Alien Captured Read online

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. Sorrow darkened her eyes even more. “I can’t, I would give anything to know where they are. Anything.” She pummeled his chest, but it was half-hearted, showing pain and frustration more than a wish to hurt him. “You can’t leave. I have to give you to the resistance.” There was a kind of desperation in her eyes he’d never seen in a human before. “I have to.”

  “Tell me why you have to give me to the resistance. Why are you this desperate?”

  She sagged in his hold. “They have Noah.”

  He’d suspected something like this, but had thought maybe it was this Caine that went with the resistance. “Who is Noah?”

  She stiffened and stared fixedly at his chest. “He’s--he’s my brother,” she whispered at last. “He’s still a baby.” She held something back from him and, in time, she would trust him enough to tell him everything.

  Azagor pulled her into his arms, the way he’d seen Zacar do with Natalie. His instinct was to shake her, but human females didn’t find that soothing. “I will find your brother and bring him to you.” In the process, many of her people who thought to do her harm would die.

  He had to find out what had happened to her. He doubted the kind of human that would burn a defenseless woman would stop there. He should’ve made a plan to come down to Earth more often during the time he worked in space. If he’d been here, he would’ve known the humans mistreated her. “Will they harm your brother?”

  She looked up at him with big sad eyes. “I’m so afraid that they’ll hurt him. He’s so young, he can’t defend himself. He was born out of wedlock, and, to them, that is one of the worse sins.”

  “What does out of wedlock mean?”

  She fidgeted, her hands smoothing down her dress and then her hair. She looked down, avoiding his gaze. “His mother and father weren’t married.”

  There was something she wasn’t telling him. Maybe she was born out of this wedlock as well and ashamed.

  Killer yipped from the teacup, the sound he used when he wanted Azagor to pick him up. “Your rat is trying to train me.”

  She laughed through her tears and, looking down at her, he thought his breeder may just be the most beautiful woman in the galaxy. “Your eyes are beautiful with the tears making them sparkle.” He lifted her braid, felt the soft silk. “You hair looks like the darkest night on my home planet. It feels like the finest Aurelian silk against my skin.” He thought about Viglar’s breeder with her ugly red hair. “I am relieved that it’s not red.”

  “Thank you.” Her face became red, and she stared down at her toes.

  Killer yipped again. Azagor picked it up and held it in his hand. It sat down on his haunches and regarded the world from his preferred perch. Azagor could imagine what the other warriors would say when they saw this. “You do not have to be ashamed of being born out of wedlock. I will kill anyone that tries to make you ashamed.”

  Her lashes fluttered, making him think of the small birds on Aurelia. They looked like flying jewels. “That is kind of you.”

  Sensing she didn’t want to talk about that anymore, he asked, “Why do you not allow your rat outside?”

  “Lately, I’ve noticed some animals around. I don’t know where they came from, but I worry about one of the big birds grabbing Killer.”

  The Zyrgins had used their cloning technology to reintroduce most of the animals. It would take several decades to restore the ecology of the Earth.

  “I may still eat him, but I will not allow the birds to get him,” he teased.

  She looked at him uncertainly and then motioned outside. “I have some coffee. I will make us some. Then maybe we can talk about Noah.”

  Susannah went outside, and he followed. She made a crude fire and put a blackened pot with dents in it on the coals. “I started to hide some of the coffee when I realized they were leaving and would probably leave me behind. Brother Joseph is the only one who was allowed to drink the coffee. I had to hide really small amounts at a time.

  “In our dwelling, you will drink as much coffee as you want every day.” Coffee was the one good thing humans produced. In Africa, one of the warriors sent back in time had kept a coffee plantation going while he waited for the centuries to pass.

  “Is Josephatus a common human name?” He needed to know more about this human to give the probes narrower search commands.

  “No, his name is Joseph. He made us call him that because he thinks it makes him sound important.”

  “You should not give him this importance. He has not earned it.”

  She balled her hands into fists. “I won’t ever again,” she vowed.

  “Tell me about Noah.”

  She fiddled with the fire. “I call him my brother, but he’s a cousin. I wanted to care for him, but they took him away from me.”

  She was lying about something, but he’d have to wait until she trusted him with the truth. He would find this Noah for her. When he was safe in one of Margaret’s orphanages, he’d allow Susannah to see him every week. He was a modern Zyrgin, after all.

  “Did you want to buy him? Is that why you were going to sell me?”

  “No, I wanted to pay someone to find him for me.” She spread her hands. “I don’t know anything outside this farm. Where do I start to look for him?”

  “I will find him for you.” He liked being alone on the farm with her, having her care for him. “After my fever is gone and my machines have found him.”

  Her eyes rounded. “Your machines?”

  “We have machines like your TC that can search for humans.”

  She looked skeptical but didn’t protest. Back at the table, she poured them both some coffee. Susannah handed him the cup of black bitter coffee. She didn’t have sugar or milk like Natalie and the other breeders.

  “If you lived with me, you would have as much coffee as you can drink. You will also have milk and sugar and cream.” He needed to make her see that she should live with him, that her life would be better with him. “Do you plan to stay on the farm? You cannot survive alone.” He would force her to come with him if he had to, but he would prefer if she came to him of her own free will.

