Alien Romance: The Barbarian's Owned: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 1) (3 page)

Chapter Three

The nautilus spire was a corkscrew-shaped mineral formation the size of a high-rise, and they walked atop the vine-strewn corkscrew ridges. Clusters of bioluminescent orbs hung off the bottoms of each corkscrew band, illuminating their path in weak green light.

When overgrown thorn bushes with fishhook barbs blocked their paths, Garr would swat them down by summoning a thin sheet of otoya, shaping it like a machete in his hand. His clothing could turn from supple cloth to liquid and then to sharpened alloy at the flick of his wrist.

Sometimes Vaya led and Garr stayed at her side. They never left her without an escort. It wouldn’t do much good anyway, since Rae had no viable escape route.

Yet.

Hoping something would fall into place, Rae kept asking questions: what are the deposits made from? Why did Lyr let them cross her boundaries? Vaya was more forthcoming.

She didn’t know much about the Skorvag, but Lyr was apparently a “wild domé” who had no Ythirians living in her borders, no prime, and protected her territory with vicious wildlife.

It put the picture together for Rae. The domé were all part of the Skorvag, but also separate entities competing with one another, using Ythirians like white blood cells to keep out foreign organisms. The planet’s dominant life form—the Skorvag—had a symbiotic relationship with the Ythirians.

From an evolutionary standpoint, breaking the Skorvag into regional entities who competed or cooperated with one another according to their needs would produce a more adaptive, probably healthier planetary life form.

Rae wondered if there was a greater mind; wondered how competitive versus how cooperative each domé was. Most of all, she wondered if she could appeal directly to this “Kaython” entity who ruled Garr. Seemed logical a domé would have veto power over the biological equivalent of her gut bacteria.

And Rae nursed the wild hope that Kaython identifying as feminine was no accident. True, techno-organic forests didn’t necessarily adhere to “sisters before misters,” but to the extent Kaython had an opinion on trivial matters of mating, maybe her feminine identity signaled a different point of view than Garr’s.

Or it was quite possible Kaython was a giant, dendritic bitch.

Once Garr had a lead around the nautilus spire and was nearly out of sight, Rae glanced up at Vaya, whose rangy strides always made her hard to keep up with. “If Kaython’s so powerful, why does Lyr control the portals to Earth?”

Vaya frowned at Rae, eyes narrowing.
Oops. That question might have been too obvious.

The giantess knelt, a top arm wrapping around Rae’s shoulder, the lower one pointing to Garr. “See that guy?”

“Of course I—”

“He’s the prime. If I mess up, I answer to him. So enough with the friendly questions that are plainly designed to glean enough information to make your escape. ’cause I like you, short-stuff, but I
work
for Garr, and I take my job seriously.”

She had severely underestimated Vaya. Why was it she just assumed huge, athletic people weren’t as sharp as her?

“Not saying I don’t love me a schemer.” Vaya’s English was so good it was clear she’d spent time scouting on Earth. “The best taliyar are always schemers.”

“I don’t know that word.”

“It’s sort of like first lady. The prime’s girl.”

Rae made a belch face. She didn’t want to be first lady of anywhere, let alone an overgrown alien Christmas tree. She’d have taken “chief researcher,” “tenured faculty,” or “senior scientist,” but first lady?
Ick.
“How about I take your job and you can mate with the arrogant prick?”

Vaya snickered. “Don’t be absurd. I’m not a mating-class female anymore.”

“Mating class?” Rae’s voice came out sharper than she’d have liked. “I’ve been
classified
? Based on my fertility? That’s disgusting.”

“Relax. It just means you can mate and I can’t. Fertility’s a separate thing.”

That was worse, not better. “So it’s just about who can have sex?” She shook her head. “You had to give up sex to be a soldier?”

Vaya shrugged, a more elaborate gesture for someone who basically did it twice at once. “Naturally.”

Naturally!
“I hate this world.”

The criticism plainly stung Vaya, who stood and prodded Rae forward. “It probably hates you right on back.”

Rubbing her poked ribs, Rae turned back to the path and realized she’d just lost the esteem of the only person on Ythir close to liking her. On the other hand, she’d come out with vital information:
if Vaya’s afraid I’ll use information from her to escape, that’s good. It means escape is possible.

And increasingly, Rae realized her path home had nothing to do with Vaya, Garr, or even Kaython. The one who controlled the portals and her way back to Earth was none other than the wild domé Lyr.

***

They stopped to eat in a forest clearing. Rae had learned the mineral formations covered in scales were called “crags,” similar to Earth’s stony counterparts.

The honeycomb alcoves were “divots.” There was no English word for the scaled plates that felt like warm sandstone, and so they were translated as
squama
.

A tablet of crag with divots sprouting soft toadstools took up the clearing’s center. Nearby trees bore a fruit in a hard, turtle-shell shaped rind and while Garr and Vaya had no trouble with theirs, Rae was left pounding hers against the crag to get it open.

Garr shifted nearer, took the shell from her hands, and popped it open with slight pressure from his thumbs. He offered it, and for a few moments Rae burned while staring at the shiny, orange marbles of fruit clustered inside the rind.

She took it from his hands and it seemed to satisfy him somehow.

Sneering at Garr, she nibbled on the fruits inside, which had a sweet citrus flavor.

Vaya used the lunch break to commune with Lyr for further instructions. The Ythirian giantess knelt with eyes shut in a meditative pose.

She cast pinches of sand into the air, seeming to interpret its direction as the way Lyr wanted them to go. Rae was surprised by the shamanistic ritual.

Were she a domé, a simple command line interface would have sufficed.

***

How, precisely, would Rae talk to a sentient woodland? She’d been to church as a girl, but wasn’t really a meditative, free spirit type. Nevertheless, she had to try something.

