Chapter 10
I was living in a horror movie.
Being captured by blue aliens was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, but that was before we ran into a monster that looked like a cross between a rhino, a toad and a walrus.
It was thick necked, with a bony, almost skeletal head, broad tusks jutted out of its mouth, protruding from the corner of its wide jaw, like forklift tines.
Bulky, armored shoulders rose higher than its head, and its body was heavy with muscle that sloped down to low-set back legs. Its furless skin was a sickly yellow color and littered with old scars.
The monster had appeared out of nowhere, rising from the dirt, where its coloring had camouflaged it against the dirt when the sytos had walked past a series of shallow divots in the ground.
The syto in charge had screamed at a pitch that made my head throb and immediately started barking orders as the group retreated from the beast. Within seconds I was in the middle of a tight formation of aliens, their evil little batons bristling out in a shield around us.
And then Tovis appeared. But not a version of Tovis I’d seen before. His eyes were red, wide and glaring as he charged at us, and for a brief moment I was certain he was going to trample right over me along with the sytos.
He’d hit the sytos between us with the force of a car wreck, and screams and blood filled the air. The syto holding me, dropped me like I was on fire and bolted for safety. Leaving me dazed on the ground as Tovis attacked everything that moved.
I froze, afraid to crawl away and grab anyone's attention, but too scared to stay where I was while huge hooves and booted feet stomped around me. The monster joined the fray and suddenly everyone was fighting everyone.
A boot landed on my hand and I yelped, jerking my fingers free and scrambling on hands and knees as I did my best to dodge the wild blows and waving batons all around me.
As quickly as the fight started, it ended. The monster running off into the distance like its ass was on fire. I watched it go and looked behind me just in time to see the lead syto bludgeon his baton into the back of Tovis’ head.
He was already on the ground, his nose streaming blood, and I watched in horror as his body seized and he slumped face first into the dirt.
“Tovis!” I yelled.
A blue hand grabbed me by the shirt and my brief moment of freedom was gone. I watched, my chest tight, as the sytos cuffed his thick arms behind his back. He didn’t resist at all and I swallowed hard as a small pool of blood formed around his head.
“Is he dead?” I whispered.
The alien holding me snorted.
“We’re not that lucky. By the time he wakes up he’ll be fine. Turochs heal faster than they have any right to.”
I blinked the grit from my eyes and shuddered. I wasn’t cut out for this much peril and excitement. All I wanted was to go back to my clean, cool spa and my bubble of fake safety.
Tovis had come after me and now he was injured and just as trapped as I was. If a massive, muscle bound former gladiator couldn’t get me out of this mess, there was no getting out of it.
“Set up camp!” the leader barked. “We’re staying here until the slave is mobile.”
The slave, they meant Tovis. My heart sank.
Grumbles sounded from the others and the leader rolled his eyes.
“Which of you wants to drag that sack of meat all the way back to the Kwin?”
The grumbles stopped. Tovis was easily twice the size of any of them, if he couldn’t walk there was no way they could easily move him and they knew it.
“Set up camp, we have food at least. Consider it an unexpected break from your normal duties.” He shook his head and landed a brutal kick to Tovis’ unresisting body. “I’m the one the Kwin will punish when we’re late, one of you is probably up for promotion once she has me flayed.”
He said it with such bitter resignation that I didn’t think he was exaggerating.
I shivered. This was so, so bad. And I didn’t see it getting better anytime soon.
***
I watched numbly as the syto in charge of me hammered a square metal stake into the dirt and tapped a button on the side. My cuffs vibrated and flashed a quick one, two of yellow light before an invisible force lifted my hands and held them hovering a foot from the stake. Invisible chains, awesome.
Two other sytos painstakingly rolled Tovis’ limp body toward the stake until he was laying on his side, his cuffed hands leaning against our shared tether. I tested my restraints and found I could move around the stake, but couldn’t get any farther away no matter how hard I pulled.
If they trusted the cuffs to hold Tovis, there was no way I could out muscle it, but it was worth a try. Their captives secured, the sytos scattered to continue setting up their camp, and I awkwardly maneuvered around Tovis until I was leaning against his legs.
