Alien Prince

Teldara Kinesse.... Tierney Mafaren...

Ciara Zehr...

Sara Yve...

These names were a mantra, and they came to me even before I was fully conscious, their faces flashing across the screen behind my eyelids. The preceding days were scraps on the cutting room floor of my memory: the Quarter Moon crest; the accoutrements of my enslavement; the cages; the other frightened faces. And I am a fighter. I fought my way off that ship, and I fought my way back to consciousness.

With a groan, I shifted beneath the heavy cover of furs, that smelled musty with fire smoke, and I cracked my eyes open against the glow of orange light that filled the space. Where am I? I wondered. And how did I get here? As my eyes adjusted to the light around me, I ran my hands over the furs and tried to push myself up to sitting. But a pair of hands caught me gently by the shoulders and kept me down. I heard a voice—a man's low, gruff timbre—in a language that was not my own. Blinking, I turned my head in the direction from which the voice had come, and that was the first time I saw his face. He had stubble along the line of his solid jaw, and his eyes were a piercing and disarming shade of blue. So blue, in fact, that I noticed them even before the great horns that emerged from his forehead and swept back over the crown of his head. His hair was white, and he wore it long so that it brushed his shoulders, a few braids and beaded accents hanging to frame his face. His ears came to a delicate point, and they were adorned from lobe to tip with metal rings in neat rows. He had skin the color of cafe au lait just the way I like it, just a splash of milk-with the tribal markings of his people in thick inked lines of black and red all over his body. He was terrifying and exquisite. And he was speaking.

"What?" I stammered, first in English. But he was shaking his head; he did not understand me, so I gathered my wits: I'd routed a course to Qetesh; he was clearly Qeteshi. And I could speak his language, so I did: "Forgive me," I said, my style formal, "I do not know where I am, precisely. And my head is heavy. Please, slow down."

He nodded his head and sat on the edge of the bed beside me. "My name is Calder Fev'rosk," he said, his voice low and sonorous, "and I pulled you out of a badly damaged escape pod a few leagues from here." "Here," I repeated, "where is 'here'?"

"Ah, my home," he said, gesturing absently around the space. "A dwelling about 30 leagues outside of the Qeteshi village of Larandi." The second settlement. I was familiar with it, if only through what I'd read. The Echelon had sent a contingent of Europax women to this settlement within the last several years. It was a small, peaceful place inhabited largely by Godly creatures who still worshipped the old pantheon. Of all the spots to end up, I'd gotten lucky. I nodded my head, and Calder perked up. "You know of it?"

"My family works for the Echelon," I explained. "I know something of your people and the attempts to reinvigorate the population."

"You were in the hands of the Quarter Moon Slavers," he went on, his tone cautious somehow.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"How did you come to be their property?"

"I am not their property!" I spat, and my head swam. I closed my eyes a moment, and he pressed the back of his fingers to my forehead.

"Of course you are not," he said. "But you were in their possession when you escaped."

"Yes. I was...I had stolen away on a transport vessel bound for Earth. We were sold out by the co-captain, the captain, three other girls, and myself. We were taken aboard the slave ship, and we were en route to...I honestly haven't a clue. The Keldeeri were going to send me to the auction block, because they determined that I could..." I swallowed hard. "Breed. They knew I could breed, so..."

Calder gently patted my hand. "I understand the ways of the Quarter Moon."

"You do?" I asked.

"Yes. We had been in negotiations with them, at one point. When our women first began dying off, we reached out to them to ascertain whether or not they might have any Qeteshi women in their slave ranks. They had none, or at least none they would admit to-and why would they? If they had one of the remaining Qeteshi women in the universe, she would undoubtedly fetch quite a price. In any event, they offered to sell us a few dozen women of other species, but we did not want to deal with them for that. Not when the Echelon was willing to do the same thing for us without the considerable expense."

I nodded my head, and Calder proffered a faint smile. "Your Qeteshi is very good," he went on, "if you understood all that I just said."

"I understand it better than I speak it," I smiled, "and I speak it better than I read it, so..."

Calder rose to his feet, fetching a jug full of fresh water, which I watched him pour into a hand-carved mug. He sat back down again, cradling the mug in his palms. "Do you feel well enough to sit up?"

"Yes," I confirmed, and pushed myself up to sitting. As soon as I did, my head began to swim, and I nearly fell over. But Calder caught me, sloshing a little of the water onto the furs as he did so. "Easy," He gently intoned, "easy."

Once I'd steadied myself, I noted my distinct lack of clothing, and tugged the furs up to my chin so as to preserve my modesty. Of course, that was hardly necessary at this point: he'd clearly seen all of me that there was to see. Even under such circumstances, civility prevails, and I kept my body hidden from his sight, even as reached out to take the cup of water that he offered. I drank it down greedily so that it spilled over my chin, and when I was finished again, he wiped my face with the corner of the furs. "Thank you," I breathed.

