Alien Tribute
Alien Tribute
A sci fi warrior romance
Lee Savino
Golden Angel
Contents
Alien Tribute
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
About Lee Savino
Excerpt: Draekon Warrior
Draekon Warrior
Also by Lee Savino
About Golden Angel
Excerpt: Mated on Hades
Mated on Hades
Also by Golden Angel
Alien Tribute
Who knew that reading sexy alien romances could lead to abduction?
Or that aliens could cure my cancer? Not me. But here I am, the captive bride-to-be for an alien warrior, just like the heroine in the book I was reading in my hospital bed on Earth.
Except the surly warrior who’s supposed to claim me doesn't want a mate.
Disclaimer: The authors are not responsible for any actual alien abductions that may result as a consequence of your purchase of this book.
Prologue
Pareena
Beep. Beep. Beep. I never thought the hum of hospital machines would become the soundtrack to my life. But the sound, along with the rattle of breath in my chest, tells me I’m alive. The sound is sweet because I won’t hear it for much longer.
Hospitals are never quiet. A never-ending stream of doctors, nurses, and food service workers, coming in, checking charts, dropping off food trays and picking them up. The doctors frown. The nurses murmur “how ya doing, honey” and force smiles as they plump my pillows and check my vitals. The food service people don’t comment as they pick up the food trays with most of my meal uneaten. I can only manage a few bites a day, another sign that I can measure the rest of my life in minutes and hours versus weeks and years.
I used to be so busy. Used to be one of the white-coat workers hustling past patients’ doors. I used to hate being late, hate waiting, hate making small talk. I had so much time, I had the luxury of complaining that I had none.
Now my seconds are measured by the drip, drip, drip of my IV. I have nothing to do but doze or watch silly sitcoms on the tiny TV suspended in the corner of my room. Both early and late to my death, I’m happy to wait. I have nothing left to do but die.
My fingers crawl to the edge of the bed and find the smooth surface of my new best friend—a glossy black e-reader. I don’t know who left it on my hospital bed but it’s full of stories I’d never let myself read before. The ones I’d avoided at the library—the ones with strong-jawed, shirtless guys on the cover, with bulging muscles, and another bulge straining the front of their tight pants. I was always tempted to read them, but too embarrassed. I was such an elitist coward. I missed so much.
The Tribute rises from the Jabolian pod. Her body is lithe and strong, all the scars from her past are gone. Her skin glows and her hair falls in shining waves past her waist.
Now that’s a fantasy. I haven’t had hair in a long time. The chemo took everything, including my eyebrows.
Her Tsenturion master stands on the receiving deck to greet her. His suit molds his strong frame, a glittering grey color that reflects his impatience. As his female tribute approaches, the suit glimmers with a silvery sheen. By the time she has walked the long path to stand before him, the silver has turned to gold.
She is a worthy Tribute.
I finish the story and sigh. Becoming a Tsenturion bride sounds great right about now. Fix all my imperfections and heal my disease. Replace the cancer cells with healthy ones. Throw in a pair of eyebrows, and it’d be worth getting abducted.
I click back to the beginning of the story, ready to read it again, but as I swipe to the first chapter, the e-reader blinks a few times. A new screen appears.
Initiate questioning phase.
New words form onscreen: Are you Doctor Pareena Singh?
I jolt awake and glance around the empty hospital room. How did the device learn my name?
The e-reader gives a little chirp as if reminding me to answer the question. Are you Doctor Pareena Singh?
I tap “Affirm Identity” and type in my full name and title as prompted. I haven’t referred to myself by my title since I stopped working as a psychologist, after the first round of chemo failed. The staff around here don’t know I have my doctorate.
It feels good to be recognized. I turn the e-reader over, checking for signs that someone has tampered with it. Whoever sent it to me must have programmed it with my name.
Another question appears on screen. Do you have children?
What the hell? That’s invasive. I should throw the thing aside in protest. Instead, I hit “No” in a huff. I must be really bored.
Another question pops on the screen. It keeps chirping, so I keep answering.
Over an hour later, I lay back on the pillows, exhausted. I’ve answered over a hundred questions. They just kept coming—asking about my family, my career, even whether or not I had a cat. It reminded me of a dating site one of my friends got me to join—answer all the questions and they’d match you with your true love. After my diagnosis, I stopped dating. I didn’t want to find my true love only to tell him I had a few years to live.
I close my eyes for a moment until the device beeps impatiently. New words swim across the screen.
That’s new. The text blinks at me, green.
This has got to be the weirdest computer game ever invented.
