Hunted By The Alien Assassin by Ella Maven

Seven

Karina

My blood had turned to fire. That was the only explanation for the pain ravaging my body. I gasped, seemingly unable to draw in air. A loud buzzing echoed in my ears, and a voice in the distance was saying my name, but I couldn’t answer. I was too busy trying to breathe. Wind blew through my hair and over my skin, increasing the pain radiating from my shoulder tenfold.

I was dying. That fucking Gattrix. I hadn’t known their venom would hurt this much. Instead, it was like acid. And I was going to die.

Suddenly the air calmed, the buzzing stopped, and my body was jostled. I tried to focus on what was happening, but my eyes were blurry with tears. All I could see were blue eyes. “Hurts,” I whimpered.

“I know, kotche.” a deep voice answered me. “Hang on. I’ll take away the pain soon.”

How? I wanted to scream. Maybe he’d put me out of my misery. I could barely move my limbs now, as they were locked up in agony. Was I entering rigor mortis already? Ugh, this was a terrible way to die. Tears leaked out of my eyes, and I couldn’t even manage to sniff.

A sharp prick on my arm, a different kind of pain, made me flinch. The fire in my blood fizzled out with a hiss as ice water flowed instead. Shivering, I could hear my teeth chatter. This couldn’t be good either. I was definitely dying. “W-w-what—?”

The big bronze alien wrapped a fur around me and pressed me to his chest. Rocking slightly, he cradled my head. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay,” he repeated until his deep voice settled into my bones. My eyelids lowered as fatigue took over. “D-d-don’t… let me… won’t wake up…”

“I’ll be right here. Rest, Karina. Rest.”

The cinnamon whisky was back, and I was warm from the inside out. Covered in furs, I blinked at the flames of blazing campfire. The stars above me twinkled, and massive trees with full leaves rustled. Among the branches, I could see small pockets of light, and looking closely, I realized they were coming from small structures erected on fungus-like pads about the size of a two-car garage. Vines hung strategically among the pads, and as I watched, a large figure slid down one like it was a fireman’s pole.

“Kotche,” a voice whispered in my ear. I turned to look into Bosa’s fluorescent blue eyes. He reached for my thigh, squeezing it with an intimate familiarity. I sucked in a breath as a different kind of heat lit my blood. He nuzzled my ear. “I ache for you.” His deep voice sent a shiver of pleasure down my spine just as his hand slid up to cup me between my legs possessively. “Let me inside, kotche.” His tongue lapped at my earlobe, and I closed my eyes as I let out a small gasp. “Trust me.”

* * *

When I opened my eyes again, I couldn’t move. I panicked a moment until I realized that my limbs weren’t frozen. I was just swaddled in a large fur like an infant. When I tried to speak, my voice failed me, so I smacked my dried lips and tried again. “Bosa?”

The ground under me moved, and I realized I’d been held in Bosa’s arms this whole time. After he placed me on a bed pallet, his eyes peered down at me as he touched a palm on my cheek. “Are you cold?”

“No,” I whispered. My dream was still vivid in my mind, and I felt feverish. What had that been about? Now I was having full on sex dreams about my alien partner? I refused to look him in the eye. What the hell was going on with my subconscious?

He didn’t seem to notice my inner turmoil, too focused on my health. He slowly peeled away the fur to release my arms, and I stretched them over my head. The skin of my shoulder pulled, and I grimaced at the pain. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the skin was still red and angry, but at least the blisters had burst. That did a lot to douse my dream-induced arousal.

Bosa was carefully packing a cloth with a green paste. I glanced around me but couldn’t determine where we were. Underground, maybe. The walls and floor were dirt, and there were no windows. A flame flickered in a lantern in the corner.

He hovered over me as he placed the wrap on my shoulder with the cool paste on my skin. I let him maneuver my arm. His expression was grim, and he was focused on his task in a way that caused his eyes to glow even brighter, and his high cheekbones to stand out in stark relief under his eyes. His jaw was set, and I could feel his anger simmering below the surface.

When he’d faced off against those Gattrix, I’d been in indescribable pain, but I’d forced myself to remain alert during the battle in case more showed up. But it’d only been two. Bosa had literally ripped the limbs off one Gattrix. This wasn’t like picking a crab for dinner. This was an eight-foot-tall giant Predator-like insect. Taller than Bosa. And he’d dispatched both with a deadly battle lust in under a minute.

