Noble Monster: A Scifi Alien Abduction Romance Standalone (Jannan Raiders Book 1) (4 page)

Kaelon nodded, and let out his breath through his nose, two thin streams of smoke drifting up. “
Leave my home and do not return,”
he rumbled. “
You are banished from my court.”

The dragon stood guard over them until four of his soldiers came forward to lead Torvin out. Then he turned his glowing green eyes to Irina, and she was shocked to see that same look of worry in them.

“
Are you alright?”
The creature asked in such a gentle voice that it put a lump in her throat.

“Of course I'm not.” She had avoided crying in public so far on this planet. Right now, she knew that it was a near thing--simply because for once, one of the beast-men actually appeared to give a damn.

“
I am sorry,”
he said suddenly, in a voice so soft that she almost didn't hear it. As she stared at him in astonishment, he jerked his head up toward the top of the stairs. “
Go back to your chamber and take care of yourself. I can fetch my own wine.”

Her eyes started stinging dangerously. “Thank you,” she murmured in a shaky voice. Then she turned and hurried up the stairs, eager to regain the safety of her small room.

Uncollared Woman

It took Irina an hour to pull herself together after her run-in with Kaelon’s predatory rival. She did cry, as soon as she was alone. Irina had never been the kind of person to let her suffering show.

She was a product of the foster care system back on Earth Prime, and ever since her youngest days she had had to fight for everything she had, up to and including her doctorate. The opportunity to catalog alien flora and fauna many light years down the galactic arm from Earth had been a dream job for her.

Six months ago, she had finished her biotech residency. Her new job with Galaxy Pharma was supposed to have been the start of a grand adventure. She was going to find and catalog biological materials capable of providing new treatments for diseases. She was going to make a name for herself, the way that she always had before: through sheer will, and a lot of hard work.

And then the Janna Raiders had hit her transport ship on the way to her first job, and ruined everything.

She cried in the shower pod, glad at least that the palace seemed to have a bottomless supply of hot water. her arm was sore where Torvin had gripped it, And she knew she would have bruises tomorrow.

But she had survived without being raped. She kept reminding herself of that fact every time the mental image of him leering down at her entered her head.

The strangest part of all of it was that Kaelon himself had actually rescued her, and then apologized to her and sent her back to her room.
You aren't supposed to have empathy. You're a beast-man. If you had empathy you wouldn't have bought me as a sex slave in the first place. You're not supposed to care. What the hell is your game?
The act of kindness and protectiveness confused her utterly.

After she finally managed to stop crying, she went to her wardrobe and search for something comfortable enough to recover in. She did have a robe, though she had never tried it on. It was made of some fuzzy substance that she suspected with real fur, despite being bright blue.

She bundled into it and tied it around her waist, feeling herself relax a little bit as the fur brushed against her skin. It felt like a hug from some sort of friendly animal.

A knock at the door alerted her. She figured that it was Miriam, and immediately called, “Come in!”

The door slid open, and she blinked in shock as she saw Kaelon move somewhat hesitantly into the room. He was still wearing his polished armor, and in fact had a wine cup still in his hand. But what shocked her most was not just that he had decided to check in on her before the party was actually over.

He had that worried look on his face again, and the first thing that he asked as the door slid closed behind him was, once again, “Are you alright?”

She swallowed, her throat suddenly too tight for words, and nodded.

“Had I known that that mongrel of a lion shifter still had designs on you, I would never have invited him to tonight's event.” He walked inside, keeping something resembling a respectful distance and settling into a chair across the room from where she sat on her bed.

“It was never my intention to put you in danger.”

“I guess I don't understand your criteria for keeping me safe. I'm your captive, remember? I'm here against my will.”

He stiffened slightly, as if she had slapped him. “I know. But I...I do not understand how it is that I had to purchase you, and I had to bring you home, and why it is that I absolutely must keep you here, in spite of the fact that you reject me at every turn. This has never happened to me before.”

“What are you going on about? Look. I don't just mean that I'm with you against my will. I mean that I'm on this planet against my will. I was supposed to be headed for the third planet from a star on the edge of the Crab Nebula, to catalog medicinal plants. The only reason that I'm not is that kidnappers from your planet intervened. Those kidnappers would not be grabbing human women out of the spacing lanes if people like you did not provide a market for the slaves they sell. So if you talk about how you absolutely have to be with me even if I reject you, do you have any idea how that sounds?”