Well, what can it hurt? I touch the screen with a finger, pressing lightly to steady it. My hands are bony with veins standing out. They look like they belong to a much older woman.
What the hell. I’m stuck in this hospital bed, dying of Stage IV cancer. My e-reader wants me to swipe right to play a stupid game?
I have nothing to lose.
I place a trembling finger on the screen. The e-reader gives an encouraging chirp as I slowly slide my finger to the right. The screen starts to glow.
Is something happening to my eyes now? The doctors didn’t say anything about my eyes possibly being affected, but I’m not sure that means anything. They don’t tell me a lot of things these days if they don’t think I need to know.
I can’t tear my eyes away to find the call button for the nurse though… it’s like the screen is fracturing into rainbows, filling my vision… and it’s beautiful. Something tugs at me, pulling at my body.
Am I finally dying? Is this the light that I’m supposed to go toward?
I open my mouth to call for help—I’m not ready!—but there’s no air and suddenly it feels like there are tight bands around my chest, pulling me towards the light. Tears slide down my cheeks in despair. I’d hoped to come to accept my death but now I have no choice.
Rings
of light burst ahead of me as the darkness closes in. Pain, which thankfully feels distant because of the morphine, swirls as I shatter apart.
My last thought is mournful.
I’m not ready.
1
Pareena
I don’t hurt.
That is my first thought. A thought filled with as much awe as relief, because I didn’t expect to wake up at all. My momentary joy at waking is tempered by the knowledge that my time is almost up. At some point I need to move past the stage of depression and into acceptance that my life is ending, because it’s obviously coming sooner rather than later.
“Greetings, Pareena Singh.”
The unfamiliar voice and formal greeting make me sigh. Great, another doctor. I open my eyes to see who I get to deal with now. Then I frown, because I must be dreaming. Not only am I no longer in my hospital room and the man in front of me looks wrong somehow, like he’s CGI and not a real person, but I’m seeing everything through heavy eyelashes. That’s happened in my dreams sometimes, where I think my hair has returned. I reach up and, sure enough, there’s thick, soft hair covering my entire head.
Tears spark in my eyes as I pull it forward to see the thick, glossy strands. They feel so real. Look so real. This is probably the most vivid dream I’ve ever had. Hm. I wonder if I’m in a coma. Do people in comas dream? Technically I have my doctorate, but becoming a psychologist didn’t make me an expert on people in comas.
“Pareena Singh, why are you leaking?”
“Leaking?” I ask, looking up at the not-man. He gestures at my face, his movement awkward, as if he’s not used to using his hand. I reach up to touch my cheeks and feel the wetness of tears as they overflow from my eyes. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. “These are tears. I’m just… sad. I miss my hair so much and this feels so real.”
“It is real,” he says seriously. And then he starts telling me the most fantastical things I’ve ever heard. His name is Frllil and he’s a Jabol Luminary, in charge of finding females for an alien race—and, of course, human females are the only compatible beings.
The last trilogy I read, the Tsenturion Masters trilogy, is, according to him, based on reality and I’ve been selected as a Tsenturion Tribute. I’ve been cured of my cancer and my body has been not only restored to prime health, but actually enhanced so that I will never have to worry about cancer—or any other illnesses—ever again, and my life expectancy has been expanded exponentially. That I will be trained, ‘primed,’ and then presented to my new master.
For a coma dream, it’s pretty detailed. I haven’t ever really thought of myself as the imaginative sort, but being trapped in a hospital room with no visitors for weeks on end has apparently sparked something in my brain. The desperation to get out of my situation, perhaps, or some kind of delusional wish fulfillment.
To be truthful, I’m not really into self-examination right now.
Yes, I know that some part of my brain has conjured this outlandish scenario, that I’m pretty much out of my gourd. But I can’t stop touching my hair.
Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?
Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?
For a crazy old man, sometimes Dumbledore did make sense. Does it matter that this isn’t real? It feels real. My hair, which my fingers are continuously running through, feels real. The lack of pain feels real. Why not enjoy this dream while I can? Eventually, I will wake up and be thrust back into the awful reality of my current existence... or maybe I’ll never wake up at all. Neither option is appealing. Even my subconscious thinks so, or else I wouldn’t be dreaming about alien abduction.
For the first time in my life, I decide to follow the advice I gave so many of my patients and just go with the flow, for as long as it lasts.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m a Tribute… so now what?”
Frllil is watching me with an air of anxious wariness, and I’m kind of getting used to his odd appearance, but it’s still creepy when he smiles widely. It’s so close to approximating a real, human smile, but the fact that it’s so close somehow makes it more unsettling rather than less. It’s the Uncanny Valley effect, but knowing that doesn’t make it less strange.
