Princess for the Alien Commander by Tammy Walsh

Ikmale

I’d donemy best to restrain myself, to hold myself back from throttling the fool king as he insulted my people, but I’d finally come to the end of my rope.

I was going to let him have it and damn the consequences.

The coward turned his back and slammed the door behind himself.

I reached for the handle and heard the subtle but distinctive click of the lock as it was turned into place.

I yanked on the door and banged on it with my fist.

No door could hold me!

I unleashed my full rage upon it, snarling and cursing and spitting as I slammed my shoulder into it…

And hissed through my teeth when the unflinching door didn’t cave in on itself.

I massaged my shoulder that stung with pain and pressed my hands to the door’s surface.

A flake floated to the floor beside a growing pile.

It was paint.

I ran my hands over the door and dislodged a good deal of it and came away realizing the door wasn’t made of wood at all.

But metal.

It’d been specially designed to keep a rampaging monster locked inside this room.

So, the wedding had turned out to be a trap after all.

Just as I knew it would be.

But instead of a blade between the ribs, I was to be a caged prisoner.

The king would not slay me, not until I stopped being of use to him.

I threw my head back and howled, and launched myself at the door once more, taking no notice of the injuries I might sustain.

I couldn’t let myself be trapped in here.

I couldn’t let down my people this way…

Then, I froze, recalling the order I’d given Bena at the rear entrance of the cathedral to take part in this sham marriage.

If anything happens to me, head back to our territory. I will not have you throw away your lives for me. Return later and figure out a way of rescuing me.

There was one good thing about being trapped behind a reinforced door like this, and that was that my banging wouldn’t get Bena and the other’s attention.

They might forego my earlier order and decide to rush to my aid anyway.

I backed away from the door.

My aching fists had done nothing more than superficially dent and scratch it.

I glared at the door so hard by all rights it should have melted.

Then, I detected movement out the corner of my eye.

Sofia stood frozen with her arms wrapped around herself.

Scared and afraid.

My wife.

My traitor.

I turned on her.

Her eyes widened even further, turning stiff with fright.

I jabbed a finger at her.

“You!” I growled. “You’re part of this! You’re a part of your father’s plan to trap me here! Aren’t you? Admit it! Aren’t you?”

Her instincts, sensing the imminent threat of being destroyed, leaped into action.

Her movements were sharp and jerky, her muscles still partially frozen with terror.

“No!” she screamed. “I had nothing to do with this!”

I didn’t hear her lies.

I darted to one side to stop her from entering the bathroom.

She shifted direction and rushed into the adjacent room instead.

I followed her inside.

“You planned this with him!” I snapped. “He sent you to the forest to see me! You’ve been part of his plan the whole time!”

“Get away from me!” Sofia screamed.

She backed into the bedroom, unable to take her eyes from me, and her calves caught the bed and she fell to its bedspread, a tangle of arms and legs.

She quickly got her legs under herself and pretended to lurch one way, and instead lurched in the other.

I blocked her and, taken by surprise, she fell back on the bed.

She crawled on her elbows.

I joined her on the bed and inched slowly toward her.

She was wreathed in the thick red mist of my anger.

“Please!” she wailed. “Don’t hurt me! I didn’t know anything about this! I swear!”

I leaned over her and pressed my body weight against her, pinning her in place.

“Are you even your father’s daughter?” I sneered. “Or a two-bit whore he picked up off the street? What’s he paying you to do this? Huh? What’s he paying you?”

Sofia’s entire body shuddered with terror.

Even her cries shivered.

She couldn’t even bring herself to look at me.

“Tell me the truth!” I bellowed. “Tell me you’re part of this! Tell me the truth!”

“I am telling you the truth!” Sofia screamed. “Get off me! Get off! Get off!”

She was surprisingly strong and yanked her hands free from mine.

She struck at me with her tiny fists and attempted to bite the fleshy part of my hand.

She threw her head back and forth and kicked with her legs violently, kneeing me in the back.

