Barbarian’s Taming by Ruby Dixon

1

MADDIE

It’sweird when you don’t fit in.

I thought that once I hit adulthood, I’d be all done with feeling like an outcast. That once I got past those awful high school years where I felt like the round peg in the square hole, that it’d all just be a bad memory. That someday I could look back and laugh at how much it bothered me to be the weirdo on the outskirts.

Sitting here in a cave at a party for my sister, surrounded by aliens, I feel like I’m reliving my high school years all over again. It’s pretty garbage, I have to admit. I wasn’t popular then, being fat and opinionated. These aliens don’t care if I’m fat or if I have a big mouth, and yet I’m still on the outskirts.

It’s weird.

Someone dances past me, laughing. His tail smacks against my arm and then he spills a bit of his drink on the stone floor in front of me. Lovely. I absently swipe a bit of my tunic on the spilled alcohol because I don’t want someone slipping on it in front of me while I sit and hold down a cushion in the corner of the room by myself.

It’s not that people are unfriendly. Heck, it’s not even that I’d have to sit alone if I didn’t want to. It’s that I’m really not sure where I stand with any of these people. I stare out at the celebrating tribe, not paying attention to the people who dance past with a skin of sah-sah, or the woman who pulls her top down to breastfeed not one but two blue babies. I ignore the exclamations over the fruit that they’ve managed to savor all damn night, and I sure as shit ignore when they start singing again.

Everyone’s so damn happy. Everyone but me.

Me? I’m lost.

In the space of the last month or so, my world has been upended. I went to sleep one night and woke up in the arms of blue space aliens on a frozen planet. Apparently I was kidnapped by bad aliens in my sleep. Apparently they took my sister, too. Apparently we were also stuck in sleep pods for a year or so and missed out on the bad guys being shot down.

It seems we slept through a lot.

Even if I thought it was all too strange to be believed at first, it didn’t take long to realize this shit was legit. There are two suns, two moons, and endless frost and snow. The people here are blue, covered in a downy fuzz, and act like a blizzard is a nice spring rainstorm. Oh, and the parasites. I don’t even want to think about the parasites, especially not the one living inside me now, helping me ‘adapt’ to this alien world.

My sister is thriving, though.

It’s weird. Lila’s always been a shy introvert and even more of an outcast than me. She was born deaf, and though she got cochlear implants at age twelve and no longer needed me to interpret for her when lip-reading was too tricky, I’ve always felt the need to protect her and care for her. But here? We’ve been separated and she’s been thriving. Lila is usually the lonely, lost one and I’m the bold, outgoing one. I have to be because that’s how you Get Shit Done.

Except Lila’s doing fine on her own and now I’m just kind of…lost. I’m the single human that doesn’t have a mate. I don’t know the others. They’re all pregnant or getting pregnant or juggling babies already and I’m sitting here, twiddling my thumbs with my ‘vacancy’ sign over my vagina.

Not that I want a baby, mind you. Or a mate. But it feels weird to be the only chick who’s not hooked up in this place. Even my sister’s lovey-dovey with an alien and mated.

She’s happy here despite all the snow and ice and man-eating creatures and lack of toilets. She wants to stay (not that we have a choice).

And me?

I’m just kind of here.

Alone.

I rub at the wet spot on the stone floor while one of the humans—Georgie? Megan? I don’t know which one—whips out a boob and starts breastfeeding her child mid-conversation with an alien lady. Lila’s not attending the party any longer; she ran off to her cave with her alien guy to go make babies with him. Literally. She’s literally going to make babies with him. It’s something I’m still struggling to wrap my brain around. It seems that if my chest-cootie wakes up and starts purring, it picks a man I should make babies with.

I’m pretty glad mine is deciding to be mute.

Lila’s thrilled to be ‘resonating,’ though. Of course she is—now she’s one of the baby-crazy crowd of human women who’ve settled in with the aliens. Now she fits in even more, though she wasn’t exactly having a tough time with that. She’s mated to a popular guy. She showed up with fruit. She’s taken to all the daily life tasks like they’re a joy for her. Got a fire that you need made? Lila can do it. Skin a kill? Lila’s right there. Make dinner? Arrows? Fucking slings or snowshoes or bear traps or whatever else these Grizzly Adams wannabes can come up with? Lila can do it. She can survive just fine because she’s been learning how to be like them.

And they love her for it, too. The tribes-people have been learning sign language to speak to Lila and to make her feel welcome. I’m glad they’ve accepted her so readily, but it also makes me jealous…which makes me a terrible sister.

Everyone in the tribe adores her and they can barely tolerate me. I’m like a stinky fart that’s lingering in the cave and everyone tries to ignore.

Not that I can blame them for treating me like a turd—I haven’t exactly been Miss Pleasant to live around while my sister was gone. I was frantic with worry about her after she was stolen, and when they wouldn’t let me go after her? I was kind of not nice about it.

