(Unedited Prologue)

Viktal - On the red planet of Megoth
Viktal jerked awake, gulping air into his lungs as he tried to calm his racing heart. He glanced frantically around his tent for several moments, searching the corners for something he knew wasn’t there.

Slowly, he sat up and swung his legs off the bed platform and pulled down the light fur blanket so he could stand. His naked body was covered in sweat. Rubbing his forehead, he moved to the water basin and used a cloth to wash the nightmare from his body. The headache would disappear with the light of day.

These were familiar actions. He had been having the same horrific dream for months. It ended the same way—with him startled awake—reaching for the hand of the one woman who could end the chain of lonely, stressful nights. His mate.

Sometimes she felt so close, at others her soul was just a whisper of feeling. It was driving him mad. Wanting her, needing her, worrying about her. She was in danger and he didn’t know who she was or where. Just that she needed his help.

***He sighed heavily. After long experience, he knew sleep would evade him tonight. He would go saddle his beast and join the patrol. At least he could work to keep this world safe while he searched the darkness for his mate.

He drew on his loincloth and weapons. Ducking out of his tent, he wound his way through the quiet village. Enjoying the vision of the moon highlighting his way, he headed for the pen holding the Yeslas.

He could see the animals by the light of that moon. Some laying down, some asleep standing up. The horde beasts were huge. In the mature males, the backs were over ten feet from the desert’s red sand. Which meant even the largest warrior could ride them comfortably, without their feet dragging in the dirt.

The Yeslas were strong, fast, and could go long distances on little water.

Both male and female Yeslas had horns. Just like both the male and female members of the Megoth horde. Admittedly the animal’s horns were much bigger than anyone in the tribe. A Yesla male could have horns as big around as Viktal’s arms. And while his horns could be hidden in his hair, the male Yesla’s horns had a broad base, pushing sideways, out from the mid-line of their skull. Then the horns dipped downward at the sides of the head before they curved upward at the ends. There was no way to camouflage the animal’s horns. Even with their coats of long, dark brown hair that brushed the sand, their horns weren’t hidden. The Yesla’s long hair did conceal their short tails and small ears. The beasts grew thick wool under their hair in the winter, and when they shed it in the summer it was gathered by the tribe and used to make warm clothing and blankets.

Viktal’s tribe had bonded with the beasts long before he was born. The horde fed and cared for the herd. Protected them from being slaughtered for food. The Yesla in turn carried the warriors into battle and through the desert.

As he got closer, it was obvious he wasn’t the only one roaming the night.

The male standing at the fence line ignored the sound of Viktal’s approach. The old man would recognize his steps and know who was coming at his back in the dark. Staying immobile was a sign of trust and friendship. Viktal clapped the older warrior on the back and they stood silently for a few moments as they looked over their great herd of beasts.

Without the Yesla there would be no horde. The beasts gave their tribe the ability to travel far in the desert sands. The long-furred creatures could sense water deep below the ground and follow it until it broke the surface. The beasts were fast, strong, and trained for war.

Zaneth turned and looked up, meeting his gaze. “Is it the same night-terror?”

Viktal sighed. He couldn’t keep anything from the stooped, gray-haired warrior. Zaneth had taught him how to use his first weapon, how to survive alone in the desert, how to lead his people without the need to fight for everything they owned, and how to care for the beasts in the pen.

He owed his teacher his life and his sanity. He nodded. “It’s grown… more. More intense, more vivid. I can’t yet see my mate’s face, but I feel her soul. I will know her if I run across her.”

Zaneth didn’t make fun of him or tell him he was crazy. He was the one who taught Viktal that if he were ever gifted with a mate, he would be responsible for protecting her soul. There were many who no longer believed in the old ways. Viktal and Zaneth weren’t among them.

The old man scratched his head and closed his eyes for a moment. When he raised his lids, he met Viktal’s gaze again. “Something is coming. Change, I think. Take your favorite beast, Viktal. Ride out for a bit. Move away from all of us so that you may connect with the silent rhythm of the planet. It will guide you if you listen. Maybe in this way, you will find her, or the night terrors will fade. But I know you need to go.”

Viktal frowned. Zaneth often knew things that others didn’t. If he said Viktal needed to go—it was important. Fear stirred in his heart. He jumped over the wall holding in the beasts, focused on getting into the dark. What if he couldn’t find her?

If he didn’t follow Zaneth’s urgings it might mean he would never find his mate. Over the many sleepless nights in the last months, he’d grown to know her soul. What would it be like to continually feel her presence but never get to hold her?

His genetic resonance mate. Without this single chance—his life would never be extended. Only finding this one woman and claiming her would lengthen the Chieftain’s life. His life.

