Alien Hunter's Fated - A SciFi Alien Abduction Romance Read online

  ALIEN HUNTER’S FATED

  VIVIAN VENUS

  CONTENTS

  SUMMARY

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Thank you for Reading!

  Warrior’s Fate - TEASER

  Warrior’s Desire - TEASER

  Also by Vivian Venus

  SUMMARY

  His people ravaged by a deadly sickness, Tor is the last hunter of the Ulduuk. After desperately praying to his gods for help, Tor witnesses a light burning through the night sky.

  The shooting star that Tor thinks is the answer to his calls is actually an escape pod containing one passenger: Kaylee Mentz, a human from Earth. On the run from an abusive relationship, Kaylee was trying to start life anew on the off-world colonies when her shuttle got into a terrible accident, sending her hurtling down to the jungle covered surface of Tor’s planet.

  Kaylee is just a regular old girl with no clue how to survive in a dangerous alien jungle, so when the beast-like Tor comes to her rescue, she gladly accepts…even though he seems to think she’s been sent by the divine to help him repopulate his species! Marooned with the sexy alien, Kaylee decides to learn his ways…but can she resist the temptation of fate?

  Written by Vivian Venus

  Copyright© 2016 by Vivian Venus. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ONE

  Kaylee Mentz didn’t pack anything except for a small bag with some clothes and toiletries, not that she even had much to begin with. His words to her the night before were the last straw, the final catalyst that got her moving.

  You can’t do a damn thing for yourself, he had said. You’re fucking worthless without me, you hear me?

  She might’ve been inclined to have believed him before, and perhaps there was still something inside her that did – after all, that was the reason she had gotten with him in the first place.

  She had been attracted to him for his knowledge of things, so many things that she didn’t even think of or hadn’t learned – “adult” things. For most of her life, Kaylee just didn’t bother. She was having fun, and as long as she had enough money to get her through the week with enough to go out with her friends, that was fine. As the years went by, friends faded away to their own lives and Kaylee began to feel a deepening void inside her, the realization that she wanted something more with her life. That's when Kaylee had met Devlan – charming, good job, had his own place in one of those fancy apartment buildings that floated above Earth’s pollution layer.

  Well it turned out Devlan wasn’t the gentleman he had made himself out to be on the outside. After no time at all he had taken to verbal abuse, and when Kaylee spoke up he turned his hand on her. Leaving for somewhere on Earth wasn’t an option, he would find her…or worse, she could see herself going back to him. No, she needed to go somewhere where he couldn’t contact her and work his guilt on her, or where she could have a lapse in sanity and want to go back to him.

  The off world colonies were the perfect place. Affordable to get to (though the shuttle ticket had used up what meager savings she did have), and impossible for Devlan to reach. He’d be gone from her life forever. She could start again, prove to herself that she could do something for herself.

  Her face still ached from where he had struck her the night before. She touched her cheek lightly, winced, and then glanced out of the window by her seat at the strange, streaked energy of cross-universal warp, hazy and slow like what a drunk would see if they walked past a display of Christmas lights. She thought about what she would do when she arrived on P3Y-229, the colony she had chosen to live on. It was about two hundred light years away from Earth, or about six hours with cross-universal warp, and one of the newest worlds to be colonized. She had chosen it because living expenses there were cheap and she had read that work was plentiful. She didn’t know what she would be able to do, but she told herself that she would find something. She had to.

  She thought that maybe she would try and sleep for the rest of the journey there, when suddenly the shuttle shuddered, a slight vibration that sounded a low noise throughout the cabin. She looked around and saw that a couple other people had noticed too, but most seemed to ignore it. Probably no big deal then. Kaylee had never flown in a space shuttle before in her entire life, so she had no idea what was normal procedure at what wasn’t. She had been slightly nervous about space flight even though she had read that it was one of the safest things you could do.

  She was telling herself this when a loud groan filled the cabin, deep and mechanical. This time everyone noticed. People were pulling out their earbuds or looking up from their glowing holo-displays, eyes meeting eyes with glances looking for reassurance from someone who wasn’t fazed by what had happened – but everyone seemed confused or concerned.

  Then the shuddering grew. The slight vibration turned to a shaking and then to a rocking, sending a frighteningly loud DUGGDUGGDUGGDUGG through the whole ship. Stilted screams sounded as people grabbed hold of their arm rests for dear life. The vibrating seemed to grow worse, and Kaylee shut her eyes and prayed that it would stop, that maybe it was just some kind of space turbulence, that the captain would announce that there was nothing to worry about…

  With a tremendous jolt the shuddering stopped. More gasps and shouts sounded around the cabin, and Kaylee saw that they had exited warp. The hazy streaks of light had resolved to the sharp points of stars. Everyone began looking out their windows, and Kaylee could see they had stopped right by a huge yellow planet, with glowing rings of space dust and rock encircling it and clouds of white and ochre gas swirling around its face, and just next to it was a smaller green planet, or maybe it was a moon. For just a brief moment she forgot what had just happened, amazed at the sight of that grandeur. She’d only ever seen things like this in photographs and movies before.

