by Lisa Lace
“What choice do I have but to trust you?” she heard herself say. For a non-answer, she thought it sounded pretty good. “I am in your care, and as far as I can tell I am unharmed.”
The alien nodded. “That’s very practical of you. We appreciate practicality on my planet. My name is Arkhan ar Trepniss. I’m Troxeo’s cousin.”
Katie smiled. Arkhan was definitely big, and he was definitely alien, but he didn’t have the gruff manner that Troxeo did. There was a sense of manners about him mixed with the cold, scientific viewpoint they all seemed to have. It was like he was an English gentleman combined with an engineer. It wasn’t much, but it was more than she could say for any of the others on board.
Troxeo was simply a monster, Chixo an overcurious analyst, and Enan was only interested in her for the possibility of technology. She wondered for a moment how the men of Bonaan would compare to these aliens if they were able to stand side by side. Would they seem weak or unmanly? What did it mean for an alien to be masculine? Was it the same as being a man on Earth?
“You have to understand that when we land on Oretoz, things won’t be quite so easy for you,” Arkhan continued. “You won’t be allowed to wander around freely or speak to whomever you like. Most of us will not openly reveal their names to you. You are being treated as a guest here, but technically you are our prisoner.”
Katie felt Chixo’s hard eyes staring at her. Could it hurt to ask one more question? “What I don’t understand is why I’m a prisoner at all. Did I do something wrong? I’m just a regular person. Why can’t I go home?”
“Wrong.” The alien said the word like a statement, not a question. “I don’t think there was anything you did wrong. But right and wrong don’t have anything to do with it. Someone needs you on our planet, and we’ve been assigned to bring you there.”
“You can’t go around snatching people up and whisking them to the other side of the universe. I want to go home.” Tears threatened to erupt from the back of her eyes, and she had to hold her breath to keep them from falling. These people were obviously not going to be moved by pity.
Arkhan ignored her demands. “I trust that your room is comfortable?” he asked, taking a few slow steps closer to her. “This ship is not a big one, but I assure you that worse ships exist.”
Somehow this alien easily got past her defenses. She had thought of herself as a solid stick of humanity, but he was bending her like a flower stem. He loomed over her now. Katie knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him if she wanted to. “Oh, um, no. I mean, the ship is nice.”
He gave an animalistic smile again. “Good, good. Tell me about your life on your planet. I confess I haven’t studied Earth life much. Do you have a mate?”
“A mate? Er...oh. No. Not anymore.” Her face burned, and there was no way for her to hide it.
Arkhan nodded sagely. “You got tired of him and threw him out of your home? Well, I suppose that’s to be expected eventually for any of us.”
“No, not exactly. He didn’t want me. But this isn’t any of your business.” She said the last part in a rush, hoping it would cover up her embarrassment.
Arkhan didn’t laugh at her. Instead, his dark eyebrows drew together on his forehead, and he leaned down to her. “Are you sure?” His eyes swept over her body. She suddenly felt self-conscious in a bodysuit that left nothing to the imagination. “You are obviously healthy and fertile.”
She crossed her arms over her body. The clothing completely covered her, but the thin material didn’t hide much. Arkhan was complimenting her in a way, and she knew that, but his words were not making her feel any better.
“Yes, I’m sure.” She wondered how red her face was.
“I doubt you would suffer the same fate on Oretoz. In fact, you might be beating off potential mates left and right. Once they got over the fact that you’re an alien, that is.”
He stood straight once more, and Katie felt as though she could breathe again. “What’s so bad about being from Earth? If you don’t like where I come from, I would think you’d be eager to take me back there.”
Arkhan shook his head. “Earthlings, from what we can tell, are soft. Emotional. They are not good fighters. But you are needed on Oretoz, nevertheless.”
The door to the bridge whirred open once more, and Troxeo entered the room. He stopped for a moment and took in the scene before him. “Take the human back to her quarters,” he commanded to Chixo. “I have some business I need to take care of.”
“But I just got out!” Katie protested.
Troxeo stared at her blue ones. “I’m commander of this ship. Obey me.”
The door closed swiftly on Katie’s heels as Chixo escorted her back to the room.
Chapter Twelve
Troxeo actively tried to prevent himself from watching the human leave. He marched swiftly toward his seat at the helm instead. He sat down in the chair and ran a hand through his hair. The things he saw when he entered the bridge bothered him.
The human was standing in the middle of the floor, looking tiny and vulnerable with Arkhan towering over her. Troxeo realized that she must look the same way to others when he spoke to her, but he hadn’t thought about it before. The human was getting under his skin, peeling back a layer of his armor every time she looked at him.
“Is something troubling you, cousin?” Arkhan returned to his seat as well. “You don’t seem to be yourself.”
Troxeo stared out the front window of the ship as he thought about his next moves and even his next sentence. Arkhan didn’t realize how correct he was. Troxeo had been second-guessing every thought he’d had in the past several hours.
“Did you get any useful information out of the human during your interrogation?” Troxeo didn’t respond. “I know you were in her quarters for some time,” Arkhan said innocently.