Okay, I was a bit of an ass.

Well, more than just a bit.

But I was worried about seemingly fragile Lila on this hostile, cold planet. So I took it out on everyone else. I might have picked a few fights and dragged my feet and okay, I threw a few things at people’s heads. So what? Anyone else would have done the same if they were in my shoes, uncertain about the fate of their baby sister.

They don’t understand what it’s like to be so alone, even in a sea of people.

Everyone here’s part of a family. There are happy women with babies, and men utterly devoted to their ladies. As I look over, the chief—Vektal—is tossing his baby daughter into the air and giving her exaggerated kisses just to make Talie laugh. And boy, does that baby laugh. It’d be adorable if it didn’t make me feel so sour inside. He’s got a wife and a baby. All of the humans here have someone.

I have Lila. Like I have in the past, I’m ready to shield her from the world’s harms and interpret for her when someone doesn’t know sign language.

Except my sister doesn’t need me anymore.

Scared, timid little Lila has returned utterly confident in herself and in love with Rokan.

That leaves me…well, it leaves me sitting here by myself on a mat, mopping up someone else’s spilled drink.

I sigh and stare out at the entrance of the cave, feeling alone and yet trapped at the same time. I don’t fit in with these people, but I also don’t have the option to find another people. There are no other people.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just upped and left. Would they hunt me down like they hunted for Lila? Or would they be all “good riddance” and not care because I’ve been a bitch?

I scowl into the shadows of the cave’s entrance. It would be so easy to get up and just walk out while everyone’s drunk and partying. But even as I stare, glowing blue eyes blink back at me, and a big, bulky form emerges from the shadows of the cave entrance, spear in one hand, a dead animal in the other. It’s a hunter, returning from a late-night jaunt out into the snow.

And not just any hunter.

It’s Hassen. The bastard that stole my sister. The one that decided he wanted a mate so much he’d just up and fucking steal her.

Him? He can kiss my fat ass.

Though the look he’s giving me right now? That tells me he’d enjoy that far too much. That he’d do more than just kiss it if I bared it for his inspection.

And for some reason, I find myself prickling with arousal at the thought of Hassen folding his big body down to give my plump ass a kiss. Which is all kinds of wrong. He’s exiled. He’s a dick. He wanted my sister. None of these put him on the ‘Ice Planet’s Most Desirable Bachelors’ List.

As I glare at him, his mouth twists into a fang-bearing smile.

I jerk my gaze back around to the fire, scowling. Totally not gonna keep picturing him with his mouth on my ass. Biting one of my rounded cheeks. Dragging his fingers over my body and exploring the fact that I have no tail…

I give my cheek a hard slap to bring me back to earth.

Nearby, Farli gives me a startled look. “Are you all right?”

“Just distracted,” I tell her. Farli’s a good kid, and the closest thing I have to a buddy here, for all that she’s, like, fifteen years old. Right now? She’s my ride or die, because, well, I don’t have anyone else. Even my sister Lila is off in a corner somewhere, making out with her new hubby. I can’t even be mad about that—she’s so happy and she is such a wonderful person that she deserves every bit of joy. I’m thrilled for her.

I’m a little jealous of her radiant happiness, sure, but still thrilled for her.

I’m just a selfish jerk of a sister who doesn’t know what to do with herself when she’s not needed anymore and suddenly finds herself with no friends. Funny how I always thought I didn’t need friends. Funny how being stranded on an ice planet can totally change your perspective on things like that. In a small community like this, not playing by the rules gets you left behind.

Hassen knows all about that.

I peek over my shoulder back at the cave entrance again. Just in case Hassen is still there. But he’s not, and I ignore the little stab of disappointment I feel.

The last thing I need is to get involved with the bad boy of the ice planet.

HASSEN

It is a cold night for me.

The laughter coming from within the tribal cave spills out into the snow, and I can smell the burning meat cooking for the humans. Someone is singing, and I hear Warrek banging away at his drum. They are all good sounds, happy sounds. My people are light and carefree and full of joy.

That joy does not extend to me.

I stand alone in the snow on a nearby ridge, a fresh-killed quill-beast in hand. And I am torn, because I do not know if I should ignore the punishment the chief has given me and join the celebration, or if I should turn around and leave.

I am exiled. I am nothing to my people now. I did not think I would care, but…I do. Their scorn hurts me.

If I go inside, I will be met with uncomfortable looks, but they will not turn me away. Some will be filled with disgust at how I have behaved. Some will pity me in my punishment, because I risked everything and lost. It would have all been worth it had things turned out differently, but I am empty-handed and alone, and thus a male to be pitied.

I am not one to dwell upon what might have been, but tonight, I wonder. I wonder what it would be like to have the tribe celebrating my resonance. To hold my mate close and bring her to my cave, and together our breasts would sing until our kit was created.

