Brax Read online

  Violet had second thoughts, but she was brave enough to only allow them to show for a moment before she followed Ariel and Ivy out the open hatch that slid up and out of their way like they were on a Star Trek episode. When Ariel saw the control panel on the outside of the door and no guards, she allowed the door to shut closed behind them.

  "We should have shown them how to open it, in case we don't make it back,” Ivy said.

  Since Ariel was confident no one else in that room could send an energy surge through the correct circuits to talk to the alien tech she did not bother to respond. It was not a conversation she was willing to have, ever.

  There was a reason she never used her gifts where others could see her do it.

  Finding no one lurking around the first corner was almost anti-climactic.

  "Shouldn't they be watching their captives since they went to so much trouble to take us?" she asked Ivy in what she considered a whisper, and which Ivy gave her a stern look and a finger to the mouth in the universal sign to shut up. Clearly not impressed with her stealth abilities.

  Then they turned a corner and ran almost bodily into a Tellox warrior.

  Well, so much for their big escape.

  The big warrior narrowed his eyes at them and growled.

  If he was going for ‘inspire fear in the Earthlings,’ he succeeded admirably.

  At nearly seven feet tall, he towered over them, his skin was so gold it shimmered metallic in the light. Glowing eyes, gold and slit like a cat, glared down at them. He wore a strange barbarian get up that combined high-tech leather looking armor and space gadgets strapped over his massive muscled chest. He was the first Tellox she had seen in person and while they all seemed to share the golden color, strange predatory eyes, and the height and brawn, in person he was daunting, to say the least.

  He did not need the long lethal looking sword strapped to his back to make an impression. And really the growl from that brutal almost feline face showing sharp white teeth with pronounced canines was overkill.

  He spoke with the growl in his voice and just like the last time she had heard one of them talking in perfect if accented English on the television broadcast of their first arrival, it was disconcerting. "Who freed you from the hold?"

  Ariel cleared her throat and lifted her hand to as high above her head as she could. "He was about this tall with gold skin and hair and wore an outfit that looked a lot like the one you're wearing." She motioned up and down at the warrior’s leather looking gear. She knew it was probably not leather at all but since she had no idea what their armor was made of she would go with that. She pointed behind them. "He grabbed one of the others and took off that way. We came looking for someone who might help us. He looked a little off to me." She would have tried for emotional depth to her story, but she was aware of her limits, and acting was not one of them.

  The big warrior looked down at her his brows lowering as he studied her, obviously wondering if she was lying, but then someone had to have taken them out of the hold. The silly female earthlings could not possibly have done it themselves, right?

  "I will return you to the hold and find the missing female." He narrowed his eyes. "Did any other females leave the hold?"

  "Well," Ariel said with a shrug. "The door was open. Do you expect everyone to just sit around and wait for you all to decide what you wanted to do with us?"

  The warrior cursed and grabbed a square device off his leathers and rushed passed them with a growled order. "Come with me."

  Ariel looked at Ivy and then Violet and then toward the quickly disappearing warrior.

  "Does he really think we're going to just follow him because he said so?" Violet finally whispered what they were all thinking still in the frozen state they had all entered when they saw the warrior.

  "His mistake in understanding," Ariel said turning in the opposite direction. "Let's not waste it. I have a feeling we won't have long before he realizes we aren't coming to heel."

  "Split up," Ivy said while they ran toward a branching hallway. "See what you can find before we are carted back to the others. Any information we can get while we have the chance will be a help and he can't come after all of us."

  They ran, taking different corridors. Ariel memorized the path she took in case they could use the knowledge later. Unfortunately, this time when she ran into warriors, there was more than one, and she literally ran right into the biggest one’s arms before she could put on the brakes.

  Ariel would have sighed at their escape ineptitude but the hard chest she slammed into had equally hard arms that closed painfully around her cutting off her ability to move or breathe. She looked up into the first eyes she had seen on a Tellox that were not gold, but rather a grey so light they appeared clear.

  Unlike the last Tellox she had seen this one did not scare her. When he examined her with those cold eyes recognition flared there, recognition, malice and dark satisfaction. No, this one did not scare her. He terrified her. And that was before he spoke in that hard growly voice and said the last thing she expected to hear from the lips of an alien barbarian.

  "You look a great deal like your sister," he said, and Ariel could swear her heart just stopped.

  ***

  Ariel hoped Ivy and Violet were doing better than she was. The only bright side she could ascertain from her current circumstances was that she had not been dragged back to the hold with the others. Instead she had been dragged along with this Tellox while he made what felt like a tour of the ship. Which might prove helpful in the future but was doing nothing for her present circumstance. The lab was the first place he dragged her.

  Since he was ignoring her questions they were presently enjoying silence while another golden barbarian male, one that was almost half a foot shorter than her captor, ran a scan over her. He took her blood and studied the humming computer while it analyzed her scans and her blood. Two other large males stood guard at the open hatch, and while she could not understand them when they talked back and forth to each other she did not need a genius IQ to know they were discussing her.