When it mattered, he didn’t fuck around. He’d defended me when he could have just left me. He’d promised me the next time that he had to use Babe would be proof he intended to keep me safe. And he’d kept that promise.

He secured the wrapping on my arm with a bone needle before running his hands over my skin in a cursory way as he tested my temperature. Maybe that was what was wrong with my subconscious. It was just about gratitude.

“How am I alive?” I asked.

He sat back and rubbed at the Gattrix blood stains on his face. “I injected you with a venom antidote.”

“You had some?”

He shot me a look. “I’m always prepared.”

“How did you know what dose to give me?”

His tongue toyed with the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t.”

I stared at him for a moment. He’d been worried. I could see the emotion lurking in his eyes like a shadow. “Thank you. For saving me.”

“Second time now.”

“Are you keeping score?”

His head cocked. “Keeping score?”

“Like in a competition. Because if so, you’ll win. I don’t think there’ll be a time where I have to save you.”

He grunted. “You never know.”

I bit my lip. “I’m sorry your home is ruined.”

“It wasn’t home. Just a hideout.”

He’d called it his home away from home, so he was definitely downplaying this. “Still.”

He shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“Where are we now?”

He squinted in the dim light. “Another hideout. I have a few. I prefer the trees, but this works too.”

I wanted to ask him again why he was risking his life for me. He watched me carefully and beat me to speaking. “You’re about to ask a question.”

“I was, but you said we can’t have that discussion anymore.”

He let out a husky laugh that seemed to surprise him. “If you told me when I was younger if, as an adult, I’d be helping a human female prevent the stealing of her kind from Earth, I’d have told you to yerk off. But life didn’t go as planned. I stood by for too long while our own females were hurt…” his voice trailed off as his head dropped between his shoulders.

I rolled to face him. “You mentioned your pardux abused your females before… what actually happened?”

I thought he’d blow me off like he did before, or change the subject, instead he tossed a small stone in the air repeatedly, seemingly lost in thought. He sighed heavily. “The Kaluma believe in respecting our elders. And the pardux is even more important than that. He is our leader. Our everything. But our last pardux should never have been allowed to lead. His father had been an excellent pardux, and I was young when Varnex took over, but I’d heard rumors that some had doubts about him, most believe he’d mature and rise to the role. He didn’t take the changes to the planet well as new settlers arrived. When his oldest son disappeared, he lost himself a bit. He isolated us and insisted on growing our settlement himself…” His lifted his eyes to me, and his gaze was burdened.

“Wait,” I said, putting a few pieces together. “Grow your settlement… as in the population?”

He nodded with a heavy swallow.

“So he…” I felt my stomach churn. “What did he do with your women?”

“Our females used to have varied roles in the settlement, but he narrowed the duties of all unmated females to one… servicing him.”

“Sexually?” My voice squeaked. “Like a harem?”

“They all wore collars to match his matz.” His brushed his fingers over the white marks on his chest. “When we mate, the females wear collars to match their mates. He claimed them all. He insisted that his seed was the most powerful and should be used for the future of the settlement. Except none of the females grew with child. So our population remained stagnant except for a few already mated females.”

“How…” I didn’t want to place blame, but that was horrible. “How did it get that far?”

“He was good at convincing everyone that what he did was best for the settlement. I was still a novice, and I’d always been raised to obey the pardux without question. Still, there was a time when I could have done something, and I didn’t.” He tossed the stone against the wall.

I listened to it clatter to the ground with an aching heart. For him, for the women. It was easy to see these aliens as their roles—assassins, warriors, pilots—but many had stories full of humanity. They carried guilt and had loved ones and goals and dreams. Just like I did once upon a time.

“I’m sorry, Bosa. I really am.”

He shrugged and his tone grew almost shy. “Helping you could be my way of taking care of my guilt. I couldn’t help those females, but I can help you.” He lifted his chin in the air and avoided my gaze. “And maybe I don’t mind your company as much as I thought I would.”

I went up on an elbow to try to look into his eyes. “Did you just admit to liking me?”

“I admitted to not disliking you,” he sniffed.

I laughed, and I could see the corners of his mouth lift into a small smile. “I’ll get you to admit you like me. One of these days.”

“Don’t push it, human,” he huffed.

