Read The Princess and her Alien Rogue: Alien Romance Online

Authors: Harmony Raines

Tags: #General Fiction

The Princess and her Alien Rogue: Alien Romance (2 page)

“Misha’Ha, you know why I am here.”

“I know why you
think
you are here. But what you seek is forbidden.”

“Did you tell that to the woman who just left? Or did you simply take her money?”

“I took her money.” Misha’Ha indicated the one silver coin on the table. “And I gave her what she needed. A tonic for her stomach.”


Cross my hand with silver
,” Tallia whispered.


And I will tell your future
.” Misha’Ha sighed. “Those words are not said by me anymore. Your father banned my abilities, do you remember?”

“Of course I remember.” Tallia had been there the day her father had burst in on her mother and Misha’Ha. He had been worried about her mother’s mental state, and followed her here to the tea shop. He accused Misha’Ha of taking money under false pretenses.

“But you never spoke up. You never told your father of the times I refused your mother’s silver coins. He accused me of lies, and you know I never lied.”

“I was a child.”

“But you had a tongue, and a memory.” There was no malice in the witch’s voice;, it was light and smooth, as if they were talking about what fine weather it was today.

“I still do.” Tallia had long since come to terms with her guilt.

“Then perhaps that tongue should tell me why you are here, dressed in such finery.” Now the witch’s sarcasm surfaced.

“I have some silver for you.” Tallia pulled the small pouch of coins from beneath the peasant dress, and placed it on the table.

“If this is a test, then I will pass. I do not take silver for what you want answers to.” Misha’Ha’s eyes did not leave Tallia’s face, and the princess felt all the years of shame bearing down on her. Shame that she had never stood up to her father and told him the truth. She knew why, but had never wanted to put it into words. Never wanted to admit her father would not have believed her. Would never have believed a girl.

“You know what is at stake.”

“Your rule. What is a princess to do if she will never be queen?”

“It’s more than that. You know the Emissars will seize full power if I cannot find a husband and produce an heir.”

“Not just a husband. I have heard tell you need a son.”

“Well, let’s start with a husband, I can work out the finer details afterwards. I need to defeat the Emissars or they will rule Carinia instead of me.”

The woman chuckled, her violet eyes sparkling in the witch light. “I see you are more like your father than your mother.” The laughter left her. “Which is why I cannot help you.”

“Here. Two bags of silver. One for the information, one for your silence. In fact, it would be better for both of us if you took the silver and left Carinia for good.”

“This is my home.”

“No, it isn’t. Your home is on some far-off planet.”

A dark look crossed over Misha’Ha’s face, and for a moment Tallia though all was lost. “Sit down.”

Tallia didn’t say a word. She sat down quickly and held out her hands, as she had seen her mother do countless times before. Misha’Ha took hold of them, her both her hands, the witch’s touch hard, unyielding, as if now she had Tallia in her grasp, she would never let her go; as if the only way Tallia was going to leave here was if she cut her own hands off.

“Relax, little princess.”

Tallia looked up from her hands, and her gaze was captured by those violet eyes. Misha’Ha stared at her, and then the incense began to penetrate her brain. She could not fight it, although she tried.

“Let yourself go. If you do not, I cannot get in.”

“Get in?” Tallia asked. “You mean, inside my head.”

“No. Inside your future.”

Chapter Two – Johar

“We should leave, Johar, the shipment will be loaded,” Krigan said on cue.

“Very well. It is getting late. I will play one more hand with my good friend here, and send him into the poor house,” Johar said, taking another sip of the most disgusting liquor he had ever tasted.

“You are so sure you will beat me?” The man he was playing was a hustler. Johar had picked up on that the moment he had been invited into the game. In his line of work, you got a nose for these things, and in the next round, the hustler was going to make his move. Only Johar had beat him to it.

“So let us make the next game all or nothing.” The pock-faced man lifted the bottle of
absilon,
and poured some into Johar’s glass. “Drink up, my friend, and let’s play.”