He was unconscious and just as trapped as I was, but keeping close to him gave me a weird sense of security anyway. My hair was damp with sweat and sticking to my face, and I had to lean forward to wipe it out of my eyes.
After months of air conditioning twenty-four seven, I’d lost all tolerance for the heat and I had sweated through my clothes just minutes after they’d dragged me outside.
This close to Tovis, his body heat was radiating off him like a fire, and I felt like I was trapped in an oven, but I wasn’t willing to put any space between us.
Not when we were surrounded by blue, kidnapping assholes and there was a monster on the loose. I shuddered as I remembered the size and ghoulish, bony face of the creature that had run off.
It had to be the percer thing that had chased Tovis into my spa the day we met. It had to be, I refused to believe there was more than one kind of alien monster lose on Earth.
I sniffed, too dehydrated and tired to cry anymore, even though my eyes kept watering at random moments, like my body knew it had every reason to cry but didn’t have the energy to keep it up.
Tovis looked dead. He hadn’t moved at all since he’d taken a baton to the head, and there was a trail of blood from where they’d rolled him.
His face was swollen, nose clearly broken, and dried blood covered his front.
He was so still, I kept my eyes fixed on his chest, counting his slow, even breaths to reassure myself he hadn’t actually died right next to me.
How much power did those batons actually have? I didn’t know much about electricity or cattle prods, but I knew even tasers didn’t usually knock people out for very long. It had been almost twenty minutes since Tovis collapsed. What happened if someone got tasered to the skull?
Was his brain fried? Or had he gotten a concussion when he hit the ground and the baton just finished the job? Neither option sounded good.
I rested my cuffed hands on his thigh and laid my throbbing head on my wrists, trying to block everything out and rest while I could.
“Jessa.”
I flinched awake at the sound of my name, and whipped my head up to see Tovis’ yellow eyes fixed on my face.
I sucked in a relieved breath. “You’re okay!”
The sun had set, I must have dozed off for longer than I thought, and the brutal heat of the day had faded just enough I didn’t feel like I was going to die right this second.
Tovis was still laying on his side, his hands still cuffed behind him, but he looked alert and I swore his face wasn’t even swollen anymore.
His nose still looked broken though, there was no way he’d healed up that fast. I looked around, blinking hard as I realized a miniature camp had been assembled around us.
The only light came from a strange, squat cylinder a few feet away from us, all the sytos were clustered around it, talking in hushed voices.
All around us were short poles, about two feet tall, set up every few feet, with a glowing white light at the top, a low vibrating hum filled the air and I had a feeling I was looking at some sort of security measure, though I didn’t know if it was to keep us in, or keep other things out.
Based on the wary look our captors were shooting at the darkness, I guessed it was to keep percers out.
“I’m well,” Tovis murmured, drawing my attention back to the alien I’d turned into a pillow. “Are you hurt?”
I leaned down and rubbed my hands over my sleep bleary eyes. The movement dragged my loose hair over his legs and he twitched like I’d tickled him. I froze when I realized I was cuddled up to his naked, muscly thighs, and my hair was literally tangling in his loincloth.
Whoops.
I jerked my head back, hoping the low light hid my blush, and the direction my eyes had gone.
“I’m fine,” I said, wincing at how rough my voice was. I’d been baking in the sun for hours, screamed and cried for most of them and hadn’t had a sip of water since this morning. I sounded like a pack a day smoker.
Clearing my throat, I shook my head. Tovis was awake, and even though we were both still cuffed to a stake like feral dogs, I felt so much better not being alone.
“They didn’t hurt me,” I snorted out a painful laugh. “I mean, they shocked me and cuffed me, and dragged me out here, but they didn’t beat me or, you know, do other things.”
Other things hadn’t even occurred to me until just this moment a cold spike of fear shot down my spine at the realization of just how helpless I was if the thought occurred to them, too.
Tovis’ nostrils flared angrily when I said ‘shocked me’ but he wiped the expression off his face and shook his head comfortingly.
