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

by Ella Maven

  I wasn’t in Jersey anymore, Toto. How that blow hadn’t killed me, I wasn’t sure. My entire body ached. Did he know humans were fragile creatures made of flesh and bone and blood? A dark liquid mingled with the dirt beneath me. My blood.

  Something thumped the ground, hard enough to make my teeth rattle, followed by a dull roar. Earthquake? Tsunami? Was there even water on this planet?

  Miranda gasped, and my vision cleared in time to see the Bladed Blues leader sprinting toward me. I wondered if he planned to finish off the job, and I wasn’t sure I cared at this point. Use me as an example, fucker. I dare you.

  Except he was heading toward the guard who’d cracked me. His scales seemed alive, as ripples of varying blue shades shimmered over his body. His forearm spikes unfurled as he raised his arms, and in my head, I heard a metal-like, unsheathed-sword sound effect. He leaped in the air—I swear it was in slow-motion—as his mouth opened to release a thunderous growl. His spiked forearm whipped toward the guard and then fell to his side as he landed with a massive thud, dust surrounding him.

  I didn’t understand what had just happened. At least, I didn’t understand until the guard’s arm fell off. The same arm which had clubbed me over the head fell off his freaking body and landed in the dirt in front of me with a thud, the fingers still twitching. With a wheezing, high-pitched squeak, he held his now-armless shoulder, as thick, clotted liquid squirted from his body.

  What followed was chaos. I screamed, the women around me screamed, and it was goddamn hysteria as the rest of the Armored Bears went into attack mode to avenge their fallen brethren. The group of Bladed Blues went into a practiced formation. They crossed their arms in front of their necks, spikes out, and fanned out from their leader in a V.

  There was nothing for us women to do but close ranks and huddle together as the fight waged around us. I’d thought the odds wouldn’t be in the Bladed Blues favor, as they were outnumbered two to one, but it was obvious I didn’t know much about the alien species on this planet because the Bladed Blues were winning. Handily. It was like watching a herd of elephants stampede through a pack of hyenas.

  It became obvious why the Armored Bears wore helmets and armor, while the Bladed Blues didn’t even bother with shirts. In addition to the spikes in their forearms, they also had them on the top of their heads—in three spiky rows like Mohawks—and down the center of their backs. Along with their now-elongated claws and spiked tails, they were chopping Bears in half, slicing through their metal like butter.

  When the grunts and dying groans faded, all six Bladed Blues still stood. Most weren’t even breathing hard, and an especially large one with a scarred face and broken-off horn was casually swirling the end of his tail through a pool of green Bear blood. Another took out a piece of cloth and meticulously wiped down one of his horns. This was appreciated, because I’d seen him send it straight through a Bear’s eyeball.

  I clung to Miranda. “Oh my God,” I muttered. A Bear took a few last shuddering breaths, blood oozing from an open wound that spanned his torso. “Did the good guys win or the bad guys?”

  “I’m thinking there are no good guys,” she answered.

  Blondie whimpered.

  Eyes narrowing, the leader stood in the center of the carnage. He studied each body, and I followed his gaze. Where was the armless guy? I counted the Bears on the ground and only got eleven. I knew there’d been twelve. Had one gotten away?

  The leader must have come to the same conclusion, because he barked a few words at his men, his voice guttural and urgent, before his gaze fixed on me, and he began walking in my direction.

  As he got close, he reached for me, and my survival instinct kicked in gear—albeit too damn late. My head throbbed, my cheek ached, and my eye was already swelling shut. I tried to scramble away, hands scrabbling for purchase on the dirt, but there was nowhere to go. Women surrounded me, and I probably had a concussion. Where the fuck was I going to run to? Earth? He picked me up off the ground as if I weighed as much as a kitten.

  I lashed out, hitting him with my fists and kicking my feet. My bare toes struck his hard stomach muscles, and I cried out.

  “Let her go!” Miranda screamed.

