Unexpected Read online

  That had sounded stupid, and who would be likely to respond to such an amorphous plea? Before she could formulate another sentence to try, the door she’d been leaning on opened and she tumbled half out of the car, her hands hitting the pavement and the little device skittering away across the cement floor. The two security officers had apparently circled around as she’d cowered and they loomed over her, one pulling her to her feet, the other leaning down and retrieving the communicator. Hoping for the courtesy she’d been shown in her previous encounters with the alien men, she held out her hand for the device’s return. The Alphan holding it merely narrowed his eyes at her and tucked it into his pocket.

  She tried to look past their shoulders but couldn’t see much other than open space and a few hovercraft at rest. That idea of freedom blossomed in her heart, and she decided to listen to her instincts like she hadn’t so long ago.

  With a quick scuttle, she swerved away from the closest Alphan and sprinted toward the far wall of the hangar, hoping there would be a door or ladder leading out of the building. She knew the men were following her because she could hear their surprisingly light footsteps behind her as she stretched her legs into a full run and prayed she wouldn’t slip or twist an ankle. There were raised voices behind her, and she found another burst of speed as she accelerated up to the wall. The corrugated metal surface flashed in front of her eyes as she desperately searched for a doorframe or handle. Nothing yet.

  A big hand clamped onto her arm and she was forced to slow, and as she stumbled at the sudden change in velocity, an arm snaked around her waist and lifted her off her feet entirely.

  “Kick and scream if you like.” Her captor swung her around and began to carry her back to the staring group of men. “I enjoyed your momentary flight and the corresponding pursuit. I only wish it could have gone on longer and had an even more satisfying conclusion.”

  She did struggle then, even though she knew she couldn’t escape the heavy, strong man clutching her. It helped release some of her stress and fear. Too soon she was back among the other Alphans, Ivar stepping to the forefront with a dark scowl twisting his features.

  “She had this, sir.” The Alphan who’d stolen her communication device handed it over to his commander, and Commandant Offen sneered.

  “I don’t have to wonder where you got this. Those Taurides providing a human with proprietary technology. Yet another matter I will have to deal with.” With a quick twist of his hand, the commanding officer dropped the small cube on the floor and stomped it with his heavy black boot, sending tiny cracked bits skittering away. “It’s of no use where you’re headed.”

  “Sir, I didn’t have a chance to check for any messages she might have broadcast.” The other Alphan security officer frowned at the broken shards.

  “It’s of no consequence. The two she’s bedazzled are too far to come to her aid at this point, and when they return, there’ll be no trail to follow. Once I drop you off in one of those lawless slums your planet sprouts like infected boils, you’ll be dead in days. Mikel and Felix will be free to consummate the match I’ve arranged with a proper Alphan female. They’ll never think of you once I’ve returned them to their proper path of keeping our bloodlines pure.” Ivar’s eyes twinkled with malevolent intent, and cold terror iced her stomach.

  The man holding her tightened his grip, and she twisted at the discomfort. They were going to dump her in some festering, lawless camp where she might not even know the language. She’d be raped, and killed for her clothing within hours. Felix and Mikel would return and find her gone, probably to think she’d turn coward and fled from the life they had offered her so generously. The thought of their grief and confusion made tears spring to her eyes.

  “Put her in the hover. There are shackles you can attach to one of the benches.”

  The man holding her acknowledged the order and carried her toward a large, pale grey craft. The other security officers fanned out to surround the landing struts of the ship, none of them paying much mind to her and her ignominious passage. Deep despair filled her as she was hoisted up the ramp toward the dark interior, and she couldn’t hold back a frightened moan. A quick trip down a narrow corridor and she soon found herself dropped on a hard bench, the firm seat and back thumping her knees and elbows. Struggling to roll, she tried to pull herself away, but the Alphan had soon strapped her kicking legs and swinging arms to flexible and heavy straps threaded around the seat.

