Bound: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Gladiators of the Gryn Book 3), page 1
BOUND
A SCI-FI ALIEN ROMANCE
HATTIE JACKS
Copyright © 2025 by Hattie Jacks
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Editing: Polaris Editing
Cover: Ozark Witch Designs
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
JOIN ME!
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Chrissie
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Rych
Chrissie
Chrissie
Epilogue
Chrissie
JOIN ME!
CHAINED
Cleo
Maxym
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CHRISSIE
“You did well tonight.” Fenek leans back in his chair. It creaks under his weight. “My friends were impressed.”
I’m trying not to sway on my feet. Every joint in my body is screaming at me, my head is pounding, and my throat is scratchy from overuse.
“That’s good,” I respond.
“They want me to share you with some other friends of theirs.” He smiles, showing crooked, sharp teeth. “Friends who will be very useful for me.”
“I…” I want to say I can’t, I need rest. The alien virus I caught shortly after I was abducted has ravaged my body and mind.
Fenek’s smile fades which is not good.
“I should be able to sing again tomorrow night, if I can rest,” I say quickly.
The smile comes back, and my huge business-alien boss settles himself into his creaking chair behind his huge desk again. He steeples his fingers, each one tipped with a black claw, and his usually mauve scaled skin flushes blue with his achievement.
Yes, he got a tiny, sick human to agree with him. Great job.
Shame it’s my job. Keeping him happy, being his pet, his party piece, his way of getting contracts and credits where otherwise no one would entertain him.
“Go and rest your voice.” He flicks one hand at me as a dismissal. “And make sure your wardrobe for tomorrow night is appropriate for council members.”
I manage to keep my limp to a minimum as I exit his study into the darkness of the rest of Fenek’s vast dwelling, but once the door shuts behind me, I heave out a painful breath and lean hard on the stick he deigns to let me have.
Sickness is weakness, Chrissie. No one likes to see a sick creature.
Fenek dislikes the fact I haven’t recovered from the mystery virus as quickly as he hoped after he heard me singing in a dingy bar on the outskirts of Tatatunga, the only place I could find which would give me a chance and offered me a job.
He always has an eye for anything he thinks can make him money, and that day, he thought I might be worth a few credits.
And I knew I had no other choice. If I didn’t get out of the gutter, I’d have died there.
I creep through the silent house. I can’t exactly do much else. Every step is agony, and all I want is my bed, even if I know the pain will still be there in the morning…and the afternoon…and the evening. It’s never-ending, exhausting, and there appears to be nothing I can do about it.
All I can do is hope eventually my immune system will kick the virus to the wall and I’ll be free of it. Until then, I’m at the whim of an alien employer who doesn’t care.
Of course, his study is the farthest from my small quarters. I stop about halfway to catch my breath and consider whether I want to go to the kitchens, one floor below, to get something cool for my throat, or drink the lukewarm water I can get from the bathroom.
I’m stood next to the floor to ceiling windows which mostly make up the walls in Fenek’s dwelling. I lean my head against the cool, clear surface. Outside, his large yard is lit up almost brighter than day. It means I can’t see the twin moons of Trefa or the unfamiliar stars which punctuate the sky. It means I can try not to think of home and my dad.
My poor dad who will be worried sick because I didn’t come in to work one morning. Who will never know I was taken by aliens on a lonely road over Dartmoor on my way to pick up a broken down vehicle. My dad who will never give up trying to find me. His only child.
A tear slips down my cheek, and I bite my bottom lip to stop myself crumbling further when the outside lights wink out, and the entire place is in darkness.
I freeze. Fenek never turns out the lights at night. Maybe he didn’t pay his electricity bill? I cough out a harsh laugh because I wouldn’t put it past him given how tight he is, until I see the shadowy figure running down the side of the dwelling.
This is not a mistake. There’s someone out there. Someone swift, dressed in black, and whoever it is can’t be up to any good. No one who needs the dark ever is.
My heart pounds in my chest. I feel dizzy and sick. I’m taken right back to the night I was taken from Earth. I wanted to fight, but I couldn’t.
Tonight I couldn’t fight if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. If this dark figure has come for me, then it looks like I’m taken once more. I’d struggle to fight my way out of a paper bag.
The silence of the dwelling crowds in on me. My breathing seems hopelessly loud. My feet are stuck to the floor because running is impossible.
With the same suddenness as when the lights went out, every single light in the house and outside comes on as an alarm rends the air, high-pitched and loud. I drop my stick to cover my ears, and I’m unable to go anywhere.