Troxeo turned to glare at his cousin. He knew what the man implied, and it fueled a fire deep inside him. He didn’t know if it was anger or lust, but it burned regardless. “She didn’t have much to say.”
“Oh, I see. You probably mean there were no words that suited your purpose. Did she speak to you in other ways, perhaps?” Arkhan had an annoying habit of dragging out the end of a sentence to make it have an implied meaning of far more than the literal interpretation of the words themselves.
“What is the matter with you?” Troxeo slammed his fist onto the arm of his chair, feeling it shudder beneath him. “She is an alien from Earth. I didn’t fuck her.”
Arkhan shrugged. “If you say so. But I would be the last person to criticize you if you decided to pursue it. I mean, she’s surprisingly attractive for an Earthling. Somehow I thought they would be repulsive.”
Troxeo’s throat clenched as he struggled to swallow the first retorts that jumped into his mouth. He couldn’t agree out loud with his cousin’s appreciation for the human. Nor could he lie openly about his attraction to her. By all rights, the girl should have been nothing more than a piece of luggage. That was what he had intended.
But from the moment she looked into his eyes, there had been a word echoing in the back of his mind. Eleste. It was an ancient word, an old-fashioned idea that most modern Oretoz cast aside as something so silly it might as well be mythical. It was the word used for the deepest connection imaginable between two souls, a link between their bodies, their hearts, and their minds. Troxeo had never known anyone who had experienced such a thing. If they did, they would probably be too embarrassed to talk about it.
He had no connection with Katie’s body, not in the obvious sense. Troxeo hadn’t experienced sex with the woman. But he swore he could feel her heart beat to the same rhythm as his. And he felt a deeper sense, a primal desire to know more about her and understand her thoughts.
Did that mean she was his eleste? Maybe he was just fascinated by a new, shiny plaything.
“Hello? Troxeo?” Arkhan interrupted his thoughts, and a grin was on his lips. “At any rate, I’m happy to keep the human occupied for you while she’s
on board the ship. You know, keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t try to kill herself or find a way to escape, keep her bed warm at night...”
Troxeo was on his feet before he knew it, leaning down over his cousin. “You won’t touch her!” He wanted to sink his teeth into Arkhan’s throat and rip it out. Every ounce of his body was alive and pulsed with a wild urge that had driven all logic out of him.
Arkhan put his hands up in a placating gesture, but the wicked grin hadn’t left his face. “Easy now, Trox. I had no idea you felt so strongly about the cargo. After all, you’ve been talking about what a disgusting creature she is. I took you at your word.”
“She is my prisoner, and she is under my protection.” Troxeo’s voice sounded rough and gravelly. He tried to look calm, but his muscles were too tense to allow him to sit down again.
On Oretoz, a man and a woman who decided to mate only stayed together for a season. It was enough to ensure there would be a new life to carry on their legacy. A woman was under the protection of her mate while she grew the baby inside her, safe from harm with a strong man at her side during the only time in her life she was vulnerable.
But when a man found his eleste, the connection was different. Instead of being marked as a mate for a few months, the bond was for a lifetime. Something happened during the mating process that changed both of them. Arkhan wondered which sort of protection Troxeo meant.
“Is she now?” Arkhan sat back in his chair, folded his hands against his abdomen, and looked up at his cousin calmly. He had always been content to let others think they were getting the better of him while he gained the upper hand. Troxeo knew this fact about him, but still often found himself trapped. “I wasn’t aware that you had taken those steps.”
Troxeo groaned. “I meant she is under my protection because I captured her. If you think I am implying anything else, you’re delusional.”
Arkhan nodded. “That all sounds good, cousin, but there’s a problem. What could you do if someone else were to lay his claim on Katie? Then you wouldn’t have any control at all.” He laughed a little. “I won’t pretend to be an expert on humans. My sample size is one. But I find it difficult to believe that she understands how things work for us. How could she know that women have the advantage over the men on Oretoz? They are the ones who decide when it’s time to mate and when it’s not. I’d be willing to bet I could do what I wanted to with her. I could go into her room, peel back her thin bodysuit, and run my hands over every curve of her little body. She would have no idea that the fact that I’m physically stronger than her doesn’t give me all the power in our interaction. If she said no, I would have no choice but to stop.”
The image Arkhan projected was something Troxeo had already imagined time after time in his mind. Why was Chixo compelled to give the human an outfit that was barely more than a second skin? It was a darker blue than her haunting eyes, but it only seemed to intensify their color. She had already driven him mad with desire when she wore the clothes from Earth. Seeing her dressed like an Oretoz woman nearly made him tremble inside. It made her look powerful and yet welcoming at the same time.
He longed to do what Arkhan described, to use his power and take what he had desired ever since he took her from the Earth ship. He wanted to feel himself sink into her soft warmth flesh. Troxeo fought to keep his spine straight. If he bent down to get nose-to-nose with his cousin, it would only confirm that Arkhan had succeeded in getting under Troxeo’s skin. He was still captain of this ship, and Katie was still his prisoner.
“All I can say, Arkhan, is that you had better keep your hands off her. I am the one who will decide her fate. Not you, not Chixo, and not even Katie herself.”
