Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance (32 page)

“
My lady,
”
I said, shifting so that I might hold her up with one arm.
“
Look.
”
I pointed, and she followed my gaze, squinting against the starshine. She pointed with me, frantic, glancing between me and the egg, the egg and me. I took a few steps toward it and she patted my shoulder as if to say,
yes, yes, go.
And so I went, happy to comply with her request. We drew ever nearer, and I saw another member of my tribe, a hunter with some status called Pjarn, and he had a female with him, his fingers curled proprietarily around her arm. The female was alive and standing on her own, but she trembled in Pjarn
’
s eager grasp. I ducked down low in the tall grass when I saw Fegar and Yorn approach; my lady was watching with terror in her eyes.

“
Chief,
”
Pjarn said, eyeing Fegar dubiously,
“
this was my drop zone, was it not?
”

“
Yorn and I have traipsed all over this infertile rock,
”
Fegar hissed,
“
only to find his female was dead upon arrival, and mine never arrived at all.
”
Fegar turned his hungry gaze, then, on the female behind Pjarn.
“
It is only right that the Chieftain of your tribe should be mated.
”

“
Ask another, lesser hunter,
”
Pjarn said, standing tall.
“
I have earned the right to take a mate.
”

“
So you have,
”
Fegar agreed, nodding his head,
“
but hear me, Pjarn Qu
’
taiya, you shall not keep both your mate and your life.
”
Pjarn hesitated. I knew he could kill Fegar in single combat; I had seen both men fight. But with Yorn at Fegar
’
s side, the odds had turned against him.
“
There is to be a secondary delivery,
”
Fegar went on,
“
should this trial prove to be successful. You shall be the first of us, then, to be mated.
”

Pjarn scowled and tugged his female forward, handing her over to Fegar as though she were a sack of grain. Fegar smiled, showing his sharp canines, as he took her into his arms.
“
And so there is no confusion,
”
Fegar said, pushing his female down into the dirt and lifting the skirt of her gown up her thighs,
“
I shall claim her here, in the company of witnesses.
”

My lady cried out, even as Fegar
’
s female began to thrash on the ground, kicking at Fegar to keep him at bay. I clamped a hand down over my lady
’
s mouth, praying that her cry had not drawn attention to us, but I saw Pjarn and Yorn look around: they had heard. Fegar, for his part, was too focused on the female, holding his hands up to say,
very well, I shall not touch you.
But the female glanced nervously between the warriors around her and laid back, spreading her legs for her would-be mate, who was practically salivating at the sight of her. I gathered my lady up into my arms, and we stayed hunched low, my hand still tight over her insistent mouth. I could not see Fegar thrust home, but I could hear how his mate called out, and the sound echoed against the far-away mountains.

Back at my dwelling, my lady convulsed with the force of her weeping as I laid her down on the furs. She trembled and shook, so I moved gently to tug her gown off over her head, leaving only the tiny jewels that adorned her nipples. I hung her gown over the entrance of the dwelling so that it might dry, and sat down close to my lady. She was saying something as I carefully pushed her back so that she was lying down, something pleading, and I tried to smile to reassure her, but I know she could not see my face, obscured as her vision was with her tears.

I examined her body, covered in tiny little cuts, her ankle swollen with injury, and pried her legs apart so that I might examine where the
rimosha
had sliced into the flesh of her thigh. I could not help but look briefly at the flower of her sex, and I felt myself hunger at the sight of it. But I would not take her immediately, as Fegar had his mate; I would wait for her to come to me, if ever she would. No, instead I cleaned her wounds with fresh
Panyan
liquor and bound them with strips of clean cloth. Then I closed her legs and covered her with a soft fur.

“
Sleep,
”
I murmured to my lady, and lay down beside her.
“
Sleep.
”
I encircled her with my arm to keep her warm when the winternight set in and watched her tremble, watched her weep. She was so soft; I reveled at the feel of her in my arms. We had so much to discover, she and I.

This creature was designed at the intersection of the beautiful and the terrifying, and when the glass of the pod shattered and rained down, I felt his gaze on me long before we made eye contact. When I finally did look up, it was the terror I saw first. His skin was the color of bronze, and it shimmered where it caught the light. He had thick, black horns like those of a ram — no, not two, just one, and it curled around his head like one half of a twisted demon’s crown. From the shoulder of his left arm, all the way down to the knuckle of his middle finger: scales, black and pointed. But there were no scales anywhere else on his broad, sinewy form. His hair was black and worn in a ponytail that hit between his shoulder blades, and his eyes — like his horn — were black and flecked with gold. I had never seen eyes like his before: still pools at night full of bioluminescent starbursts. They were haunting; they were beguiling.

Beautiful but horrifying: the creature was easily two feet taller than I was, with hands that looked as though they could snap my bones as easily as I pull apart chicken wings. Can you blame me for screaming when he pulled me out of the pod? Can you blame me for running when he set me down on the earth?

I ran as fast as I
’
d ever run, weaving in and out of trees larger than some Manhattan studio apartments, until they gave way to a clearing. I turned back to look over my shoulder at the humanoid alien who, though several yards back, was in pursuit, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. I had only just registered that he was holding out his hand, that he
’
d quickened his pace, that he was crying out, when the ground gave way beneath me and I slid painfully down a ravine into the icy waters of a river.