  “Exhaust yourself by trying to escape. It will make you more compliant to our desires on the flight.” He looked down at her with cold eyes, and she suppressed a shudder. Would rape be the next way these men decided to overpower her?

  “I can guess by your expression you are considering the possibility of a forced sexual encounter. Don’t concern yourself on that score. We are Ivar’s personal retinue and as such, would never sully ourselves by contact with an alien. There are many among us disgusted by the current trend of breeding with inferior stock.”

  Alisa’s mouth fell open. “But Mikel and Felix—”

  “Are security officers with good pedigrees and not much awareness of anything that doesn’t pass directly in front of their noses. They aren’t part of our commander’s true plans, but merely act as decorative distractions for his work.”

  “What work?” She couldn’t help asking even though she expected he’d never give her any more information.

  “Saving our species.” With that, the man turned on his heel and exited the room, leaving her bound and uninformed.

  ****

  “Yes, Your Grace, we checked the autogyro thoroughly before departure.” Mikel listened to his bondmate assure the prince that the ship was functioning normally despite the slight vibrations they were experiencing due to wind gusts. Felix was piloting the small craft while Mikel sat beside the prince, ostensibly to guard him, though there were only two other Alphan bureaucrats on board. They’d gotten quite a late start, thanks to royal dithering and last-minute flight checks. Their special passenger glanced around the interior of the compartment with tight lips and blinking eyes. Mikel wondered how the man had fared in the rigors of space travel to get to Earth, but was distracted by the vibration of his personal communicator. With gratitude for the interruption, he pulled the cube free from his pocket.

  Alisa’s pleading voice filled the cabin, and Mikel’s immediate happiness at hearing her instantly morphed into concern as he understood her words. Felix whipped his head back to stare at the communicator, leaving the flight controls unmonitored.

  “Repeat that,” his bondmate ordered with a growl.

  Mikel hit repeat and listened intently, anxiety for her filling him with the heated impulse to smash whatever threatened. When he tried to reply, there was no connecting signal. The prince tilted his head, the jeweled circlet crowning his braided hair tilting a bit. The craft shuddered wildly as Felix decelerated and banked the vehicle in a tight turn, throwing all the passengers against their seat restraints.

  “What’s happening?” the prince asked as he clutched at the belts crisscrossing his chest.

  “We’re returning to base to check on that mechanical issue with the stabilizers.” Mikel’s lie flowed from him with ease. “We don’t want to risk your safety, Your Grace.”

  Felix leveled out their trajectory with rapid adjustments that left them reeling and soon had the ship accelerating toward home at the highest speed possibly for their altitude. Mikel scanned the flight data displays around him and watched as the kilometers rushed below them. He could only imagine what the humans might think was passing overhead with screaming engines and flaming contrails.

  Mikel tried to contact Alisa again and again by the communications link but made no further connection with her. His heart thudded in his chest as the adrenaline built in his body. He knew his bondmate was equally agitated, could sense Felix’s anxiety and rage almost as strongly as his own. Time stretched slowly, so when Felix made landing arrangements, prioritized courtesy of their royal p
assenger, it felt like hours had passed when in fact it had been only minutes. Soon enough they were descending in big, looping circles and the ship came to rest on the landing target with a clang and shake of the landing struts. Mikel had his restraints unfastened before the vehicle stopped moving and was forced to pause, thanks to protocol edicts that forced him to bow to the prince before he could step ahead of him and exit the ship. Felix would be delayed by flight checks, and Mikel wanted to be free of the constraints of the ship as quickly as possible.

