I stepped closer to the aliens, but they were so broad, so tall, I couldn’t see past them. I skirted around the upper tier, trying to find an opening. I made it halfway around and picked up some conversation.
“—the best on The Colony.”
“I’ve never seen a fighter like him.”
“Even Prillons can’t take on an Atlan in beast mode.”
“Together? I’m betting on the Prillons.”
“Rezz will send them to medical.”
“How many do you think he can take?”
I skirted the edges, clinging to the back wall, trying to stay in the shadows. No one paid any attention to me, their complete focus on the contest about to begin in the ring. The tension in the air was growing as anticipation made the men edgy and primed for competition, for violence.
My shoulder bumped into a large brace that curved up over my head. The giant piece of metal was at least three feet wide and curved up to connect to a series of overhead beams that supported a clear-domed roof at least thirty feet above my head. Each beam had a two or three inch ledge that I could use to climb, and once I was up there, they were wide enough that I could lay down on my stomach, watch everything and not be seen. Perfect.
If I could just make it up there.
With a grin, I adjusted the pack on my back and lifted my foot to the lower ledge. Years of gymnastics and messing around on the rock climbing wall at the local YMCA were paying off, big time, as I climbed up and hoisted myself onto the top of the beam. Crouched low, I climbed about a third of the way up, finally found a space, settled in on my belly and peered over the edge, looking down. Shit. It was the closest thing to a gladiator fight I could imagine. The arena was a full circle. Small, perhaps the size of a one-ring circus. In the center, the ground was dirt and two men stood facing a giant.
No, not men. The two fighting the giant faced my direction and they were not like any men I’d ever seen. They were aliens and the disappointment I’d been feeling just moments ago died. These two were obviously from the same planet, one a dark mocha, the other with pale golden skin and copper hair. Their faces weren’t quite human either, their noses, eyes and chins too sharply pointed. Neither was less than six-six, but their eyes gave them away. Gold and copper. And when they smiled, they flashed a hint of fang, not enough to be vampirish, but enough to make me lean forward trying to get a closer look.
Fascinating.
Not human. Soooo not human. But damn. None of them wore a shirt and I’d never seen a more spectacular display of masculine beauty. Well, except for in my dream earlier, but that hardly counted. These were real, flesh and blood and standing right in front of me.
And the model perfect chests on the two challengers were small compared to the bulging muscles and massive frame of the giant they faced. He was monster sized, his profile oddly elongated, as if his face had grown out of proportion to the gigantic rest of him. He was even bigger than the other two, towering over his opponents whose heads barely reached the top of his shoulders. The men in the crowd were chanting, and the giant raised his hands in the air like a victor, rotating his torso to acknowledge the cheers. His knuckles were bloody and he had more blood running from a small cut near his eye, but he was smiling.
“Rezzer! Rezzer! Rezzer!”
Other than the fact that he was massive, he looked the most human of the bunch. My theories of lizards and blue skin were for nothing. No one, not one spectator, looked completely different from an Earth man. Some had different skin coloring, sharper features, but not enough to be alarming. Just odd. And huge. Big huge. Like…huge huge.
What I quickly noticed was that every single person in the crowd was a man. Scanning the crowd, I didn’t see one woman, alien or not. I was the only female here. Strange. Where were the women?
The sound of a fist connecting with flesh and bone filled the air, followed by cheers and shouts. My curiosity quickly forgotten, I redirected my focus to the fighters as my pulse pounded in my ears and I fought to control my breathing inside the helmet. Below me, chests heaved and I could practically taste the testosterone in the air. It was like being inside the male mind, surrounded by heat and power and…rage.
The intensity of my reaction startled me as anger rose to choke me. I swallowed hard, fighting the burning sting that gathered behind my eyelids as the giant below me bellowed out a challenge that made the entire crowd roar. An answering yell exploded inside my chest, but I clenched my jaw and held it inside, locked away with the rest of the emotions I couldn’t deal with right now.
