by Aline Ash
The Alien King’s Mate
(Orean Warlords, book 3)
Aline Ash
Athena Aston
© 2020 Aline Ash, Athena Aston
The Alien King’s Mate – Book 3
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
Kindle Edition
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Table of 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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
About the Authors
Also by Aline Ash
Also by Athena Aston
ABOUT THIS BOOK
I’m not falling for an alien…
I’ve got every reason to want to go home after a year in space. My family back home needs me. I’ve watched my friends fall for the smokin’ hot aliens all around us, but so far I’ve been able to resist. King S’oraj promises that he’ll send us home… just as soon as he can figure out how to get us past the evil Raxians who abducted us in the first place.
I’m not holding my breath. And I’m not buying the fated mate crap that my friends have fallen for. I don’t need an alien male. Especially not an alpha warrior king who makes my heart beat way too fast.
I must send her home…
I made a promise to send the abducted humans back home, and a good king keeps his word. But to send the humans home, I must win a war first.
There’s another battle going on in my heart. I must marry to secure a political alliance. I can’t follow my heart or find my true mate. But Becky makes me want something I can never have. The tiny human is full of fire and she lights me up inside. Keeping her could put my kingdom in danger. But how can I ever let her go?
“Orean Warlords” series:
Book 1: The Alien Commander’s captive (Lisa and V’orin)
Book 2: The Alien Warlord’s Obsession (Jenny and X’oran)
Book 3: The Alien King’s Mate (Becky and S’oraj)
Chapter 1
Becky
Every single one of them is losing their freaking minds.
I can’t believe that after all this time – after nearly nine full months of being trapped like prisoners on this ridiculous alien planet with these admittedly gorgeous but absurd aliens, with their tails and their orange-brown skin and their stupid tiger stripes that are always rippling around and betraying their hidden emotions – after all that we’ve been through (kidnapping from Earth, sold into slavery, abducted by two different races of E-freaking-T’s, nearly blown up more times than I can count...), now, not only Lisa, but Jenny has fallen for one of these guys and run off with him? Jenny?
I mean, out of all eight of us, she would have been the last one I’d guess would let herself fall for their stupid eye-color-changing trick. “Ooo, look at me! My eyes turn gold and I make you love me!” It’s absurd.
But it doesn’t matter what I think? No, nothing matters anymore. No one cares about getting back to Earth. No one cares that now two members of our group have been impregnated with alien babies. By aliens. No, I’m the one who’s acting irrationally. Sure. Yeah. That makes all the sense. Why would I possibly argue with them about something so normal and natural as MAKING BABIES WITH AN ALIEN WHO HAS A FREAKING TAIL? Nah, they’re right: I’m being unreasonable...
I’m walking the hallways of the palace, getting a bit of air and trying to cool off, but it isn’t helping. I’m so frustrated with the way my friends are acting, and it doesn’t help that every one of these Oreans I pass are spectacularly hot in their crisp military uniforms with their huge muscles bulging visibly underneath the fabric. But I’ve made it nine months into this ordeal and I’m not about to give in to any of their weird seduction tactics now.
Fated Mates? What a load of crap.
I don’t care how many sets of eyes I see go from purple to gold and back again, no one’s going to convince me that this is anything except some weird sex fetish that Lisa and Jenny have let themselves get obsessed with. I mean, God! Even Tess has been all flirty with our host, L’arten. At least Natalie, Mia, and Clarisse still have their heads screwed on. At least they still want to get back to Earth.
I’ve got plenty of reason to get back. My mom’s dealing with Multiple Sclerosis and without me there only my fifteen-year-old sister is there to care for her all on her own, as well as finish up high school.
But Nat’s situation is much worse. God, I feel bad for her. She’s barely been keeping her shit together. Her twins are still so young, and she hasn’t been able to see them this whole time. She just went away for a weekend party to celebrate Lisa getting out of Jennersville, and then she never came home. What must her mother be thinking? Or worse: telling the kids?
My brain feels like it’s on fire with so many thoughts filling it at once, so I pick up the pace and hope that if I get my heart rate up, I might get distracted enough that I’ll stop just spinning on hypotheticals and useless curses at the universe. But the longer I walk around this palace, the more my thoughts recycle themselves.
“Witnessing Ceremony, my ass,” I grumble. “Why don’t they just call it what it is—an excuse to have sex in public!”
