Alien Beast's Fated Mate: Science Fiction Adventure Romance (Valti Fated Mates Book 1), page 1
ALIEN BEAST’S FATED MATE
VALTI MATES BOOK 1
ELIN WYN
CONTENTS
Lita
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
Drax
Lita
SNEAK PEEK OF ALIEN HUNTER’S FATED MATE
Also by Elin Wyn
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About the Author
LITA
My brain began to clear.
How much time passed, I didn’t know.
Enough to send for soldiers to drag me up South Spoke to the center of Terr. And the pointed arch of the temple door.
I couldn’t think clearly, every thing coming at me in quick bursts as I tried to pull myself together.
But failed.
Clop of siu hooves, and their rank animal smell. Above me, roofs and eaves of Terr crowded the stormy night. I was on a cart, propped on a hay bale.
My head ached, my jaw and teeth and nose throbbed. Blood clotted in my throat.
“She’s coming around,” I heard a deep voice say. The three spires of the temple rose above us.
“The old man really gave it to her,” another said as he dismounted. Then the round knocker in the mouth of a serpent was slammed three times against the bound door.
“Too bad,” the first said. “I’ll bet she’s a beauty under all the blood and bruises.”
Blinding, a flash of lightning preceded a steady downpour. I blinked away the afterimage and sat up.
The door stood ten feet tall but opened without a sound.
The soldiers knelt, gazing at the ground. One held out a sheet of auto-scribe. From the shadows, a pale hand beckoned.
“Let’s get this over with and get the hell out of here.” The soldiers returned, lifting me from the cart. When they saw I could stand, they walked me to the pointed black maw of a door.
“You’re afraid,” a soft voice spoke.
I nodded, unable to answer.
“Come.”
No way was I going—the soldiers gave me a rude shove. I ended on my knees on a hard stone floor. Light narrowed and vanished with the thud of a door closing. Thin hands gripped my shoulders.
“I’m touching you.”
Looking up, torches distant, I saw amber eyes set in a hooded pallor.
“Your skin is like gold.”
Too afraid, my mouth clamped shut.
“You are afraid,” the pale woman said.
Finally, I managed to croak, “Yes. I’m afraid.”
“Your response is appropriate.”
Then hands reached out from the dark, pulling me in all directions. My beautiful dress was ripped from my body, tossed out of my view. I was lifted up, stripped completely naked, carried into the dark.
I didn’t have the voice to scream.
In an unlit chamber, I was dropped into a tub. Rough cloths scrubbed me, reaching everywhere, my private places—I could not slip free of their grip. Just as suddenly, I was pulled from the water. Manacles slipped over my wrists, my ankles. When I tugged, I found my bindings were soft but firm.
Gripped by these bonds, I was hauled into yet another room. This one had a rectangular hole in the floor. A cover, like that of a sarcophagus, lay a few feet away. I could not see my captors as they forced me into the watery grave.
“What are you doing to me?”
The water was warm, so warm I hardly felt it. I floated, my bonds secured, but not tightly. Only my face remained above the surface. When I tried to thrash, I was held—but loosely.
The pale face floated above me again.
“What is this?” I asked. “Please don’t hurt me.”
She crouched down. “We only need to learn if you can learn.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“The temple needs oracles to maintain the city. We will train you. If you are able.” She touched my face. Her eyes widened. “You are present. I’m never sure.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on.” I sobbed, tears rolling into the warm bath.
“You will be deprived of sensory input. Once you reach a calm state, the priests will attempt to impart knowledge. If you cannot accept, there are other uses for you.”
“Uses?” I wailed.
“Should you prove an unworthy vessel, there are other ways your form can be applied.”
I didn’t understand—except that one word.
Applied.
So few girls brought to the temple by lot ever reappeared. Something had been done with them. Is that what she meant? Were they applied in some frightening way?
With a sound of stone on stone, I heard the sarcophagus cover move toward the hole in the floor. It was going to entomb me.
“No, no, no, no—”
“Fear is your friend,” the pale woman stood.
I saw the edge of the cover looming. It slid relentlessly in place.
Lightning flashed in the room. I would’ve thought we were deep in the bowels of the temple. The walls shook with the report of thunder.
The woman threw back her hood, clutching her temples. Sparks flew from black, featureless walls. She let out a moan.
But I caught a glimpse of her. Thin, with auburn hair shaved short. When she blinked, I noticed the green of her eyes.
Freckles?
She was hardly older than me. How could someone who looked so normal torture me within the walls of the temple?
“Error,” she said.
“Don’t do this to me,” I pleaded.
More sparks erupted out of sight. She winced. “Error,” she said.
