Devil in the Hold: A Scifi Alien Romance (Fated Mates of Breeder Prison Book 3)

by Tammy Walsh

  It took one minute to find the Desert Monarch.

  It wasn’t the easiest thing to lose.

  It was perched upon the peak of the tallest sand dune but the details were hard to make out.

  “Computer, switch to night vision,” I said.

  The screen shifted, turning multiple shades of green, illuminating the scene in much clearer detail.

  The Desert Monarch tossed a prison guard into its open maw and set to dragging the half a dozen or so others toward it.

  I gauged each of the victims to ascertain if they were Agatha.

  Most gleamed with the same polished armor that identified the guards.

  But not that figure.

  It was being dragged across the smooth surface toward the gaping maw.

  The figure didn’t struggle.

  Either the figure was dead and couldn’t move or they knew holding still was their best bet.

  Please tell me it’s the latter.

  Time would tell.

  But not much time.

  The snapping mouth swallowed another body and reached for the unmoving one…

  I had to stop the monster.

  I checked my surroundings for a weapon I could use, something I could drop in the monster’s mouth and blow it to hell.

  But the merchants had already stripped it of its weapons.

  There was nothing left.

  Nothing except…

  I peered through the windscreen at the unmoving figure, closer now to being consumed.

  I could care less about the prison officers but that one small figure…

  And I knew in my heart, I had no choice but to carry out my plan.

  I’d done some crazy things in my life but nothing quite as mad as this.

  Agatha

  The creature snagged me with ease.

  Despite my struggling breaths, I had tried to run.

  I hadn’t gotten far.

  A vine snaked around my leg, clenched tight, and I instantly hit the deck.

  I lost my grip on the knife and couldn’t reach it.

  But the truth was, I couldn’t fight this thing.

  If it was four times stronger than the last one, it could snap me as easily as dry grass.

  The vine wasted no time in wrapping around me a dozen times.

  For a moment, I thought it might cover me head to toe like a mummy discovered in a long-lost tomb.

  It stopped at the waist and dragged me up the incline.

  It didn’t rush, not when it had so many other snacks to feast on before my turn came.

  I watched as one prison guard after another was swallowed whole by the monster.

  It could have been eating popcorn.

  One after the other, it pulled its victims inside itself.

  And soon, it would be my turn.

  Some of the guards fought, beating ineffectively against their bonds, while others, mercifully unconscious, let the creature do what it would with them.

  I could only imagine the horror when they woke up inside the belly of that beast.

  Just as I was about to.

  Suddenly, lying back and not fighting didn’t seem like such a good idea after all.

  My head and arms were left untouched.

  I peered around, looking for something I could use to attack the creature.

  Even a rock was better than nothing.

  I saw nothing.

  The prison guard I helped earlier was ahead of me, next in line.

  He flailed weakly, trying to pry the monster off him.

  I heard the sickening series of cracks as one bone after another snapped in his ribcage.

  It was all the same to the Desert Flower.

  I stared up at the night sky and made a prayer.

  For a miracle.

  For something to save me.

  I knew nothing would.

  I thought about Egara among the stars, living a happy and full life.

  And despite the situation I found myself in, I smiled.

  To know he would live a long life was enough.

  Resigned to my fate, I would face it and not flinch.

  Not that I wasn’t scared—I was terrified—but the one thing I had control over was myself.

  “I’m ready,” I said out loud.

  Then I heard a whirring noise.

  Not the high-pitched buzz of the drones—although I would have taken that too if they’d come to rescue me—but a deeper, more powerful sound.

  I thought back to when I’d last heard it.

  The shuttlecraft.

  And there.

  A light blinked on the craft’s underside, its engines glowing a soft shade of blue as it flew directly for the monster.

  I recognized the shape and model of the craft immediately.

  It wasn’t so long ago I was on board it.

  “Egara!” I said.

  My throat tightened and my chest grew congested.

  My face curled up and tears threatened to roll down my cheeks.

  He’d come back!

  Had he come back for me?

  Had my prayers been answered?

  Would I get to see him again?

  And hold him?

  If I could do that, I could meet my maker without too much regret.

  Then the smile slid from my face.

  The shuttlecraft was coming in too shallow, too fast, for him to crash.

  He would put himself directly in the Desert Flower’s reach.

  It was a fraction of a second after I had that thought that the Desert Flower tilted upward and peered at the shard of technology diving headlong toward it.

  It raised its tendrils but not high enough.

  The shuttlecraft smashed into the monster, emitting a harsh blue-white explosion that tore through it, blinding me, and turning the world white.

  Egara

  I wrenched the passenger seat from its moorings and held it in front of myself, preparing to use it to cushion my fall.

  And what a fall.

  It wasn’t a long way down but the speed concerned me.

  It made the ground blurry, fuzzy.