  The bikers silently formed a line, cutting me off from the rest of the women, leaving me to struggle on my own against the leader. His eyes scanned me curiously, and then he barked a command at me in a deep voice that reverberated down my spine. But his harsh tone was nothing compared to the sight of his massive, gleaming fangs. Seriously? Bone blades, muscles, and fangs? What intimidating feature didn’t this species have?

  I went still with fear and braced for whatever he had planned for me. I couldn’t imagine it was anything good.

  Two

  Daz

  This was the last flecking thing I needed.

  I held a human female. An actual human female. One of her eyes was nearly swollen shut, but the other was a deep brown, big and round in her pale face, and her long, dark hair hung to the middle of her back, wavy and thick.

  She was so small. Did humans have natural defenses at all? I gripped her jaw and squeezed. A shudder ran through her body and her mouth dropped open. I peered inside. Her teeth were small and blunt. How did she eat anything substantial?

  Her chest heaved, and her good eye rolled wildly.

  “I won’t hurt you,” I said and readjusted my grip.

  She swallowed and shook her head. “Uh dohn unnestan u.”

  I checked behind her ear. No translation implant, and my guess was that if she didn’t have one, none of the other females in this group would either. I huffed in frustration. A dire situation just got worse.

  Flecking Uldani. Now it all made sense. Five rotations ago, they’d captured my brother, Sax. They were holding him hostage until we picked up cargo from a Rahgul ship and delivered it to the Uldani compound. They hadn’t told us what the cargo was, and at the time I hadn’t understood why they’d insisted on holding Sax as collateral instead of just offering to barter. Now I knew why they kept the specifics of the cargo from us. Drixonians would never put females in harm’s way. It was embedded in our very sola.

  I prided myself on my instincts and my ability to assess situations before acting rashly. It was what had kept me alive all these sun cycles—through dangerous missions, war, and survival. It was what had kept the males of my clavas alive. They looked up to me as their drexel. They depended on me to lead them, and I’d die before I let them down.

  Right now, my instincts battled each other with bloody fists. Failing this mission most likely would cost my brother his life, but everything had changed the minute the Kulk struck this female. I’d felt the blow in my own head like an echo. One glimpse of the female’s blood and I hadn’t been able to think straight. Even now, the thought of those crimson drops on the ground had my scales rippling in anger and my machets twitching to be let free. I could feel the throbbing of her pain like a full pulse in my own temple.

  Never before had I lost control like that. I’d wanted nothing more than to make that flecking Kulk suffer for hurting her. As soon as we’d arrived, this human caught my eye and made my cora beat double time. For a brief moment, I’d felt something other than anger and the crippling pressure of guilt. I’d felt hope.

  And now… the Kulks were dead. My only regret was that the one who’d hit her had gotten away. I’d intended to finish him off after he suffered for a bit and watched his Defens troop die because of his actions, but he was missing. In the chaos of the fight, he must have fled. I suppressed a growl. I’d find him and finish the job. It wasn’t like it’d be hard to find a one-armed Kulk.

  Kulk bodies lay around us, their green blood staining the dirt. They worked for the Uldani as their Defens, and while they weren’t hard to kill, they were plentiful and followed orders. Also around us? Five human females. They wore minimal amounts of clothing and clung to each other, obviously frightened. The one in my arms shook like a scared baby welf. I smoothed her hair, and she flinched a
t my touch. I gritted my teeth. Didn’t she see all those Kulks my males and I had killed for her? Didn’t she see I was her only hope of survival on this flecking planet?

  Fleck, she was fragile. Her skin was soft, and thin, narrow tunnels carrying her blood lay just under the top layer of her pale flesh. What kind of evolutionary fleck-up was that? One scratch of my claws and she’d bleed. I’d never seen a human up close. I had no memory of seeing any female—of her species or mine. All our females had died when I was an infant. And now, I was responsible for this human and five others.

  My men would want orders. Answers. Not that they ever needed an excuse to kill some Kulks. They hadn’t hesitated to follow my lead even though they knew there would be consequences. Normally, we didn’t give a flying fleck about a few dead Kulks, but the Uldani held my brother. They had a way to punish us. I clenched my jaw at the thought of what they’d do to Sax. He was strong, but he wasn’t immortal. And he was all I had left of my family.