  She shrugged but didn’t answer. She took the plates and cups, and he followed her outside to see what she was going to do with them. She went to a crude hole in the ground and started to pull on a rope. Wisely keeping his thoughts about such primitive methods to himself, he gave her the rat and pulled up the water. “Why do the taps in the house not work?”

  She shrugged. “We think they wore through a long time ago and we didn’t have the materials to fix it.”

  “Even without your primitive plastic for the pipes, there are many solutions.” Every time he came to see her, Joseph had sat or stood around drinking or eating while the women worked. This was the first planet they’d conquered where the civilization was this close to collapse.

  She turned on him. “I’m getting really fed up with you thinking you’re better than humans. If it’s that easy to use what is available on the farm, then prove how superior you are and fix the pipes and, while you’re at it, fix my TC too.” She stormed off, and he let her go. She might not realize it, but she’d given him the opportunity to show her the benefits of having him as her warrior.

  It took some effort, and he had to cheat here and there using a tool from his toolkit in his pocket, but he got the pipes in the kitchen working, using scraps he found lying around in the sheds. The filter system he installed was crude, but the water should be safe for her to drink. The bathroom in the bedroom they used took longer, mainly because the other warriors kept calling him with problems to fix.

  He heard her open the front door and walk to the kitchen with quick footsteps. He tightened the last primitive bolt on the bathroom pipe. He’d need some equipment from headquarters to install a system to heat the water. The rat had been a nuisance the whole time he worked. Azagor laid out his tools and the little pest had kept taking them in his mouth. Azagor figured out, eventually,
that the creature was trying to help by handing him the tools.

  He went to the kitchen to see her frowning at the taps he’d cleaned.

  He crossed his arms over his chest, prepared to accept her praise. “Open the tap.”

  She turned the tap and stared down at the water, held her hand under it, and that slow smile curved her lips. “You did it.”

  “If Joseph was not a lazy useless human, he could have fixed this a long time ago. You are lucky to have a warrior who can fix anything.”

  “He didn’t have to worry because he never drew the water from the well. We women did that, and we had to warm the water for his baths.”

  “You will have warm water to bathe in, in our dwelling.”

  Lines formed on her forehead. “What dwelling? I never agreed to live with you.”

  “You are my breeder. You will live in the dwelling I built for you.”

  “I never agreed to be your breeder.”

  “I killed an Eduki for you, wiped out a raider camp for you, why would you need to consent?” Humans had strange ideas. Natalie had told him several times he’d have to get his breeder to agree to come to him. He’d thought when he met her and presented her with the Eduki pelt, she’d come with him without protest.

  “You really have no idea. I might not know a lot of what goes on in the world, but I know you can’t just claim me.” Her brow wrinkled. “And what’s an Eduki?”

  “It is a large animal, much like the bears that now roam this area again because of Zyrgin technology. A warrior kills an Eduki and presents its pelt to his breeder.”

  The others had warned him not to tell her of the feast after he killed the Eduki. Humans didn’t eat their meat raw.

  “And if she refuses the pelt?”

  “She does not refuse a pelt,” he said firmly.

  “Where is the honor in forcing a woman to be your--your breeder?”

  “I am not forcing you. You captured me,” he hastily continued. “I will not force the first knowing on you. After I find Noah, we will talk about this.”

  By that time, she’d be madly in love with him.

  Susannah opened her mouth and then closed it. “When are you going to find him?” she asked.

  The tragic pain in her eyes made him want to kill the humans who took her cousin from her.

  Azagor thought about the scans he’d been running, finding locations of all the farms run by her people. Normally, he would speak into his communicator without enlarging it, but now he took it out and held it in his hand. “This is like your TC. I use it to speak to my people. I have asked them to look for the farms of your people.” He’d done it the moment she requested his help.

  Her smile was slow to come, beautiful. She clasped her hands together in front of her. “Thank you.”

  “While we wait for word about the farms, I want to fix the floor of the bedroom.” He couldn’t be idle anymore and, after their earlier discussion, he didn’t want to order her to kiss him with tongue. Yet.

  She dogged his footsteps as he took some wood from the old shed and from the floor of the second bedroom. The second bedroom had the same wooden blocks as the room they used, and he took the ones not rotting out and replaced the worst of the rotten blocks in their bedroom. After he’d sanded it down and she’d washed off the dust it, gleamed. It was strangely pleasurable working with her silent beside him. Killer kept trying to help and had his nose in everything, while Susannah frequently tried to carry things to Azagor that were too heavy for her to handle. He spent more time preventing her and the rat from hurting themselves than fixing the house.

  “I’m beginning to think you can fix anything,” she said softly.

  Her eyes glowed with admiration for him. He’d taken off his shirt, and he’d noticed her giving his chest shy glances when she thought his attention elsewhere.

  He sat straighter, pushed out his chest. His breeder was beginning to see the value of having a warrior like him. She was falling madly in love with him.

