Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance (4 page)

The silent auction meant she had no idea who had bid on her, if anyone. She had however long it took them to tally the bids, to determine who had won what, and then she was going to be passed to a master. And would that dog Rua manipulate it somehow? Would he make certain she ended up with someone awful or was he more interested in the cash? Whatever form
cash
took in space.

When she got bored of pacing, she sat down on one of the couches. It was soft, but it wasn’t even a full foot off the floor. Everything was so low to the ground, the sofas and the tables, it was like the old paintings of Ancient Rome Alaina remembered studying in high school. Couple that with the Arena and she briefly wondered if she’d traveled back in time, too. But, no. It made sense, she reasoned, that if there were ancient alien cultures and they’d been to Earth again and again, stealing people or whatever, that some of their culture would have rubbed off on early humans. So, she reasoned, it wasn’t that this place was reminiscent of Ancient Rome, it was that Ancient Rome had been reminiscent of this place. Insane.

Finally the door opened, and Alaina shot up to her feet. Captain Rua strolled in, holding the door open for one of the aliens. To Alaina’s utter dismay, it was not one of the Jiayi.

But to her equal surprise, it was the Errai girl.

“Your grace,” Rua said, nodding to Alaina. “I present your prize. Look down when your domina is present, slave.”

Alaina blinked and looked down, but felt her temper rise at that. She wasn’t going to live long, though, if she couldn’t play the part. So she stared at her feet, even when she heard the girl approach her. Sandaled feet stopped across from hers. Her toenails were scaled, the same evergreen, and looked like they’d been painted that way.

“I am Lennai of House Chara, your new domina,” she said. Her voice was light and airy, sweet, but Alaina remembered Yfia calling the Errai vicious. “Captain Rua tells me that you are new to our world, new to the work of a slave, even. That’s all right. We’ll make sure you pick it up quickly.”

Alaina had no idea what to say to that. “Thank you, domina.”

The girl clapped her hands. “See! She’s a natural. Rua, I assume you are happy with my payment?”

“Yes, your grace,” Rue replied. “Very happy, in fact.”

“Excellent. We’ll be going then. Alaina, you may escort me.”

Alaina lifted her eyes, but only so far as Lennai’s collarbone, because she had no idea what to do.

Lennai sighed and held up her hand, then let it rest on Alaina’s shoulder. “Now you walk, and I walk with you. You can keep your eyes for this. Try to look proud. You are now owned by the most powerful family on the station.”

Alaina stole a glance at Rua, who no longer looked smug, and then she walked to the door with Lennai drifting along, more or less at her side. In the corridor, Lennai indicated which direction to go, and the bodyguards in red and gold fell in behind them. When they emerged from the bathhouse and the roar of the market hit them, Alaina faltered, but Lennai just let go of her and walked past her, towards a hovering phaeton at the base of the bathhouse steps. Alaina followed, watching Lennai climb through the curtains and into the little transport. Then one guard climbed into the front driver section of the phaeton, but the rest of the guards flanked Alaina and she was made to walk behind it with them.

The walk through the market was a tough one.

It was loud and full of people, and all so strange Alaina found herself teetering on the edge of a panic attack. Past the slave blocks, the market itself was popping with stores and stalls, full of brilliant colors and noise. Aliens hawked their wares, shouting out articles of clothing with names Alaina didn’t recognize, waving food she’d never seen before. Children darted here and there, some of them begging, some of them stealing, she was sure. It was a bustling metropolis on a space station, and Alaina looked around at all of it as she walked behind the phaeton, escorted by armed guards.

The phaeton wound its way up a long, narrow street, and eventually the sounds of the market began to fade. Buildings rose up all around them, several stories high, glistening metal walls with gates barring every entrance. When Alaina could peek through a gate here and there, she saw gardens with wild fronds and blooming flowers from other planets. Some of them had mouths. Guard flowers. It was a crazy juxtaposition of old and light-year new. The houses were shaped like what Alaina thought Roman villas would have looked like, but they were all made of futuristic materials and contained these strange aliens. Then the phaeton passed beneath another portcullis much larger than the one that had separated the bathhouse from the slave quarter. This one was painted in the red and gold of the Errai. They must have been passing from the central part of the station to the Errai-only section.

