The Alien's Ransom: A SciFi Alien Warrior Romance (Drixonian Warriors Book 1)

by Ella Maven

  THE ALIEN’S RANSOM

  Drixonian Warriors #1

  Megan Erickson

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Ella Maven

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Copyedited by Edie Danford

  Cover design by Natasha Snow

  First edition February 2020

  Dedication

  To those who handle trauma with humor

  Contents

  The Alien’s Ransom

  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

  The Alien’s Escape

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Alien’s Ransom

  “Nothing in my life had prepared me for extraterrestrial motorcycle clubs.”

  Frankie: I thought alien abductions only happened in movies. But here I am on a strange planet with green soil and a gang of muscled, wicked-horned aliens on hover bikes. All I want to do is go back to Earth, but the alpha male in charge has decided I belong to him. Now I’m on the back of his bike speeding to an unknown destination and super freaked out about liking his biceps and serious scowl. Good thing I have some banked personal days because this might take a while…

  Daz: The job is supposed to be easy. All I have to do is deliver a spaceship of living cargo to the vile Uldani and they’ll release my brother. If I fail, they’ll take it out on him. Except the cargo is something I’ve never seen before—human females. The one called Frankie is beautiful and soft, and I’ve already spilled blood for her. Now how am I going to save my brother? Because this human female is mine.

  The Alien’s Ransom is a full-length Sci-Fi Romance novel featuring a snarky heroine who tries to find the humor in everything, even when kidnapped by aliens, and a possessive hero with lots of hidden weapons. Big ones.

  One

  Frankie

  I couldn’t move my limbs. That was my first indication things were most definitely not okay. Also, my body swayed slightly. Was there an earthquake? Was I dreaming?

  I opened my eyes, and instead of the ceiling of my apartment in New Jersey, I was staring at a dome plated with gleaming silver. I blinked and tried to turn my head, but my muscles were frozen in place. My heart began to race, and I screamed except … no sound. My mouth didn’t even open. My vocal cords didn’t vibrate. Just … nothing. Nothing but me lying on my back staring at a silver ceiling.

  Okay, Francesca Maria Russo, think, think, think. Don’t panic, don’t panic…

  Shit, I was panicking. My breathing sped up, the sound whistling through my nose. I could feel my chest rising and falling as tears slipped down my temples.

  A loud beeping blared in my ears and then a face appeared above mine. I used the term face loosely. Pale white skin. One eye. A hole above it which fluttered like a dolphin’s blowhole. And a red slash which must have been a mouth, because it opened and emitted a squeaky voice, “Calm, human.”

  I didn’t even try screaming. There was no point. I had to be dreaming. I had to be, and fuck, if my subconscious wasn’t a dick, because I was paralyzed and unable to pinch myself. My brain was cruel if it was doing this in my sleep. That was the last time I’d eat Ben & Jerry’s before bed.

  But God, this seemed real, so real. The beeping stopped as the dolphin-faced thing moved its floppy, elbow-less limbs beside me. Something pricked my arm, then warmth flowed through my neck. I tried to move it, and sure enough, I could now turn my head. I couldn’t move my limbs. But my head? Yes.

  I was lying on some sort of cot and the creature was beside it, standing at what looked like an ultrasound machine. The creature was … very tall. Like NBA-basketball-player tall, but also so thin I didn’t think it had many organs, or bones for that matter.

  He turned around and blinked at me with that creepy one eye. Another loud beeping filled the air, and the creature wheeled his cart away. It was then I got a good look at the space I was in. It was all very sterile, with gleaming silver-plated walls and a floor so clean, its surface was reflective. Lying on about half a dozen cots which filled the room were women, like me, covered in white sheets.

  Wow, this was one fucked-up dream. The creature was now at the bedside of another woman. I heard it say the same thing— “Calm, human.”

  The bed to my left was empty. I looked to my right and met the deep brown eyes of a woman with skin a few shades darker than mine and hair spread out around her head in curly black ringlets.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I smiled at her. “I’ll be okay when I wake up.”

  Her eyebrows dipped. “You are awake.”

  I shook my head. “Nah, this is a dream.”

  Her expression softened. Was that pity? “Sweetie, I promise you, this is no dream.”

  “Where the fuck am I?” A voice screeched, loud and jarring, the sound echoing off the metal walls. “Who are you? What is happening?” Her voice dissolved from shrieking to hysterical tears.

  I could barely see the woman, but she looked to be around my age—late twenties—and had straight blonde hair. A few more weird creatures entered the room from a sliding silver door. One jabbed a needle in the hysterical woman’s arm, and she fell silent.

  I turned back to the woman I’d been speaking to. She was watching me carefully.

  “This is a dream,” I said.

  “Not a dream,” she whispered. “What’s your name?”

  “Frankie and this is a dream.”

  “I’m Miranda. I wish this was a dream but it’s not.”