  The wind roared and whipped my hair, snapping my clothes.

  I peered over at the console and brushed a hand over the cool metal of the craft’s door that framed my exit.

  I’d been through a lot with this shuttlecraft.

  More adventures than I could count.

  But it represented my past, not my future.

  That was Agatha’s domain.

  A host of new exciting adventures awaited me.

  I just needed to rescue her from the jaws of death first.

  The Desert Flower Monarch was far larger than any I’d seen in the past.

  I wasn’t sure the shuttlecraft would take it out but I had to take the chance.

  I peered at the creature.

  It reached up with its sprawling tentacles, ready to snap around the shuttlecraft as it came in to land.

  Would the ship slip through?

  I couldn’t wait to find out.

  I needed to jump now.

  So I did.

  I braced the chair with both arms and tossed myself out the door.

  I was halfway to the ground when the ship struck the monster and tore into its soft and pliable body.

  It flailed its tendrils and screeched a horrible sound like glass tossed into a blender.

  Thick viscous liquid seeped from the tear in the corner of its mouth.

  The ground rushed up to meet me.

  Time slowed the way it always did during times of high drama.

  The chair struck the ground first.

  As it did, I landed on my shoulder, badly, and felt something tear.

  I rolled end over end, taking out the worst of the blow and tossing up great plumes of sand.

  I rolled five, six, seven times before I came to a stop.

  I laid on the ground for a moment, dizzy and disorientated.

  I pressed a hand to the sand to shove myself up. />
  Sand smothered the blood peeling from the corner of my mouth and neck.

  I rolled onto my back and peered up at the sky, unable to contain the giddy and crazy high-pitched laugh that issued from my lips.

  It was a mad, dumb shit thing to do.

  But I had done it and survived.

  I grunted as I rolled onto my shoulder and immediately wish I hadn’t.

  The bones crunched and shot a bolt of pain into my chest.

  I rolled up onto my feet but couldn’t stand, not yet.

  I closed my eyes and waited for my senses to right.

  The creature continued to scream, in a higher pitch now.

  Even through my eyelids, I saw the enormous explosion that must have been the fuel cells biting the dust.

  And still, I could not stand.

  “Egara?” the sweetest voice in the galaxy screamed—not in pain but excitement. “Egara!”

  It was music to my ears.

  She crashed into me with her usual lack of grace and knocked me back down.

  She straddled me and kissed every inch of my face.

  “Are you all right?” she said between kisses. “What do you think you’re doing? Flying a spacecraft into a monster?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I said calmly, the pain subsiding as I reached up to tuck a length of hair behind her ear. “All I could think about was you.”

  She grinned and tried to pull her laugh back but it exploded from her uncontrollably.

  All of a sudden, tears were in her eyes.

  I reached up and wiped them from her face.

  “Don’t be sad.”

  “I’m not sad.”

  She leaned down and pressed her lips to mine.

  She gave herself to me as I gave myself to her.

  The way fated mates were always said to coexist.

  Each equal in the other’s eyes as neither could survive without the other.

  And I knew then I made the right decision to come back.

  As the Monarch squealed its last shriek, its tendrils fluttering in pain, it finally flopped to one side and was still.

  It turned out the shuttlecraft was enough to silence the beast for good.

  The prison guards began to get up from their positions dotted about the monster, most unaware of where they were and what they were doing there.

  “Get up,” Agatha said. “We have to leave before they realize you’re here.”

  She reached out a hand to me but was too weak to heave me up by herself.

  I rose by myself and, still a little shaken, she helped lead me from the fiery blue pit of the Desert Flower Monarch’s dwelling and final resting place.

  We slipped into the darkness, hoping never to be found again.

  Agatha

  We staggered through the darkness, letting our feet find the way.

  What little moonlight there was waxed and waned through the sporadic cloud cover.

  I hoped we wouldn’t run into another Desert Flower before the night was done.

  I stood no chance of protecting us from it alone.

  Although Egara’s arm pressed heavily on me, I timed my movements with him so we could keep slogging on.

  I didn’t know how we were going to survive the night, never mind escape the planet but I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Egara.

  No matter how long or short that was.

  Egara panted, struggling to breathe the same way I had until our first kiss.

  He clutched a hand to his chest with an expression of intense pain and a thin film of sweat popped across his brow.

  It had to be something serious.

  Of course it was.

  It wasn’t exactly normal everyday practice to throw yourself out of a moving shuttlecraft while it was still in midair.

  “Wait,” he said. “I need to rest.”

  He slumped to the ground and focused on his breathing.

  He sucked air in deeply through his nostrils and out through his mouth in very slow deliberate gasps.

  I’d never seen him so hurt before—even after fighting a vicious battle in the pits.

  “I should go back and get the prison guards,” I said. “Maybe they can help you.”