I scrambled to swim to the surface, my lungs burning, but I wasn
’
t making any headway: my foot was tangled in a waterweed that looked like the evil progeny of a Venus flytrap that had mated with a hydra, its thin green teeth sinking into the soft flesh of my leg. I screamed, and only bubbles erupted from my mouth.

And that
’
s what panic gets you: a sprained ankle, and a leg all sliced up from the hungry jaws of a flesh-eating waterweed. It became very clear, very quickly, that the Echelon had not sent us girls back to Earth.

After the creature had pulled me out of the water, I thought, perhaps, his designs on me were not to kill and eat me, but rather to discern my reasons for coming to this planet, even, perhaps, to help me. He cradled me in his arms as he tromped across the plains, and I rested my head against his bare chest as he moved. He was wearing what essentially looked like raw leather overall shorts with straps that crisscrossed before hooking over his shoulders, but aside from a belt that boasted a knife and a small sporran at his hip, that was the only garment that adorned him.

He held me carefully as he moved and when I asked,
“
Do you speak any English?
”
he peered down at me with a shrewd, intelligent gaze, and puffed a huff of a sigh that gave me all the information I needed: no, he didn
’
t understand me, and it was no use continuing to jabber my gibberish at him while he was carrying me in his arms across an open field.

But when he pointed out the other pod, my heart swelled: maybe the girl in there knew more about all this than I did. Maybe her pod hadn
’
t been destroyed and there was a communicator of some kind that we could use to call for help. Maybe I simply wasn
’
t the only human alive on this planet. And he could sense my enthusiasm about finding the pod and he set off at quite a clip to reach it.

But there were three other creatures there when we arrived, all speaking in a language that sounded harsh and sharp, Germanic or Scandinavian. And I saw one hand a girl to another, and I saw him push her to the ground and lift her skirt above her head.

I cried out,
“
Stop!
”
And I was silenced.

He carried me quickly away, and I was staring over his shoulder as a horned monster, mad with lust, thrust himself into the small, trembling girl beneath him. I wondered why she had opened herself to him: perhaps she saw no other choice. And I had been powerless to help her. I was powerless to help myself. I deflated into tears, inconsolable, and thought I might be able to spare myself further pain if I just submitted to the devil
’
s desires, as the other woman had. So, I wept racking sobs all the way back to his little tent, I leaked hot tears as he laid me atop a fur, and remained inconsolable as he pulled off my bloodied gown. I wept as he laid me down and pried my legs apart, certain that he was about to plunge himself home. But he didn
’
t: he cleaned my wounds with stinging liquid and wrapped them in clean cloth. He wrapped up my ankle as well, careful to set it straight before he did so. And then he covered me with fur blankets and lay down beside me and went to sleep.

He went to sleep
. I shrugged his arm off of me and sat up, staring down at him. It was the middle of the day, or so it seemed, and I could see him clearly in the shade of his little hut, and he seemed totally at ease. I furrowed my brow, reaching out to gently brush a stray black hair out of his face, and still he slumbered. This was my chance. This was it. And God only knew when my next opportunity would come.

I slipped quietly out of the tent, snatching my wet and bloodied gown as I went, and doing my best to make even steps. I couldn
’
t move quickly at this pace, favoring my injured ankle as I was, but I could move, and I thought that I had to get back to my pod. I had to do anything I could to get off of this bizarre planet. I had to do whatever it took to get myself home.

The plain was full of tall grass and wildflowers, and it felt good to have the sunlight beating down on me. The planet was warm and lush, and I didn
’
t need any coverings to feel comfortable because I appeared to be the only living thing in a three-mile radius. I had my wet gown around my neck to cool me, and to keep my shoulders from getting sunburned.

I approached a patch of stunning pink flowers the size of my fist, their orange pistils sent skyward, and decided to walk through them. Even though I was in pain, I thought I might as well try to make the trek as pleasant as possible. I stepped through the patch of wildflowers and marveled at how they bent their heads toward me; I felt a little like Alice through the looking glass, and these were Wonderland
’
s wonderful flowers.

They waited, the little bastards, until I was in the middle of the patch of them before they struck. The pistils, it turned out, were mandibles, and the stigma opened into a tiny mouth. The petals themselves were razor sharp, rendering the head of the flower into a hungry jaw that latched onto my leg. I tugged myself free and the flower came up with it, dead but still attached. Then more bit into me, and more, and more until I couldn
’
t move, until my legs were a feast for the flesh-eaters.

I shrieked, trying desperately to wrench myself free, but found myself being tugged to the earth by the foliage.
This is absurd
, I thought and began pick the flowers up out of the earth and toss them aside.

The skin on my legs was on fire as they bit into me, but I was making some headway, plucking up patches of them by the fistful. But mere moments later, I felt myself being tugged free and held aloft. There he was, my savior, my protector. My captor. He gave me a long-suffering look, hoisted me over one shoulder, and headed back to the dwelling. My gown he left in the field with the flowers.

“
Rimosha,
”
he said, then rattled off a few more words.

“
Yeah,
”
I muttered,
“
I get it. Bad. Flowers bad.
”

My cheeks burned with embarrassment, as he had me ass up over his shoulder, but I just swallowed down my pride and let him carry me. I had been hurt, again, by the foliage. I shifted uncomfortably, my breasts pressed against his shoulder blade, my stomach rubbing against the scales of his left arm, and heaved a sigh.