The tokens were dealt, and Johar watched carefully as his opponent shook a single token out of his sleeve, to land in his pile. It was a sleight of hand so quick, so skillful, only someone who had been in the company of fraudsters and liars his whole life would have seen it.

What his opponent didn’t know was that Johar had changed the token when they had shaken hands in the third round of their game, when Johar had won a considerable amount of coin. But he was about to know, in three, two, one…

“What?” His opponent’s scars stood out livid as he realized he had been tricked. He looked at the pile of coins on the table and then up at Johar, who was intent on his own tokens, trying to keep his face neutral.

“Not the hand you expected?” Johar asked easily, as he looked up to see a hatred so intense, he knew this was going to end in bloodshed. Not exactly what he had come here for. But then, trouble seemed to follow him around. Or maybe he sought it out.

His opponent rose up from his chair, his hand going to his side, but his sidearm had gone too, thanks to Krigan, who always had Johar’s back and had foreseen how this was going to end.

“Listen, friend, you know as well as I do, I won fair and square. The only way you were going to win this round was by cheating.”

“Give me back my money,” the other guy said.

Johar rose from his chair. He towered above everyone in the room, his muscles straining against the shirt he had worn to come into the town. He usually hated wearing clothes on the top half of his body; instead he liked to let his skin, which was covered in silver tattoos, breathe, to feel the air on it.

Not wanting a fight, he tore the fabric from his body, to show himself off in all his glory, and he was glorious, the gasp from the other men in the room proving that. However, it still didn’t stop the hustler from charging at him, head down like a
bulleroo
. That caught Johar off guard and they both ploughed through the makeshift door of the inn, The Lucky Star, to spill onto the ground. More gasps erupted, followed by excited cries. This was probably the best entertainment these people would have all afternoon, not least because guards patrolled the area frequently.

That was Johar’s problem: he needed this over fast, he did not want any soldiers with their many questions coming across a street brawl. Yet he could not hit this man hard. If he did, he would kill him. Johar knew his own strengths, and also his own weaknesses. He was not a murderer.

Then the hustler pulled a gun out. Of course a man like this would have a backup weapon. Tucked in his boot, this was a laser, small but it would pack a sting like a
flangers
bite. “Damn it.”

The first shot went wide, readjusting; the second shot was a true aim, but Johar dived to the left and rolled over, springing to his feet ready for the next round. If he remembered correctly, these lasers had a recharge that took longer each time the gun was fired. He counted the time between shots, just as he had counted the time between the lightning and the thunder when he was a child.
Three seconds
: he dived and rolled again.
Five
: this time he felt the sting as the beam glanced off his skin. The guy was beginning to read Johar’s body language and predict his movements.

Seven
: this time Johar rolled forward. He figured he had enough time between shots to reach the man and knock him unconscious.
Smack
.

The sound of bone cracking met his ears, but it couldn’t be helped. Kicking the gun away from the hustler, he looked up to see Krigan standing off to one side,
with a woman
. She was talking to his first mate, and as Johar approached, they turned and walked away. He followed.

“Krigan. What are you doing?”

“He is helping me with a task,” the woman said.

“What task is that?” Johar said, ready to fight.

“She has a proposition, Johar,” Krigan said. “It’s worth a lot of coin.”

“But I need to get back to the upper town, so we will talk as we walk,” she said, and another woman appeared, head down, not looking at either Krigan or Johar. By her coloring, Johar would say she was a slave, probably from the planet Tiwnin.

“No. We stop and talk now.” Johar stopped, and put his hand on his sidearm, not sure if this was a trap.

“You aren’t going to like it,” Krigan said.

“Then let’s get it out in the open. I can make a decision and then we can leave.”

“The offer is simple. I will pay you a million
Kerengu
coins.”

“A lot of coin, and the universal currency too. And where does a woman like you get that much coin from? And what does she want in return?” His expression became serious. “I don’t kill for money. You know we don’t take bounties, Krigan.”

“It’s not exactly a bounty, but it does involve someone’s life,” Krigan said.

