Princess for the Alien Commander by Tammy Walsh
Sofia
The dras dumpedme on my ass.
Although I’d been battered to and fro while riding across the front of his saddle, I sprang up onto my feet, staggered for a moment as my left leg was numb with pins and needles, and hurried toward the clearing’s edge.
I never made it.
A second dras swung his okmath around and knocked me back on my ass.
I crawled back as the hideous creature dismounted and bared down on me.
I scuttled on my hands and feet to escape him but he dropped to his knees and snagged my ankles.
He yanked me toward him and set to tearing at my clothes.
“No!” I screamed. “No! Get off me!”
The dras groped at my breast, pinching it painfully.
I elbowed his arm, forcing him to release me.
The creature hissed, the mandibles inside his mouth visible for a moment, and he pulled his arm back and smacked me across the face.
It was a hard blow across the jaw and made my eye feel like it was going to explode.
Stars danced in front of my eyes as he tore the front of my dress open.
I fought weakly against him, still dazed by his blow, as he spread my legs wide and positioned himself in front of me.
“No…” I said.
It was all the resistance I could manage.
“Please. Don’t.”
He placed a hand over my mouth to muffle my cries.
It smelled bad like it hadn’t been washed in a month.
The creature pulled back his hips.
Thwak!
He fell on top of me but not inside.
The creature rubbed a hand over the corner of his bleeding mouth where his hard outer shell had been split.
Green blood dribbled over his fingertips.
He glared up at a figure standing over us that I hadn’t noticed was there.
“She’zzz not to be harmmmed,” the figure standing over me said in the buzzing drawl of the dras.
“I wazzzn’t going to harmmm her,” the bleeding creature said. “I only wannnted to tazzzte her flesh.”
“You know azzz well azzz I do what happenzzz to the creaturezzz you only wannnt to tazzzte,” my rescuer said. “They get plennnty hurt. Now, go mmmake yourzzzelf uzzzeful and zzzet up cammmp. Get zzzome food. We have a long nnnight of riding ahead of uzzz.”
The dras that rescued me didn’t move until his bleeding buddy moved away.
He bent down and covered me with a ratty blanket.
“Thank you,” I said around a split lip and cheek that’d already begun to grow swollen.
“Don’t thannnk me yet, Princezzz. I don’t knnnow what the king hazzz in zzztore for you but I doubt it’zzz going to be mmmore pleazzzant than what we drazzz had in zzztore for you.”
My father?
Surely he didn’t have anything to do with these dras?
Surely even he wasn’t dumb enough and so full of vengeance for his fallen son that he would involve them in his plans?
But I knew what my father was capable of.
When he was angry, his rage was blinding and absolute.
There was no end to the depravity he was capable of.
“Is he giving you money?” I said. “If he is, I can give you more. Just take me back to the castle. Ikmale—my husband—will give you whatever you ask. I swear.”
The creature chuckled an ugly chittering noise in the back of his throat.
“Why would we take paymmment when we could get everythinnng if we only bide our timmme? Bezzzidezzz, it’zzz above my pay grade to quezzztion orderzzz.”
“Then what do you want?” I said desperately. “Whatever it is, I’m sure I can get it for you. Take me back to the castle and—”
The creature grabbed me by the throat and squeezed to cut off the last of my words.
“Keep your hummman zzznake wordzzz to yourzzzelf. We drazzz may have a nazzzty reputation, and yezzz, zzzome of it might be well dezzzerved, but there izzzn’t one of uzzz who would zzzell the other out the way you humanzzz do. There izzz honor ammmong piratezzz far greater than annnything you humanzzz are capable of.”
He released his grip on me.
I coughed and sputtered, struggling to breathe.
The creature rose to his feet and called out to the others.
“Five minutezzz! Five minutezzz and we are out of here!”
Five minutes and my life would be over.
These creatures wouldn’t kill me, but they would hand me over to my father.
I would never escape again.
He wasn’t in the habit of making the same mistake twice.
Neither was there any chance of bartering with these creatures.
They’d been given a mission and they fully intended on completing it.
I had no hope.
None, other than the slim chance Camila had escaped and raced back to the castle to inform Ikmale about what’d happened and who’d taken me.
But that was only if she saw what’d happened, and there was no guarantee of that.
She could still be wandering around the forest, lost and trying to find me.
How long would it take her to realize I was no longer there?
Until dark?
Until morning?
Camila didn’t give up on things easily and never asked for help until all other avenues had been exhausted.
I wished I hadn’t gone riding.
I wished I’d stayed in the damn castle.