It seems like seconds but the air outside is filled with drones. Laser bolts flash randomly, hitting the ground outside with little puffs of dust.
There’s no sign of the black clad figure.
Fenek’s bulk rounds the corner. His face is a deep teal as he puffs and blows, feet stomping as he moves towards me.
“Assassin,” he rasps, voice hoarse with the unexpected exercise. “Assassin!”
RYCH
“I told you I don’t serve gladiators.” The bar keeper glares at me. “You’re trouble when you’re sober and worse when you’re drunk.”
“I’m not a gladiator. Not anymore.” I glare at him. “You’ll take my credits if you’ll take theirs.” I jerk my thumb at the three thick-set Habosu who are watching this exchange over their tankards of mead-beer.
My mouth practically waters at the thought.
And the suggestion I might have the credits to pay sticks in my throat.
“They don’t smash up my bar. Get out, go find somewhere else, Gryn,” the owner spits at me.
I bristle, all my wing feathers pricking up before dipping down again. I’ve been out of the dome for less than a nova-week, and the lack of respect is infuriating. Especially when the dregs of the universe like the Habosu get more of it than I do.
It doesn’t help I can’t access any of the credits I made while I was a gladiator. The vrexing dome has kept every single vrexing one of them. I ball my hands up, claws slicing into my flesh.
A chair scrapes as one of the Habosu gets to his feet. I feel like the level of stupid increased in this small bar.
“He said he wants you to leave, Gryn,” he growls.
“Stay out of this,” I snarl back. “If you know what’s good for you.”
The Habosu looks at his two friends, and they crack crooked grins.
“I always wanted to try my hand at a gladiator in the dome but could never afford the fee. Looks like I get to have a go at the low rent version,” he says, pulling out a pulsar pistol.
Vrex. It looks like the barkeeper is going to be proved correct and I won’t get the drink I’m after.
“I don’t want trouble.” I put up my hands, slicking my wings hard against my body.
“You didn’t leave when you were asked, Gryn. You are trouble,” the Habosu growls.
But he’s showing off to his friends, and his reactions, already far too slow for me, are made even slower as I launch myself at him when he fires first, the shot going over my head and scorching the shoulder of my wing.
I pull the pulsar from his hand, slamming my uninjured wing into one of his compatriots, a foot into the windpipe of the other, and tip my would be challenger over until his head hits the ground with a dull thud.
It won’t have done any damage.
“Absolutely correct,” I snarl at him. “Gladiator or no, I am your worst nightmare.” I crush the pulsar by digging my claws into the casing, my specialty in the dome, and his eyes widen.
“Gak you, Gryn!” I hear the bar owner over the sound of blood rushing in my ears. “You’ve really done it this time.”
I lift my head. My antagonist is dazed but alive. I’ve only broken a few sticks of furniture.
“I’ll pay for the damage.”
“You’ll pay for what you’ve done,” one of the other Habosu growls.
I drop my wing to look over my shoulder at him, only to see the third Habosu impaled on a spike of wooden chair. For a moment, I think he’s dead, until he groans and rolls to one side.
“Vrex.” I shake my head and get to my feet.
Tatatunga might be lawless, but these Habosu are going to do what they can to get me imprisoned for such an injury, even if they started it and I was acting in self-defense.
And as much as my current situation as a swordless gladiator is not to my liking, I don’t want to end up back at the amphitheater as fodder for the pre-games. A violent act like this won’t see me back in the dome. It’ll see me dead.
“You saw what happened. He came for me,” I say to the barkeeper.
He shakes his head slowly, his eyes fixed on the remaining, undamaged Habosu.
So this is how it goes. Killing in the dome is lauded. Outside of the dome it becomes a way of control, for the dead and for the living. I always knew it, only I had thought I’d end my days as a gladiator. The dome doesn’t have a habit of giving up its fighters.
Not for the first time, I curse Blayn under my breath. He might have wanted freedom, but I didn’t know what I wanted.
“You will pay,” the Habosu who tried to shoot me snarls. “You’ll face the same justice you meted out in the dome, Gryn.”
“I think you’ll find none of you will be reporting anything,” a slightly nasal voice says from the doorway.
I look over to see a tall, although not as tall as me, male stood in the doorway. His scales are predominantly purple, but there are flashes of other colors as he surveys the room. He looks like an Oykig, only more colorful and without the tail, and there’s something about him which puts my feathers on end. A name springs into my head. Drahon. Only I’m not sure what it means.