I didn’t want to be here, belly down, on this stupid beam twenty feet in the air on an alien planet. I didn’t want to have one more nightmare about my beautiful, broken little boy and his innocent, trusting eyes. He was mine, and he believed me when I told him everything was going to be all right.
Everything had to be all right. I’d do whatever I had to do. For my son, I would lie, cheat, steal, fly halfway across the galaxy locked in a crate. For Wyatt, I would do anything, risk anything. Even my life. I was no killer. I wasn’t a fighter or a soldier, but for Wyatt? I was a mother, and that meant nothing was out of bounds. Absolutely…nothing.
I blinked slowly, clearing the wetness from my eyes as the hot sting of tears tracked down my cheeks beneath the helmet. I couldn’t wipe them away, so I ignored them and clung to the beam, my fingers tight with tension where my dark, gloved hands wrapped around the edges securing my perch.
Below, the darker-skinned of the two smaller challengers was gone. A quick scan of the ground showed him tossed aside and unconscious several feet outside the center fighting area. Two men wearing green uniforms were bent over him, running some kind of blue light over his body like a scanner straight out of a sci-fi movie.
Everyone ignored them, so I did, too, my gaze drawn like a magnet to the force and power at the center of the arena floor.
Two remained, circling each other, arms up, fists clenched. The lone challenger had pale caramel skin and copper-colored hair. The giant faced me now and I got my first good look at his features. He was handsome, despite his size, with dark hair and green eyes. His stare was intense, focused, but he had to be well over eight feet tall. His hands were like dinner plates and his muscles seemed to have their own muscles. They both wore the armored uniform, but their shirts had been discarded and left on the ground behind them. They were bare from the waist up and to say they were both hot was an understatement. My ovaries perked right up at the sight of their broad chests, wide shoulders, rippled abs.
The bigger one had a smattering of hair on his chest that tapered into a line that slipped beneath the waistband of his pants. Below was a very serious bulge. The other fighter wasn’t lacking in that department either.
I was enthralled, hypnotized by the intensity, the power. This wasn’t a boxing match. It wasn’t WWF. It wasn’t even MMA. They dodged and weaved, moved with a pace that made me squint and lean forward, trying to keep track of them.
They came together in a clash of fists and fury. I expected the smaller opponent to be tossed aside as quickly as his friend had been, but Rezzer, which I assumed was the giant’s name, and the man were locked together, muscles bulging to the point of breaking. I winced at the force the two exerted on one another, waited for a shoulder joint to pop, or an elbow to break.
No one could withstand that kind of pressure. Locked together, they circled one another and suddenly the copper haired alien’s back was to me. That’s when I noticed the silver skin that covered half of his back and wrapped around his neck. The silver sparkled in the light like he’d been dusted with a thin coating of glitter. The arena lights were bright in the center of the ring, spotlights shone down on the fighters so there was nowhere to hide.
Hive. Cyborg. Contaminated flesh. The words floated through my mind from my conversations with the doctor back on Earth. The Colony was for warriors who had been implanted with Hive technology. That silver skin sealed his fate…all of their fates. This place was their end, the
ir prison.
Men screamed and roared as the two below me moved faster than any living thing I’d seen before.
Suddenly, the spectacle below made me sick. The violence made bile rise in my throat and I turned to rest the face of my helmet against the beam. I couldn’t feel the cool metal on my face, but I pretended as I heard Rezzer bellow one final time. The crowd erupted in cheers three times louder than anything I’d heard before and I peeked back down to see that his final challenger was struggling to rise, blood running down his face, copper colored blood, too orange to be human.
His right arm hung at an odd angle and the green uniformed men rushed forward with their magic blue wand.
My palm chose that moment to pulse with heat, but I clenched my hand tighter on the beam and ignored it. Apparently, I’d been mesmerized by the testosterone coming off the fighters for my pussy clenched and a rush of desire heated my blood. Maybe it was a reaction to the fight. I had no idea, but I could do no more than lick my lips and ogle the abundance of man candy before me. I should blame my distraction on estrogen, but really, I had no idea what to do next. I scanned the crowd, looking for human men, but if any were here, they were hidden among the others, a sea of black armor and aggressive faces.