I laid back down with a grin on my face. “This might be one competition against you that I win.”

I swore I heard him mutter, “Maybe.”

* * *

Bosa

I watched her sleep, waiting to see if she’d cry out from a visul. Her eyes flickered below her eyelids, but her face remained slack in sleep. With her lips slightly parted, her breath whistled between her teeth and the sound made me smile.

Reaching out, I ran the pad of my finger down the bridge of her nose. She didn’t stir, and I couldn’t resist continuing my perusal—brushing her lips and tracing the column of her throat. When she wrinkled her nose and smacked her lips, I quickly drew my hand back, afraid I’d be caught.

The pendant that had originally drew my eye rested on her chest between her breasts. The pattern was nearly identical to the marks on my chest. I didn’t believe in her fate or destiny, but there was something about this human…

I wasn’t the only assassin in the galaxy. Someone else could have done the job. They would have delivered her without looking back and by now she’d be… my lips curled back in a soundless snarl. I marveled at how she’d survived this long on her own. I had always considered humans helpless. Beneath me. But this one? She was far from helpless.

She rolled onto her side and cried out in her sleep when her bad shoulder squished into the bed pallet. I immediately scooped her up and cradled her from behind to prevent her from rolling into her injury. She grumbled before settling back down in my arms like she was made to be there.

My scales itched. My eye twitched. This felt so right that it was wrong. I’d never thought far ahead. I took each rotation, each mission at a time, but I began to look ahead. Originally, I’d planned to deliver her to the Drixonians on our twin planet Corin. They had a settlement with many human females. They’d care for her and find her a respectable mate. I squeezed her without thought, and she whimpered in her sleep. I eased up my grip and breathed through my nose until the panic in my chest faded.

Give up Karina to another? But the alternative would be to take her home with me, and that was… impossible. A human wouldn’t be accepted, and I couldn’t imagine her there, living with me in my tree hut, swinging down the vines, making food, bathing in our stream. Visions of her laughing with Gurla and Wensla filled my head. So, I could imagine her there. And she’d fit in.

I shook my head. No. Ridiculous. We needed to focus on our Kaluma settlement, not dilute it with a human. And that was even if she agreed to come home with me. She stirred my cock and made my vurs pulse, but I was muscle for her. A partner in crime. Nothing else. I’d keep my hands to myself and my head on straight. I couldn’t give into these delusions of a future with her. And if she knew how badly I ached to place my mouth on her slit, she’d run away.

* * *

“I need to get clean.” Karina sniffed under her arms and wrinkled her nose. She’d woken up recently and was munching on some jerky. “I’m not being a diva. If I don’t wash my body soon, I could get a rash. Infection. Sickness.”

Alarmed, I stared at her. “Are humans this fragile?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t bathe.”

“A little time in the sun bakes the impurities from my scales.”

“Your hair?”

“Every thirty rotations or so.” I tugged at my braid. “I am about due.”

She stared at me. “Well good for your genetics or whatever. Human skin needs cleaning.”

I thought she smelled fine. Great even. A musky floral scent that surrounded us in my underground hideout. “We will stop on the way.”

Her eyes lit up. “We’re leaving to get my supplies?”

I nodded. “We’ll head to the farm today, and along the way find a spring or a cleanser.”

“Either will do,” she nodded. “I mean, I’d kill to get my hair wet, but at least an air cleanser will clean me.”

I checked her shoulder, and while she tried to bat me away, muttering about how it felt better, I prodded the irritated skin. She was healing well, and I was so thankful I’d had the anti-venom with me. I had Wensla to thank for that. She packed everything she thought I’d need, and while sometimes it was a burden to lug the supplies around, I sent a silent thanks to Wensla for saving the human’s life.

“How does it feel?”

“Like I burnt myself with a frying pan. I’ll live.” Her voice lowered as she ducked her chin. “Thanks to you.”

After applying a fresh smear of paste on the bandage, I wrapped her shoulder again. “Don’t sound too happy about it.”

“I don’t like being in debt to anyone.”

I cocked my head. “Did I say you were in debt to me?”

She shuffled her feet. “No.”

“This isn’t a competition to me.” I gestured to a packet of jerky on the bed. “Finish your meal. We leave as soon as I get packed up.”

She shoved the jerky in her mouth and chewed rapidly. With a smile, I turned to gather our supplies.