Claimed by the Alien: A Scifi Alien Romance (Fated Mates of the Titan Empire Book 6)

by Tammy Walsh

  I had no idea how long I’d been in that pod, how long since me and my friends had been abducted by aliens.

  Even now, saying those words brought a confused expression to my face.

  Abducted.

  By aliens.

  I often wondered where my friends were.

  Were they elsewhere on this planet? Had they been dumped in an escape pod the same way I had?

  I only knew that much about my situation because the local Titan tribe (the Urcim) saw the news about an attack taking place on a cargo ship by the Changelings. Fearing they might lose their valuable cargo, they piled their items into the escape pods and blasted them down to the planet below.

  The planet where I now resided.

  I suppose they intended on coming back to pick me up later and sell me on somewhere else. Who let valuable cargo like that go to waste?

  I shuddered at the thought of who I would have been sold to. Much better to be taken care of by the Titans of this village. They saw my escape pod crash, and when they pried it open, they found me asleep in my cryogenic pod.

  Waking up in the middle of a forest surrounded by aliens hadn’t been a barrel of laughs.

  Fortunately for me, they were kind and gracious hosts. I never went hungry or thirsty. Still, I wanted to return home.

  When I consulted with the tribe elders, they informed me that the only way of heading to one of the other planets was to go to the big city. The only way of getting there was by waiting for a trader to pass through. I could hitch a lift on his cart and he would take me there.

  Then I could go to the palace and ask the emperor for help. He could arrange for me to return to my home planet.

  I waited two weeks and still the trader hadn’t shown his face. It seemed few people came to this village.

  But there was little for me to do. I wasn’t a great hunter, cook, or leader. I happened to stumble across the medical facility when a hunter was carried toward it after being impaled by a wild animal’s tusks. I explained I was a nurse back on my home planet and they welcomed me with open arms.

  I was glad for the work. It would keep me busy while I waited for the trader to show up.

  The village was not modern. It was a traditional tribe buried deep in the forest. It rested on a single road.

  The tribe was largely forgotten by the rest of the empire, but the tribespeople did not forget. Every day, they crested a hill they called “Emperor’s Peak” that overlooked the forest and gazed admiringly at the large building perched on a hill in the far distance.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “The emperor,” the tribe’s chief said. “He lives there.”

  He gave me a spyglass to peer through. I saw the shining majesty of the palace in all its splendor. Funny, I thought, that someone so powerful should live in the lap of luxury over there while the people here struggled to get by.

  Not that they complained. They were good, kind people. Warriors who still held to the old ways. But even here, they were not untouched by technology.

  They had TVs that projected holographic images. Although they often cut out due to a bad signal, and they had to fix the machines often, they were a valuable insight into the goings-on in the rest of the Titan’s vast empire.

  Then came the big news.

  On the holographic TV, we watched as the emperor’s palace was struck by a marauding squadron of Changeling warships.

  It was like watching a science fiction movie. Except it was really happening.

  The Urcim tribe were beside themselves. In their minds, the emperor was nothing short of a god. They came running outside, disbelieving what the TV was showing them, and climbed up Emperor’s Peak.

  The chief didn’t need to raise his spyglass. They could watch with their own eyes the distant speck of light as the palace burst into flames. Even from there, we could hear the explosion.

  A deafening thump followed by a wrenching crack.

  It wasn’t only the foundations of the palace being destroyed, it was the heart and soul of the local Titans.

  They dropped to their knees and wept.

  Their emperor wasn’t only a leader. He was the central figure of their entire culture.

  If these Changeling creatures wanted to destroy the Titans’ sense of themselves in the galaxy, there wasn’t much they could do worse than killing their emperor.

  Shortly after that, bodies began to appear in the river. The Urcim pulled them ashore and checked them for signs of life. They hauled the living to the medical center where I worked and took the dead to their burial site.

  The songs of mourning they sang were beautiful but solemn. They sang together, as one. The translation strip on my neck that they’d given me when I first arrived didn’t give me any hint of the song’s meaning.

  When I asked a local what the singing meant, they told me it didn’t mean anything. They weren’t words but sounds that conveyed their emotions far more accurately than words ever could.

  Every day when they buried those bodies, the song was different.

  The headstones were marked with the same word, a word I later learned meant “sibling.”

  It was a dark day in Titan history and I wondered why I had to be present for it.

  It was then I began to hear angry whispers of revenge. The tribe, like all Titans, was a warrior race. They were peaceful unless threatened. The warriors—both male and female—reached for their weapons.

  They were primitive weapons for the most part, although the chief carried a blaster pistol that looked like something from a science fiction movie in his large hands. The chief was angry like the others but he refused to allow the Titans and his people to head into battle.

  He pointed to the thatch of wood perched upon Emperor’s Peak that he referred to as the “beacon.”

  “The beacon is not lit,” he said. “We cannot attack. We must wait until it is lit.”