“No, I suppose not. I do not think that the translator does a very good job on certain concepts. I am simply trying to explain to you that my motivation is not to break you. It is not to use you. I have to be near you. I don't know why.” He laughed incredulously suddenly, startling her.

“You are human, after all. We
are
genetically compatible on a basic level, but that doesn't explain how this could have happened.”

“How
what
could have happened?” She was trying to keep the anger and skepticism out of her tone, since he seemed to actually be trying very hard to be nice to her.

“On my world, true mates find each other instinctively. We only breed to humans to expand our genetic diversity, as our population is too small and we constantly risk inbreeding otherwise. But our greatest citizens and most powerful shape-shifters are always products of this instinctive mating with another member of our species. Yet...now something has changed.”

He ran a big hand back through his wavy hair, face slightly tense. “The moment that I saw you, I knew that you the one I had been looking for. Somehow, you, a human, are meant to be my true mate.”

She stared at him, a scowl on her face. “Look. I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is, if you honestly think that this is true love, you are out of your mind once again. I am a kidnap victim. I have been held against my will. You are continuing to hold me against my will. What part of this is not translating properly? This is not how you treat someone you love. And if you think it is, once again. Out. Of. Your. Mind.”

He sighed and looked ceiling-ward, a tight smile on his face. “Well, I can't blame you for feeling that way.” He sat back in his seat.

“The truth is, I never gave much thought to what the slavers were doing. Most of us don't. We don't ask too many questions. We depend on them for new genetic material.”

“You can get the same goddamn thing from a treaty, you hypocrite. It's just more convenient to you to kidnap us because it doesn't involve you taking any risks--or facing the music for your past crimes against my race.”

His eyes widened slightly at her defiance and criticism, but after a moment, he simply nodded. “I suppose you are right. We were told things about humans by the slavers. You should know this. We were told that human females were naturally tractable. That you enjoyed serving. That you were trainable. That you made ideal slaves because it was not offensive to your egos to act as servants to others.”

“And you believed that load of garbage?”

“I didn't know. I inherited my father's servants when he died a few years back, and I've never actually purchased a slave of my own before. The servants are treated well, but I have very little interaction with any of them except for occasionally Miriam. Because everyone has always been obedient, I thought that what the slavers said was the truth.”

She folded her arms across her breasts and looked him right in those emerald-colored eyes.

“Let me ask you something. If you were kidnapped, taken away from everything you knew, stripped of all power and resources, made into a slave--made into a
sex
slave, with the right to your own body taken away, and subjected to pain and humiliation if you did not toe the line at all times, what would you do? Miriam can explain it to you better than I can.

She's been forced to do this for twenty years, and she obeys because she knows that if she doesn't, she'll be killed. And that is why we're obedient. Because we want to survive. That’s why we give into this humiliating, awful life you bastards impose on us. Because it’s the only way we can live with a gun to our heads.”

His expression had gone from surprised to utterly shocked, and a little bit horrified. “Then what you are saying is that a portion of our society depends on the misery of human beings.”

She nodded slowly, a corner of her mouth tilted up. “Now you're starting to get it.” Deep breath.

She had never actually expected to confront Kaelon and actually survive it. She had expected to simply goad him into being angry enough to push the button on her.

“I'm guessing that your society is so significantly behind ours in terms of social and moral development that you don't even realize that rape is forcing a woman to have sex with you. Instead you gave me this crazy idea that the only way you could rape someone is if she belongs to another man.”

“I'm not saying that it is not cruel to treat a woman in such a way. But women in our culture do not have ownership of themselves. They belong to men. Even the ones that are not slaves are daughters, and then they are wives. If Torvin had succeeded in forcing you to service him sexually, the offense would have been against me, as he intended. He was using you to attack me.”

“Yeah, I get it. You primitives don't realize that women are people. You don't understand that we're your equals and that we deserve the same rights. You don't understand what it's like to have some asshole decide that he owns you, and then have another asshole decide what he's going to break you to piss off the first asshole. You know what?

