“S
he is mine to protect, mine to shelter, mine to feed and mine to cover. When she is weak, I shall be her strength. She was stolen from her world by our captors. Now her survival is my responsibility. It is her duty to endure my lust, respect my nest mates and honour our union with offspring. I revere this giver of life, as is the way.”

~ Venomous One, formerly of Rök, enslaved gladiator

––––––––

“S
ix things a woman should not have to deal with: 1) More than one barbaric alien lover/life mate. 2) Long term stay on a slave planet where you’re one female amongst thousands of ‘needy’ males. 3) Killer space pirates. 4) Psychotic mother-in-law. 5) Putting your alien lover/life mates species under the threat of annihilation because you ticked off the wrong Slave Chieftain. 6) A marauding overlord with a harem four hundred strong who is determined to make you concubine number four hundred and one. My name is Lumen. I am stranded in a galaxy far, far away and here be huge fucking aliens.”

~ Lumen Young, formerly of Earth, lost in space

PROLOGUE

G
reat Serpent, I hurt.

Separated from kindred and lonesome. How did a sane mind survive the endless spans of misery?

Rock, blood, heat and grief.

There! Bone-shaking sensation. There! Fang-rattling pleasure.

Air floods the pits of lungs atrophied from disuse. Blood rushes into muscles long dormant. Bright surges of vigour and strength infuse the warrior with purpose.

The one is female.

Rock, blood, heat, grief and her.

Hurtling through the darkness the warrior stalks the scent. Elusive. Fading.... No! Growing stronger.

Run faster.

A clawed fist smashes rock. Feverish eyes glint from the dark. Bared fangs drip venom as a guttural hiss pierces the din.

I need. I need. I need.

Unimaginable pain. Male. Hope bursts through the agony of existing for existence sake.

The noise of the horde silences.

Flames of hell transform to a cage of black rock, and a roar quakes the foundations of a nightmare.

Shock ripples.

Disbelief.

A dawning realisation and yawning of dread.

Foes tremble and shy into the bowls of the great nothing. Sheer terror. Terror of what the warrior has become.

It sends them rabid with fear. Trapped. Trapped with a beast seeking to mate.

Blood drenches the battlefield.

Fight for her
. The command rings in his ear.
I shall fight without end
. Never-ending. The devotion to her is never-ending.

Fangs aching. Muscles swelling. Gold glinting. Hearts beating.

Mine to protect.

Wild with lust the warrior fights in desperation.
Mine to shelter.
Straining, howling, desperation.
Mine to feed.
Tear flesh with tooth and claw.
Not enough.
Shatter bone with muscle and might.

And mine to cover.

They are weak and he is strong.

Mine.

CHAPTER ONE

D
read gripped cold, steely fingers around my throat and squeezed at the grinding, grating noise of rock on rock.

I scuttled from the door to my lightless hovel as it whirred then crashed open.

Currents of damp, stagnant air brushed against my huddled figure.

Eyes averted, I shrank into ‘my’ corner.

My battered face ached as I pressed it to the gritty wall, arms burrowed into the cradle of space between my knees pulled to my chest.

Finding the strength to resist my captors, to show courage was growing difficult.

Claws fisted in my hair, dragged me off the dirty blankets onto my bruised feet.

Jaw clenching, I hid my anger.

There was a little fight left inside me.

Urine trickled down my thigh to puddle around my scrunched toes.

Shame assaulted me, and scorching heat flooded my cheeks.

I saw it through to the end and kept going.

The alien holding me reeled back retching then hauled me from the cell.

He held me far, far from his body, now reluctant, his grip didn’t pinch and hurt as usual.

All I managed were trivial displays of defiance that annoyed my captors.

Each victory allowed me to cling to a sliver of self-respect.

The thought of soiling myself had once been repugnant.

I’d thought nothing could bring me so low, but the constant fear of being raped, tortured and murdered changed me, and each inch of flesh protected from prying fingers became an obsession.

Boosted by my trifling rebellion, my eyes remained fixed downward at the bare dirt floor, but I smiled inside.

The guard would backhand me if I glared at him again.

He hated me.

Hated touching me, looking at me, being near me.

I just made it so he
really
hated it.

Dim green lights dotted the craggy walls, nestled into geodes that glimmered and sparkled with crystals.

In the distance was the eternal reverberation of hammers and pickaxes, the cracks of whips and soul destroying wails of pain.

It was the sound of back breaking labour.

The aliens that had purchased me from my abductor were slavers.

The grotesque ‘lizards’ forced dozens of alien species into mining the ores and minerals abundant in the obsidian rock below the planet crust.