“I must say, you’re taking this a lot better than the last Tribute,” he says, sounding very relieved.
Other Tributes—very interesting. Although, I suppose it only makes sense that my brain has included other humans in this dream. I’m very tired of being alone, after all. My subconscious apparently doesn’t want me alone in any manner, even in a dream. I’m not sad about it.
“Is there any way to escape?” I ask, because it seems like he expects me to.
Frllil shakes his head. His expression doesn’t change—he isn’t sorry. If anything, he looks pleased. “There is no way for you to access the wormhole you came through, and a return trip would be inadvisable, even with the improvements I’ve made to your physical form.”
I shrug. “Then resistance is futile. So, what comes next?”
“Now we begin your training.”
Bogdan
Black space stretches before me. I grip the sides of the command chair, willing my expression blank. But nothing hides my mood. My suit is as dark as the empty quadrant.
“Scan complete,” Science officer Kalexston reports. “No signs of the enemy.”
I glare at him for announcing the obvious. He ducks his head to study his screens. “Shall I scan again?”
“No. Officer Zakhar, take us on a patrol pass.”
“Yes, Commander,” Zakhar snaps to attention.
I am failing everyone counting on me.
Again.
The feeling is far too familiar, but it never becomes easier to bear.
High Commander Gavrill, the leader of our entire fleet—which makes him the leader of our entire race, since we are all that is left of it—put his faith in me to lead our warriors in his stead while he is distracted by his Tribute. I also failed at convincing him and the others that we aren't ready for Tributes. In my defense, I had not really thought the Jabol would be able to procure acceptable substitutes for Tsenturion females.
But they found a planet, currently accessible only through an unstable wormhole, on which there are many suitable females.
The thought strikes fear in my heart, although it is unlikely that the Vgotha would be able to mount an attack on that planet. While they know about the High Commander's Tribute, they do not know the location of the wormhole or the planet. Even we do not know it, only the Jabol involved in procuring them do. It is safer that way.
The bridge door slides open and a tall warrior marches towards me. I rise.
“Arkdhem, reporting for duty,” the third in command salutes with a fist to his chest. He is a hand taller than me, but I am broader, with more muscle. Sometimes he wears extra battle spurs about his shoulders to make him seem bigger, but I know his true size.
“Commander,” I glance at my screen. “You are not due for duty until later.”
“I volunteered for a double shift.” Most see Arkdhem as a pleasant, jovial sort. I know better. There’s a reason he has risen so high in the ranks.
“Where is High Commander Gavrill?” I question, even though I can guess.
“With his Tribute. He and Dawn are celebrating ten semicycles since her abduction and return.”
In the corner of my eye, Kalexston’s suit lightens to a happy blush. A color that should never reveal itself on a warrior. “Has it been ten already?” he exclaims. “Truly a cause for celebration.”
“Will they accept gifts?” Zakhar asks. His suit is light red. Another idiot.
“I don’t know, but a visit would not be amiss. Perhaps at mealtime,” Arkdhem says. The rest of the bridge breaks out in exclamations of intent to visit the Tribute and express their congratulations.
My fists clench at my sides. Fools, all of them.
“Perhaps if you have so much
time to waste, you all should pull double duties,” I bark, and the discussion quiets to a murmur. Arkdhem raises a brow at me. He knows better than to smile. I would beat his face off.
My fellow warriors are excited by the news of Tributes. They want more of them to come now, before we've even eradicated the Vgotha threat. Fortunately, the procurement process is both long and difficult. Made even more so by the High Commander's Tribute, Dawn. She insisted the protocol for selecting the tributes be adjusted, so that the women of Earth are given as much of a choice as can be provided to them. A choice which she feels was denied to her, although she is happy enough under the circumstances.
All the while, we are not given a choice about whether or not we even want Tributes on the ship with us. The Jabol provided Tribute Dawn to the High Commander on their timeline, not ours. Already she's proven to be a liability. We had one of the Vgotha ships within our sights when she was kidnapped. She managed to escape in one of their small pods, but then insisted it be released back into space so we could follow it. She said the pod—and the Vgotha ship she'd been taken to—were actually sentient, and allowed her to escape.
The pod disappeared, leaving us none-the-wiser about where the Vgotha have vanished to this time or why their 'sentient' ship might have assisted her.
The High Commander was too relieved to have her back and fully bonded to him to be able to focus on the Vgotha's disappearance. That duty has fallen to me, as his second-in-command, and I am failing.