As the leader of the Megoth hordes, he was gifted one chance to form a dynasty. One chance to find his genetic resonance mate. If he failed, then there would come a time when the Dragon King would find a replacement.

Viktal had been all over this planet. And on trips to several more, without hope. He hadn’t found her. Or sensed her. Until these last few months. He didn’t want to put the fate of his people in someone else’s hands. He didn’t want to die without a mate. Without children and someone to teach all that Zaneth taught him. All the secrets of this planet and its people. So, he would go and listen to the rhythm of the planet. And hope.

Kaitlyn - On an alien spaceship
An alien race known as the Siloth had captured four alien females from different planets and went to Earth and collected eight American women, including Kaitlyn and Lauren. Most of the Americans were from the Midwest.

Kaitlyn and her cousin Lauren were the last two kidnapped by the red, furry, four-armed aliens. They’d been on the spaceship for several days, going through hell together. The women helped each other. Watched their tormentors carefully and when the opportunity came, they managed to work together and escape their cage.

Once they got out of the cage, they were still imprisoned in the guards’ room on the alien spaceship. They damaged the door mechanism to the room to keep the Siloth out. They needed time to inch around in the ceiling and figure out how many Siloth were on the ship and what they planned to do with the women.

The women in their group were smart, resourceful, and had skills in all sorts of areas. They came up with a plan and for the most part, it worked.

It took another day or two to figure out how to sabotage a few of the ship's systems just enough to force their captors to land somewhere for repairs, without damaging the ship enough to kill them all.

Lauren and Kaitlyn were asleep when something woke them at the same time.

“What was that?” Kaitlyn whispered close to her cousin’s ear.

Lauren shrugged slightly and then froze.

Kaitlyn looked around. The door between the guard room where the women were now and the main group of Siloths had been locked from this side—and the mechanism broken. Randi and Rachael, the twin women from earth who were self-professed geeks, had looked at the access door from both sides after they damaged the locks. They promised that the aliens would need to use something like a blow torch to get into the room from the direction of the hall. It was still shut and solid. The noise didn’t come from there.

She looked over at the cage where the aliens had kept them after they were kidnapped. When the women escaped from that cage, they used it for their three guards. The creepy Siloth guards were sleeping now. She looked over and shuddered. Their flat, smashed looking faces were set in oblong heads. Their fur varied from a bright red to a burgundy color, and they all had four arms. Some were tall and skinny, and some were short and fat. All of them were mean.

Yesterday, when the guards woke up and started nagging at them, the alien woman they had nicknamed Sissy, trained the women how to shoot the silver canes. After a little practice with the Siloth as a target, the men were unconscious again.

Then Rachael figured out how to erect a virtual wall between the women and the guards. The women could see whether or not the guards were awake, but the guards couldn’t see anything in the room outside the cage. Right now, the men either remained unconscious or they were asleep. The noise didn’t come from them.

She looked across the sleeping women. Yesterday had been a long day. They escaped the cage, locked themselves in the guard room, and made their way into the ceiling of the spaceship once they figured out how to move around up there without the aliens seeing them.

Donna, another of the human captives, had suggested they map out an escape route to an empty room on another level. It was a good idea. They picked one on the second level, down from the medical bay. Then locked the door from the inside, moved water tubes, and the food they found in other areas of the ship into the room. They added a few weapons and some blankets they discovered. Then they made sure everyone knew how to find their secondary hideout through the labyrinth of the ceiling.

When they were done, they decided shifts for guard duty and went to sleep. Everyone but the guard, Natacha, was asleep. So, what had startled Lauren and her enough to wake them up?

“Lauren, Kaitlyn you have to hear this, come.” It was Natacha. She had called to them.

The two quickly stood, pulling blankets around their shoulders and tiptoeing around sleeping bodies to get to the table they’d set up in the corner as a command center.

Rachael and Randi, the tech-savvy twins played with a couple of the communicators they took off the guards. They got them to work but they didn’t recognize any of the voices or hear anything that pertained to them. Natacha, one of the alien women, had a translator. She could understand the Siloth crewmen or guards no matter what language they spoke. She volunteered to listen to the communicators while she took her turn guarding those who slept.

Natacha sat at the table with one of the communicators in her hand. “Hurry. It is the commander talking about us.” She waved them over. They didn’t have to worry about being heard, the techy twins took off the mouthpiece so no sound would come from this end.

“Plug it into this,” Randi said coming up to the table. “I rigged a speaker last night so we could all listen if something came in.”

“Umm. I’ll get us water to drink,” Tallie said and pushed her pink hair tuft out of her face. She’d taken on the responsibility to remind them to eat and drink.