If he wants to rape somebody and he wants to hurt you, then why doesn't he just try to rape you, huh? But no. Of course not. You've always got to drag some innocent woman into the middle of your rivalry bullshit. God, you people are sick.”

She hadn't meant to start crying, but the the sheer horror of confronting how even the kindest beast-man that she had met yet thought about women, and especially about human women, overwhelmed her.

“You want to talk about how I'm your ideal mate somehow? And that's why you bought me? You want to talk about how there's some kind of special connection between us? Even if that were true, what kind of a man keeps his supposedly fated true love in a goddamned slave collar?

“What kind of a man sees someone try to rape her and takes it as a personal insult against him instead of thinking about what it did to her? Don't pretend you care about me. You think I’m property. A thing, not a person.” She touched the collar around her neck with her fingertips.

“If you actually gave a single damn about me, I wouldn't be wearing this collar, I wouldn't be at risk for rape, and I wouldn't be on this planet. So don’t talk to me about true mating, Or any other kind of romantic tripe. I know I'm just lucky you haven't decided to force me yet. Eventually, you're going to want to get your money's worth. I know how guys like you think.”

He stood up rigidly, his eyes flashing. For a moment, she thought he would strike her. He stared down at her with his mouth working, and then let out a tremendous sigh.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the collar remote. Pressing his thumb against the fingerprint lock, he startled her by keying in a series of numbers. She heard a beep beneath her jaw, and suddenly the collar snapped open.

He took a translator bud from his pocket and fit it into his ear while she stared at him.

“You still have to wear it while others are around. I can't change that. If you do not, rumor will get around that I cannot control the humans in my household. They would lose respect for me, which is dangerous for a warrior in my position.” He hesitated.

“I'm not as you assume. If I have treated you as less than a person, it is my ignorance, not any kind of malice. I only ask for the opportunity to prove to you that I am not this beast you think, and that my people are not the monsters you think.”

“And if you can't?”

His next words stunned her. “Then I will find a way to send you home.”

Dragon Rider

“Tell me of yourself,” Kaelon asked quietly.

They were sitting in his dining hall, alone for the first time all day. He'd had a meeting with his generals earlier, conferring about some investigation or another that Irina couldn't fully follow.

It seemed that her translator was not very good at military terms. That was likely deliberate. But in any case, she finally had some alone time with him, and she was actually realizing how much she had looked forward to it.

It wasn't just because as soon as the other servants had gone to bed, he pulled out his remote and unlocked her collar. After weeks of living in his home, sometimes a servant but no longer a breeding slave, she had discovered that she genuinely enjoyed her conversations with him.

He was curious and intelligent, and though sometimes he didn't seem to fully grasp the topics that she brought up, like religion, he had become quite interested in both her world and her job. But he'd never asked her about her personal life before.

She said back in the heavy wooden seat, blinking up at the ceiling and trying to figure out where to begin. The translator bud chafed in her ear, and she resettled it in place before replying.

“Well, I was given up when I was a kid. Don't know anything about my real parents. Don't know if I have any siblings, nothing like that. I had a genetic test done a couple of years ago, so I know my ethnicity, I know where my ancestors came from. But me? I can’t show you a family tree. I don't have one. I'm just a stray leaf, I guess.”

“Not to me.” His voice was very matter-of-fact still. It sometimes grew gentle with her, and sometimes filled with worry when she was in pain. But most of the time, he still sounded a little bit like a general giving orders.

But when she looked him in the face, she saw him gazing at her with soft eyes, and this little smile that was almost charming.

She didn't know how this whole true mating thing worked, but sometimes when they were alone together, he looked at her like a school boy with a crush. From such a powerful and intimidating being, that kind of look was disarming.

It helped her forget that he could have killed her with a single blow. Or a single exhale, for that matter. “If you had no family, how were you raised?”

“I was in and out of foster homes. I wasn't a problem kid or anything, but I just had bad luck.”
Very bad luck.
“I was sent back to the youth facility three times by the time that I hit eighteen. Not because I was a bad kid or anything. I was just...unlucky.”

He tilted his head, not blinking enough, his eyes steady on hers. He rolled his golden wine goblet between his palms. “What do you mean by unlucky?”

