Pregnant by the Black Star Warlord

Chapter One

Elara

The first thing I taste is blood.

The second is metal.

Not the familiar kind from a split lip or a busted water filter back on the colony ship. This metal is sharper. Bitter. Chemical. It coats my tongue and slides down the back of my throat every time I swallow.

I try not to swallow.

That makes me choke.

Something clicks beside my ear, and cold air hisses over my face.

“Specimen conscious,” a voice says.

Not human.

My eyes fly open.

For three seconds, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. My brain tries to turn the ceiling above me into the underside of my bunk on the Mercy Ark, tries to make the greenish lights into emergency strips, tries to make the curved glass above my face into a cracked viewport.

I am strapped inside a clear containment pod, naked under a thin silver sheet, with my wrists locked at my sides and my ankles held apart by metal cuffs.

Panic punches straight through the drug fog.

I buck hard.

Nothing moves.

My shoulders slam against the padding beneath me. Pain sparks down my left arm. My ribs scream. I try again anyway, twisting, kicking, yanking until the cuffs bite skin.

“Agitation response within expected parameters,” the same voice says.

I turn my head as far as the restraint allows.

Three creatures stand beyond the glass.

Tall. Pale. Jointed wrong. Their faces are too smooth, their eyes too large and black, their mouths thin as cuts. One holds a tablet of light. Another adjusts something connected to the pod. The third watches me with the bored interest of someone checking cargo.

My stomach turns.

“Where am I?” My voice comes out shredded. “Where is my ship?”

The one with the tablet tilts its head. “Human vocalization confirmed.”

“Where is my ship?”

No answer.

I pull against the restraints again. This time, the cuffs send a bright shock through my wrists.

My body arches off the table. The scream that leaves me is raw and ugly.

The creatures keep watching.

One makes a note while I scream.

“What did you do to my people?”

The creature with the tablet taps the glowing surface. “Primary reproductive subject is responsive.”

“No,” I whisper.

The creature by the pod leans close enough that I can see faint blue veins under its translucent skin. “Fertility markers remain viable despite cryo disruption. Soft-tissue bruising not relevant. Pelvic structure acceptable. Hormonal indicators promising.”

A cold, clean terror opens inside me.

I yank so hard against the cuffs that skin tears.

“Let me out!”

Another shock hits. Harder this time.

White bursts behind my eyes. My teeth slam together. For a second, I am nowhere. Just pain and light and my own heartbeat hammering so fast it feels too big for my body.

When I come back, one of them is saying, “Primitive species. High fear response. Minimal discipline.”

I laugh.

“You kidnapped the wrong primitive.”

The creature with the tablet pauses. “Defiance response noted.”

“Note this.”

I spit blood at the glass.

It splatters across the inside of the pod in a dark red star.

The one nearest me recoils.

My name is Elara Quinn. I am not dying politely in a box.

I was born in the outer dark with failing oxygen scrubbers and rationed heat. I have seen babies born in storage rooms and old men die with smiles because the recycler made clean water that morning.

“Sedate it,” the tablet creature says.

The pod hums beneath me.

A needle slides out near my inner arm.

I twist away, but there is nowhere to go. The cuff holds my wrist flat. The silver sheet slips down my chest. Cold air touches too much skin. Shame and fury burn through me so hot I almost miss the fear.

The needle kisses my skin.

Then the ship screams.

The lights flash from sickly green to violent red. The floor shudders. Somewhere beyond the chamber, metal tears with a sound so massive it vibrates through my bones.

The creatures freeze.

A second impact rocks the room.

The needle snaps against my arm instead of piercing deep. Pain stings, but the drug does not hit. I suck in a breath like I’ve been drowning.

“What is happening?” one of them demands.

A new voice bursts from the wall in a language I don’t know. Harsh. Fast. Terrified.

The creature with the tablet goes rigid.

The door at the far end of the chamber seals with a heavy metallic boom. More red lights ignite along its edges.

The tablet creature hisses something.

The other two scramble.

One opens a cabinet and grabs a weapon. The other slams its hands over the pod controls.

The glass above me clouds, then clears, then clouds again.

“Emergency transfer protocol,” it says. “Secure breeding asset.”

I stop thrashing.

Rage is quieter than fear, and right now, rage is the only part of me that can think.

The creature’s long fingers fly over the controls. My restraints tighten until my shoulders ache. A mechanical band lowers across my hips.

“Touch me again,” I whisper, “and I’ll bite something off.”

The creature does not even look at me.