Her opportunity came while working their way along a rocky goat path that ran parallel to a steep ravine, an earthen wall rising sharply on her left and sloping off to her right.

If she was going to escape, there was a relatively quick, largely gravity-driven route available. That maybe wasn’t the best idea, but it had the obvious merit of being her only one.

It might have helped if Garr hadn’t taken rearguard while Vaya scouted ahead. She could feel the rake of his gaze whenever it caught her. Sparing a backward glance, she noted his attention’s focus on her foot placement and the narrow path.
Worried his chattel will get injured,
she fumed.

He met her gaze. The intensity of his black eyes made Rae reflexively lower her head. She hated herself for the show of submission, trying instead to meet his stare head-on.

Garr’s eyebrow rose at the challenge. He stalked toward her. “Staring at a prime only means one thing.”

“A challenge?” she asked, inclining her jaw.

“For females, an invitation.”

Rae tossed her braid over one shoulder. “From me, it’s a challenge.”

He narrowed his eyes.

Pricking his ego seemed to get a rise from him. She decided to keep pushing it. “I’ve got your species figured out. Your domé is the advanced intelligence. Your lot seems a few generations behind humans, to be honest.”

He started toward her. “Watch where you’re stepping. There’s—”

Ah, but that was also part of her plan. Fake a tumble off the ravine wall, so that it looked like an accident instead of an attempt to get just a few moments alone to speak with Lyr.

That she’d goaded him into stepping toward her only made it better. Rae stepped back, intent on landing her foot askew so that she could wobble and fall, bracing to tuck and roll with the her chosen path down the steep slope.

Instead, her foot sank into empty space and she pitched faster than she’d wanted to.

Garr shouted. The world spun end-over-end. Soft leaf padding thumped into her shoulders, and after a few rolls, Rae lost track of the angle of her descent. Would she strike a tree trunk? Her whole body braced for impact.

The ground fell out from under her entirely. Her stomach leapt into her throat and she plunged twenty feet, hitting a soft, wet pool of sticky mud.

Groaning, Rae propped herself up on her elbows, body half swallowed by the dark ooze that cushioned her landing. When the forest stopped spinning, she noticed two green pods the size of pumpkins growing from the mudhole. They were shaped like cabbages, though paler, and much larger.

Both cabbages bent toward her and their leaves flared open like the night blossom, except…

Those aren’t flowers.
Inside each cabbage were eight serrated, curved knife blades evenly ringed around the plant’s center, as though protecting the pistil.

From the razor gleam, she could tell the Skorvag had generated plants with metallic components.
Apparently I’ve found Lyr’s claws.
Just how would a wild domé react to her going suddenly off the recommended path?

Garr dropped into the mud hole beside her, sinking shin deep into the muck beside her. He snatched Rae’s shoulder and dragged her upright, pressing her chest-first into the earthen wall.

His body encompassed her totally, and she heard a distinct puff noise from the plants. She guessed the alien cabbages had pressurized tubes and were firing murderous knives at them both.

Instead of skewering her, they rang off Garr’s otoya. He must have armored himself with it. However, at least twice, she heard a distinct wet
thunk
that suggested they’d found a gap in his defenses. He shuddered against her.

For a few long moments after the puffing stopped, Garr held tightly onto her. Then he slumped away and buckled to his knees. Rae turned and held her hand over her mouth at the sight of two gleaming knives embedded in Garr’s right shoulder blade. His violet blood ran in tiny streams down his back and dripped into the mud.

Above them, Vaya crashed through brush, headed for their location.

“This,” Garr growled at her, “is why you do what I say.”

“Noted.” She looked from him to the spent cabbages.
Lyr certainly has trust issues.
Swallowing, she scanned beyond the muddy pit, noticing the bladed foliage only seemed to grow in the muck. Vaya would be here momentarily, and Garr’s injury would distract her. With Garr too wounded to give chase, this was her only shot.

But a glance to his nasty shoulder wounds gave her pause. She felt a swell of pity for how he’d accrued them. Her logical mind, though, broke in with the obvious:
He wouldn’t be wounded if he hadn’t kidnapped you. This is no time for Stockholm Syndrome. You’ve got a home on the other side of the galaxy. Run!

She lurched from the mud, hit solid ground, and took off at a sprint.

“Stop!” hollered Garr.

Not for anything.
She ducked beneath vines, wove out of sight, and veered sharply another direction. The change in trajectory would make it harder for them to catch up.

She put on as much speed as she dared in the treacherous, shadowy pathways, which were filled with unfamiliar and maze-like flora. She needed at least a hundred yards if she wanted time to petition the wild domé who just tried to murder her.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” she panted. “I get it. You’re sentient, maybe a little overprotective. And I’m sorry I can’t do that ritual crap to ‘talk’ to you. I’m an alien here. Cut me some slack.”

Huffing, she leaped over some roots. “That’s my point. I don’t belong here, Lyr. Don’t know why Kaython brought me here, but the portals are your thing.”

Rae stopped running when she hit a thick tapestry of hanging vines that blocked her way. She knew them from earlier in the day—there were millions of microscopic saw teeth hidden in each vine. Get wrapped up in those, and they’d slowly cut her to ribbons.

“No Ythirian lives inside you,” she called into the forest. “You’re wild. I know what it’s like to want freedom, to need distance. I’m not cut out for being some prime’s taliyar. I don’t want it. Please, Lyr. Send me home.”

The forest was silent. Even more silent than Rae had expected—no chirps or chitters, no buzzing insects. She couldn’t hear Vaya in the distance and the only noise was Rae’s thumping heart.

For the first time since her arrival on Ythir she felt alone, and it was terrifying.