“Well, there were the Smiths. Typical fairly well-off suburban family, figured that they would do the right thing and take in a foster kid. Problem was, Mrs. Smith's brother was a real creep and tried to put his hand down my panties when I was six.

Well, I ran away screaming to a neighbor, and told them what had happened. I don't really remember what happened next, but I do know there were a lot of cops involved. And by the time that they went home, Mrs. Smith was on the phone to the facility to send me back.”

“But you were the one who was wronged.”

“Yes, but that was her brother and I was just some kid. It didn't matter that he was evil. She just plain didn't believe me. She decided that I was trying to mess with her family, so she got rid of me.”

“That is horrific.” His expression fell into troubled lines. “What about the others?”

“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews fostered a kid because they couldn't have a baby. or at least, that was what the doctor told them. Then they went to a different doctor, got some fertility treatments, she gets pregnant, and suddenly there's no more room for me in the house.

I get sent back again. Then, finally, there was Dr. Woods and his wife. They were child psychologists. Nobody knew it at the time, but they had decided that they were going to use me as the control in an experiment of nature versus nurture.

So I got treated normally, while their biological child Sam was being deprived of things like sleep and food periodically just to see how he would react. By then I was twelve, and I was starting to realize that a lot of adults out there are full of crap.

So me and Sam ran off in the local news station and gave them an exclusive on our story. Next thing we knew, Sam was being taken by his grandmother, Dr. Woods and his wife were in jail, and I was back at the facility.”

He blinked several times, his expression full of confusion. “I do not understand. Here, a fosterling is taken in exchange for one of one's own children in order to ensure a peace treaty with a neighboring noble. They're always treated well, for any complaint from them will result in the same treatment being visited on their keepers' own child.”

“Well, on our world fostering is basically temporary adoption. Sometimes, they keep you for a real long time, and you end up with something resembling a normal childhood. But for most of us, any stay with people like that is going to end up temporary.”

She took a cautious sip of the wine. She didn't know yet what fruit they pressed this stuff from, but whatever it was, when it was done fermenting it was an awful lot stronger than grape wine.

“After I finished high school, I managed to get a scholarship to a good University, and then I just kept working my way up. My ambition was to become a scientist, and explore off-world.”

“Yes, you mentioned that this was what you were doing when you were... captured.”

“As for the rest, well, I'm a biologist with a specialty in medical xenobotany.” At his blank look, she explained, “I am a type of scientist who goes to other worlds and catalogs new species of plants and sometimes animals that might be able to cure human beings of various diseases.”

“So you are some sort of space-faring herbalist then?”

“That’s kind of simplistic, but you've got the basic idea.”

“Fascinating.”

“What about you?” She managed another swallow. The stuff was deceptively smooth, but she had accidentally found out what happened if she had more than half a glass at a sitting.

“I was born to a minor noble family on the southern continent. We are largely reptile shifters. We make our first change when we hit puberty. It is said that the creature that we emulate in our shift form will determine our destinies. At the time, I didn't even know what a dragon was. Some of the servants had to explain it to me.”

“I don't understand. How is it that so many of your people end up with shift forms that look like they could have either walked out of Earth's Zoology textbooks, or our books of myths and legends?”

“It is honestly a great mystery for us. There are many questions that we are left asking now that science has advanced sufficiently that we have a chance to get answers. We do not know how it is that we are genetically compatible with humans.

We do not know how it is that our shift form so often emulates creatures from Earth, or from a few other planets inhabited by intelligent beings. We have scientists who are studying these matters, but I think that even they would be baffled to discover that the two of us share a mating bond.

“At any rate, once I reached my mid-teens, I enrolled in military training, as is the tradition in my family. Within a decade, I had participated in three wars: two intercontinental and one interplanetary. I distinguished myself in battle and as a strategist, and it was decided to give me a leadership position. This kept happening. I rose through the ranks fairly quickly, in part because we are not in the habit of leading armies from our armchairs. A general who is not willing to lead a charge is not a general.”

“Which means that a lot of them get killed?”

“I am afraid so. Fortunately, as it turns out, this strange shift form of mine affords me greater resilience and power than many. Because of this, I have survived longer than the others. And they just kept promoting me, essentially.” He shrugged.