“Whose?” Johar asked.

“Yours.” Krigan nodded. For a moment he wondered if his old friend was about to sell him out for coin, but then a grin broke out on his face. “She wants to buy your body.”

“What?”

“I need you to come with me and pretend to be my husband,” the woman said reasonably.

Johar stood there, his mouth open, for once lost for words, while Krigan burst into laughter, and kept going until he was doubled up as if in pain, with tears in his eyes.

“Why?” Johar asked.

“Because I’m ordering you to.” This seriously tested his temper. He was not used to being ordered to do anything these days. He was a free spirit, traveling where the ship’s cargo took him.

“Ordering?”

“Yes. This is my planet. You have a choice: you either make everyone believe you are my husband, or you can go for a vacation in my dungeon.”

“Your what?” Johar asked, incredulous.

The woman before him pulled back her hood so that he could just make out her face. “I am the Princess Tallia of Carinia, and I order you to do my bidding.”

“This just gets better,” Krigan laughed.

Johar straightened up. “Well, why didn’t you say so,
Princess
,” he said, emphasizing the word.

He would go with her, he would do her bidding, but before he was through he would teach her something about ordering people around. But first he was going to see just how far she wanted this mock marriage to go.

Chapter Three – Tallia

“Are you sure about this, My Princess?” Those were the words Rian said to her when they had left Misha’Ha’s tea shop. Tallia had wanted to say
no, I’m not sure
, and she still wanted to say those same words, but it was too late; she had already offered the money and the man had accepted.

The man
. He wasn’t a man, he was a goddamn giant. Pure muscle covered in toned flesh that shone like the silvery moon. That was how Misha’Ha had described him:
Find the moon in the stars
. Her gift never went so far as to tell a person the name of their true mate; it was more like following a trail of breadcrumbs, which in this case had led her to a hunk of man meat. At first confused, Tallia had gone with the first thing that had come into her head, the inn in the lower market called The Lucky Star.

“I want the money up front,” her moon demanded.

She let go of her worry and turned her attention back to him. “No.”

“Then no deal.” He raised his eyebrows at Krigan and they turned to walk away from her.

“Half. But I don’t have it with me.” She couldn’t let him leave; she was sure this was the man Misha’Ha had meant.

“OK. Here’s how it’s going to go down. We go to your palace; you transfer the money. OK.
Half the money
,” he agreed when she opened her mouth to protest. “When I see it’s in my account, then we play your little game.

Keeping her expression blank, as she had become practiced at doing, she worked out how she would get the money. She had not thought it through that far. Today’s adventure to the lower market had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. A conversation with the head Emissar, Aleck, had made her think of her mother and how trapped she had been. The pressure to produce a boy had been intense, something Tallia had recently learned to understand completely. Thinking of her mother, her thoughts had then rested on Misha’Ha.

A dream, a fantasy, a memory?
Desperation
. That was what had taken her to the tea shop.

Now she was faced with another problem, but she would work it out, she always worked it out.

“Very well,” she answered. There were trading accounts she could access, money she could transfer and then pay back later with the sale of some of her mother’s jewels.

He spoke to his friend. “You know what to do?”

“Yes, Johar. I’ll deliver the cargo and then return to see if you need rescuing from the life of a prince.” Humor still shone in Krigan’s eyes, yet something else flickered there. She chose to ignore it and not make problems where there were none.

Then they shook hands, and bent their heads so that their foreheads touched. They were close; they trusted each other. She thought it ironic, that these ruffians, these rogues, could have such deep friendships, while she, a princess, was alone.

She looked at Rian. That wasn’t true. But the difference was, she owned her most trusted friend.

“Where to, Princess? Or do I have to wear a collar?” he asked in his overly confident voice. This was like a joke to him, where as to Tallia, it was life or death.

“No.” Tallia looked at Rian, who looked as if she was going to puke. She should never have put her in this situation. She was mad at herself, everything looked as if it was about to spiral out of control. Maybe the Emissars were right, she wasn’t good enough to rule.

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