The mark pulsed again and I hissed in a breath as my nipples pebbled and my stomach clenched. It was like the dream all over again, except instead of staring into the eyes of the hottest damn man I’d ever seen, I clung to a beam, hiding from a sea of violent, alien fight mania. I’d seen this before, the mob mentality, the wave of aggression that everyone present would be riding for hours. I’d gone to exactly one MMA fight with the sperm donor, and that had been enough for me.
This was too much.
Trembling, I wasn’t sure staying up here another moment was safe. My hands were cramping and my entire body shook with stress and adrenaline. If I didn’t get my act together, I could easily fall and break my neck. Or worse.
I laid completely still for long minutes, eyes closed, head down and focused on my breathing. Just air. In. Out. Until I could feel my toes again and my ears stopped ringing. The crowd had settled, their sport for the day over. I looked down and the warriors were milling about, talking, laughing, hitting each other, doing their male bonding stuff. I had to assume the giant, Rezzer, had won.
Whatever. I needed to get the hell out of here before I lost my shit.
Moving slowly, I scooted back the way I’d come, counting on the dim lights around the edges of the arena to help keep me hidden. I had just dropped to my feet and taken two steps back toward the air vent when an alien appeared out of nowhere, bumped into me and looked my way. I still had on my helmet, but he did a double take and then stilled.
Predator still. And like the proverbial deer in the headlights, I froze as he leaned toward me, took a deep breath in and filled his lungs with my scent.
“Female.” His voice was deep and full of awe, as if I was some kind of mythical creature, a unicorn. Based on the lack of females in the area, perhaps I was.
He looked like the bigger fighter, the one called Rezzer, and I assumed they were from the same planet. Similar size, coloring and those dinner plate hands. The last, I felt, for he gripped my upper arm. While his hold was gentle, it was a vise locked about me. I tried to wiggle out, but he wasn’t letting go. His strength was indisputable and I knew, without even blinking, he could snap me in half like a twig. Holy shit, these guys were big. I barely came to his shoulder.
“Female,” he repeated and before my eyes, he grew, like the Incredible Hulk until my head barely reached his chest. He’d been big before, but now he was monster sized, too, and a roar left his throat. “Mine!”
“Oh my god,” I murmured, my heart practically stuttering in my chest. I would have fainted, but I couldn’t even do that. I was literally frozen in place, but my hand burned like fire and I suddenly wished I was back in the air shaft. No, back sleeping with my strange dream man, rather than facing down a mob of horny aliens. Insanely, I wasn’t worried about being raped. I had the distinct feeling Mr. Dinner Plate wouldn’t let anyone else touch me.
No. Right now, he was the one I needed to worry about.
The man’s—no alien’s—voice was loud, loud enough where those around us turned and came closer.
I was surrounded by looming, hot, aliens. Heard the murmurs of their voices at finding a female among them.
I felt the helmet come off my head and once it was gone, I twisted to look over my shoulder. Another caramel skinned male tucked it beneath his arm as he stared at me, then lifted a hand to touch my hair. Not with malice, but awe.
“Hey!” I said, trying to step back, but it was no use. I was held in place by Mr. Dinner Plate whose gaze followed the movements of the stranger’s hand through my long blond hair as he combed his fingers through the strands.
If this was a petting zoo, apparently, I was the main attraction. I heard someone shout, “Get the Governor down here now!” But I had no idea who the Governor was, nor did I care. Not at the moment. Right now, I just wanted to get out of this mess and make a run for it.
News of my arrival spread faster than gossip at a church supper. The arena had gone quiet and everything seemed to have stopped.
“Mine! I claimed her,” Mr. Dinner Plate repeated. He lifted me in his arms and carried me down the stairs to the center of the arena where the warrior, Rezzer, stood, flexing his hands into fists. His chest was heaving and his green gaze met mine with cold calculation.
Behind him, his former opponent rose from the ground spinning his arms around, feeling the shoulder as if testing it out. Completely healed.