“I am proud to serve my people in this capacity, and I have to admit that the pay scale is fairly satisfying.” A little smirk. “But there are times when I wish that I could simply fly out to my summer retreat and stay there for more than the summer.”

“You have a summer retreat? Where is it?”

“Out in the mountains, perhaps half a day's flight from here if I use my own wings. Barely ten minutes with a hover plane, but that's no fun. It is a pristine area, heavily forested. It is used for wildlife hunting, so logging and building are not permitted, but the stone house that my father built predates that law.”

He tilted his head. “Would you enjoy time in such a place?”

A week later, walking out onto the rooftop plaza at the very top of the tower, Irina wondered if she should have said no after all. Kaelon crouched there in dragon form, a heavy leather and steel harness crossing his chest and belly and holding an odd sort of saddle to his back.

He turned his head as she walked out, and she saw that their baggage had already been strapped to the rear of the saddle.

His eyes twinkled. “
I had this made special, so you could fly with me.”

“It's, uh, really something else. Does it... have seat belts?” She approached cautiously.

“
Do you think that I would drop you?”
He sounded indignant. “
Come, climb aboard. I promise, I will not let you fall.”

“Alright, but if I end up a smear on the landscape, I'm going to haunt you. Just warning.”

She climbed aboard a little hesitantly, trying to avoid stepping on the wing folded at his side. The saddle was just a little bit too broad for her, forcing her to spread her legs wide and hang on to a saddle horn in front. She was glad that her wardrobe included trousers, or this would have been very awkward.

“
Alright. Are you settled?”

“Oh, give me just a second.” She stopped to fiddle with the straps, making sure that at least she had something to grab onto if her fingers slipped from the saddle horn. This close up, she could smell him again. His scent did not change when he changed.

Now, at least, she didn't have to feel that strange about the fact that he smelled good. At least now she felt safe enough around him that she could appreciate that he was attractive...at least when he looked like a man. “Alright, I guess I'm about as ready as I'm ever going to be.”

“
Okay. Deep breath. Here I go….”

Powerful wings beat the air on either side of her, and suddenly the plaza dropped away and they were in midair. She let out a scream that was half shock and half exultation, and heard him chuckle low in his throat.

“
Are you all right up there?”

“I...I...I...um, I'm doing okay, just give me a moment....” She still despised being a captive. She still distrusted this place and its culture. But he at least had proven to be good company, even if he had not yet made good on his promise to one day let her go.

Her best guess was that he still thought he could not only change her mind about his world and culture, but also win her heart.

She had no idea how he planned to do all of that, but she had to admit that a retreat to the mountains didn't sound like a bad idea in that direction. It meant getting away from everyone but him.

Besides Miriam and a few of the servants that she had befriended, there was probably no one on this world that she wanted to see besides him. Now if she could only survive the flight....

They soared out over the spires of the city, far over the square where he had haggled to buy her like she was a piece of meat. She had all sorts of mixed feelings about that day now. She knew that he wasn't an evil man, but he came from an evil culture.

There were things about it that were so corrupt that it made human society look like a shining example of morals by comparison. And she knew that even with the High Commander's ear, she wasn't going to be able to do much to improve on the situation from within.

There was nobody really back home for her. It was something she had realized lying in her bed all those nights, realizing that she didn't miss Earth so much as she missed freedom.

The only thing she really had back home were a few co-workers and fellow doctoral candidates who had received their laurels at the same time as she. There was something depressing about realizing that there was no one back home who would ever miss her. No one who would notice that she was gone.

“
What is it? Why are you upset? Am I flying too fast or too high?”

“No, no. It's beautiful up here. I just...wait a second. How could you tell I was upset?”

“
I don't entirely know. I can just feel it. I can feel
you
. I knew you weren't really scared when I took off. You are excited. But then we flew over the city and you got upset. What is it?”

“We flew over the square where I got sold. it got me thinking about bad things. It's fine, let's just leave the city behind. I really have had enough of it for a while.”

He was silent for several wing-beats as he headed for the wall that marked the edge of the city. Beyond, dense forest pressed in; in the distance, she could see the mountains rise up to pierce the cloud layer.