Kaitlyn took the water. She was still dehydrated. When they were in the cage—no one drank much, as the toilet was a hole in the center of their living quarters. With nothing blocking the guard's view of them when they used it.

They had all been overjoyed to find a real bathroom in the guardroom. It even had an alien shower. Kaitlyn was looking forward to using it this morning.

Randi plugged the communicator into the speaker and a deep voice thundered, “The red planet of Megoth is closer.” It was the commander. Kaitlyn had only seen the Siloth once, but she remembered his voice.

“It is, but the planet itself could be an issue. They have auctions, yes. We could sell the slaves quickly. But there are also rebels and marauding hordes. We might lose our heads and our money before we manage to fix the ship and leave.”

Kaitlyn frowned. She didn’t recognize that voice. By the looks on all the women’s faces, no one did.

“We can’t take the women to Brac on Zylar. He was arrested for not only selling women but a list of things that will ensure he never sees daylight again. That is done. But most of the women are breeders and the ones that aren’t, have high value just because of their species. Even on Megoth, the breeders will bring us enough money to fix the ship. The others may provide us a small profit. And Megoth is close. How far away is the lab you wish to travel to?”

The alien whose voice they didn’t know sighed and said, “It is farther than we should go with the damage to the solar shields and all the issues with the systems we keep having. The money for experiments on the women would be more than the price we’d get for breeders, but not if we don’t make it to that planet. Megoth is within a few hours. You are right, sir. What will you do about the slaves? They’ve locked the door to the prison bay.”

Alien laughter filled the space and the women looked at each other. Kaitlyn didn’t like the sound of that.

“Let them have their win for now. In a few hours, we will be on the ground. Before they wake up, we’ll blast the door down and put them on the auction block. We’ll have plenty of credits before nightfall.”

Kaitlyn sat still for a few moments. She was stunned. A glance at the other women showed the same amazement on their faces. Then they all quietly whooped and made a dive for the things they’d prepared. Just in case.

All of them hoped, prayed, and prepped for the slight chance they could do more than irritate their captors. They believed they would eventually die. Every one of them was prepared for that final sacrifice. Now it might not be necessary. They were going to land on a planet. Hopefully, one that had oxygen. It wouldn’t make sense if they were being taken to a planet that didn’t have enough air for humans to breathe.

Ashton and Tallie handed out backpacks filled with a supply of water and food. They had put them together just in case they might get a chance to escape the ship, not just the cage.

Sissy handed out silver canes and modified Siloth uniforms. They weren’t pretty, but it was better than the pajamas most of them were wearing. Earlier, when they had checked out their locked door from the hall side, they’d also discovered some long cloaks in a storage closet. Those would double as disguises and blankets.

Her cousin Lauren asked Sissy, “The guards? Will they stay asleep?”

The half Siloth woman grinned. “Randi found a button with a Siloth label. I told her it said sleep. We pushed it and they all are sleeping.”

Lauren snorted and faced everyone. “The plan is to move quickly through your assigned floor. Gather whatever weapons, shoes, better clothes, fire sources, and cooking pots that you find and can carry. Those are the items we need. But don’t take too long. Go through and get out. We will meet on the fifth floor and it may take time to work around the elevator. So, don’t leave it until the last minute. Plan on about an hour. Those with watches, keep an eye on the time. Alarms should be off,” she warned.

Kaitlyn’s eyes widened. That was all they needed. A too stupid to live moment when they were sneaking around an alien ship—and their watch alarm went off, alerting the enemy to their presence. Not good.

Lauren spoke again. “I’m serious. Check now that all alarms are off.”

Kaitlyn rolled her eyes when Randi and Rachael had to help two of the girls from Earth turn off their alarms. They didn’t know how, and they forgot they had them.

Her cousin came over and hugged Kaitlyn before she popped up into the ceiling and started to climb. Sissy and Lauren were going straight to the top of the ship. When they made it above the bridge the plan was to throw sleeping gas into the area where they figured most of the higher ranking Siloth would be.

Kaitlyn and her smaller group went through the ceiling to their assigned area. The women with her were silent, watchful. They braced for the rough landing they knew would come. After all, one of the systems they just sabotaged was the landing gear.

Viktal
Viktal was in the desert for several days and nights. He climbed to the top of a hill, intent on watching the suns’ rise. Once he was at the top, he looked over the quiet land and took a deep breath. When he exhaled, he told himself to let the past go. Let the worry he had for a mate he didn’t know… dissolve. Until he found her there was nothing he could do—except become more frustrated. He needed to continue this night’s’ patrol. It was his responsibility to keep slavers off the planet of Megoth.