And sure enough, beyond that gate, all she saw were Errai.

On the other side, it was like a castle. A palace. Banners and huge windows that let in spacelight, carpets and curtains and chandeliers. The phaeton stopped in a gigantic foyer and Lennai climbed out of it, brushing out the skirt of her dress with one hand while extending the other towards Alaina.

“Come along.”

Alaina went to her but didn’t take her hand. Which seemed just as well, since Lennai didn’t appear to want her to, just to answer her beckoning. She turned and started walking and Alaina followed her, trying to keep her eyes low, when all she wanted to do was look around at everything. Servants hustled this way and that, in clothes similar to the dress Alaina wore. Not servants, she corrected herself. Slaves. They must have all been slaves. Serving slaves and guarding slaves.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked suddenly, as Lennai led her down a twisting marble staircase.

“
Domina
,” Lennai said sharply, looking at her. “You always call me 'domina.' And I don’t like it when slaves ask questions, but given your background, I’ll let it slide. This time. In the future, you will trust that I will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it, to properly serve me.”

“Fine,” Alaina muttered. “Domina.”

“Rua recommended you as a bed slave,” Lennai went on. She shrugged, and fiery red curls slipped across her shoulders. “But I have plenty of bed slaves. I don’t need another. Despite all of his insistence.”

Alaina exhaled, relieved.

“However, I do need an exceptionally unique donara, and I think you will do perfectly.”

Alaina hesitated. She had no idea what a donara was, and now she was afraid asking would get her snapped at again, or worse.

In the minute she spent struggling with whether or not to ask, Lennai led her to the foot of the staircase and then out a pair of glass doors, onto a high porch that overlooked what Alaina realized was a training yard. Two dozen men and women populated the yard, all of them practice fighting in a miniature arena scattered with soft sand. Lennai went to the porch’s railing, settling her hands upon it, and looked down at the fighters with pride.

Not just fighters, Alaina reminded herself. These were gladiators. The gladiators Yfia spoke of, who fought whole wars in the Arena to keep interplanetary peace. Alaina saw Errai and Jiayi and Ankaa among those training in the yard, and felt an anchor of dread drop right through her stomach. Was she going to be made to fight? Would Yfia’s prediction come true? If she had to fight, surely she would die. She had no idea how to fight the way these aliens were fighting. Some of them had weapons she’d never seen before, could not have even imagined how they were used. She’d barely ever thrown a punch in her life.

Lennai lifted her hands and clapped them three times.

The fighters reacted instantaneously, as if whipped, all stopping what they were doing and falling into a tight, straight line before the balcony, looking up at Lennai. Shoulders straight, hands at their sides, chins high. They’d moved almost in concert, and swiftly, until they were perfectly positioned beneath their domina’s gaze. And they were all rippling with muscles, even the Jiayi, who were still slender but chiseled. Even in the women, there wasn’t an inch of body fat on any of them. Scarred, sandy faces, and eyes hardened by bloodshed and determination. Alaina was terrified of all of them.

One of them in particular drew her eyes, and then she couldn’t look away. He was Errai, she could tell, and the scales that wound over his shoulders and chest were black, shiny, like obsidian. He was gorgeous, Alaina thought, and that single thought was very jarring. Along with his black scales, his hair was black and long, braids and baubles threaded into it, pulled back from his face in a short ponytail. He was tall, shoulders broad and every inch of him was one defined muscle after another. He had violet eyes, so bright Alaina could see them all the way from the balcony. But his expression was dark, ferocious, and angry.

“Cursii of the House of Chara,” Lennai announced, smiling. “In preparation for the upcoming games, I have bought a gift to further inspire you along your path to glory. This,” and she indicated Alaina, “is to be your donara if you win the day. Whosoever of you reaches the top of the list, that is the cursu or cursana who will claim this very exotic creature.”

Claim
.

Alaina was starting to think she knew exactly what a donara was.

The gorgeous black-scaled Errai fighter looked right at her, then, and a chill when down her spine. She shivered.

“Does this please you?” Lennai asked them.

