Alien Mine (12 page)

Tired and cold, fed up with constantly feeling afraid, she wanted to just lie down under a tree and forget about everything. Forget that aliens had landed on her mountain. Forget that Zacar was probably hunting her.

Maybe being a breeder wouldn't be that bad.

A shiver snaked through her at the thought, spurring her on. She tried to pull herself up by holding onto a bush, but she couldn't feel the branch. Her hand was too numb and weak and it kept slipping from her grasp.

Her feet were cold, and her mind had trouble commanding them to move, to climb. She knew she was risking developing frostbite, but she continued to move on, sluggish and cold. She had to get to town. She just had to.

She fought the nagging desire to lie down on the soft snow and just go to sleep.

Just another half an hour and you can rest, Natalie.

Even her own thoughts were starting to sound strange, slurry. She lifted her tired arm in slow motion and gripped the rock above her.

Her glove made contact with something. Even with her numb fingers, it didn't feel like a rock or a bush.

Confused, she lifted her head, and stared up into Zacar's frighteningly emotionless face.

Chapter 7

Up until that moment, the winter's normal eerie silence of snow falling on the mountain--broken only by the soft whispering sounds of trees moving and the plaintive cries of animals far away--was all she'd heard. Now the silence was absolute, as if even nature feared Zacar.

Natalie's lashes fluttered as she stared up into the glowing red, menacing gaze glaring down at her. They stayed like that for what felt like hours, her cold hand shaking on his ankle while his eyes pinned her in place.

At last, she managed to tear her gaze away and sag down onto the snow with a soft plop. She curled herself into a ball. At least now she didn't have to climb anymore. If he wanted her back in the cave, she'd make it his problem how to get her there. She settled in to sleep, but a question nagged at her sluggish mind.

"H--How'd you f--find me?" she slurred, barely able to keep her teeth from chattering.

"Knew you left."

She wanted to cry. And she would have if she could've mustered the energy. Every muscle in her body ached. Hunger and thirst competed with her exhaustion and she felt helpless, unable to even control her own body.

All for nothing. It had all been for nothing.

"You knew? You knew I escaped and are only trying to stop me now?" She tried to grab her hair, to give it a good tug, but her fingers wouldn't grip.

"Teach lesson," he said simply.

Cruel, stubborn, rotten...

"You horrible red-eyed alien." She tried to scream it, but it came out as a whimper.

His arms held loosely at his sides, his legs spread, he looked down at her. "My breeder cannot leave me."

"You can't just decide to keep me, as if I'm some kind of pet. I'm not an animal." If only she had her club. She wanted to jump up and hit him, again and again, but she could barely move. She tried to glare at him, but dropped her face into her hands. How pathetic. She didn't even have a good glare left in her.

"I will escape," she mumbled through her frozen fingers. "Even if I have to kill you in your sleep to get away."

"Punish. You never try again."

Punish
? Wasn't it bad enough she was a prisoner in her own cave, that he was going to use her as a breeder? Every torture method she'd ever heard of flashed through her mind and she shuddered.

She stared at him. His body seemed unaffected by the biting cold.

I can't win, can I
?

Her shivering increased. Too cold and tired to put up any further fight, she said, "I d-don't care what you d--do to me, just as long as you do it somewhere w--warm." She curled deeper into her jacket, but it didn't provide the heat or safety she craved.

In a motion so fast she only saw a blur, he threw her over his shoulder and strode down the mountain. At first, she was so grateful for the heat of his body and not having to walk, she didn't notice how uncomfortable she was being carried like a sack of potatoes. The muscles beneath her were as hard as rocks.

He moved so quickly, she expected him to stumble at any moment, her heart hammering every time she looked down. They'd be killed if he lost his footing and fell down the slope. But he strode down the path, surefooted and confident, the way she would stroll in a meadow.

"P--please don't drop me," she said, her teeth chattering as much from the jogging motion as from the cold.

He didn't answer. He simply tightened his hand on her thigh and continued to leap down the mountain.

She had to wait for her heartbeat to slow down before she could talk again. "What are you going to do with me?" Despite the heat of his body slowly thawing her middle, her face still felt frozen, her numbed lips still having trouble forming words. Would he whip or beat her? Or was there some other horrific form of punishment he had in mind? "You can't really blame me for trying, you know. Any sane person would've tried to get away from an ugly baby-killer like you."

He stopped abruptly, with one foot squarely planted on a rock. Natalie held her breath, waiting for him to retaliate, to punish her for the insult. Maybe she shouldn't have called him ugly. But he was holding her captive after all, so he shouldn't complain if she called him names.

When he moved suddenly, she flinched, only to realize he was leaping over a boulder. He landed hard and her breath escaped with a small
oomph
. Her bruised stomach and ribs protested, her meager breakfast threatening to launch from her mouth.

For a while, she bounced over his shoulder, cold and miserable, without any breath left to complain with. On top of that, her body ached where it jostled against his shoulder. His muscles had no give in them. Blood rushed to her head until she thought it might explode. And she still couldn't feel her fingers and toes.