Holy shit. Was that what the little blue wand thing was for? To heal? Maybe I didn’t need to spy and write some stupid conspiracy laden exposé. Maybe I just needed to steal one of those blue magic wands and take it home to Wyatt.
Even as I had the thought, I realized the futility of that hope. Right this moment, the people who’d offered me this job were waiting and watching my mother and my son. If I didn’t come back, they would hurt him, torture my baby, perhaps even kill him. The consequences of failure had been explained in great detail. It wasn’t just about the money or the story, not anymore. I either gave them what they wanted, or they were going to hurt the only two people in the universe I cared about.
Failure was not an option. I’d do whatever I had to do to survive, to get back to them. Wyatt needed me. I had to be strong.
Twisting my head around to keep my sight on the green uniformed warriors who moved away from the arena, I ignored the hulk carrying me until he set me down gently on the edge of the fighting pit. He placed me there like delicate china and I had to admit, he might be big, but he was a gentleman. He leaned down and looked into my eyes, his gaze a dark, golden brown and sincere. “I am Warlord Braun. You are mine, now. I will protect you.”
Some kind of order appeared to have taken hold as the crowd resumed their seats. There were a handful of warriors lined up along the far edge of the arena, facing Braun.
I glanced at Rezzer, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest a few feet away, a frown on his face. Braun completely ignored him, and me, as he turned to face everyone gathered. “I am Warlord Braun and I claim this female.”
“No. She will be ours.” One of the golden warriors stepped forward with a nearly identical twin at his side.
“Mine!” Another giant came forward, nearly as big as Rezzer, already huge, his face transformed. His roar was nearly as loud as Braun’s.
Pandemonium ensued as two aliens behind the one who held my helmet began shoving and punching each other. Why they fought, I had no idea. It appeared Braun had few challengers. Based on his size, that was completely understandable.
Braun stepped forward and motioned to the two golden aliens. With a groan, I bit my lip and looked around. Not one, but three warriors were lined up directly behind me, shoulder to shoulder. And they weren’t watching the fight, they were watching me.
No easy get
away there.
“This is insane,” I shouted at all of them. “I don’t belong to any of you.” With a sigh, I turned back around to see the golden ones step forward. One of them, I saw now, had a face half metallic and a completely silver eye. It was unnerving and strange, but then, everyone here seemed to me marked in some way by the silver flesh.
Contaminated. Imprisoned.
I was screwed. I’d done everything wrong. I was supposed to remain hidden. That hadn’t happened. I was supposed to remain unobtrusive. Yeah, I couldn’t get any more visible, and I hadn’t even been trying.
I was a terrible spy. The worst.
Now I had hot aliens fighting over me, one claiming I belonged to him. I should have been flattered or impressed. I should have been thrilled. Heck, what woman wouldn’t want a bunch of ridiculously hot aliens all wanting to claim her?
Me. That’s who. I didn’t want a mate. Yeah, dream man Kiel had been hot as hell, but I had a little boy to get home to and three days to make it back onboard that shuttle before it left. I wasn’t going to miss my ride home. I’d survive now, escape later.
It was the only option I could think of because I had no idea how I was going to get out of this.
Chapter Four
Kiel
I had a set of warriors in the air shaft following the intruder’s path. I led two others and took a route outside, narrowing down the exits he might take, hoping to cut him off. The directions coming through the comm had us heading in the direction of the fighting pit and I had to hope we’d get there before he blended in. The space held over a hundred warriors. It would be easy for him to get lost in the crowd. It wasn’t just my Hunter senses that were guiding me. No. That was enough for the governor to request me personally and be able to find the intruder easily enough. I was also guided by my mark. For some reason, each step I took closer to the fights, my mark pulsed and became hotter. It was not something I could ignore.
Why the fuck was my mark drawing me? There were no females on The Colony besides the few who had been matched and mated. No unclaimed female warriors were on Base 3. My mark would have awakened long before now if the area of proximity was enough for any one of them from the other Bases to be mine. I hadn’t been on The Colony long, but the dreams had just started. That meant she was new. Newer here than even me. But how?
Cyborg Seduction (Interstellar Brides: The Colony Book 3) Page 4