  “Drexel,” Ward spoke from behind me, respectfully using my title and not my name. His voice held a tremor of emotion, a sign of how unusual this situation was. Ward was a stoic rule-follower. “What are we going to do?”

  I didn’t know, and that was unacceptable. I’d been the leader of the Night Kings clavas since the Uprising. I’d led us to prosperity and as much happiness as we could have without females and a future. Now, we had females, but was I willing to have them at the cost of my remaining brother’s life?

  “We will take them to the hideout and comm the rest of the males at the main camp to go on lockdown. It won’t be long until these dead Kulks are discovered. The one who got away will alert the closest squad to come after us.”

  Ward’s eyes searched mine. “What’s happened doesn’t make sense. The Uldani assigned Kulk guards to the females, so why didn’t the Kulks deliver them to the Uldani? Why did the Uldani need us to make the delivery?”

  That same question had been like an itch under my skin ever since we’d arrived to find a group of humans being guarded by Kulks. “Something’s not right. And until I know more, we protect these females from harm.”

  Ward straightened his spine and nodded, clenching his jaw. “Of course.”

  As long as we held these females alive, then we had something the Uldani wanted. And as long as they kept Sax alive, I had a reason to make the delivery. Just the thought of handing over the human in my arms to the Uldani made a growl rumble in my chest.

  I had thought Fatas was done flecking with us. We’d already lost all our females and most of our male elders. We’d been betrayed by the Uldani and then lost hundreds of our males in the Uprising, including one of my brothers. Then she’d stranded us on this planet. I hadn’t even thought of her when the Uldani took my Sax.

  Fleck Fatas. We’d survive despite her. But now, as I held the pretty human in my arms, and my instincts screamed at me she meant something, that I had to protect her, that she was mine, I wanted to rage at Fatas. I’d had my brother Rex’s life in my hands and flecked that up. I couldn’t have Sax’s life on my conscience either.

  When Sax and I were younger and still lived on Corin, we’d found a pack of wild rusters. Sax had talked to them and given them all names, even though he knew they’d be our dinner. When an elder killed the one he’d named Hammy, Sax had cried. The elder had told us never to talk to or name anything we’d have to hurt or kill. It’d been a lesson I’d taken to heart. The logical decision to ensure the safety of my brother and my clavas would be to deliver these humans as promised. Don’t talk to them. Don’t learn their names.

  As I stared at the female in my arms, and she stared back at me, I wanted to know her name. I wanted to know what it would be like to have her look at me with respect instead of fear.

  That hope in me grew, and I resented it. It could be the end of me. The end of my clavas. The end of my brother. And yet I couldn’t turn my back on these females. I told myself I was holding off on the delivery because I didn’t like being tricked by the Uldani, but this was bigger than that.

  I felt as if I was standing at a line. Stay behind it and life would continue as it always had. Or I could cross that line and take a chance. But I could never go back.

  “I need to take her to Tark.” Tark was a friend of mine, and a lonas. He’d left his clavas to go it alone, and, because he was a tech genius, we often traded with him. “If he doesn’t have a language-translator implant, he’ll be able to find one. I have to be able to talk to her.”

  “Daz.” Ward said my name in a low voice. “Not that I minded slicing into a few Kulks, but normally you aren’t that impulsive.”

  “I know.” I kept my gaze on my female as I spoke, worried I’d look away and she’d somehow have been only a dream. “I can’t explain it. The Kulk struck her, and I felt it. I felt her pain in my head. I wanted to kill whoever made her bleed. Did you feel that?”

  “I felt only sympathy at her pain. That was all. You, my friend, went straight to killing.”

  My jaw ticked, and I had to tighten my muscles, so I didn’t dig my claws into her skin. “I’d do it again.”

  “And we’d back you up again as well.”

  I nodded. “Grab one female each, put them on your bikes, and get to the hideout as fast as you can. No flecking around.”

  He lifted his brows. “You mean watch Hap doesn’t crash his bike, keep Gar from scaring the females to death, and make sure Xavy doesn’t try to ‘show them the scenery’.”