  The metallic table she sat on was as smooth and cold as every other surface on the ship, and it was nothing to the icy shiver of dread she felt whenever she looked into the eyes of her captor. The others she was certain she could deal with, but this one with that cold malice mingling with possession that watched her every move. Him, she was not so sure about.

  There was a commotion at the door before even more warriors filed in dragging a staggering bloody mess between them.

  The bloody warrior saw her and reacted violently. Her captor barked something at him and he subsided, talking fast. Then the large obviously in charge male turned her way with that same brutal look in his eyes and switched to English. It was only then that she realized the bloody unrecognizable male was the first warrior they had run into in the halls.

  "He says you were leading an escape. You gave him some story, a lie, about another warrior and then did not comply when you were ordered to follow him back to the hold. He also says that someone accessed the hold from inside, and he believes it was one of the three women he found roaming the ship. More specifically, he suspects you."

  He snarled when the warrior would have spoken, and the male fell silent. Everyone was silent, all the males eyeing her and waiting for her to speak. Ariel briefly considered ignoring them in favor of continued silence but did not like the scenarios she could foresee that would follow. None of them ended well for her or the other women.

  So instead she shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "He is correct. I opened your tech with a nail file." No sense giving away the army knife if possible. "Then I got lucky and jabbed at your circuits until the doors opened and the lights went on. I was trying to get the lights. The door was unexpected." She raised a brow at the large cold eyed male. "I decided we should take a look around since the doors were open anyway."

  She did not pause after answering but repeated the questions she had been asking since he mentioned her
sister. "The sister you say I resemble. Where is she? Are there more holds of women on this ship, or other ships? Why have you brought us here and declared war on Earth?"

  The big bastard laughed, it was a chilling sound in an already cold situation. Ariel shivered and wished she had been wearing something thicker than the thin cotton of her much loved t-shirt when she was taken. "To war with humans would be a waste of time. You do not have the technology or intellect to put up a decent enough fight to make it worthwhile."

  She narrowed her eyes feeling a kernel of warm anger kindle. "We might surprise you."

  "You might. If you are anything like your sister you very likely will, but it will be for nothing in the end. I will have you."

  Ariel blinked at that statement and got a very queasy feeling in her stomach. "Define have me."

  The stretching of a parody of a smile across that brutal face was answer enough. Ariel grimaced, refusing to give him the satisfaction of her fear reaction. She fell back on what she always fell back on in uncomfortable circumstances, biting words. "Are you telling me that a civilization advanced enough to traverse the stars has nothing better to do that invade a planet and steal its women?" she asked. "For sex?" She gave him her most scornful once over. "Are you that bad in bed?"

  At least she wiped the smile off his face. But all right, yes. Not the best use of her intellect.

  He stepped forward and gripped her chin pulling her face up so painfully she could not bite back a little whimper of pain. "You should not push me little one. I like the sounds of your pain too much, and you are still too human to take what I would give you. The pain it will cause your sister to know that her family suffers at my hands makes the idea only that much sweeter."

  Ariel yanked her head out of his grip, feeling the burn of his touch still, even as she glared into those eyes. Eyes no longer simply cold but burning with a fierce light so brutal and cold it sent chills down her spine. Something she had always dismissed as dramatic drivel when she read it in books, until now. "Still too human?" she asked, swallowing back her emotional reaction and turning instead to what she did so well, fact gathering and extrapolation. "Why have you come to Earth and taken our people? Where is my sister? How are you expecting to change my too human status to fit with what you would give me?"

  "I came to find you and the other one of course. How could I resist once your sister rejected me for a mere Commander?" He did not speak again after dropping his bomb shell. Ariel's mind added his words to the rest of what she knew. That explained the woman that had been picked up and where the Tellox had been hunting them. He ignored his reference to the other one, that had to be Megan. She would not give him the satisfaction of an emotional response to that.

  If she thought of Megan at all, out there alone with only her dogs, being hunted by alien barbarians, she would lose all ability to reason.

  He studied her for a long time. She did not move her gaze from his, fidget or otherwise express any of the emotions she had reined in. She just waited, hoping that he would keep talking, but knowing he probably would not bother. Instead some of the crazy went out of his eyes, replaced with calculation.

  "No protestations and emotional pleas for me to let you go?" he asked almost conversationally. He raised his head and sniffed. "You do not smell of fear. Even your lovely sister reeked of fear when she was in my presence. She could keep it from her face, but scent does not lie, not to me. But you," he breathed deep through his nose as if he was reveling in her scent. "You smell of nothing but sweet female flesh and the cloth you wear. How intriguing."

  "What did you do to my sister?" she asked distinctly, anger at his reference to Sara's fear slicing through her. "And in case you are wondering, that scent you smell now is fury."