  He prowled around the landing deck, looking for a communications module. Spotting one at a small work terminal, he instructed the occupant to leave and took control of the device. After entering his security clearance code, he gained access to the key data of the apartment and verified Alisa was not inside. She’d left a half an hour after they had, which meant she had been walking around, vulnerable to this attack, while they’d been cooling their heels waiting to take off. He remembered his sense of foreboding increasing the longer they’d waited, and now realized it hadn’t been merely the thought of spending hours ferrying a royal around, but his connection with Alisa had been alerting him to her peril. Remembering her words, he debated whether she was at the human airfield, or at the Alphan space dock. Felix emerged from the ship with a bound, tossing a weapons harness his way with a snap of his wrist. As Mikel shrugged into it and double checked his blades and projectile weapons, his bondmate took a turn at the monitor, pulling up the feeds to the Alphan landing fields that had spread adjacent to the human landing strips and terminals. Checking the time stamps, several vehicles had entered hangars in the past few hours, but it was impossible to see the occupants of the vehicles once they drove them inside the large structures. No ships had left yet.

  Mikel willed himself to calm and tried to open his mind to any contact he could form with Alisa. All he could sense was his own uncertainty and compulsion to find her.

  Felix drew in a deep breath and stepped away from the monitor. The clerk whose seat had been usurped shot them both an irritated look, but settled back in without protest to continue his tasks.

  “Three vehicles entered the main terminal, and one entered the utility bay,” his bondmate said in a thoughtful tone as he ran his hands over his lash coiled at his belt. “I doubt they’d take her to a populated area, so I say we should go to the smaller building first.”

  How his bondmate could be so rational was beyond Mikel. He wanted to find an armored vehicle and blast all the structures around them to sticks until they found her. “We can’t be sure she’s there. She might have been talking about the human sections.”

  Felix shook his head once and walked toward the exit. The prince and his entourage were still milling around the ship, and one of the lords-in-waiting beckoned for their attention. Felix smiled broadly back at them.

  “Please excuse us, Prince Edem. Our bondmate has been kidnapped, and we must find her before she comes to further harm.” Even as he spoke he kept walking and Mikel followed along, plotting which course would get them back to the little used docking bay at the far end of the Alphan station most expeditiously.

  They exited the building at a trot and as soon as they reached the tarmac, bolted into a dead run. Mikel wondered if they should discuss some sort of plan of attack, but Felix merely barreled along, not reacting to the rain falling on them or the shouted inquiries of their fellows as they passed.

  ****

  With a triumphant wheeze, Alisa rolled off the bench and fell to the spaceship’s floor. She held still a moment, listening for any sort of movement from outside, then crawled to the hatch she’d come through what seemed like hours before. The restraints still bound her wrists and ankles, but the Alphan who’d looped them around the back of the seat hadn’t made them tight enough to prevent her from stretching and wriggling her way free. It was probably the first time he’d secured a smallish human. She was sore, sweaty, but thrilled to be nearly free. The passageway beyond was dark, and she couldn’t see any light indicating the ramp was still down. That was no surprise. Security officers wouldn’t leave the vehicle open with her inside.

  As she pulled at the bindings on her wrists and ankles, she looked around. She didn’t dare check out the cockpit area since there were viewports all around it and she’d be spotted moving around inside. Urging her brain to work, she wondered what other means of egress there might be on this ship. Surely there was an emergency exit or escape hatch somewhere. Peering at the discreet signage on the wall, she ignored the Alphan lettering since it was quite incomprehensible and concentrated on the line drawings. Some showed how to stow materials in storage bins, others illustrated where seats could be unfolded or concealed. With a quick intake of breath she spotted something likely. A figure was grasping a curious-looking handle with arrows that showed it moving. It was attached to a large oval frame, just the right size to jump through.

  Hope renewed, she continued to pull at the straps. There was just enough give to pull first one then the other from her hands. She’d have bruises tomorrow, but with her restraints removed, she at least had a chance at tomorrow. Her ankle fetters refused to budge, so rather than continue to struggle with them, she merely looped the excess material over her elbow. Taking a deep breath, she grasped the handle in both hands and twisted it. It didn’t budge. Dropping her hands and shaking her arms and shoulders, she grabbed it again. A sudden memory of Felix and Mikel overwhelmed her, and she almost doubled over, longing for their strength and comfort. Determined to do everything within her power to find them, she heaved again, her shoulders and arms shaking with the effort. To her utter shock, the handle shifted briefly, then rotated smoothly as she continued to turn it. The oval shaped depression on the way deepened and finally receded to reveal a short passageway and the view of a slice of the concrete floor below. Crouching down, she shuffled to the edge, careful not to let any of the tether attached to her ankles, or her peeing head, show. There were no men in sight, but she wanted to get an idea of where they were before she dropped out of the ship.