  The Warriors were angry but they heeded their chief’s words. They put down their weapons and washed the war paint from their faces and arms.

  But that look in their eyes, that angry, defiant look, remained the same.

  When the beacon was lit—if it ever was—the Titans would be quick to gather their weapons and attack.

  And I would join them in their march to the city. I might not be much of a fighter but I would help them patch up their injured during the battle. The chief told me these Changeling creatures were the ones responsible for me being abducted in the first place.

  They were the reason I was so far from home.

  Once the war was over, I would jump on the nearest interstellar ship and return to Earth. I just didn’t belong here.

  There was a lot of talk about something referred to as their “Emperor’s Army” too. As far as I could make out, it was a place where Titans pulled back to in times of war. They joined with all Titan survivors so they could mount an effective attack on their enemy.

  A young warrior called Okem told me about it.

  “The Emperor’s Army changes location each year,” he said. “The chiefs across the planet meet and decide where the Emperor’s Army will be. None of the elected officials or even the emperor himself knows where that location is. It’s so we the people can fight against any invasive force that threatens us without need of leadership from above.”

  Of all the places I could have wound up, why did it have to be here? Or even if it was here in the middle of the forest, why did it have to be right in the middle of a freaking intergalactic war?!

  It was mid-morning the next day when Fiath awoke again. He mumbled words in his sleep that I couldn’t make out. He seemed surprised to find himself in the medical center.

  I placed a hand on his shoulder and eased him back down.

  “Sh,” I said. “Take it easy. You’re okay now.”

  He relaxed and smacked his lips.

  “Did you have a bad dream?” I said.

  “Not a dream,” he said. “A memory. How I ended up like this.”


  “Soon, it’ll be nothing but a distant memory. Then you can forget all about it.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever forget what happened.”

  It was the same with every Titan, injured or otherwise. They found it hard to believe they might now live in a world without their emperor. They’d always had an emperor. The title was passed from one Titan to another through the ages. An unbroken line that reached back to their earliest times. He’d always been there to take care of them and lead them through difficult times.

  I decided to change the subject.

  “So, what did you do in the city?” I said.

  “This and that,” Fiath said. “Nothing exciting. How about you? Have you always been a nurse?”

  “Yes. It’s something I’ve always wanted to be. Even when I was a kid. I used to perform surgeries on my teddy bears. Without a license…”

  Fiath smiled.

  “How did you end up here all the way from Earth?” he said.

  I was surprised he remembered where I was from.

  “It’s not like it was through choice,” I said. “I was abducted. The locals told me it’s the Changelings that do that to innocent people. Then they transport them across the galaxy.”

  Fiath frowned.

  “Are you sure about that?” he said.

  “It’s what the tribespeople told me,” I said. “What reason do they have to lie?”

  “The Changelings just overthrew their empire.”

  I shook my head.

  “This was before that happened,” I said.

  Fiath’s frown lines grew deeper.

  “I never knew they were so underhanded,” he said.

  “I guess we have a common enemy,” I said.

  “Yes,” Fiath said. “We do.”

  His eyes had turned hard as steel. It was a dangerous look that made me think maybe there was a reason he avoided my question about what he did in the city.

  Even with his body as damaged as it was, he was in fine physical shape. I wondered what he looked like when he still had his face. I bet he was devilishly handsome…

  I started. Focus, girl!

  Since when did I fantasize about patients?

  Never! That’s when.

  Flustered, I consulted my clipboard.

  “Can you move your fingers?” I said.

  He moved his digits on one hand and then the other.

  That was good news. It ruled out dangerous deeper tissue injuries he might have sustained due to the burning.

  “How about your toes?” I said.

  He wiggled them.

  I ran a finger up his shin.

  “Can you feel this?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I did the same thing with the other leg.

  “How about this?” I said.

  He nodded.

  I made a note on my clipboard.

  “Is that good?” he said.

  “It sure is,” I said. “Your body is on the road to making a full recovery. It’s going to take some time—even for a Titan—but it’s good news. I’ve been putting the Healer’s Touch ointment on every hour while you were asleep. It seems to be working.”

  I shone the light over his arms, across his chest, and his face. Everywhere showed improvement… Everywhere but his face.

  That was to be expected. After all, it was the worst affected location.

  Then something struck me about the burns.

  I recalled the explosion that happened at the palace that night.

  “Plasma fire,” the surgeon had said during the surgery. “Nothing burns like liquid plasma.”

  The Changelings had opened fire on the emperor’s palace using plasma cannons. Could he have witnessed the attack first hand?

  “Were you anywhere near the palace the night the attack happened by any chance?” I said. “Is that how you sustained these injuries?”

  Fiath took a moment and gazed at me.

  If I had to guess, I would have said he was considering how he was going to reply.

  With the truth? Or with a lie?

  “I was near it,” he admitted. “A wave of it washed over me.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said.

