Saved By The Warrior Hero Read online

  We met Kloran, Haelian and Leonix for dinner. They all laughed as hard as Alyse and I had when we revealed the trouble we had gotten ourselves into.

  “The Newthelian males can be a bit much.” Leonix patted Alyse’s hand sympathetically. “If you wish, we can arrange for another room for you—or you may share mine if you like.”

  Alyse cast a glance in my direction, then shook her head. “I think…I don’t know. After everything, I don’t really mind having Nion in the room with me. And if they think we’re, um, mating, they ought to leave me alone, right?”

  “They are more likely to, yes,” Haelian agreed. “They mean no harm in their advances, truly. It is merely the culture here. It is a culture of consent as well, thankfully. You need not fear anything…untoward.”

  “Annoying little baz-terds just the same.” Kloran shot a dirty look to the Newthelian who had brought us our food. The little green male had been staring at Leonix for the entire meal like he was planning on having her for dessert. But as Kloran bared his teeth at him, his eyes grew wide and he was quick to scurry away. “At least the males are as cowardly as they are persistent.”

  “Puntable, too,” I added, which made Alyse giggle. That warmth in my chest returned every time I could make her laugh now. “It would not be difficult to pick one up and kick him down the hall if need be.”

  “Let us hope that you are not called to do so,” Kloran warned. “I believe you have created enough inter-species drama of late, king-killer.”

  “Perhaps.” I grinned wolfishly at Alyse, suddenly prouder than ever at my new epithet. “But if they bother you…”

  “You’ll still behave yourself.” She pointed her fork at me with a surprisingly authoritative tone in her voice for someone as small as she was. “Or I’ll have to handcuff you to the bed. You saw it—the handcuffs are already provided.”

  Leonix, Haelian and Kloran howled in amusement.

  “Careful, Alyse.” Leonix’s smirk was incorrigible. “He just might enjoy that.”

  That night, we took turns using the large bathtub to clean ourselves before bed. When Alyse returned from her bath, she was dressed in a large, fluffy robe and smelled of sweet, floral perfume.

  “I couldn’t find any pajamas,” she admitted. “I didn’t even think to pack a bag for this trip. I guess tomorrow I can wear the same outfit I did today, but for tonight…”

  “The embassy will provide you with a fresh outfit for tomorrow.” I gave her a sympathetic smile. “But for tonight…yes, I am afraid you have been maligned by Newthelian custom once again. Given the attitudes toward sex here, it is most common to sleep unclothed. Do you wish me to go out in search of a sleeping shift?”

  “No, it’s fine. Either I’ll sleep in this…” She cuddled her robe around her as she sat down on the bed. “Or I don’t know. When in Roam, I guess.”

  I clenched my jaw and tried not to imagine Alyse’s naked body writhing beneath the silk sheets all night.

  Tried, and failed.

  “We are on Newthelia,” I reminded her as I tugged at the collar of my shirt. I had planned on sleeping in my clothes myself, but suddenly, my shirt and trousers felt entirely too tight. “Not Roam. You must be tired, Alyse. You are forgetting what planet you are even on.”

  She giggled, but her laughter was cut by a yawn.

  “I guess I am sleepy,” she admitted. “But…it doesn’t seem right, you sleeping on the floor.”

  “I will sleep here in this chair, then, if you prefer it.” I kicked my feet up onto the little table in front of the armchair I had settled into while Alyse bathed. “Just remember, I am a warrior. Believe me—I have slept on much worse.”

  “Well… Okay, then.” Alyse reached for the lamp next to the bed, the only remaining light in the room. Before she turned it off, though, she gave me a final smile. “Goodnight, then, Nion. Thank you for everything today.”

  “Goodnight, Alyse.” I returned her smile as I closed my eyes. She would not have been thanking me, I was certain, if she knew the visions of her that danced in the darkness beneath my eyelids.

  But that, at least, she did not need to know.