The lid slid home. I was trapped in the warm black. For a time, I merely floated. Nothing bad happened. Nothing good, either.
Lights played in my vision. Visions took shape. Shapes took on solid form.
My father bouncing me on his knee on our terrace, telling me silly stories. Slicing firin root and patat with Mother for larendove pie. My friends on Four Ring playing a game of skip. My true love, crawling through narrow, claustrophobic darkness. Terr, blazing, the city engulfed, an explosion of soil and rock. Smoke and dust reformed into concentric circles. Lecherous and lame, my betrothed assaulted me within view of the temple. A wall built from steel plates stood inside a mote. Giants wandered a glistening forest.
Stars at night.
Whispers in my ear.
Nothing.
And then…
I sensed his thoughts in my state of nothing.
Danger, he thought, fearful himself.
He? He who?
He sensed I was afraid, in mortal peril. With him, I crawled through the rusted, blood-scented guts of an alien stronghold.
Passages barely large enough to belly-crawl. Slick, cold, greasy fluids dripped on our skin. Sometimes, we slithered through grotesque, fetid muck.
He would not give up. My rescuer.
For many moons, he dreamed of me, as I now dreamed of him.
But then, a sudden shift: terror and pain, forced his hand. I was no dream.
He was compelled to find me, even across miles of wilderness, even in this maze of metal, blinking lights, miles of tubes and wires.
What was this place?
To my shock, he sniffed the air, taking in the scents. My scent. It drove him on.
What was my rescuer? Man or beast?
Should I feel a jubilant relief, or dread at his unstoppable approach?
Needing to know more of him, I reached out with my mind.
At first touch, his reflexive growl was bestial. Savage.
Yet we still connected.
Rage and fear vanished in a flood of recognition, of yearning joy.
“My fate,” he whispered. “The bond of my soul. You will be mine.”
Never had I experienced such forceful emotion. It was too much to bear. I broke away…
LITA
“Give her a robe.”
I felt rough hay beneath a thin cover, an itchy blanket.
My senses returned.
When I sat up in a dim chamber, something struck me in the face.
Laughter ensued.
“First time is the worst time in the Tomb.”
I was in a dorm, a cell. Two women sat on another cot. They tossed a garment at me.
“Get dressed. We’ve got work to do.” She had features like mine, straight black hair, dark eyes.
“You do know what we’re working on?” the other asked.
“Removing corrosion from the contact points in Monitor One.” My words surprised me. Where did they come from?
“Good. You can learn to learn. In that case, my name is Mila.”
I pulled the rough white robe over my head and stood.
“Denna.” The other girl had a foam of blonde curls and deep blue eyes. “Guess it’s the three of us, then.”
Five girls were sacrificed every year. “But where are the others?”
“Not suitable for temple slaves, we guess,” Mila said. “They’ve been…”
She shrugged.
Applied. The word shuddered into my thoughts.
“You know what we’re doing. Do you know where we’re going?” Denna asked.
How could I possibly— “Monitor One is on sublevel three west.”
“Let’s go,” Mila shrugged.
I took a few staggering steps. Stopped.
“You’ll get used to it.” Denna put a hand on my shoulder. “The priests put thoughts in our heads. Instructions. Skills.”
The door to the cell opened at my push. I turned to the other two.
“They don’t lock us in?”
Mila turned my shoulders physically and guided me into the corridor. “The temple is your life now.”
“Don’t bother trying to escape,” Denna said.
“They’ll kill me?” I whispered.
“Worse. They’ll keep you alive. Maybe forever,” Mila said. “You’ll see.”
A woman turned into the corridor. I recognized her. She had taken me into the temple.
“Oracle,” Mila and Denna bowed in greeting.
“Error,” she said. I heard that from her before. She handed each of us a metal device.
“Huh,” Denna said. “Good morning to you, too.”
Mila elbowed her.
We turned and moved down a staircase.
“Niam is strange,” Mila said. “Her lot was drawn when she was just a baby. She’s grown up in the temple.”
“Stranger than even other oracles,” Denna said.
After another set of stairs and a maze I could somehow navigate, we moved into a bright room. What looked like the auto-scribes my father worked with were wall-sized. I’d never seen screens so huge. Designs and colors swirled across them.
“One day, we might understand the data,” Mila said. “I’m not looking forward to that day.”
But right now, we were just doing low-level maintenance. Not knowing how, I disconnected a pulsing tube from the wall. Inside were squirming wires that ended in gold points. With the device that the oracle handed me, I trapped a moving wire and removed dark gunk from the shiny end.
I looked up to see the other two at the same task.
The three of us were frighteningly efficient.