But I am happy for Rokan. He is a good friend and a good hunter. He truly cares for Li-lah, and together they will be very happy.

Li-lah…I have mixed feelings about. I am disappointed that she is not my resonance mate and yet I am incredibly relieved as well. I thought upon first seeing her that she was perfect—small, fragile, with dark hair and big eyes. I thought she would be the perfect female for me, and I listened to my heart and not my head, and stole her away. I kept her captive for hands upon hands of days in a hunter cave, and with every day that passed, I became more and more worried.

Li-lah cried. Many, many tears. She huddled in the back of the cave and stared at me, terrified. And me…I felt like a monster. I only wished to resonate with her, to cherish her and start a family with her. I want what the others in my tribe have with their human mates. I want to feel the warmth of another body against mine, to have someone to talk to. To see her belly full with my kit. I would never harm Li-lah, yet she flinched away from me every time I spoke to her. And then she would cry, again. It soon grew to the point that I was looking for excuses to leave the cave so I did not have to endure her weeping and trembling.

And I was so terrible in Li-lah’s eyes that she escaped. Left the safety of the cave and was taken by metlaks. Rokan had been in the area and helped me search for her, and when he returned, resonating to her?

I felt relief.

This cringing, terrified female was not mine. My gladness filled me with even more shame. Should I not be sad that Li-lah is someone else’s? Should I not be jealous of Rokan? But…I am not. I am glad for him, even as I ache with loneliness. There are not many unmated females in the tribe. If I am to ever have a mate, I will have to wait for one of the other females to grow to adulthood, unless my khui chooses the last human, Mah-dee.

I snort to myself at the thought. Sometimes I wish it had been her I had stolen instead of cowardly Li-lah. Mah-dee does not cringe and weep. She throws things when she is upset, and bellows at all that stand near. She attacked me the last time she saw me. She is fierce.

Now that is a female.

I step into the mouth of the cave to deliver the fresh meat to those that sit near the fire. Normally there is a hunter standing on guard at the front of the cave. Tonight it is Bek, his arms crossed and his expression as morose as mine. He is not interested in the celebration, either. Nor is he interested in taking my kill to the others for me. He watches me with disinterest and then gazes back out to the night sky again. I feel a strange sort of kinship for Bek—he knows what it is like to have a human female and lose her. Though I think Bek still has feelings for his; I test mine and still feel nothing but relief that Li-lah belongs to Rokan. My loss is what she represented to me, but I think Bek truly loved his Claire in his way. Claire, however, has resonated to another and even now sits near the fire with her mate, content.

I feel eyes on me and scan the cave.

There, off to one side. It is the human Mah-dee. She is looking in my direction. I catch her gaze and give her a challenging look, daring her to continue staring at me. Does she think her distaste for me will make me scurry away like a diseased metlak?

To my surprise, a strange expression crosses her face and she quickly looks away again.

Curious. Her response reminds me of when Jo-see first resonated to Haeden. She chattered on and on about how much she hated him…and yet could not stop watching him when she thought no one paid attention. The hunters noticed, however. It is our job to be observant of our prey, to notice the behavior of others. Jo-see’s lips said one thing, but her body said another.

Could this be the case with Mah-dee? Is she attracted to me?

I feel a surge of pride and run a hand down my chest. My body is a fine one, and I am strong. I am a tireless hunter, and I am sure that if I were given the chance to test my skills, I could be equally tireless in the furs to please my female.

But it does not matter. I can take no mate because I am exiled. I have no cave to call my own. Until the brutal season arrives, my bed is the snow outside, and my task to bring in as much food as possible. Once I have worked hard enough, I will be forgiven for betraying the rules of the tribe.

Until then, I have nothing and no one.

My mood bleak, I toss the kill down in front of Hemalo. “Meat for you and your—” I stop, because Hemalo has broken the bond with his mate. They do not speak, and now he beds with the hunters. It is unthinkable to me—to have a resonance mate and choose to leave her. I do not understand him. “Meat,” I say gruffly.

“My thanks,” Hemalo replies, ever mild. “Will you join me by the fire for a bit? Rest yourself?”

I hesitate. I would like to join him by the fire. I would like to share a cup of sah-sah and laugh and eat. I would like to sit amongst my tribe and enjoy the evening, even if it is to celebrate the joining of another male to the female I stole. I would like to see if Mah-dee looks my way again.

But Vektal is sitting nearby, his daughter bouncing on his knee as his mate, Shorsie, shares a piece of fruit with other humans. He is watching me.

And his rules must be obeyed if I want to win my place back amongst my people. “I must not.” I touch Hemalo’s shoulder and then head off, back out into the snow and the dark.

Alone.

I have not yet earned the right to return. But I plan to.