A blast hits the sealed door.

The entire room jumps.

One of the creatures falls. The weapon skids across the floor, too far from my pod to matter.

Another blast.

The door bends inward.

The creatures start screaming at one another.

I turn my head toward the weapon and yank against the restraints again. My right wrist is slick now. Blood makes the cuff slippery. Not enough. Maybe enough. I twist my thumb inward until pain flashes bright and nauseating.

Come on.

Another blast.

The sealed door rips halfway off its frame.

The creature scrambles after its fallen weapon and fires at the doorway.

The shots vanish into smoke.

Then something steps through.

He is too big for the doorway.

He has to turn slightly to enter, one broad shoulder scraping the warped frame. Smoke curls around him. Red alarm light slides over dark silver-black skin and catches on the ridged markings along his throat, chest, and arms.

He looks carved out of storm metal.

Seven feet, maybe more. Horns sweep back from his temples, black and polished, lethal as curved blades. His hair is long, darker than space, braided with dull metal rings that click softly when he moves. His eyes glow pale gold.

His gaze moves over the room once.

The creatures stop screaming.

The one with the weapon fires.

The horned alien moves.

I do not understand the movement. My eyes can’t hold it. One moment he stands in the smoke; the next he has the creature by the throat.

Claws flash.

The weapon clatters to the floor.

The body follows.

I suck in a breath and choke on it.

The other two run.

They don’t make it three steps.

His tail lashes out, catches one by the leg, and slams it into the wall with a crack that turns my stomach. The last creature reaches a panel beside my pod.

The horned alien snarls.

The creature’s hand hovers over the panel.

“Destroy the asset,” it says.

The horned alien’s head turns.

The air goes heavy. The markings along his ribs pulse once, a low gold beneath dark skin.

The creature touches the panel.

A sharp whine starts inside my pod.

The glass above me locks. The cuffs clamp tighter. Cold spreads beneath my spine.

I understand, with sudden perfect clarity, that the pod is going to kill me.

I slam my head back and scream.

The horned alien crosses the room in three strides.

The creature dies before it can pull its hand away.

Then he turns to the pod.

His face is hard and severe, all brutal lines and sharp cheekbones, his mouth too sensual for something with teeth like that. Fine black markings curl up the sides of his throat and disappear under the armor across his chest.

Armor that looks less worn than grown.

He stares down at me through the blood-smeared glass.

His nostrils flare.

The markings on his throat ignite.

Something in the pod’s cold air shifts. My skin prickles. The pain in my wrists fades under a rush of heat low in my belly, strange and frightening and not mine enough to trust. I hate that it answers the way he looks at me.

His eyes narrow.

He says something in a language I do not know.

The words roll deep, rough, layered with a second sound underneath them that vibrates straight through the glass.

He looks away from my face and scans the pod controls. His jaw tightens.

His claws hover over the glass.

“Don’t.”

He stills.

His glowing eyes return to mine.

I force the words out. “If you open it, I don’t go in another cage.”

He watches me.

Behind him, sparks rain from the broken door. Bodies lie twisted across the floor. The alarm keeps screaming.

He raises one claw and drives it through the side panel of my pod.

Electricity snaps.

The glass above me splits.

Air rushes in, warmer than before and smelling of smoke, blood, cold metal, and something darkly spiced that hits my lungs like a warning.

The pod unlocks.

My restraints release so suddenly my arms drop uselessly at my sides.

I lunge for the weapon on the floor.

The second I sit up, the room swings violently. My stomach twists. My vision tunnels.

I fall sideways off the table.

He catches me.

One massive arm locks around my back before I hit the floor. His skin is hot through the thin silver sheet. Too hot. His chest is solid against my shoulder, and beneath the hard armor, I feel something impossible.

Two heartbeats. One slow and thunderous, the other faster, answering it.

His tail curves around my legs, not touching, but close enough that I feel the heat of it.

For one stupid, drugged, terrifying second, I feel safe.

I drive my elbow into his ribs.

It is like hitting a wall.

Pain shoots up my arm.

He looks down at me.

“Put me down,” I snap.

He does.

I am so surprised I almost fall.

His hand shoots out, but stops before touching me again.

I grip the edge of the pod and drag the silver sheet tighter around myself. My knees shake. My wrists bleed. My whole body feels like it belongs to someone who ran a marathon, got hit by a transport, and then woke up in a nightmare.

The horned alien looks at the blood on my wrist.

“Who are you?” I ask.

He says nothing.