  “A dream,” I said again. My breathing accelerated and my heart raced in my ears like a marching army. I glanced around and realized whatever we were in was moving. Like a boat, or airplane, or… Holy fuck, this had to be a bad dream.

  “A dream,” I panted, panic inflating inside my chest like a balloon, cutting off my air.

  “Frankie, please, they’ll come back—”

  “A dream.” I squeezed my eyes shut and opened my mouth, then chomped down on my lip. I ground my teeth into the flesh, hard, until I tasted blood. I opened my eyes and stared at the silver ceiling.

  Oh my God.

  “This is a dream!” I shouted. “A dream, it has to be a dream. A fucking dream!” The silver door opened and still I shouted. “A dream, a dream!” More dolphin blowhole jerk-faces. A needle prick in my arm. “A goddamn fucking—” My eyes closed, my voice stopped, and it all went black.

  There were a lot of things public school didn’t prepare me for. How to balance a checkbook. How to change the oil in my car. The proper way to load a dishwasher.

  But public school, most freaking definitely, did not prepare me for how to deal with extraterrestrial motorcycle clubs.

  Yeah, you heard me. E.T. motherfuckers on wheel-less bikes that hovered above the ground. The b
ikes looked a lot like regular motorcycles on top, but instead of wheels, flat circular disks the same circumference as the bike’s body spanned the bottom. The riders didn’t look like E.T. They looked more like giant, horned bodybuilders covered in shiny scales in various tones of blue.

  We heard them first, a ground-shaking rumble like a volcanic eruption before they appeared over the horizon like a locust swarm. One rode out in front, the others flanking him. They seemed to be males, but I couldn’t tell for sure until they got closer. They were humanoid, with noses, mouths, and two eyes. Wicked black horns corkscrewed out of the sides of their heads, ending in sharp points. I was probably in shock because I couldn’t do much more than stare.

  A warm breeze blew over my skin, which was nice since I wasn’t wearing much. I sat on the ground with six other women, wearing whatever we’d worn to sleep before we’d been snatched out of our beds. On Earth. At least, I was sure that was what had happened. I’d gone to sleep and woken up in that spaceship with no recollection of how I got there. I kept hoping I’d wake up in my apartment to the beeping of my dying smoke alarm because I hadn’t bothered to change the batteries yet. But nope.

  As much as I wanted it to be, this was not a dream. After we landed on the planet, we’d been ushered out of the spaceship—an actual spaceship! —by another type of alien… Species? They were easily eight feet tall and wide as freaking Grizzlies, so even if they hadn’t been covered in plated armor and helmets, I wasn’t going to fuck with them. I eyed the gun-like things on their hips and shuddered.

  The Dolphin-Hole aliens had taken their stupid ship and left, just zoomed off into the distance leaving us on this strange planet with Armored Bears and the incoming bikers. We seemed to be in a rather deserted area. I would compare it to the places outside Vegas where the mob buried bodies. This planet was covered in a coating of green dirt, kind of like matcha powder, and the vegetation was blue—from the grass to the distant forest-like area where the hover bikes had emerged.

  The craziest thing was not only could I see a sun, but also a whole other freaking planet. It wasn’t like I could leap over there or anything; it was probably still light years away. But it was visible and rising over the horizon with a blue-green swirled atmosphere. It reminded me so much of Earth my heart ached.

  The biggest biker—I assumed he was the leader—came to a stop and five others followed. The bikes settled, kicking up dirt as they dropped to the ground. The dust swirled around the alien’s tree-trunk legs as they approached. They wore black pants which looked a bit like shiny leather and black boots. Most of them wore no shirts, displaying muscle upon muscle, and their scales were mottled, almost like blue camouflage. A few had ratty-looking vests with patches on them. I didn’t want to know what they had to do to earn those patches. I assumed it wasn’t community service.

  Each one had a red armband on their left biceps with a symbol stamped in the center that I couldn’t make out. Oh, and they had tails. About six feet long, their tails were thick at the base and narrowed to a spiked point. Most of them had some sort of jewelry on the tips. Well, less jewelry and more like weapons, such as collars of blades and chains of spikes. Their pants were held up by their tails, with a clasp of some sort at the top, like a backwards belt.

  This meeting reeked of a handoff, because the Armored Bears, while tense and alert, did not seem surprised at the bikers appearance. I kept my eyes on the biker leader.

  His armband was a little different—the edges trimmed in a gold thread, and he was seriously fucking scary-looking. His prominent brow was ridged in a series of nubs over his black eyes, and as he flexed his arms, a seam split open from the scales on the outside of his forearms. A row of black blades emerged, about six inches long and four inches wide, shaped like shark’s teeth.

  I imagined they could slice through anything, including me. As quickly as they rose, they settled back into his skin, and I wondered if that was some sort of display of dominance. I accepted the challenge silently with a shudder. He was dominant. Done. No need for more demonstrations.