  “They can’t help me. I just need a little time.”

  But we don’t have any time.

  I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

  The moons crested the horizon, passing over it and disappearing from view.

  On the opposite horizon, the first signs of the twin suns and their ceaseless dance filtered through the dense cloud cover, exposing us to the prison guards any time they picked themselves up and came across our tracks.

  I took a seat beside him and wrapped my arm around his broad back.

  He leaned his head against mine and I hummed a tune, something I made up on the spot, something I felt deep in my heart that had no words could express.

  “Thank you for coming back for me,” I said.

  “I had to come back for you. I can’t live without you.”

  I smiled at him and the tears came unbidden.

  I let them roll down my cheeks as I kissed him on the lips, wishing I could give him the same gifts he shared with me when we made love.

  To help him heal faster.

  I would have gladly absorbed the pain for him, as much as I could bear, anything to alleviate the suffering he was going through.

  He’d set me free in more ways than one.

  I was his and he was mine.

  We sat there, facing the dawning of a new day.

  Its sunlight warmed our faces and neither of us noticed as a figure in regulation boots stepped before us.

  “Sorry to interrupt this beautiful moment,” the leader said.

  We both started.

  Egara released me and made to rise to his feet.

  He lost his balance and fell back.

  He shook his head, disorientated.

  I stepped between the two males and fixed the leader with a look.

  “He’s injured,” I said. “He needs medical attention.”

  “The prison has excellent medical facilities,” the leader said. “The sooner we get him there the sooner he’ll be back to his old self.”

  He stepped forward and extended an arm to take me but I wrenched it free.

  “He saved your life,” I spat. “He saved all your men’s lives.”

  The leader seemed taken aback and peered from me to Egara.

  Was it possible he hadn’t seen Egara come to the rescue in the shuttlecraft?

  “He flew the shuttlecraft into the monster,” I explained. “Without him, your men would be dead. You too. You owe him your lives.”

  A corner of his helmet had been smashed, revealing a square chin.

  A single line curled one corner of his mouth.

  It wasn’t much to go off but I could have sworn his expression softened.

  “Is that true?” the leader said.

  Egara wasn’t capable of much but he could nod his head.

  “I didn’t do it to save you,” he said. “I did it to save her.”

  The helmet turned minutely to me and then back again.

  “I thought nothing happened between you two?” he said.

  I turned to look at Egara and a smile rose to my lips.

  “The most natural thing in the world happened between us. Even in this place, it’s possible to love.”

  The leader reached into his back pocket.

  His weapon, I thought. He’s reaching for his weapon.

  “Please,” I said. “Don’t hurt him.”

  The leader surprised me when he came out with a small first aid kit.

  “It’s not much,” he said. “But it’s all I have. It might tide him over for a little while. But you’re going to need to get him to a hospital soon.”

  At first, I didn’t take the first aid kit.

  Was it a trick?

  Then, slowly, I reached out to take it.

  He made no su
dden movements and didn’t draw any other weapons.

  I sat down, opened the first aid box, and set to work giving him the medicine.

  The leader watched us for a moment and then turned to leave, following our tracks back toward the fallen monster.

  “Where are you going?” I said, fearing he might be heading to fetch more of his men.

  “To tell my men we’re heading back to the prison… without any prisoners,” he said.

  I couldn’t leave it at that.

  I hated ambiguous endings and this one was ripe.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said. “Why are you helping us?”

  “I wouldn’t say leaving you out here in the middle of a desert is exactly helping you,” the leader said. “But if you’re telling the truth and you really are in love, perhaps you’ll find a way to escape the planet after all.”

  With that, he turned and left.

  Speechless, I continued to administer the medicine under Egara’s watchful gaze.

  It was alien medicine and I had no idea what I was doing.

  I shot him with so many needles I thought he might suffer from acute blood loss.

  It was disheartening to see none of it seemed to help him.

  “Okay,” he said, easing back, “that’s it.”

  “No. There must be something else here I can give you.”

  He nodded.

  “There is one more medicine you can give me. The most valuable medicine.”

  He wrapped a hand around my shoulders and kissed me.

  I could taste the salt of my own tears.

  I wasn’t embarrassed and let them come.

  The leader might have let us go but he hadn’t set us free.

  With no food and lacking the medicines Egara needed, it was as good as a death sentence.

  “If you’re telling the truth and you really are in love, perhaps you’ll find a way to escape the planet after all.”

  Had the leader meant in death?

  It was a freedom of sorts but not the one I had hoped for.

  I pulled back and smiled at Egara.

  A little color had returned to his cheeks but he was still badly injured.

  He ran a hand over my cheeks as I ran mine through his hair.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too. My fated mate.”

  It was a love unlike any I had ever known, the kind most took a lifetime to develop.

  And I knew with certainty this would not be the end.