  He laughed. It was such a brutal cold laugh there was very little actual amusement in it. Just grim satisfaction, and if she was not mistaken, there was frustration now as well, as if he was reminded of something unpleasant.

  "Your sister was claimed by a Tellox traitor who would deny his king his due. I had meant to find them, wherever in the universe they have fled to, remove his head and take your sister as my mate, but then I found you."

  He looked her over from her purple converse clad feet to her wildly curling mass of hair. "You intrigue me. So small and easily broken. You do not have the same," he paused, his eyes going to her less than remarkable breasts. "Attributes." His hand followed to squeeze one breast in his giant paw of a hand.

  She smacked it away, feeling a surge of adrenaline and disgust knife through her.

  He laughed again, actual amusement this time. "But there is something different about you. A lack of fear and the sniveling I find irritating in the humans I have thus far met. Now I am thinking it was not such a loss that your sisters eluded me."

  The ghost of his touch made Ariel want to cross her arms in protection. The words sisters, plural, would have brought her to her knees in relief if she had been standing. Either was a bad idea. Showing this creature weakness would be a mistake.

  She glared instead, swallowing the emotions that would only cloud her thinking. "King?" she asked instead.

  He sniffed at her again and smiled. "Yes, King Rygan of the Tellox," he bowed his head in a parody of gentlemanly behavior. "And you, little human, what a Tellox you will make."

  As if those words weren't chilling enough, he smiled again. Dark satisfaction mingling with amused pleasure. "Once I have claimed you as my mate."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ariel tried to come up with a plan that had a chance in hell, which was where she figured she had ended up. Her mind was moving swiftly through vague possibility and impossible strategies, but by the time the insane King of the Tellox had dragged her forcefully to his room and tossed her inside she was no closer to coming up with anything remotely feasible.

  There was not much to the place. A large bed, a table with chairs, all of which looked like they were made of the same weird metal of the rest of the ship. The furs that covered the large bed and the chairs were the only things in the room that softened the metal space ship chic of the rest of the main room.

  The only thing Ariel found interesting about the room, besides that monstrosity of a bed, which she was ignoring, was a large round view of space that took up almost an entire wall. She would have wondered what kind of barrier they would trust to handle space debris and random meteorites, but she knew from the buzz of energy along her skin that it was holographic, or something very similar. Which was a good thing, since she was not looking at any part of her own solar system now, but constellations she had no familiarity with. His own solar system possibly? Yearning for the comforts of the familiar? She somehow doubted it.

  Surveying his kingdom? That she had no trouble imagining.

  She did not have time to look further because the King of the Tellox stepped into the room right behind her and she turned to face him doing her best to swallow her nerves.

  To her overwhelming relief the seven-foot alien smirked at her with cold eyes and did not come any further into the room. "Get naked, use the bath, I will return and expect you ready for me."

  Since he was leaving she did not bother to scoff and tell him where he could shove his expectations. But he must have read something on her face because he stopped his turn and came toward her into the room.

  Ariel held her ground while he prowled toward her with predatory intent. It was not the easiest stand she had ever taken. He was a big barbarian male, and while she was five foot nine and used to being eye level or close to it with most people, he still topped her by more than a foot of height. Every inch of which was solid muscle. Add in those glacial eyes, and the fact she had figured out he was as unstable as a bag of cats… Well, not taking that step back took pure will.

  He said something and then with a frustrated look switched to English. "I don't care to switch to English every time I want to give you instructions. It is past time we do something about that." He pressed the com device on his waist and s
poke in the same language as before, she was beginning to recognize the guttural sounds as Tellox, but it would take her more than a few hours to learn it. He was out of luck no matter what orders he made to the contrary.

  He moved faster than she expected, grabbing her arm, and causing yet another bruise with the strength of his grip while he dragged her over to the nearest chair. It was nearly as broad as he was in a supple leather like fabric that made her wonder what animal had donated its hides for it. From her new seat she had a better view of a wide opening at the back end of the room that she identified as the already mentioned bathing room. She could see what looked like a metallic basin from where she sat.

  There was a hail at the door before Rygan barked something, and the male who had done her scans and bloodwork came in the room carrying a box about the size of a lap top case. Rygan motioned toward her sitting form impatiently and the male, she assumed medic, only because of how they met, came straight to her and set up what also looked like some type of advanced lap top. She watched him handle the motion controls and then he turned and placed a circle of wires on her head. She blinked at the energy hum she was getting and realized almost as soon as he turned it on what it was, and how Rygan expected her to become fluent in Tellox.

  A learning computer? Without a word or explanation thrown her way the program started, and Ariel closed her eyes, a dizzy feeling quickly replaced with one of near Euphoria as knowledge was force fed to her starving brain. Even having a small idea of what it was before it began she was unprepared for the sudden influx of knowledge. And her brain being what it was, opened to all it wanted to give her. Then she went searching for more.

  Using her own unique gifts, she sifted through all the programs available, even as she listened to the conversation that was going on above her. In Tellox, which she now understood.