  Still, something didn’t quite sound right. I’d seen the explosion with my own eyes, even if it was from a distance. The blast had been very powerful but the liquid plasma cooled quickly and hadn’t spread far.

  Maybe Fiath was a guard and now he felt guilty for failing to protect the emperor. The warriors might blame him for what happened. The atmosphere was febrile. All it would take to explode was a single spark.

  “Are you married?” Fiath asked.

  I blinked, taken aback by the question.

  “Married?” I said. “Why would you ask that?”

  “You’re very kind, smart, and beautiful. I would assume your husband back on your home planet would be very worried about you.”

  “I’m not married. I was supposed to be married by now though.”

  “You are betrothed?”

  “Betrothed? No. We haven’t done that in years.”

  “Then how are you supposed to be married by now?”

  “I was engaged. Am engaged. I’m not sure which tense to use.”

  “You’re promised to another?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The translation device was a real wonder of science but it wasn’t infallible. Sometimes the translations couldn’t be directly translated, so the device had to use the closest description it could come up with.

  “He proposed to me and I said yes,” I said.

  “Still, he must be worried about you,” Fiath said. “You suddenly disappeared.”

  He probably was worried about me. It was funny though. I was far more worried about my friends’ fate than that of my fiancé.

  What did that even mean? Did it even mean anything?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a group of Titans gathered around a TV hologram device in the room across from this ward.

  “What in the world…?” I said. “Excuse me.”

  I joined the crowd and weaved between them. They stood watching, transfixed, as someone called Lord Taw stood on a small stage. Around him stood what I assumed to be Changelings. They were hideous creatures that looked similar to insects on Earth… Only six feet tall and with multiple black eyes.

  “What’s going on?” I said to the nearest warrior.

  “It’s Lord Taw,” he said. “He’s making a speech to the empire.”

  “What speech?” I said.

  “About whether or not we should accept the Changelings as our leaders. He’s a famous and powerful lord. If he fights the Changelings, then we will all fight.”

  And if he doesn’t fight, none of the Titans will fight either.

  Titans had a hierarchical structure. The emperor rested firmly at the top. This Lord must be somewhere below him but high enough that he garnered a great deal of respect from the other Titans.

  “My fellow Titans,” Lord Taw said. “I am Kal, second son of House Taw. I consider myself honored to be not only a Titan but a member of one of the most revered families in the empire. A few weeks ago, we were attacked without warning by the Changeling army. As befits their reputation, they attacked aggressively and without mercy. They killed my elder brother who was racing to the front lines with much-needed reinforcements.”

  There was a pause before he formed a fist and thumped his chest.

  “Listen to your heart,” Lord Taw said. “You know what to do.”

  The Titans around me performed the same action back at him.

  Something was happening.

  Something big.

  But I wasn’t entirely sure what.

  On the hologram, all hell broke loose. Changeling soldiers opened fire on Lord Taw and the crowd of Titans fought back. The hologram cameras switched off and we were left with static.

  The Titans stood, slack-jawed, staring at the hologram that was no longer there.

  “What happe
ned?” I said.

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the Titans rushed outside and peered up at Emperor’s Peak.

  My heart was in my throat.

  The thing they called the beacon was lit. It burned fiercely even now in the afternoon.

  The Titans roared, pumping their fists in the air.

  “Now we go to war!” the warriors bellowed.

  He grabbed me, kissed me on the cheek, and then kissed the other Titans.

  I backed away, into the sanity of the ward. Since when was going to war a good thing?

  “It’s not going to be easy pushing the Changelings back,” Fiath said, watching the Titans celebrating. “But it must be done.”

  “The Changelings are armed with ships and powerful weapons,” I said. “These Titans only have ancient weapons.”

  “It’s not the weapon that matters. It’s the will to act.”

  “The weapon matters a little bit…” I muttered.

  The Titans had been nothing but kind to me. I didn’t want their fate to end in a bloodbath.

  WAAAaaaaa!

  The siren rang loudly, cutting the Titans’ celebrations short. They ran outside and I followed them.

  Above us, swarming across the sky, were a dozen bright lights, identical to the ones we saw that fateful night when the Changelings attacked the emperor’s palace.

  My stomach fell through my feet.

  They were heading straight for us.

  The Titans scattered.

  There were no screams, no shouts of outrage. I’d seen panic before and this looked nothing like it.

  They moved with purpose. Everyone kept their heads down and ran to their battle stations. With everyone else knowing what they were doing, I suddenly found myself alone and without anything to do.

  Except run for my life.

  I turned and ran back inside the hospital. The other nurses were already leaping into action. They lifted the patients out of their beds and placed them in wheelchairs and stretchers. I gave them a hand but with my limited human strength, I wasn’t much use.

  Damn these weak human muscles!

  I ran to the supply room and helped pack up the equipment. At least I could do that much!

  I carried the boxes out the entrance to the carts they hastily assembled outside. The nurses added some of the patients to the cart beds too. I added the supplies and apologized when one struck a patient on the chest.