“And what are you going to do about it?” my would be assailant growls. “Our friend is badly hurt because of him.”
“I’m sure ten thousand credits will be enough to aid in his pain and your own,” the creature says. “And another ten thousand for your silence.”
“Each?” the Habosu with the broken nose asks.
The purple male shrugs. “Each,” he says without batting an eyelid…if he has eyelids. It’s hard to tell.
He beckons to me. I feel my lips lifting in a snarl, but that only seems to make him smile. “I have a proposal for you, gladiator.” He flicks the credit chips on the bar, causing a scramble of the occupants, who decided the credits are worth ignoring their unconscious friend.
“I didn’t ask you to intervene, and I don’t have the credits to pay you back.” I look at the scrum behind me. “This was your choice.”
“I don’t want the money back,” he says, going to put an arm around me, but I pull away. He doesn’t seem bothered by my refusal. “I want to offer you a job.”
CHRISSIE
I swear as the glass tumbles into the stone basin in my quarters and smashes to pieces. It means I have to take another one from the kitchen.
The last thing I want is to go downstairs. I am exhausted, and I don’t want to encounter my boss. Fenek’s absolutely adamant the assassin came for him with the intention of kidnapping me. Something I find highly improbable…the kidnapping, not the assassination.
I try to take the glass out of the basin carefully but hiss as my hand is nicked by a sharp shard. My blood oozes out, deep scarlet, making my head spin as I reach for a towel and wrap up the wound. I’m so sick of being sick. I force myself to stay upright and clear up the remainder of the glass, which I deposit in the refuse incinerator.
As I do, I catch sight of myself. My skin is pale in the artificial light, and my hair looks like straw. But humans are virtually unknown in this quarter of the galaxy, and even though I think I look terrible, no one else does. The one saving grace.
I’m a sick thirty-year-old human. I might have an ability to entertain, but I’m not exactly a prize, even if Fenek touts me around like one. My alien boss excels at marketing himself, and he’s done very well at it.
I decide to put my big girl knickers on and do what I need to do. Taking my stick, I make my way slowly down the stairs, listening for Fenek’s whiny voice. All I hear is the hum of the internal generators and the sounds of the cleaning bots going about their business. Outside it’s bright and sunny. I consider whether I should go out, get some sun on my face, but then I remember how my skin reacted last time. Big purple blotches.
This space virus is something else. And sunlight is out of the question. Best just stay alone in the dark.
I descend another staircase which takes me into the basement, to the kitchens. Fenek rarely uses them, preferring to get food delivered or eat out. But as he doesn’t want to take me everywhere, he has it stocked with basic re-hydrated rations and a kitchen-bot who can prepare fresh meals if I want them.
So, when I enter, I don’t expect to see another living being, let alone a massive male, with slate dark wings, feathers pooling on the floor behind him as he sits at the kitchen bench, his back to me. He’s eating his way steadily through an absolute mountain of meat.
I freeze.
He doesn’t stop eating or even look around. It’s like I don’t exist. I contemplate my options. I could back out of here, pretend I didn’t see this enormous creature and go back to my quarters.
Or I could get my glass of water because I actually live here, and I shouldn’t be intimidated in my own living space, by whatever this…hulk of a male is. An absolutely vast creature who has a very muscular back and, from my current position, a bum to die for.
One thing is for sure—he works out. A lot.
I toss my hair back and stride, well, hobble but with bigger movements…into the kitchen, making my way past the male to the prep area on the other side of him.
“Hi,” I say breezily. “New here?”
Worst opening line ever. I cringe inwardly.
He grunts.
Maybe not such a bad opening line if he’s going to be rude. I fill my glass with water from the cooling fountain and lean against the counter.
“I’m Chrissie,” I say as he continues to shovel food into his mouth. He doesn’t speak. “And you are…?” I prompt.
The male lifts his head, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He has liquid dark eyes, and no white shows within them, only a reflection of me. His cheekbones could have been carved by a Greek sculptor, his face severely handsome. A small scar runs through one eyebrow, giving him a rakish look under his dark floppy hair. Around his neck are a number of heavy precious metal necklaces, tangled together.
And that’s all he wears on his upper half. Some jewelry. Otherwise he is bare chested and what a chest! The same sculptor has had a field day on his abs. I’m getting hot simply looking at him, and it doesn’t help his eyes are raking over me from my toes to the top of my head.
