Gerralt made a disgruntled noise and snapped, “Come on.”
Crystal jerked back into motion and fell into step behind him, following him out of the room.
“Are you taking me to my room?” she asked after a moment, just to fill the silence that had settled.
Gerralt glanced at her over his shoulder, offering a bemused look. “Your room is my room,” he replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Crystal swallowed thickly and fell silent once again as she contemplated what sharing a room with him would entail.
The courtyard was enormous, with a maze of bushes that Crystal couldn’t see over, with different branches of the maze leading to gardens with flowers that could have engulfed her head, benches carved out of stone, and ponds and waterfalls with fish in every gleaming color of the rainbow. In any other situation, Crystal would have enjoyed it, but mostly it just seemed like Gerralt was attempting to use the view to placate her.
As they walked through the maze in tense silence, Crystal observed the people. They were all tall and dark skinned. The men were all built like brick walls and the women all looked like super models. Crystal felt rather short and pale and…substantial in comparison, and she got many odd looks as they walked.
At last, they paused in a garden in the middle of the maze, the circle of flowers surrounded by a circle of benches. A man and a woman, their heads bowed together as they spoke, occupied one of the benches.
The woman was slightly darker skinned than Gerralt, while the man was slightly lighter. The woman looked like all of the most glamorous interpreta
tions of Cleopatra, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a prominent jawline. Her hair fell to the middle of her back in a mass of tight, golden curls, and her eyes were violently bright purple.
The man had features that looked like some sort of pharaoh’s, and his dark red hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. His eyes, as well, were as bright as neon, but a rather startling yellow.
The woman noticed them first, and she bounced to her feet with a jubilant, “Gerralt!” and clasped her hands together in excitement. “Oh, she’s adorable!” she cooed, as if Crystal was some sort of puppy. “You did her no justice last night.”
“This is Princess Mellia,” Gerralt supplied, his tone slightly indulgent. “My sister.” He glanced at the man and added, “Her fiancé and my usual bodyguard, Kelso.”
Kelso nodded his head once in greeting.
As if she was meeting some sort of super star, Mellia clasped Crystal’s hands in her own and beamed. She hooked one arm around one of Crystal’s and began towing her off into the maze once more as she gushed, “Oh, there is so much to tell you!”
They left Kelso and Gerralt behind in the garden, Gerralt watching them with quiet confusion.
Once they disappeared around the maze wall, Mellia excitedly asked, “Do you have gifts, too?”
“Gifts?” Crystal parroted back, already a little overwhelmed by the princess’s excitement.
“You know, gifts,” Mellia repeated. “My brother alters body heat, Kelso can change his appearance—well, a little bit, at least—and I can read emotions by touching.”
Crystal’s gaze darted down to Mellia’s gloves, before shooting back up to her face. “Uh—no, nothing like that. Earthlings don’t, uh—if we don’t have a body part dedicated to it, we probably can’t do it.”
Mellia pouted. “Well, that’s anticlimactic.” But then she shrugged and her good cheer returned. “Ah, well! That just makes it all the more exciting for you!”