  His septum was pierced with a thick ring, his black hair streaked with silver hung straight to his shoulders. It blew in the breeze like he was the star of some intergalactic shampoo commercial. Dove for Extraterrestrials on Bikes. Christ, I was delirious. My friend Paris always told me I laughed at inappropriate times, and that was true, because my brain seemed to handle stress with humor.

  Something about the leader’s posture, and that of the rest of his crew, made me uneasy. They had humanoid features, and I could tell from their expressions they thought something was wrong. They glanced at each other, murmuring harsh words in a guttural language. The leader’s nostrils flared as he surveyed us, his fists clenched at his sides. His hands appeared to have five fingers, each topped with a pointed black nail.

  Most of the women looked away and a few whimpered, but I kept watching him. His gaze landed on me, and a flicker of darker blue flashed over his scales. His tail thumped the ground, and I felt it, like an electrical current speeding through the dirt. Those eyes looked into my very soul, and a fissure of heat licked at my spine.

  I looked away first, because what the hell was that? Did magic exist here? Did he cast a spell on me? When I looked up again, he was conversing in muted tones with the head Armored Bear who stood in front of us holding a wicked-looking spear. About a dozen more Armored Bears stood guard over us, as if a bunch of weapon-less women in sleepwear were any threat.

  I had on a pair of short shorts and a large T-shirt. I was better off than the girl in the back who wore nothing but a sheer teddy. Pitiful thing. But really, who slept in stuff like that?

  About four of the Armored Bears were checking her out with hungry eyes. Well, from what I could see through the slits in their helmets, I assumed they were hungry eyes. Kind of hard to tell because they had no eyelids, just these big yellow eyeballs. Occasionally, an opaque film would descend over them before disappearing again. It was freaking me out.

  I stared down at my feet. I’d meant to repaint my toenails before bed but had fallen asleep before doing so. They were a chipped bright pink, and sitting here on a foreign planet, I couldn’t believe I was actually thinking about my stupid, fucking toenails. Who gave a fuck when aliens were going to rape or eat us? I shivered and glanced around, like I’d find evidence of a gnawed-off human arm laying nearby.

  My way of dealing with stress all my life had been to just not deal. After my mother died when I was two, my father raised me. He was a fantastic dad, but a little overbearing. He made the decisions for me, and I went with the flow. That had been a fine plan for the most part because my life had flowed on a calm current. Floating in an innertube, I’d been content to let the wind blow me around since I’d never strayed far from shore. When the seas got a little rough, I’d laugh it off and move on. But this? This wasn’t a small storm at sea. This wasn’t even a hurricane. This was Armageddon. My inner tube had popped a long time ago, and I was drowning.

  Miranda sat beside me, and although she shot me cautious looks, we hadn’t spoken since I’d woken up. I needed some time to deal with the fact this wasn’t a dream. I’d bitten my lip to hell, and still I was here and not in my bed. I wasn’t waking up in my apartment, grabbing a granola bar to go, and getting ready for my waitressing job. I wasn’t fielding my best friend’s phone calls about when I was going to pick up my bridesmaid dress. The answer was never if I could help it. Peach wasn’t my color. Nope, I was here, on a planet with a gleaming orange sun that seemed so close I couldn’t understand why we weren’t all burnt to hell, and a sister planet that loomed like a threat.

  “Hey,” I whispered to Miranda, unsure if we could talk. Some girls were sniffling. Shrieking Blondie sat with her head bowed, hair covering her face, slender shoulders shaking. I wanted to go to her, but the guards glared every time we so much as scratched an itch.

  Miranda turned to me. “Hey, back.”

  “Sorry for my freak-out back there.” I gesture
d to the area where the spaceship had landed.

  She smiled. “Hey, it’s okay. You didn’t hear me when I woke, up. I did the same thing, but I got it under control before they shot me full of that paralyzing shit again.”

  “Yeah, what the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged.

  “Any idea where we are?”

  “None. Another solar system? Some black-hole time warp?” She pointed to where the hover bikes rested on the ground, the sun rays gleaming off the polished metal. “I mean, what are those things?”

  “I vote for black-hole time warp. That’s easier than believing this place has existed all this time, and all we’ve accomplished through our space research was dissing poor Pluto.”

  Miranda snickered, and me being me, the daughter of a loud Italian chef, I opened my mouth and hooted.

  Big mistake. Huge. The guard next to me took one of his massive club hands and swung it at me on a hiss. I didn’t have time to duck or dodge because it was coming at me like a chunk of concrete. I managed to avoid a full-contact blow, but he still cracked me across the cheek. Blinding pain scorched across my face and down my neck as my head felt like it spun three hundred and sixty degrees. I fell to the side, lungs burning as I inhaled dirt and whatever air was on this godforsaken planet. I struggled to stay conscious. Cries surrounded me, and I felt gentle hands in my hair as Miranda spoke to me softly.