But I was so enraged, I couldn’t feel any of it.

Beneath me was the embodiment of the king’s malice, the threat he represented to my people.

“Tell me the truth!” I yelled into her face. “What are your father’s plans for my people? Tell me! Tell me!”

“I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

Her dress tore beneath my hands as she struggled to escape.

“Tell me!” I bellowed. “Tell me or so help me I’ll—”

Sofia screamed and threw her head to one side, and there, poking out from the torn collar of her dress, I saw it.

A pool of black was spread across her chest and over her arms like ink.

I froze, recognizing them instantly for what the markings were.

Bruises.

Dark as midnight.

And they weren’t just any bruises.

I recognized what had caused them.

When I’d been a teenage boy and my father was beginning to grow his political contacts in both the human and kauah territories, I came across an okmath struggling to pull a cart laden with food.

It struggled mightily, its legs shaking and sweat pouring down its flanks.

The owner was beating at it with his whip.

In the past, it might have given the poor okmath the motivation it needed to finish the job…

But not today.

It was too old, too weak, and no amount of beating was going to get it to carry that weight.

I felt great sympathy for the creature, ran forward, and knocked the owner to one side.

I snatched up his whip and drew it back to bring down on him the same way he had struck his struggling okmath.

I’d been as furious then as I was now, but still, I couldn’t bring myself to do the evil he had done to the okmath—even if he did deserve it.

I snapped it across my knee and tossed it to one side.

When I returned to the beaten creature, it was startled.

The bruises across his body, crisscrossed with so many other injuries from previous beatings, that there were patches where his magnificent mane no longer grew.

Markings like those on Sofia’s body.

They hadn’t been caused by me.

She’d been beaten—most likely by the king, although it could have just as easily have been one of his men.

She’d been whipped the same way that poor creature had been all those years ago.

I had been so incensed the red mist of fury had drifted over my eyes.

I hadn’t heard her words or her screams of mercy.

My fury broke like a terrible fever and I blinked, coming awake to myself.

Aghast, I released her, my hands coming away as if she were red hot.

I backed away and stared at my hands in horror at what I might have done.

Sofia didn’t get up and only rolled onto her side.

Her body heaved with a flood of tears.

I stepped toward her before thinking better of it.

She didn’t want me to touch her, not after I had frightened the poor girl to death.

Ashamed of myself, I turned away from her.

I listened to her weeping and took a seat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know what the king’s really like. I know how manipulative he is, how little he cares for others. Even his own children so long as it serves his purposes. I shouldn’t have accused you like that.”

Sofia sniffled quietly, and after another five minutes, the tears dried up and she wiped at her cheeks and eyes.

She sat up and peered over at me.

We sat in silence, my thoughts turning inwardly, appraising what might have happened.

It didn’t even bear thinking about.

“You never suspected this was a trap?” she said.

“I did. But with the dras threatening to invade any day, I saw no other choice but to step inside it, even if it meant losing my life.”

Sofia’s eyes were red and puffy, her cheeks still damp with tears.

She couldn’t bring herself to look me in the eyes, but it said a great deal about her strength of character that she hadn’t completely broken down or raced to slip past me and lock herself in the bathroom.

Or maybe she only knew it would have been fruitless and no one would come to her rescue, not even her dear father.

Especiallynot her dear father.

Her wedding dress, torn by my anger, hung severed from her arm, exposing the smooth curve of her muscles.

Not big like a kauah’s but strong and well-formed nonetheless.

And there, poking out from beneath the torn sleeve, the dark mark I’d spied on her skin.

Black at the center, it morphed through every hue of purple and blue until the soft green and yellow merged with her healthy pale skin.

Sofia clutched her torn wedding dress to herself to protect her modesty.

I rushed to the bathroom and tugged the female robe down from off its hook and handed it to her.

I prepared to wrap it around her shoulders but she flinched away from me.

I handed it to her instead so she could do it herself.