Over the next few days, I had no dreams of the man who was driven to rescue me. I did learn something about my fellow temple girls.
Denna was a warrior brat from Five Ring. Mila, a leather worker from the lowest ring in the city of Terr, Eight Ring.
“What did you do before your number came up?” Denna asked me.
“Oh, I was a nanny to some wealthy healers on Three Ring. I did some gardening on our terrace—mostly herbs. I took care of the family shopping and cooking,” I said.
“That’s not a job,” Denna said. “That’s just life.”
“Is nannying a job?” Mila asked. “Somebody owes me some coin. Sounds like you’re high class.”
My job.
I felt my eyes welling, but didn’t want the others to see.
“I found out what my real job was right before I was traded to the temple,” I said.
“Real job?”
“All my skills were meant to make me a prize for a wealthy man of status, that I could bear his babies and keep his home. I made nice dresses, learned to pin up my hair and blush my lips. So my father could collect a dowry and climb from Four Ring to Three.”
Had it only been days ago that my life went topsy-turvy?
“But you drew a lot instead?” Mila asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
Denna nodded sagely. “She’s like Branna was. Her parents took money from a wealthy family so their own daughter wasn’t sent here.”
Close enough, I thought.
The door to the cell opened. Niam the oracle beckoned to me.
“The Tomb. You need to acquire a new skill.”
I didn’t want to go. Being submerged in the liquid, hanging weightless in the dark for who knew how long, the idea made my skin crawl.
“Better go,” Mila said.
When I faced her, she pulled up her sleeves. I saw rings of scars. Burn marks. Branding? She gave me a nod.
I went.
This time, the Tomb chamber was not empty. Tall men stood, faces invisible within deep hoods. They stared at me, not speaking.
I looked at the oracle. She stared into space.
“Remove her robes,” one of the hooded men said.
“Yes, Father Zarak.”
“I don’t need—”
The priest made a wide gesture. Before my eyes, a line of heat and light cracked, hot enough to hurt.
Okay. Do what they said. I got it.
Niam removed my robe. For a while, I stood naked in front of the priests. They stared, emotionless in their hoods.
“The wisdom we impart will hurt you,” the other priest said. “Should you survive, you will be initiated.”
Survive?
“Into the Tomb,” the priest said.
“Why will it hurt me?” I asked.
Like Father Zarak, the other priest made the sweeping gesture. A flash, and an agonizing welt appeared on my skin. Zarak took a step forward, utilizing his own horrible whip.
Under the assault of the fire whips, I fell to my knees, shrieking, covering my head. The priests didn’t stop.
“Father Aronn. Father Zarak. The Tomb,” Niam said, stepping between me and the priests.
I saw the whip element burn through her robe, leaving a mark beneath. The Oracle didn’t react.
Her presence stopped the assault.
“Yes,” Aronn breathed heavily, his words sounding wet.
“Into the Tomb,” the other priest moaned.
Niam took an instrument from her sundered robe. A green light flashed and the painful welts disappeared from my skin.
She had it on her as if she knew the priests were going to whip me.
My jaw clenched.
The priests took manacles from the walls, but had Niam bind me. I moved to the Tomb and descended the stairs into the warm liquid. They remained staring from under their hoods as my body was suspended and the lid slid shut…
Late in the night, I rose from my cot, not remembering how I got there. Dreams haunted me, a face, a voice I couldn’t remember.
Pulling on my robe, I picked up my sandals, so as to move quietly.
“Where are you going, Lita?” Mila whispered.
So much for that.
I faced her. “I don’t know. Not here.”
Lower, I thought, below the temple. I needed to get there. But why?
Whatever happened, the priests were right. I hurt. All over my body, even inside my brain.
She slipped out of bed and took my hands. “Don’t. I know you think this is bad, but there are worse things. Please, just go back to sleep.”
“I’ll be fine.” I pulled away and shoved through the cell door.
“Lita!” Mila hissed.
She didn’t follow.
I wandered. While I didn’t know the temple, the Tomb gave me knowledge, even though I didn’t realize it. Moving down the curving stone stairs, I headed deeper into the temple.
Walls went from undressed stone to flat panels. Screens and lights decorated a few of them. As I descended and meandered the lowest levels, a sight made me stop short.
One of the panels had an odd decoration. A series of lines in different colors glowed. When I squinted, I saw the lines formed an intricate design. No, not lines. The delicate design looked organic, meaty—
Applied.
Above, a screen came alive, startling me.
I am Branna. How may I serve?
Eyes looked at me from the screen. I backed away, away from the pulsing design, the eyes, the voice in my head. Running, running.