“Sytos are not good, they’re cruel, and apathetic at best. They see other species as resources or slaves only, but these males are little more than drones doing their Kwin’s bidding. They won’t touch you like that, they don’t have the interest, or the permission.”
His words were equally reassuring and horrifying.
No rape, yay. Cruel, apathetic slavers, not yay. Not yay at all.
“What do they even want me for then?” I whispered, darting a glance at the huddled sytos. A few looked our way curiously, but no one said anything or approached us, so I figured even the ‘slaves’ were allowed to chat.
A muscle twitched on his broad jaw.
“All the sytos on Earth crashed here when their cruiser died. They usually capture slaves and sell them, but they can’t leave the planet, they’re trapped here. My guess is that they don’t have a use for you, but they’re taking you to their Kwin as a gift.”
“What’s a Kwin, and why does it want human gifts?” I hissed, swallowing down the hysterical urge to shout my questions.
None of this was his fault, in fact, if I’d just gone with him when he’d offered to take me to his camp, neither of us would be in this situation. Yet another cry worthy realization. This was my fault and I’d gotten poor Tovis beaten up and captured alongside me.
He shifted, wincing slightly like his arms hurt from being cuffed behind him.
“A single high level syto ruled over each cruiser, the females are called Kwins. And likely, she’d keep you as a pet. A status symbol to prove she’s still as powerful as she was before they all got stranded here.”
A pet. I wanted to cry again, my nose started to run and I sucked in a shuddering breath. Scratch that, I was crying again.
Tovis let out a pained sound and his tail flicked over his leg and wrapped around my wrist, the tuft of hair at the end scratching pleasantly against my skin.
“Don’t cry, I’ll get you out, I promise. It might not be tonight, or tomorrow, but soon enough they’ll make a mistake or there’ll be an opening and I will get you out.”
“You shouldn’t even be here,” I sobbed, staring down at the weirdly comforting clasp of his tail on my wrist. It should be freaking me out, he had a tail, that was objectively weird from a human standpoint.
But his skin was smooth and warm, and the little tuft was kind of cute, and it was frankly adorable that he was trying to hold onto me with a limb that clearly wasn’t made to be holding things.
I was possibly having a breakdown if I thought anything about this jacked up alien guy was cute.
“Of course I should be here, did you think I wouldn’t look for you?” he sounded offended and confused and I bit my lip to hold back another sob.
“If I’d just come with you when you asked we wouldn’t be in this mess. And besides, I’m not your responsibility, and you almost got killed trying to help me.”
He stared at me for a second, his eyes flicking over my face like I’d said something so ridiculous he thought I was joking.
“Jessa-”
“No,” I sniffed. “Thank you for trying to help me, but I am so sorry I got you into this mess.”
He huffed out a frustrated breath and awkwardly crunched his impressive abs until he was sitting up. I gaped at the display of strength while internally daring myself to see if I could sit up with my hands tied behind my back if I ever got out of this.
Tovis took a deep breath and glared over at the huddle of blue males.
“Sytos!” he barked.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, lurching up onto my knees like I could forcibly shut him up.
A few heads turned our way and Tovis puffed out his chest.
“I claim ulto over this female.” His deep voice rang out like a challenge and my chest tightened as I waited for something to happen. He made the strange statement like it carried weight, and I didn’t know what alien culture thing I was missing, but it felt serious.
There was a beat of silence and then one of the sytos sighed, shook his head and muttered, “Primitive animals.”
I looked between Tovis and the sytos who were back to ignoring us, feeling like I’d missed something on multiple levels. Tovis relaxed slightly and nodded to himself like he’d accomplished what he set out to do.
“What was that?” I demanded. It had been a little...anticlimactic, but Tovis looked satisfied.
“I’ve claimed you as my mate,” he said simply. “An ulto needs witnesses. I planned on claiming you in front of my friends and fellow turochs, but now you cannot doubt that I will always come for you. A turoch is devoted to his mate, he will always protect her to his last breath.”
I stared at him. There really was nothing to say to that.