“Thank you,” she said in a pitifully small voice that broke my heart.

“You never need to thank me for anything,” I said. “Least of all for a single act of kindness after the way I treated you.”

A long silence passed between us.

“He did that to you, didn’t he?” I said, nodding toward the markings on her perfect flesh, markings that had not been there when I’d held her in my arms in the forest.

Sofia shut her eyes and looked away.

It was all the validation I needed.

I ground my teeth and made a holy oath that one day I would get the king back for betraying the trust and love of his own flesh and blood.

But was she his flesh and blood? I wondered.

Could even someone as detestable as the king do something so disgusting to his own family?

“Is he your father?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sofia said, though she didn’t look happy about admitting it.

She blinked, releasing a single pair of tears that carved tracks down her smooth cheeks.

To be beaten was bad enough, but for it to be done by someone who was meant to love and protect you was a crime against the soul.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” I said. “I thought… It doesn’t matter what I thought. It was wrong for me to react that way. I wasn’t angry at you. I was angry at him. I never should have thought the worst of you.”

Sofia gently nodded her head but said no more on the subject.

The next time I laid eyes on the king, I feared what I would do.

I would tear him apart with my bare hands.

Any chance of peace between our species would be destroyed in that instant.

I felt an incredible sense of protection toward this small human female.

Perhaps it was because we’d tied the knot and in the minds of the people, she was already my wife.

She was innocent in all this.

I vowed I would protect her and never feel the same heat of hatred toward her that I had just a few moments ago.

From now on, I would do right by her and protect her as if she were one of my own species.

But I couldn’t do that if we were stuck in this room.

The king would return in the morning and I would be his.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “We have to escape.”

Sofia shook her head.

“There is no escape. The palace is packed with his soldiers. They’ll be watching every hallway, every nook and cranny. Our one chance might have been to disappear amongst the guests but they would have left already—”

She paused and cocked her head to one side, her brows knitting together and entering an expression of deep thought.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

Sofia got to her feet and adjusted the robe so her dress wouldn’t slip off.

She hastened out of the room and back into the main chamber.

She headed not for the door as I expected but to the fireplace on the other side.

I shook my head.

“There’s no way I’ll fit in there. But maybe you can. Then you can find help and bring them here.”

Sofia ignored me and said nothing.

Her hands rubbed at the ornate carvings of the ut’ika flower emblem of the royal family.

She paused and straightened up.

Once again, she took on that introspective expression before turning to me.

“You have a castle in your territory?”

“I do.”

Sofia considered for another moment and came to a decision.

“If I can get us out of here, will you let me and my nanny stay until we can leave?”

“Sure. But we’re stuck in here—”

Sofia shook her head.

“I need you to promise me that if I can get you to your castle that you’ll protect me and Camila. You won’t let any harm come to us. And if we choose to leave, you’ll provide us with a shuttlecraft to take us.”

A sudden fear gripped my heart at the thought of her leaving me.

Why that should be, I wasn’t sure.

But it was strong and overwhelming.

In my heart of hearts, I doubted there was anything I could deny her if she asked it of me.

“Whatever I have, is yours,” I said.

I bowed, lowering my horns toward her, and extended my hand out, palm up.

When Sofia didn’t touch it I looked up at her.

“You should run your fingertips over it,” I said. “It seals the bond and makes my promise unbreakable.”

Sofia hesitated only a moment before doing as I said.

It was a traditional kauah pledge and could not be broken by anything but death.

“How do you expect to escape?” I said. “The door is impregnable—”

Sofia reached over and plucked one of the stone ut’ika flower petals off the wall.

It snapped free.

Attached to it was a length of wire, and as Sofia crossed the room, she tugged on it.

She dropped it and the wire immediately began to trail along the floor, the ut’ika petal making soft tinging noises as it danced over the hardwood panels.

The entire front of the fireplace shifted to one side and dust drifted in a billowing cloud across the floor, finally grinding to a halt and forming a doorway.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s how.”