Arkhan calmly got to his feet. He was chest-to-chest with his cousin for only a moment as he pushed past him to the door of the bridge. “Suit yourself, Trox. Just out of curiosity, how long do you think you can protect her once we reach Oretoz? How long do you think it will take the other men to forget she’s from Earth and focus on the reality that she isn’t as strong as one of our women? We are men who are strengthened by denying ourselves. We are forged by our urges and always in control. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect.”
The door slid shut at Arkhan’s back, and Troxeo slumped into his chair once again. Women had never affected him like this before. They had never made him question himself or his morals. It had never bothered him if a woman on Oretoz had been with another man before or after they had spent their time with him. That was how things worked, even if the other man was his cousin.
Katie was different. More than different. Special. He wanted to land on his home planet, dump the rest of his crew, and take the human away to a safe place of their own.
But he was a soldier, and he had orders.
Chapter Thirteen
The deep blue orb of Oretoz loomed ahead in the main viewing screen of Troxeo’s ship. He had only been away for a short time, but he felt relief wash over him at the idea of returning home. When he was on Oretoz, he knew what his duty was. He didn’t have to question his identity, who he was supposed to be, or what he should be feeling. Home was a place where things were straightforward.
On Oretoz, he hoped the last few peculiar days of his life would be over and forgotten, and his regular life would resume. There were no humans here, and his interaction with one particular human would be over.
Troxeo adjusted the ship’s computer, shifting the guidance systems to manual control. The ship was capable of landing itself by autopilot, but sometimes he liked to do things the old-fashioned way. He savored the click of the cool buttons under his fingertips and the smooth motion of the acceleration lever as he wrapped his hand around it, pulling it toward himself.
He liked being in control.
The ship quickly burned through the atmospheric barrier, allowing the great city of Metzan to coalesce before him. The capital city of the entire planet, Metzan was a bustling metropolis that seemed to grow every day. Troxeo guided his ship to the Oretoz Capital Fortress in the center of the city. From above it looked enormous, but one could only truly appreciate the unusual size of the building from the ground. Troxeo had stood at the foot of the Fortress many times, staring up at it, soaring into the slate-blue sky, glimmering and slick like glass.
The bottom of the ship gently touched the ground, and Troxeo decelerated the engines, guiding the ship onto its landing pad. He shut down the dashboard with a flick of his finger and turned to Arkhan in the seat next to him. “I’ll get the prisoner.”
“Are you sure?” his cousin asked. “I’m happy to do it if you like.”
“No, thank you.” Troxeo bit off his words through tight lips. The mission was his, and he wasn’t about to let Arkhan take credit for it by being the person to escort the human into headquarters. Nothing could change whose name was on the mission documentation, but the image of Arkhan leading the first human on Oretoz into the capital would be an effective piece of propaganda.
He left the bridge and followed the looping corridor around to the prisoner’s room. When he slid open the door, he found Katie staring out the window, her arms wrapped around herself as she shivered. She looked tiny and frail as she turned to him. “What are you going to do to me now?” she asked in a shaking voice.
Troxeo felt a moment of sympathy for her, but he mentally brushed it aside. He had to remember his responsibilities. “I’m taking you to Commander Reck. Then I will resume my other duties, and my time with you will be over.” He grabbed Katie’s arm and started to lead her out of the room. His entire hand fit comfortably around her bicep.
“I hope he’s nicer than you,” she muttered as she tripped over herself on the way to the door.
He smiled down at her. In her eyes, he could see the terror his grin inflicted. “Commander Reck? Nicer than me? You’re in for a surprise, Earthling.”
Chixo and Arkhan were waiting for him at the bottom of a small ramp that had opened at the back of the ship, allowing them to disembark. His cousin wa
s smiling and looked relaxed, but concern clouded Chixo’s face. He didn’t bother asking her what her problem was. Troxeo knew it was likely related to the same troubles he was having. It didn’t matter, anyway. There was nothing he could do about it.
As they moved toward the large gate leading out of the shipyard with the human stumbling and trembling next to him like a frightened animal, Troxeo noticed a noise he hadn’t expected. It was coming from the other side of the high wall that surrounded the ships, and it seemed to grow louder as they approached the gate. He perked up his ears. It wasn’t the whine of an engine or the controlled and precise shouts of soldiers drilling. It was cacophonous, a noise built of chaos and perhaps anger.
The gates swung open to reveal more Oretoz than Troxeo had ever seen in one spot before. The crowd even eclipsed the gathering for the election of the current Master Ruler, and that mob of people only got so big because they were commanded to come. The courtyard in front of the building was fenced off, and there were more men on guard duty than normal.
Soldiers formed a double line of security leading away from the gate and toward the Capital Fortress, guarding Katie’s path in case someone who had come to see the human managed to slip past the fence with a weapon. Some shouted for her to go back to her planet. Others called for her blood. The people at the edges threatened to push past the lines of military, either because they were angry or because the irritated Oretoz at the back of the crowd mindlessly shoved them forward. Troxeo wrapped his hand around Katie’s arm protectively, but he didn’t hurry. He couldn’t let anyone see he was intimidated.