  Chapter 9

  Azagor sat at the kitchen table he’d fixed and fiddled with the TC. It was so old, it couldn’t even be used for spare parts. He’d sent a message to Larz to bring him some tools, and he’d kept the outer part of it looking like a primitive TC but replaced most of it with newer TCs Larz brought him. Larz had come in camouflaged and given him the components. He’d also updated him on the launch date for the project in space. They never spoke about it on their comms. They all knew they would only have one chance for a successful launch.

  Killer stuck his nose into his equipment and came out with a tool. With a sigh, Azagor took it from him. The Zyrgin should award him with his own command for putting up with a rat that wanted to help him work.

  ***

  Susannah sat down at the now-sturdy table and equally sturdy chair. It was embarrassing. With very little equipment, Azagor had managed to fix more around the house than they had done in ten years. “While you’re working on that, I’m going to take a bath. Will you keep Killer with you?” Her fearless dog would think nothing of jumping into the bath. She lived in fear of him doing things like that and breaking his fragile little bones.

  He looked up with blazing red eyes but simply nodded. She wanted to make him promise not to come into the bathroom while she was taking her bath but didn’t want to give him any ideas. Though judging by that look, he already had plenty of ideas. She got up and almost ran to the bathroom. She’d never taken a real bath with water that came from the tap. Azagor had said she should work carefully with the water since their...something or other...wasn’t working at full capacity yet. He’d made the tub like new with a strange tool he used to spray silver paint on.

  She opened the taps and sat on her haunches, staring at the thin stream of water coming out of it. “Magic,” she whispered. Maybe Azagor was a magician sent to make her life better. She bit her lip. Could he find Noah with that magic?

  She closed the taps, got into the bath, and almost moaned in pleasure when she lay back in the tub. “I’m a fancy lady now.” Like the woman on the TC, Susannah scooped up the water, threw it over her head, and laughed with sheer enjoyment.

  It took every ounce of willpower she had to get out of the bath. It had seemed to bother Azagor that there was no hot water, but she’d never even washed up with hot water. That was only for brothers. Simply being able to relax in a bath without fear of reprisal was wonderful. She dried herself with the thin cloth she’d made from her old clothes. She’d have to find a way to make money to buy more clothes. Panic clutched at her. She’d never been alone before. What was to become of her?

  She wrapped the cloth around her and went to the corner where she’d put her few personal possessions. She reached for her second best dress and then hesitated. Caine had brought her jeans and a sweater once. Modern clothes that would’ve made Josephatus--no plain Joseph, she corrected--it would’ve made Joseph punish her.

  Caine said it was for when he came to ask for her hand. She’d been hiding it until now, but for the first time, she was tempted to put on the scandalous clothes. In the end, she took out her old dress and dropped the cloth she’d wrapped around her.

  Killer growled. She jerked around to find Azagor right in front of her, his red eyes looked like a fire gone out of control. She clutched the dress in front of her to hide her naked body. Her ugly scars. “Get out.” She couldn’t bear for him to see all the scars marring her body.

  “You are the most beautiful breeder in the universe.”

  Susannah moved away from him, still clutching the dress to her. “Please go.”

  He stood unmoving, gazing at her. “You will be my breeder, and I will be a superior warrior for you.” He lifted her chin and leaned down. He looked truly scary. “I will find your cousin, and I will find the people who have punished you, and they will pay.”

  “They are not important.”

  “Do not try and protect them. I will punish them for the marks they placed on your body, the scars you are trying t
o hide from me.” He stopped in front of her. “I will never forget such a slight. His death will be slow and painful.”

  She believed him, and she was a terrible person, because she didn’t care. Joseph took her son from her. He could burn in hell for all she cared.

  “Tell me everything. Start from the first time you saw me.” He went to the bedroom and started pacing again, and she quickly pulled on the dress. She couldn’t be as easy with being naked as he seemed to be.

  She tied on her head cloth and joined him. “He and his wife liked to punish me.” She’d only understood Cousin Ruth’s vicious punishments after she’d met Caine. If Caine had looked at another woman the way Brother Joseph sometimes looked at Susannah, she might have wanted to punish her, too. “The first time I saw you, I thought you were a demon.” She turned away from him. “I told them about seeing you, and they thought I was possessed of an evil spirit that made me lie. They tried to beat it out of me.”

  He turned her to face him. “There is more, tell me.”

  She swallowed back the tears. They’d never make her cry again. “They forced me to stand naked while each of them took a turn to whip me while the others prayed for my lost soul.” Bitterness settled on her spirit. “Not one of them refused to take the whip.”

  “All of them will pay.” Pure menace.

  Silence while he paced up and down. Killer ran into the bedroom and fell in with Azagor who stopped and stared down at Killer before he resumed pacing.

  “This was done to you because of me?” His voice was a low grumble, like the first premonitions of heavy rain. Like lightning hitting on the mountain. Barely a rumble and yet deafeningly loud at the same time. Like the quiet before the terrible storms that sometimes came over the mountain.

  “Yes.”

  “If I find your Noah, will you forgive me?”

  “I know you said your machines will find him, but I have his baby blanket, from when he was born. You could smell that and find Noah.”