"My lady," he said, and something warm blossomed in my chest, "you have not yet given me your name. I know not what I should call you." "Forgive me," I said, smiling as I shook my head-gently, so as not to jostle my brain again. "My name is Lorelei Vauss. You can call me Lore." "Lore,” he repeated, and I liked the sound of my name on his tongue. I should not have trusted him like this, so completely, so immediately. And I checked myself, reminded myself that I needed him to help me get back to the Atria, and get those other women off of the slave ship. I needed his help, but I didn't know anything about him. Chances were good that I had not fallen into worse hands than I had been in with the Quarter Moon Slavers, but he was three times my size, and so much stronger than me that I may as well not had any muscles in my body at all. I was completely at his mercy: I didn't know which way the village was, I didn't know how to navigate the terrain of Qetesh, I didn't know anything at all. In fact, all I really did know was that it was unsafe to venture out of doors after the sun went down. Even the plants were sucked back into the ground, because of how the temperatures plummeted to freezing. I knew that, and I knew that there had been two dozen or so Europax women who now called Larandi home with their new Qeteshi husbands. And I knew his name. Calder. But that was the sum total of what I knew.

"You should rest," he said, interrupting my reverie. "Rest, and I shall prepare us something to eat."

"Thank you," I said, "But I have to get to the village."

Calder furrowed his brow, taking the empty mug from my hands and setting it aside as he came around the bed and headed toward the dwelling's entrance. There, he stoked the fire that kept the cold Winternight air at bay. "The Winternight is upon us," he said plainly, "we will be going nowhere tonight." He considered me levelly from where he stood near the fire, rigid, awkward almost, like he was unsure of what to do with himself. I shifted on the down mattress and drank in the sight of him: carved from stone, it seemed like, the muscles of his abdomen rippled beneath his flesh. He wore only a pair of light linen drawstring pants, and a leather necklace with a simple pendant hanging at his sternum. I wish I'd been afforded so much covering.

"Tomorrow, then," I asserted, not sounding as insistent as I felt.

"We shall see how you're faring, my lady Lore," he said, turning then to his worktable where a few dead animals I did not recognize were in a neat stack.

"You don't understand," I began to protest, "I have an urgent matter-❞

"None so urgent as the matter of your health," he said, and I found that I wanted to listen to him. He had a commanding voice, and an even more commanding presence, that wanted my obeying. But I am what I am, which is foolhardy and pigheaded, so I went on.

"There are four other women," I said, sitting up a little straighter, "and they need my help. I swore to them that I would help them. I've managed to land on this planet all in one piece, so what I need to do now is find a way off the planet and back to the Atria, where I can notify the proper authorities as to the abduction of the women that remain aboard the slave ship from which I escaped." I sucked in a deep breath of air after letting myself go on like that, and he blinked. "Are you quite finished?" he asked, and I quirked a brow at the sudden turn of his attitude.

"Furthermore," I said, "I would like some clothes, if you please. Unless you were hoping that I was here to be your mate."

Calder barked a laugh. "My lady, I was offered a mate, and I will tell you precisely what I told her: it will be a warm midnight on the coast of Qetesh before I mate with anything the Echelon sends my way."

I scoffed. "And what's so wrong with me, exactly? Hm? That you wouldn't be...honored to have me as your mate?"

"Would you like me to begin with your looks or your personality?" He countered, crossing his arms across the broad expanse of his chest.

"I beg your pardon-"

"Because nothing is wrong with the way you look. You are quite beautiful, my lady Lorelei, and you have a fine, round bottom and enough fat on your body that "

"Did you just call me fat?"

"I think you might actually survive on this planet, unlike the Europax twigs the Echelon sent us. So, no, there is nothing wrong with the way you look." He paused then, considering me, and unless my eyes deceived me, I fancied that I saw a bit of a bulge in the crotch of his black linen pants.

"So there is something else, then, that you find distasteful." I said, mirroring his stance as best I could, crossing my arms in front of me, over the blankets.

"It is your manner that offends, my lady," he said, an edge to his tone. "Your manner, where I have saved your life, brought you into my home, and you have immediately begun to throw your weight around when you know nothing of this planet, or its traditions, or indeed anything at all about me and what I might have gone through to secure your well-being. Not so much as a good day to you, sir, nothing. I've had more thanks from the talatuna I've skinned to eat for my supper."

Damn. I sank back where I sat and allowed my head to drop, because he was right. What a right sorry ass I was I hadn't even bothered to thank him for going through the considerable trouble of finding me, fishing me out of the busted pod, and nursing me back to health. This stranger, who owed me nothing, had taken care of me out of the kindness of his heart, and there I was, making demands.