  I almost smiled. Almost. “Exactly. Keep them in line.”

  “Sax was better at that than me,” he muttered under his breath, and then froze, gaze darting to me.

  Thinking of my brother and second-in-command sent a ball of dread climbing up my throat, threatening to choke me, but I swallowed it down. He and I had built this clavas together, working hard to be prosperous while not betraying our traditional Drixonian values. I couldn’t have done it without him. “We’ll get him back. I’ll find a way.”

  “I know you will.” Ward’s confidence in me was humbling. “You’ll meet us at the hideout?”

  I nodded. “I’ll comm you with updates. Don’t forget to keep them all charged.”

  Ward’s gaze drifted toward the glaring sun. “Consider it done.”

  After a few quick words to the rest of the males, they each grabbed a human female. Shrieking, screaming, and shouting ensued. My female went wild, reaching for her fellow females. I hadn’t realized they were a pack species, but mine fought my grip to get to the rest of her kind, clawing, scratching, and hollering at me ineffectually.

  Ward’s female had yellow hair and looked like she was going out of her mind as she flailed like a chit. Ward growled a few commands at his human, who went limp in his grip with fear. I gritted my teeth at the treatment, but we didn’t have a choice until we could explain to them we meant them no harm. His movements were jerky and irritated as he placed her on the bike between himself and the handlebars.

  After all my brothers were mounted, they turned and smacked their bands with their right hands in unison. I returned the gesture before they took off, riding toward the hideout swiftly.

  My female was out of breath from fighting me, wheezing, and whimpering. Wetness tracked down her cheeks from her eyes. Was she sick? I wiped at the drops and licked them as she batted my hands away. Salty. Was this normal? I hated I couldn’t ask her. Flecking Uldani. Flecking Rahguls. Flecking Kulks. They’d all pay for this.

  I wanted to treat her injuries and get her something to eat and drink, but it was too dangerous to linger here. Once the Kulk Defens team failed to check in, the Uldani would send more Kulks to investigate. They’d find dead bodies.

  “Fleck,” I muttered to myself. This entire situation had been suspicious from the beginning, but I was willing to do just about anything with my brother’s life on the line. Except hand over human females.

  As I dragged my female to my bike, she shook. Was she cold? The sun warmed my skin effectively, but I didn’
t know how her self-heating properties worked. I rummaged in my saddlebags before finding a spare bit of fabric I used for washing up. It was clean, and while it barely covered my chest, it wrapped around her slender body from neck to mid-thigh. She clutched it and eyed me cautiously. “Isss thus beeeig niiis thigg a trrrik?” she said in her language. I was eager to be able to understand her.

  I picked her up and placed her on the bike before settling in behind her. At the feel of her plump ass, my cock took notice. I sucked in a breath at the unfamiliar hardening of my shaft. Our libidos had remained mostly dormant since the virus that killed the females of our species about a hundred and fifty sun-cycles ago. But just one look at this female, and every carnal thought I’d never had bubbled to the surface. Fatas was seriously flecking with me.

  I started up my bike, a sleek black girl I’d modified to withstand most weapon fire. She wasn’t as light as some of my fellow warriors’ bikes, nor as fast, but she was powerful as hell and could go long distances before refueling. I wouldn’t have attempted the trip all the way to Tark’s on any other machine but her.

  I placed my female’s hands on the straight bar in front of her, so she had something to hold on to. As I did so, my arm brushed against her chest. The small buds at the tips of her breasts hardened beneath her top, and she sucked in a breath as her body shivered against me.

  Could it be the human female found me attractive, or was her reaction due to fear? I didn’t know much about the males of her species. What kind of warriors were they? What kind of defenses did they have to protect their pretty, fragile females? I snorted. They couldn’t be that strong if they’d allowed the most precious parts of their society to be taken by the pitiful Rahgul. Maybe the human females were better off with us if their males couldn’t guard them properly. On this planet, Drixonians were at the top of the food chain. Only a few other species posed a threat to us, and that was only if we were sick, injured, or alone.