  She allowed her head to extend further, and her heart seized in her chest when she saw two Alphans not ten meters away, standing near the landing struts of the ship, mercifully with their backs toward her. There were no other security officers in view, so she decided to concentrate on how far she’d have to drop. She stared at the floor. It was at least three meters down. There was nothing to do but try.

  Wishing her legs were as free as her hands, she slowly slid her feet out, gripping the edges of the hatch so tight her fingers hurt. The last thing she wanted to do was fall and make a noise. The slack of the tether fell first, and then her calves and knees swung free. The weight of her body was worse than she’d expected, and she was grateful for all the hard digging she’d done in the garden that spring. Once her whole body extended from the opening, she couldn’t hold herself any longer and made a barely controlled drop. Pain shattered from her feet and up her legs, and she couldn’t hold back a gasp. As soon as she had control of her limbs, she was scuttling toward a stack of resin cases, crouching down to remain as hidden as possible.

  Poking her head cautiously around the corner, she tried to count how many foes were in the hangar. Most were congregated near the tall open doors with their backs to her. She couldn’t spot Ivar anywhere. Her heart pounded as adrenaline pulsed through her veins. A sudden urge to stand up and scream at them, beat them with some sort of heavy cudgel filled her mind, and she was shocked at how illogical the battle-lust was. She needed to find an unobtrusive exit and escape, not rush to engage with these formidable men.

  Scanning the area, she couldn’t spot any likely doors or windows. A sudden wave of longing for Felix and Mikel filled her, and she doubled over, almost hearing their voices and catching their distinctive scent somewhere deep inside her brain. The need to see them, touch them, was so strong she moaned. An inexplicable wave of reassurance filled her, and she blinked at the soothing sensation. With a shake of her head, she tried to regain her focu
s. Mooning after them wasn’t going to get her out of this situation, she needed to think.

  Suddenly, there was a squawking tone from the cluster of men, and she watched them gather around a monitor. They then patted at their belts and harnesses, checking what seemed to be hand weapons. Apparently there was going to be a confrontation, and she should stay as far from it as possible and take advantage of the distraction. If only she could find another door.

  Raised voices brought her attention back to her captors. They’d fanned out in a line in front of the open bay, hands hovering near deadly-looking devices attached to their belts. A light mist was falling outside, and she could hear the faint sounds of running feet splashing their way. Was someone coming to rescue her? Unlikely.

  Again, she thought of her men, her bondmates, and a smile crossed her lips, despite the inappropriate timing. It couldn’t be them, of course, but maybe some well-meaning Alphans had heard her appeal and were coming to her aid now. She only hoped the interaction wouldn’t escalate into a violent confrontation.

  Two large men appeared in the concealing rain, their forms hard to distinguish under long, water-resistant capes. A sudden surge of recognition filled her, and she realized that contrary to all logic, Mikel and Felix were there, not more than twenty meters away. Jogging into a group of their compatriots they’d instinctively trust.

  “Halt!” One of the men held up his hand as the others’ postures tensed. Mikel and Felix didn’t slow their advance and within a second were inside the hangar, water pouring from their shoulders, their hair plastered to their heads leaving their horns exposed. They stopped two meters from the other security officers. She couldn’t see that either had any weapons available, and she went cold with dread.

  “Alisa, come to us.” Felix’s voice boomed and echoed in the cavernous building, and she jumped, but stayed hidden, too anxious about the tension building among these powerful males.