I wish I hadn’t ventured beyond the castle gardens.
Just when I’d found happiness, it’d been snatched from me.
I feared the king would use me to force Ikmale to betray his people.
Why had I been so stupid?
Why had I let myself get into this situation when I knew my father would do anything to have me back under his control?
Because even I hadn’t expected him to sell out his people and work with the dras!
Had it all been a ruse? I wondered.
Had he been working with the dras this entire time?
Had he used them to create a fake narrative and make Ikmale marry me?
I wouldn’t put it past him.
I wouldn’t put anything past him.
He was the worst type of opportunist and there was nothing he would not use or sell to get what he wanted.
I hated him.
I hated him with every fiber of my being.
I promised myself that when I returned to the palace, I would make life difficult for him.
As difficult as I possibly could.
I would control my emotions the way my mother had taught me, and make it look like I was on his side.
He didn’t know me any more than I knew him.
He was a fool blinded by rage.
I could exploit that.
I could pretend this was all part of the plan, that I was like him.
I would get close to him, make him think I was trustworthy, and then…
Kill him?
I wasn’t sure I could do that, despite all he’d done.
Could I take a man’s life?
Worse, could I take my own father’s life?
His blood was in my veins.
Did that make me capable of the same blind rage?
Could I lash out in that tiny fraction of time necessary to lay him down?
And what if he put Ikmale’s life in danger?
What about then?
The tears stopped running down my cheeks and a strange new confidence rose in my chest.
The knowledge that so long as I had air in my lungs and energy to act, I could do what was necessary.
“Zzzzaddle up!” the creature that’d rescued me earlier said.
He reached down, scooped me up, and placed me on the front of his saddle.
He repositioned himself so his cock pressed against my ass.
I commanded myself to feel nothing.
Not the movement of the okmath nor the hardening thing in the front of his pants.
It wouldn’t enter me but it was disgusting all the same.
I focused on what I would do to these creatures once I had control of my life again.
It wasn’t going to be pretty, not for any of them.
The forest was an impenetrable darkness when moonlight didn’t break through the clouds overhead.
I heard the rush of water somewhere to my right but couldn’t make out the river that created it.
Step by step, we were getting closer and closer to Quoisa and my father.
“Ambush!”
The dras that issued the warning screamed as his okmath reared up onto his hind legs and tossed his rider from its saddle.
“Form up on me!” the dras behind me bellowed.
The aliens might be rough but they were well-trained and brought their okmaths into a tight circle, produced plasma rifles, and fired into the darkness.
Fire returned in the form of arrows and rocks that smashed into the dras’s hard outer shells and startled the okmath into breaking formation.
The ancient weapons weren’t as powerful as the plasma rifles but they had their own unique strengths: the arrows came silently from the darkness and didn’t emit light, which kept them concealed within pockets of darkness.
The dras were also unused to fighting against them and seemed unprepared for such an attack.
Panicked, the dras fired indiscriminately at the forest, tearing through the trees and singeing the wood and crisp leaves.
Instead of trying to escape from the dras’s saddle, I leaned forward and pressed myself against the okmath’s mane.
I kept my head down and shut my eyes.
I dared not open them in case the next blink was my last.
Two more dras okmath squealed and dropped.
A third took off into the night but the deserter was shot down by the dras sharing my saddle before he reached the clearing’s edge.
A shout rang out and creatures burst from the darkness—great horned monsters like something from a nightmare, spears raised, thrown before the dras could even think to pull their triggers.
The dras behind me fell from the saddles and clutched at the primitive weapon buried in his heart.
He coughed up a volcano of green blood that flowed over his lips.
He stopped breathing immediately and froze, his hands still wrapped about the spear.
A muscular arm seized the spear and yanked it free with a single powerful tug.
The warrior approached the okmath and, skittish, the creature shuffled to one side.
“Sh,” the warrior said. “Sh.”
The okmath relaxed beneath his touch as the warrior trailed a hand over his stained mane until he came to me.
The warrior faded into view from the darkness, illuminated only by the silvery moonlight.
“Ikmale?”
“My love,” he said.
I threw my arms out to wrap about his neck and fell from the okmath’s back.
Ikmale caught me easily and held me in his arms as if I weighed nothing at all.
I kissed him on the lips to make sure he was real and not just a figment of my imagination.
“It’s you!” I cried. “It’s really you!”
“It’s all right. You’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
And I knew without a shadow of a doubt, nothing would ever come between us again.
For the return journey to the castle, I clutched him close, feeling his heart pulse like a deep drum, and his warmth wrapped around my body like a protective cocoon.