  Sleep came more easily than it did on some nights—but as a warrior, I rarely slept deeply unless I was in my own bed in my mother’s cottage back home. On the battlefield, I normally slept in the dirt, which made for poor sleep in general. But even aboard the Avant Lupinia, I never truly slept soundly enough to dream. Especially given that our enemies had been the Rutharians ever since I had enlisted. Sneak attacks were common, especially at night. At any moment, I knew, I could be called into action. If an attack occurred, that way I would not have to arrive to the battle groggy. I could snap into a fight alert and ready with only a moment’s notice.

  Instead, I skimmed along the surface of sleep. I dipped down just deep enough that I could rest.

  It was a practice that served me well on that night. Just when my consciousness began to sink low enough that a dream might come, I was stirred from my slumber by a high, sharp noise that startled me awake again.

  A scream.

  15

  Alyse

  I could feel him lurking in the shadows of the room as I slept. A silent watcher. Creeping. Seething.

  Waiting.

  He was always there, now and forever. No matter what, he was never far away.

  Just like I had sensed him in the darkness on the night he had killed my parents, I could feel him then.

  Var-arak. My captor.

  My rapist.

  “Hello, pretty one.” His voice called out to me, as cold and sinister as ever. Rougher now, though. More strained. As he approached the bed where I lay petrified—paralyzed—I could see why.

  His throat was ragged all the way across its base where Nion had slit it. The skin hung in tattered flaps, crusted with dried black blood.

  “It has been such a long time since I have gazed on your lovely face.” He loomed over the bed, reaching out to me. The back of his hand stroked the air just over my cheek. He hadn’t touched me. Not yet. But still, I flinched. “Have you missed me, my sweet? I have missed you.” He smiled an awful smile. “I have come to reclaim you. I told you, did I not?”

  His hand hovered over my skin, moving lower until it was positioned over my stomach.

  Over my womb.

  “You will bear me a child, and I will make you my queen.”

  “You’re dead,” I was finally able to gasp at him. “You died. Nion killed you. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Poor, silly thing.” Var-arak chuckled darkly. “I am king of Rutharia. I am slayer of the stars, destroyer of worlds. I am the beginning, the middle, the end. I am the death that waits for all. I cannot be killed.”

  “You’re dead,” I insisted again. I wanted to swat his hand away. I wanted to leap out of bed and run from him—but I still couldn’t move. “I watched you die.”

  “You do not believe me?” Var-arak turned to the window of my room, just next to where Nion was still fast asleep in his chair. With a twitch of Var-arak’s fingers, he threw the window open and pinched his fingers together until he held the brightest star in the sky between them. “I will pluck every star from the night if you wish me to, pretty one. Here—I will string them on a necklace for you to wear on your coronation day.”

  “No!” I cried out—but it was too late. With a little yank, like he was picking a berry, he took the star out of the sky and held it out to me. It glowed in his palm, burning and bright.

  Then, slowly, he moved the star over me. Not up toward my neck to place it there like a pendant, but lower, to where his hand had been hovering just a few moments before.

  The skin over my stomach burned as he forced the star through it. I screamed in pain. It was an all-consuming heat that seared my flesh and sank deep into my core. I could feel it glowing hot there like a cruel ember, its light still visible beneath my skin. My womb lit up with warmth. Between my legs, the heat turned to wetness, sticky and intense and white
-hot.

  “Twins, pretty one. You will give me twins,” Var-arak hissed with pride. His lips moved down toward mine to claim a kiss that wasn’t his to take. None of them had been.

  But Var-arak didn’t care what was his and what wasn’t.

  He had only ever taken—and now, against all odds, he had found some way to take me again.

  I screamed as his hands moved to my cheeks, connecting with my skin this time. But his touch wasn’t cold. His breath was just as hot as the rest of my body felt. Impossibly warm.

  “Alyse! Alyse, wake up. Curse you, vringna, wake up!”

  My eyes blinked open in a panic as my scream died in my throat. I flinched as they focused on the face hovering over my own—but the cheeks of the face were orange, not red. A pair of purple eyes gazed down at me in concern.

  When I reached up to touch the throat of the man who was folded over me, I didn’t feel Var-arak’s ragged skin. Only firm, warm flesh. Whole and unharmed.