I can’t deny – still begrudgingly – that it was sort of hot to watch, but for Jenny to be so caught up by this whole Sulin K’ara thing that she would hook up with X’oran in front of all us and all those Orean officials? It’s just weird.
And now she’s off to join their military and work on the low orbit station with her fated mate while Lisa stays on bed rest waiting for her alien baby to be born. As for the rest of us we’re still stuck waiting around for some intergalactic war to end so someone will finally drive us home.
Despite all my misgivings and foul mood, I must admit that the palace is spectacular. L’arten’s estate is nice and all, but this place is something else. I haven’t really been here all that often in the months that we’ve spent on this planet but taking this little walk before we have to go back to L’arten’s house is really giving me the chance to look around. It’s incredible.
The building is huge, with many corridors and their intricately carved pillars, gardens and fountains in every courtyard that a
re perfectly manicured, and spare no attention to details right down to the little lines of gold inlay in the masonry. If it weren’t for the fact that we’d been abducted by aliens, treated like slaves, and essentially imprisoned for all this time, it’d be a pretty sweet place.
“It would be wise to move our families outside the city by some distance,” a voice around the next corner says in a tone that causes me to instinctually stop in my tracks, press my back up against the wall, and hold my breath to listen. Whatever this guy is talking about, it’s something I’m definitely not supposed to hear.
I peek cautiously around the corner just long enough to get a glimpse of the two Orean court ministers who stood conferring together. The only thing that could possibly make them seem more suspicious while they whisper in a dark corner together would be if they each had big handlebar mustaches they could twirl while they plot.
“The meeting of the commanders is in fifteen taks. And my informant has sent word that the device is operational. There are only a few finishing touches before it can be deployed.”
“I agree,” the other guy says, pacing back and forth as he considers the words of his co-conspirator. “The Raxians were prepared to obliterate that little moon where X’oran and his new mate were hiding all this time. If that weapon is capable of wiping out Mon Alto completely, there’s no telling what it might do if they fire on the city of Orajal.”
“If we are going to move them, we will need to do it soon.”
“Yes. We must begin preparations immediately, but we must come up with some clever reason for everyone going at once so people will not take notice. A party in the country, perhaps?”
“An excellent suggestion, but nothing of great importance, of course. We certainly don’t want S’oraj to feel slighted if he’s not invited as well. It needs to be something that could take a minister from the palace, but not something that would entice any of the military to follow.”
“We’ll say it’s an engagement celebration for two of our offspring. That ought to work.”
“Good. Now let’s separate. I don’t want to be seen together.”
Before I have time to even process what I heard, I realize that my feet are sprinting, carrying the rest of me toward the throne room and away from this secret meeting I somehow just stumbled into. I fling open the doors, and immediately, two Orean guards are blocking my way.
“Let me through! I must speak to the king.”
“No one gets an audience with King S’oraj without authorization,” one of the guards barks, trying to restrain me but obviously having to make an active effort to also not hurt me—Jesus, these dudes are huge!
“S’oraj!” I shout at the king. His head flicks up, and I notice that he seems to be in the middle of a meeting. Among them are several military officers and a few other people I don’t recognize. “S’oraj, we need to talk! Now!”
A bemused expression spreads across his face as the white salises that line his golden skin writhe with curiosity. “That’ll be all for now, krens. Thank you for your input. Start working on this immediately and inform me right away if you find a way to make it work.”
The men surrounding him scurry away as he turns back toward the ruckus I’m causing. The guards are still muttering their protests as the king waves them away.
“Let her come through. And give us the room, please.”
It’s clear that the guards are hesitant to obey this ridiculous command, but their loyalty overrules such reservations. They shake their heads, drop my arms, and leave.
“S’oraj!”
“Yes, yes, what is it, Palian?”
I still hate their word for us ‘Earthlings.’ I don’t know what it is about it, it just drives me insane. But I don’t have time to quibble over it now, though.
“S’oraj, I just overheard something you need to know about.”
“Well, go on then,” he says with an ‘oh-sure-you-did’ grin.
I shoot him a look filled with as much sass as I have in me – which is a lot –and tell him everything that I just heard. “I don’t know their names, but I could point them out if I saw them again,” I finish up. “I’ll tell you one thing, though: if they’ve got that weapon they’d planned to use to destroy Mon Alto fully operational, and they know about some plan of yours to gather all the Orean commanders at the palace, then this entire city is in some serious danger. If I were you, I’d start feeding these guys some lies before they realize that you’re on to them. Move the meeting. Get the Raxians going down a wrong path or something. Because if they go ahead with an attack plan on Orajal we’re all dead.”