"My stomach hurts. Put me down. I can walk."

Ignoring her, he jumped over another boulder.

As soon as I'm warm and able to move again, I'm gonna clobber him, but this time it'll be with a lead pipe.

He walked faster, leaping over boulders as if they were pebbles, no doubt for the sole purpose of causing her discomfort.

"I promise I won't run away. Please put me down." She didn't have the strength left to walk, but she'd prefer to crawl back if she had to than be flailed around like a rag doll.

Again, he ignored her.

At last, they reached the back entrance to the cave and his shoulder dipped. Something gleamed silver in her periphery vision and she turned her head to get a better look. A thick silver door now covered the opening where the sheet of canvas had been. It slid open easily, without making a sound.

"Where--When'd you do this?" she mumbled in shock.

"When you ran."

She heard his words but her brain, still numbed by the cold and shock of her situation, couldn't register what they meant.

His body lowered and pain shot up her legs when her feet touched the floor. Natalie stumbled, nearly collapsing to the floor before something stopped her. Why had she been so stupid, to think she could survive out there on her own?

A loud roar echoed around the cave but she was too weak to even react. She could hear footsteps thumping across the cave floor. Had he called the others to help him punish her?

At least I'm too numb to feel any pain when they beat me
.

She forced her eyelids open. Zacar held her, cradling her in his arms like a new bride. He roared again and the doctor appeared, pointing one of those silver gadgets at her. Zacar continued to roar, while the doctor growled in response, his words sounding urgent.

The earth spun and she scrunched her lids closed, trying to quell the dizziness. When she opened them again, she was on her bed in her tent. Zacar's big hands tore at her wet clothes, frantically trying to remove them. Miserable, cold, and wet, she didn't care that he saw her naked, or if he thought her too tall and thin. That had been one of Andre's biggest complaints about her, probably one of the main reasons they were no longer engaged.

Why is he in such a hurry?
Did her punishment require her to be naked? Or had Zacar decided he was no longer going to wait to make her his breeder?

Through half-open eyelids, she watched him cut her boots off her feet.
Those are my only pair,
she thought, too tired to protest.

Handling her with hurried care, he placed her beneath the covers. She stiffened when the cold linen zapped the last of the heat from her body, a moan escaping her lips. When the alien bellowed again, she tried to focus on his blurry figure standing next to the bed.

Did that last roar sound worried or was her exhaustion making her delirious?

Someone hurried into the tent, his footsteps loud and urgent. Zacar dragged off his jacket, exposing a thin silver T-shirt like garment underneath.

Why is he taking off his clothes when it's so cold
? They didn't look wet like hers had been. When he pulled off his boots and stepped out of his pants, panic tingled at the back of her mind, but her numbing exhaustion won out and her eyelids slipped closed. She just wanted to sleep, to be warm again.

The bed shook and she rolled toward the center, her limbs too weak to stop herself. Then scorching heat pressed along the length of her body. A small functioning part of her brain knew the alien had climbed, naked, into bed with her, and knew she should be alarmed. But her frozen body craved his heat and she snuggled closer. "Hmmmm."

His warm body seared her skin everywhere they touched and she would've crawled inside his hot skin if she could have.

While he grated something at the doctor who stood just outside, Zacar gently cupped the base of her head and neck with one of his large hands. His other hand he placed at the juncture of her thighs. At any other time, she would've been alarmed and done everything in her power to get away from him. But now, she nearly screamed at the heat searing her body. She could almost feel the ice crystals melting in her blood, her feet tingling painfully as circulation returned.

This time she did scream. Loud and painful.
It hurts. Please, make it stop.

Zacar made soothing noises in his throat, and hunched his body over hers, his legs trapping her restless feet. He snarled something at the doctor.

"W--what's happening?" Her ears still rang from her screams and she wasn't sure she'd even said the words aloud until Zacar answered her.

"Hypothermia," he said, as if reading from a textbook.

She knew she should feel scared but the pain in her awakening limbs drove all thought from her mind. She burrowed further into Zacar's delicious heat in an effort to make the pain go away.

The doctor responded in that grating tone of theirs then all she could hear was the sound of her own breathing. Forcing an eye open, she discovered a thin metal dome-like structure had been placed over the bed, cocooning them inside. The air around them heated almost immediately.

Her shivers increased and she buried her cold nose into Zacar's chest. Her body was shaking so much, Zacar had to forcefully hold her down.

She moaned in pain. "Why does it h--h--h--hurt s--so m--m--much?" His heat should be making her feel better, so why was she in so much pain? Violent shivers took over her body and she couldn't control it, no matter how much she clung to him.

"Sleep, Natlia."

As if obeying, her muscles relaxed as the heat finally reached into her very bones. Every naked inch of Zacar was pressed against her, his warm palm cupping the flesh between her legs intimately. Yet instead of alarm, all she felt was safe. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that this alien was better than a fire.

***

Something wonderfully warm caressed her stomach.