  “Nion.” I breathed his name with relief. When I glanced to the window, the curtains were still pulled shut. And though the heat in my womb hadn’t subsided, when I looked down, there wasn’t anything glowing from my belly. Just the silk blankets from the bed, twisted around my body in a tangle. I must have been thrashing around in my sleep.

  “You were dreaming, Alyse.” Nion smoothed my hair away from my face. His voice was a low, soothing rumble. “Just a dream. Nothing more.”

  “But…but I saw him here,” I protested weakly. “Var-arak. The Rutharian king. Just a moment ago—”

  “Var-arak is dead,” Nion reassured me. “I killed him. You saw. Remember?”

  “I do, but…” I knitted my brow together. If it had been a dream, then why had it felt so real? “He spoke to me, Nion. His throat was slit, but when he spoke to me…”

  “He could not have.” Nion moved his hand across my brow, wicking a cold sweat away from my skin. “I slashed his vocal cords when I killed him. The communicator chip he used to speak to you caught on my knife as I did it. When we left his ship, it exploded as we escaped. You buried your face against my chest when you heard the sound. Remember?”

  Slowly, I nodded. I’d been strapped into Nion’s seat, sitting on his lap. The sound of the explosion had been like the slamming of a door. A door I’d never have to open again—or so I’d thought.

  “His body burned up in the inferno,” Nion continued to reassure me. “Even if he had lived, he would have been blown to a thousand little fragments, scattered across space in the blaze.” Nion’s eyes locked on mine, glinting with silver that swirled beautifully with the purple in his irises. “He cannot hurt you now, Alyse. He can never hurt anyone else ever again.”

  I blinked as I processed that. Of course, Nion was right. The slash across Var-arak’s throat. The sound of Var-arak’s gurgling as he’d breathed his last. The dull, heavy thunk of his body as Nion had thrown Var-arak to the floor.

  A dream. It had all been a dream.

  But…that still didn’t account for the tense, throbbing heat I felt where Var-arak had pushed the star into my belly in the midst of the nightmare. I could feel its light still thrumming through my entire body, up through my fingertips and burning especially hot between my legs.

  “What is wrong, Alyse?” Nion’s gaze followed my hand as I moved it down my stomach. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m…” I struggled to find the right words to explain it to him. It was almost too embarrassing to mention…but then again, I had just woken him up by screaming in my sleep. “It’s nothing. I’m just…I thought I would be more, you know, over this by now, I guess.”

  “Alyse…” Nion shook his head, then moved to sit on the bed next to me. His hands still stroked my hair soothingly. “What you are going through, it is not uncommon. It happens in warriors too, you know.”

  I blinked for a second.

  …What?

  Now that I was a little more awake, I could recognize the telltale signs. The achiness of my womb, not unpleasant, but definitely not easy to ignore. The heat between my legs—the wetness.

  There wasn’t a star inside me. I was just ovulating. Based on the normal ebbs and flows of my cycle, I should have done it weeks ago. Given all the stress I’d been under then, though, it wouldn’t be unusual for my body to delay the release of an egg. Part of me was completely elated at the idea. If I was ovulating now, there was no way that Var-arak could have gotten me pregnant.

  Twins? My ass I’d give him that.

  But knowing what was going on with my body didn’t leave Nion’s words making any more sense.

  “Do Lunarian warriors ovulate?” I asked, unable to contain my interest. It wasn’t unheard of in the animal world back on Earth, especially in the modern era with all of the synthetic hormones that had been leaked into the oceans. But… I tried to imagine Nion pregnant and realized what a stretch that was.

  Nion merely smirked with amusement. “Go into heat, you mean? No. Lunarian males have hormone cycles, just as females do, but they are less pronounced—and they do not involve becoming pregnant, thankfully. Are you…?”

  “I think so.” I pressed my hand a little more firmly against my belly. Between my legs, my clit throbbed eagerly. My wetness practically doubled. “Um. Sorry. That was TMI. What did you mean?”