"Well, fuck," I said, in English, and Calder quirked a brow at me. I sighed and switched back to my broken and formal Qeteshi. "Of course, you are right, Calder. I am sorry-can you forgive me for being so terribly rude?"

One side of his mouth hooked up in a grin, even as he turned his attention back to the table. He grunted his response and slid an animal carcass onto the end of a pronged fork and held it over the fire. "Thank you," I went on. "Sincerely. Thank you for saving my life."

"You're welcome."

I began to look around the room for the first time, and I saw that it was sparsely decorated, but warm and comfortable. The bedding in which I sat was luxurious by any standards, handmade, and very comfortable. The furniture—a bed, a table and stools, a trunk-were carved out of fine wood, with intricate woodwork detailing, and the dwelling itself was all constructed by hand. It was the beginning of something beautiful, but it was not quite beautiful yet: it was still too raw. The wood wanted polishing, and the entire place needed something of a feminine touch. Some color, perhaps, some texture.

The smell of roasting meat began to fill the air, and I breathed in deeply through my nose. My stomach began to rumble, as I realized I couldn't recall when I last had eaten. Calder removed the meat from the fire, slapped it down onto the wooden tabletop, and cut the creature in half, after primly relieving it of its head. He put one half on a plate and handed it to me, along with an empty bowl. The ceramics were beautiful, intricately designed and expertly crafted, cast in in deep purple clay and fired into a gradient of blue and red.

"What am I to do with the empty bowl?" I asked, perplexed.

"Spit the bones into it," he said, and sat down on one of the stools even as he began to worry the meat off of the bone.

I blinked, and tore a leg off, chewing at it absently and pretending that it was chicken. But it did not taste like chicken. In fact, it didn't taste like any meat I'd ever had before. It was sweet and moist; it was delicious, if a little strange. "What is it?" I inquired, and he said a word I did not recognize. I gave a slight shrug of my shoulders and figured that it didn't altogether matter what it was, as long as it wouldn't kill me. And in that moment, I was hungry enough to eat it regardless.

I tried to talk to him as we ate, but my head ached, and he seemed suddenly cagey with me.

"So, Calder," I began, like we were on a blind date, "what do you do?"

"This," he said absently, his face a blank slate, utterly unreadable. "I hunt during the day. I kill and eat what I hunt. I carve furniture and collect fruits and vegetables. At night, I eat, and I sleep. And that is my life."

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"Surely there must be more to it than that," I pressed. "You didn't always live on the outskirts of town, did you?"

"No."

"So, what brought you out here originally?"

"Our leader died, and I lost my Gods," he said plainly, rising to his feet and coming over to the bed to snatch away my bowl of bones. "I left my people, and now I live here alone. May I answer any more of your questions?"

I shook my head, and scooted down low in the bed, tugging the blankets up to my chin. Calder disappeared out briefly into the Winternight, and returned again, the bowls empty. He set the bowls aside and came to linger strangely by the side of the bed.

"We will sleep now," he said.

"All right."

"And I must sleep in the bed with you," he went on. "There is nowhere else, and the night freezes."

"Fine," I consented. As though I should have any say in whether or not Calder Fev'rosk slept in his own bed.

"Very good, then," he grumbled, and climbed between the blankets. He was a huge and hulking creature, and even though I could tell that he was clinging to his side of the bed, our bodies touched beneath the furs. He still wore his drawstring linen pants, but a thin piece of fabric is all that separated our flesh.

He shifted strangely on the down mattress next to me, trying to do his best to get comfortable and not touch me. I tried to show him the same courtesy, but the bed was constricting, and the result was that we both were stiff and irritable and would not sleep a wink if made to remain in the positions we were in.

"Calder," I said at length, "Calder, this is silly."

"What is?" He asked, resting stiffly on his side.

"You can touch me," I said. "It's all right."

"I'd just as soon not," he grumbled.

I sat up next to him, letting a pocket of cool air between the blankets. He hissed his protest. "Am I really so awful as all that?"

"I've no interest in reassuring you that I do not find you repugnant, so please, can we just sleep?" He didn't even bother to turn over and look at me. The nerve of this guy.

"Fine," I spat, and laid down again. But I wasn't going to be all strange and uncomfortable just because my bedfellow was an asshole. So I got comfortable with my head on my arm, my knees up at my chest in the fetal position, and decided he could lay on his bed however he pleased. He could touch me or not at his leisure. And if he thought I was so awful that he did not wish to make any physical contact with me, so much the better. More room for me.

I tossed and turned a bit, making a point to brush my leg against his leg, my shoulder against his shoulder, just so I could feel him stiffen where he lay next to me. But eventually, even with all of the tension that existed between us, I drifted off into a fitful sleep.