I glimpsed one of the massive caverns filled with the rest of the cattle.

Inexplicable creatures chained together.

The fleeting look scratched the surface of my nightmarish subsistence.

Though I’d yet to meet a miner, I heard them howling through the night.

The cell beside mine overflowed with bloodcurdling screams.

Insensate the first wakeful night of my capture, I vomited myself unconscious as I waited for them to come for me, submerged in a suffocating, blinding kind of terror.

Huddled in the dark, rocking back and forth as I tore at my hair and flinched at the feel of my own skin.

When they came, I screamed for so long my voice broke.

The experimentation....

Harsh light gleamed off subdural needles.

Claws on my skin.

The cold press of surgical instruments.

Chest cracked open.

Scalpels, forceps, tubes, clamps, bloody wisps of smoke as drill tips met bone.

Healing pain blistering my soul as they fixed me up to start over, lower, deeper.

My cheeks heated, and the muscles of my rectum and vagina clenched as I remembered other painful invasions, the metal rods they inserted into my orifices.

Jagged fragments of rock cut into the soles of my feet as I shuffled along.

We turned a corner, and the light brightened.

I blinked to clear my whitewashed vision, bleary-eyed from being submerged in the darkness.

Shoved into the middle of the room, my legs wobbled then folded.

I tucked them under and cradled my head, waiting for the blows.

It was cold.

My cooler body temperature was the result of lingering shock and maltreatment, I knew, but even chaffing my hands against chest didn’t help heat me up.

“Pathetic.” The rustling, whispery voice came from across the room followed by heavy, scraping footsteps.

The menacing advance ended before my dirty knees.

I managed an alarmed glance at the coarse scales and talons shaped into a humanoid foot.

Terror rendered me speechless.

My eyes clamped shut.

I couldn’t look, they were disgusting and violent to behold.

“You can’t even look at me, can you? Sickly, weak, pathetic,
worthless
creature.”

Fuck you too
, I snapped from the fortress inside my mind.

The alien grabbed my chin then jerked my head up.

It hurt, but everything the creatures did hurt.

“I knew when I saw you, you were too weak to bear the weight of a mighty warrior.”

Unmoving, voiceless, I stared at the back of my eyelids.

The shock of seeing people who were not human still hadn’t eased its grip over my mind even if the disbelief of knowing there was life beyond Earth had passed.

The universe was a big place.

I wasn’t so arrogant to believe there couldn’t be sentient life amongst the stars.

It didn’t matter how many unique elements needed to merge to create a planet able to support life.

If it happened once in one galaxy, it could happen again in another.

Had I been asked what my reaction would be to first contact, I’d’ve said something inane, like, I’d make them tea, and educate them on the finer points of human culture.

I’d roll my eyes at the triteness if I wasn’t scared stiff the monster before me would react to the gesture with violence.

Asked now, I’d warn the person to run if they came into contact with extraterrestrials.

Run
, I’d screech.
Run until your feet bleed.

Afraid of the darkness beyond the shield of my eyelids, wondering if my imagination had made my captors more hideous than reality, I opened my eyes.

Sneering, the alien’s rheumy gaze bored into mine.

You are disgusting
, I thought.
You make me sick.

He reminded me of a lizard, a bipedal komodo dragon.

I knew his species called themselves L’Odo after overhearing them debating the scientific benefits of vivisecting me again as they examined the differences of my sex.

They spoke in ear-grating, sibilant rushes and frothed gunk through their serrated teeth.

Their saliva thinned into rotten drool as it dribbled down the lower mandible of their snouts, hanging in ropey lengths that dripped onto their hefty trunks.

L’Odo scutum ranged from sickly yellow to dull orange.

This grungy, yellow-skinned alien, stockier than the other males of his species, I’d never met before, and his arrogance denoted a rank of superiority.

The sinister aura shrouding him coated my spine in frost.

His harsh grip on my chin ached, and his odour made me retch.

He offended every possible sense.

“As you cannot take our shafts you are worthless. More worthless than the food and water it would take to keep you alive until we could sell you.” His putrid breath washed over my face as he snapped his jaws. “And you are too weak to be a miner. The rock would shred your thin skin and the heat from the planet core would burn your flesh.”

“There is an auction scheduled within the next ten-span,” the guard interrupted. “Sell it then.”

“The auction is cancelled. The asteroid storm blocked the jumpway from here to Zoi Quay. There won’t be another during the dark season.”

The guard grunted. “Give it to me.”

“Think you I didn’t ask if it was suitable to ease me? Not one stiff rutting will it survive.” He sounded annoyed. “Our shafts will tear it in half.”

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