The gladiators roared their approval, so loud Alaina jumped in spite of herself, staring at all these screaming aliens who wanted now to
win
her. All except the violet-eyed Errai, who stood still, glaring up at the balcony, at her, in what Alaina could only think of as disgust. She wasn’t sure which was worse. Desire or disgust, from any of these creatures.

Lennai clapped some more, pleased with herself, and then lifted her hands again. The line of gladiators fell silent.

“Back to your training,” she called, her voice sing-songy.

The line of gladiators broke apart and they went back to their sparring. Save for that one Errai, who Alaina simply could not stop looking at, though he scared the shit out of her. He kept looking up at the balcony, at Alaina, and she stared back at him, until Lennai took her arm and pulled her towards the balcony doors.

“Now that we’ve motivated them,” Lennai was saying. “Let’s get you prepared.”

“P-prepared?” Alaina stammered.

“Yes. The games are tomorrow. You will be given the rest of the solar to rest and clean yourself properly. You’ll be given new clothes and styled to my liking, and then you’ll join me in the morning when I go to the Arena, and sit beside me to watch the games. Isn’t that generous?”

“I…”
No fucking way
. “...yes.”

“Being a donara is a great honor,” Lennai chatted on. “You’re very lucky. Any number of slaves in this house would kill for it.” She looked at Alaina, and Alaina realized her eyes were yellow, sunset against the fire of her hair. “I am being very kind to you, human.”

Alaina managed to get the words, “Thank you,” out of her mouth.

Lennai smiled, and it was almost serpentine. “If you do well as donara, really anything could happen.”

“How do I do well?”

“You please the cursii, and they win fights for me, bring glory to themselves and to my house, and to you.”

“I see.”

Lennai laughed, leading her down a corridor away from the balcony instead of back up the stairs. “It’s better than pouring wine, believe me.”

“And how exactly am I meant to please them?” Alaina asked.

Lennai arched an eyebrow at her. “However they want you to, Alaina. A donara is a gift slave. Obviously. If they want to bed you, they bed you. If they want you to wash them, you wash them. If they want to weep into your hair, you let them. Whatever they want. Understand?”

Alaina’s stomach turned. “Yes.”

“Good.”

So Rua had made good on his promise after all. Not a bed slave to just one master, but apparently a bed slave to possibly dozens, depending on who won in the games. And how many games they had. And how long Alaina lived to be given, again and again, to the gladiators.
Gift slave
. It was disgusting. There was no honor or glory in slavery in being given, no value in a life without personhood. Alaina hated this place and these people, these
creatures
, and she knew then she could not stay here. Whatever the risk, she had to escape.

Lennai escorted her through another portcullis, another locked gate, into what Alaina assumed were the slaves’ quarters. The room she was given was small but comfortable, with a bed and a writing desk, her own bathroom, and a small porthole looking out at the stars. It also had a door that closed, which Alaina saw was not always the case, because room after room that they’d passed on the way had no doors at all.

“Dinner will be brought to you in a few hours,” Lennai said. “And I will not step foot in this room again. From now on, the head slave, Gurun, will fetch you when I desire your presence. Do as he bids, for he is my arm down here. The rest of the solar you may pass in solitude, and Gurun will wake you and prepare you. I will see you bright and early —and ready— in the morning.”

“Yes, domina,” Alaina muttered.

Lennai left it at that, and left the room, clearly more than eager to get out of the slaves quarters. Alaina, spent of her courage and hope, and completely out of her depth, shut the door, sat down on the bed, and put her face into her hands to cry.

The cursii barracks were in something of an uproar after Domina Lennai’s announcement. It had been so long since any of their masters had offered a donara. Once their training for the solar was finished and they had retired to their barracks, the cursii could talk of nothing else amongst themselves. The mess hall broiled with boastful cursu and cursana discussing what they would do with the strange alien creature the domina had presented to them, as well as what kind of creature she might have been. What she felt like, what she tasted like. What she hid beneath her dress and if it was the same as theirs. If she was intelligent or primitive. Only a handful of them had ever seen another human, and those who had claimed to know everything about them. What they ate, how they procreated, that the slightest breeze might kill them if one wasn’t careful.