At one time this planet was a mecca for the slave trade. Anyone living here was at risk. And the markets were bursting with all types of humanoid creatures from far off planets. When he was a child, his best friend Nalay was taken by slavers. When he tried to fight, the slavers almost killed him. They left him to die from his injuries and ripped Nalay away from the planet as he watched from the dirt.

Viktal started patrolling with other warriors from his village at a young age. Intent on preventing what happened to Nalay from being done to others.

One night, he and two other warriors stumbled upon a spaceship. Unfamiliar alien soldiers were attempting to load a handful of Megoth prisoners aboard their ship. The three young barbarian horde warriors managed to stop the slavers and rescue all the prisoners. Including the young niece of the Dragon King.

A few years later, when the previous Desert Warlord was killed by slavers, the Dragon King remembered them. The last Desert Warlord hadn’t found a mate and he didn’t have children. Since there wasn’t anyone to inherit the horde, the King chose to reward the warriors who saved his niece by giving each of them a chance to win the position of Warlord through a set of trials. The purpose of the challenges was hidden from the three but in the end, the nature of the tests was clear. There had been one test to determine strength, one for intelligence, and one of compassion.

Viktal won all three challenges and he was made the new Warlord for the Desert Horde. Decades later—there had been hundreds of patrols, long years of training warriors, and an ongoing battle against the slavers. But Megoth was safer. Off-world slavers rarely landed on this planet anymore. When they did, they soon realized the markets had changed.

There were only three slave auctions left on the planet. Those markets were only supposed to deal with slaves who had been someone’s property for over fifteen years.

Viktal snorted. He knew those rules were frequently broken. Ownership history was easily manufactured.

The Dragon King and his son were working on abolishing those last three markets. And Viktal carefully patrolled the desert while Rojhan patrolled the ice fields. Occasionally a slaver would land and try to take or sell slaves. But it happened infrequently.

Viktal frowned at a ripple in the early morning sky. Snorting in disgust when a spaceship skimmed over his head and careened to an awkward stop in the sand below him. Obviously, slavers still showed up more frequently than he’d like.

His vantage point on the small hill gave him the perfect view. He looked at the surrounding area. Wondering if they were meeting others and picking up passengers or dropping off. Depending on how many soldiers they had he might need to go get help. He would see.

Frowning, he turned back to the ship. It seemed to be under some type of stress. That wasn’t a landing, it was more of a controlled fall into the sand.

Within a few moments, he saw several small lights on the outside of the ship blink and go dark. Then there was a small explosion and a portion of the wall on the side closest to him blew outward. The hole was about the size of a hatch door. As the smoke cleared, he watched a small head peak through the hole and look around. He was surprised when the head disappeared for a moment and then eight women from varying humanoid planets rushed out of the ship and ran several feet. They all spun in a circle, searching for something.

Viktal snorted again. He had a fairly good idea of what they were looking for. Somewhere to hide. The flat, barren sand surrounding them didn’t look as if it would hide anything. There were a few small boulders and tiny dips in the ground, along with some sparse bushes and spindly trees, but nothing the women could use.

He watched them search the area outside the ship, their movements becoming frantic. Suddenly, a mass of Siloth crewmen burst from open side of the ship and surrounded the women. Several of the females had weapons and managed to do some damage to their captors, but not enough to break free.

Viktal noted that the slavers were being careful not to damage the women. If they hurt them before an auction, he knew they would be worth fewer credits.

Eventually the women were overpowered, and their weapons were taken away. Each one was wrapped in their long cloaks to keep them from moving. Then the four-armed, furry Siloth crewmen hefted them over their heads and started running across the sands. He could see the women thrashing around—fighting the cloth bound around their bodies. But their efforts weren’t enough to get the alien men to drop them.

It didn’t surprise Viktal that the Siloth were headed in the direction of the nearest slave market in Tandor.

Viktal decided that the best course of action would be to go to his village and gather some of his warriors. Then together they would rescue the women.

A small, second explosion at the ship caused him to whirl around and search the structure. Viktal’s gaze was drawn to a smoking hole on the opposite side of the ship. Here there were four additional women tumbling into the sand. He frowned as his heart jumped. The sight of one of those women forced him to draw in a sharp breath.

His first glimpse of her long, straight brown hair and cream-colored skin went straight to his soul. Every cell in his body responded to this slight woman from Earth.

She was his. His long-awaited genetic resonance mate. All thought of saving the women taken by the Siloth fled. This woman was all that mattered. She was his. He didn’t doubt that other slavers would come out of the ship after these women. Viktal would protect his mate with his life.

Kaitlyn’s Story does not have a pre-order available. However, you can sign up for a one-time only release announcement for Wed ~ To The Alien.

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