S’oraj – this mighty and implacable king of an entire planet – stares at me for a while, his jaw hanging open, his eyebrows screwed up in disbelief, and then he bursts out laughing. Not just laughing, nearly cackling.
“What the hell is so funny about this?” I demand.
He laughs for a while more before he composes himself and replies, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. I’m only laughing at the incongruity of the situation. You see, I’ve spent months – more like years – trying to figure out the identities of the conspirators in my court. Then you, a visitor to Orean wandering around the halls of my very palace, happen to stumble into a secret conference between two of them. Then you deliver all this information to me, and yet, because there’s no way you possibly could know them, you can’t tell me who they are either. So close to my goal, and yet seemingly further away at the same time. You see? It’s laughable.”
“I don’t think that’s funny at all, Your Majesty.” I try to spit out his title as harshly as I can. How can he possibly laugh about this? This could be the decisive blow that ends this entire war and has these guys on the losing end!
“I’m sorry,” he says with a little snort. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. It is no laughing matter, and I am genuinely grateful to you for bringing this information to my attention. Rest assured that I will heed this warning with the gravest sincerity and utilize this new tactical advantage wisely. You were clever to react the way you did, and I thank you for it.”
He reaches out and gives my shoulder a little squeeze of gratitude. He finally seems to be taking things more seriously. Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm down a bit, I look up into his eyes and—
Oh, you have got to be kidding me! I shove him off me and stagger backward.
“Oh, no. Oh, hell, no!” I say, wagging my finger in his face.
“What? What have I done?”
“Don’t you try to act all innocent with me,” I snarl back at him. “This is just some trick that all you Oreans can do, isn’t it? There’s no weird, mystical link at all. There’s no legend behind any of it. It’s like some alien... pick up line!”
“What are you talking—”
“Well, save it,” I interrupt. “Keep your party tricks out of my sight. You are not going to trick me by making your eyes turn gold.”
Chapter 2
S’oraj
Making my eyes turn—gold? It can’t be.
I put my hand up to stop the Palian talking for a moment – which up until now has more or less proven impossible with this one – and I turn away from her. I pull the small, ceremonial dagger from its sheath at my waist and she startles back.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing with that?” she demands.
“Calm yourself. I simply don’t have a mirror in here.”
I keep my back to her and find my reflection in the metal of the blade. My eyes seem to be their normal, purple hue, but as I rotate my body and allow my gaze to gently shift to her, it’s clear in my reflection that my eyes have changed to a gold even more brilliant than my skin color.
“It truly can’t be,” I insist, testing the result a few more times for good measure.
“Look,” she snorts. “I don’t know what ‘I can’t believe it’ bullshit you’re playing at, but save the party tricks for the other girls. I ain’t the one. Do you understand me?”
/> I stare at her for a moment, flitting my eyes between my still-unbelievable reflection and this shanin who’d been under my care for wans, and I try to wrap my head around everything. First and foremost, her Palian slang is mixed into what she’s saying to such a degree that I can barely understand her words, but apparently, she was trying to accuse me of changing my eye color on purpose. She continues to berate me for my ‘party trick’ while I sit there just trying to wrap my mind around the fact that my eyes are changing color at all.
I’ve always assumed I would make some sort of a political marriage happen eventually. My station and my responsibilities demanded nothing less. But now? If my eyes were not deceiving me—literally—I would now need to consider other options.
I can’t help chuckling at the passionate way the shanin speaks to me, how confidently she had burst into my throne room right in the middle of a secret meeting and provided me with the most vital piece of strategic intelligence I’ve received in wans. And then, on top of that, I marvel at the way she simply had blurted at such an excellent strategy to counter that intelligence, as if it were no more difficult than deciding which clothes to wear for the day.
As she rambles on and on, I also can’t deny an overwhelming urge to take her, right here and now. I can just picture bending her over the throne and burrowing my phrung into her vush until we’re both completely satisfied. As if urging me to give in to that impulse, I feel a short, lustful twitch inside my trousers.
But there’s something more to it than a simple physical attraction to this shanin. She is undeniably the most alluring of the Palians we’d rescued from the slave traders—a fact which I had noticed immediately, of course—but I’d also come to realize that there was something different about her. Something that made her stand out from the others.