  “The night-sweats. The bad dreams, ones that feel real enough to cause you to cry out in the night. I have had them myself, after particularly awful battles. You are not alone in these sensations, Alyse. We all have them. Ask any warrior, and he will more than understand. Nothing is this…tee-em-eye between those of us who share in these things.”

  “But I’m not a warrior,” I pointed out. “I haven’t been through any battles. I was just…”

  I sank a little deeper into my pillows. I wished I could just disappear entirely.

  When Nion and the other warriors showed signs of PTSD, it was because they’d nearly died. Or had to kill others. Both, probably.

  I felt pathetic, for showing the same symptoms as warriors who had been through so much worse.

  “Tell me this, Alyse. Did you feel death breathing down your neck while you were aboard Var-arak’s ship?”

  Slowly, I nodded. “Every day. Sometimes…sometimes I wanted to die.”

  “And did you feel a loss of yourself? Loss of control in your own circumstances?”

  “Every day,” I said again. “I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t… do anything.”

  “Yes.” Nion hummed lowly. “I have felt these things too. You were in a battle of your own there, Alyse—one without blaster or blade to protect yourself with. Without comrades. Without training. And yet, you fought anyway, in the only ways you could. You made it out alive. In this, you have already proven yourself as strong as any warrior I have ever known. Stronger, even. You should not feel shame. Do you understand?”

  “I…”

  I pressed my lips together tight. I didn’t want to cry again—not tonight. But Nion’s words had moved me anyway.

  They’d been exactly what I needed to hear.

  “Will you hold me, Nion?” It felt silly to ask, but I could tell that my body needed it.

  In fact, it was positively yearning for it. Whether it was my hormones talking, or just the relief of the comfort he’d offered me, I didn’t know.

  “Of course.” Nion shifted to lay next to me on the bed. The blankets I was tangled in pressed between us, the only barrier between his clothes and my robe. “Anything you need.”

  His arms wrapped around me, holding me tight. I let out a sigh as his warmth engulfed me.

  I always felt safe when he was this close to me. Like slipping on a heavy coat in the middle of a cold night.

  We lay there together in silence for a long time, but I didn’t feel like sleeping anymore. From the sounds of his breath, never slowing or deepening, I got the feeling that neither did he.

  After a while, Nion cleared his throat.

  “Is ovulating painf
ul for you, Alyse?”

  I coughed as I nearly choked on my own breath.

  “Um…no. Not really. Actually, now that I know what it is…it feels kind of good,” I admitted. “Sorry. Like I said. TMI.”

  “I do not know this tee-em-eye. You said it before as well. What does it mean?”

  I snorted softly. “Too much information. It’s what you say when you’ve realized that you’ve shared too much.”

  “We already share such similar pains, Alyse. You cannot share too much with me.” His breath was pleasantly warm as it shifted lower, washing over my neck. “You smell…different, I think, when you are in heat. Is that tee-em-eye as well?”

  “It’s normal, actually.” I giggled. “On Earth, they say that strippers—um, women who dance and take their clothes off as, like, a performance—they make more money when they’re ovulating. I think men must be able to smell it. Or, at least, that’s what the science suggests.”

  “When Lunarian females are in heat, it pains them not to breed.” Nion offered the information up casually, like he was sharing a fun fact in a college classroom. “It only happens twice in their lives, and for only a short window of time. But when it does happen, they cry and beg for their mate to claim them, so they can become full and heavy with cub. This is…not the same for you, I take it?”

  I considered it. Sobbing and pleading with Nion to put his cock in me. To fuck me and get me pregnant with his baby.

  My pussy definitely liked that idea, at least. It liked it enough that it kind of scared me, in fact.

  “Not…exactly,” I told him, “But I understand the urge. I think in humans, it just makes us, um…horny, I guess.”

  “Horn-knee?”

  “Not crying and begging,” I clarified with a little laugh. “But, um, kind of close. It’s like every cell in your body is ordering you to go out and seduce a man. I guess maybe it’s not as strong in human women, though. We do it once a month, usually.”

  “Once a month…” Nion sounded shocked by the idea. Shocked…and pretty interested, too. “That must feel…incredible.”