  She was brought back to reality by the quick footfalls of one of the shuttle attendants walking rapidly up one of the aisles to the front of the ship, the woman’s eyes wide with…Kaylee couldn’t tell. Alarm? Panic?

  Then the PA chimed and the captain’s voice came through. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. There was muffled talk as he spoke to someone off of the microphone for a moment before coming back on. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he repeated, “this is your captain speaking. We’ve experienced a malfunction in the thranium diversion drives—” Murmurs throughout the cabin. “—and we’ve exited warp space.” His voice sounded tense, and Kaylee started getting the feeling that there was something really wrong. Her heart started hammering, and as she glanced around she saw that others had felt the same thing.

  “We, ah, we’d like for everyone to move to the lower deck and board your respective safety pods for the time being. Your attendants will be there to assist you, thank you.” The PA clicked off abruptly. The way he had so quickly signed off was disconcerting, and people started to chatter throughout the cabin
. Kaylee looked around. A baby started to cry. She saw a mother and father putting their children’s shoes on. A woman clung to her man’s arm, and he kissed her on the top of her head. Kaylee felt scared now, she had no one to reassure her, and the seat next to her was empty. Then the flight attendant got on the PA, standing at the front of the cabin waving a glowing wand in the air.

  “Attention passengers,” she said. “If you could please direct your attention to me at the front of the cabin. Please stand and prepare to flow down to the emergency deck where we will have you board your safety pods. First row, if you can please lead as was directed in the safety instruction course…”

  The cabin was surprisingly orderly. Kaylee followed the line down the aisle as they descended the stairs to the emergency deck. While on the stairs, the ship shuddered again and the main cabin lights blinked down to red hazard lights. There was another jolt, a collective gasp from the cabin, and now a sense of urgency started to set in. The attendants were hurrying the passengers into the main group pods, and Kaylee who was near the back of the line peeked around the people ahead of her to see how many remained. Would there be enough for everyone? There had to be… She thought that maybe she should’ve just stayed on Earth, that this whole thing was a stupid idea, and then she remembered Devlan, his face morphing from charming to vicious in a blink of an eye filled up her mind, and she knew that an emergency space shuttle situation was better than staying there with him.

  She saw that the attendants were now launching the pods as soon as they filled up, and she felt a lurch in her stomach. Maybe whatever had gone wrong was actually pretty bad? The crowd started pushing forward, pressing to get seated into a pod.

  “Are you alone?” the attendant asked hurriedly, and Kaylee replied yes. “Pod number sixteen. You’ve just been upgraded to business class.” She smiled thinly and ushered Kaylee through. “Next! Are you together? Okay, pod five.”

  Kaylee hurried down the broad hallway lined with the escape pod hatches, reading the numbers written above them. Another attendant stood at the end, hurrying up and down helping the oncoming groups find their assigned pods. “Pod sixteen? Right down there to the left. Thank you.”

  The pod was a single seater, cramped and tight with really only enough room for a person and nothing else. The wall was paneled with compartments that were marked with emergency equipment icons – first aid, survival – and when Kaylee sat down in the seat the door slid shut behind her. The computer activated and the holo-screen shimmered on in front of her with a greeting. “Please fasten cross body harness,” the computer said, “and prepare for launch.”

  Kaylee wished she wasn’t alone. “Where am I going?” she asked aloud. “Wait!” This was all happening too quickly for her.

  “Prepare for launch,” the computer repeated indifferently.

  Kaylee looked out the viewport, back into the ship. She saw the attendant, eyes wide now, waving his arm madly to get people to hurry. A fresh surge of fear gripped her. What was going on? There was a shuddering and a metal outer door slid closed, blocking the window. She was trapped.

  Then the main viewport activated and she had a wide view of the stars, and the lights on the holo-screen lit green. There was stiff jolt, and metal that had covered the side viewport quickly pulled away as the pod was jettisoned from the shuttle. Straight ahead she saw the cluster of already jettisoned escape pods which had gathered in a formation. Her computer blinked and the engines kicked in, auto guidance taking her over to them. Then there was a sudden flash. It filled the side viewport and Kaylee had just a second to look over and see that the shuttle had erupted in a ball of flame which quickly sucked back in on itself before her tiny pod was hit by the shockwave caused by the erupting thranium drive, sending the star field around her spinning wildly until it was nothing but streaks. She screamed, the pod shaking violently around her.

  “Stabilizing,” the computer said. “Stabilizing.”

  Slowly the spinning stars began to slow down until the pod righted itself. Outside the tiny side window, Kaylee could see the debris cloud from the vaporized shuttle and the clustered fleet of escape pods shrinking away. She was floating out into space. She frantically tapped at the holo-screen, trying to find some way to get her back to the group, but it was all automated. A warning display flashed constantly, saying that the engines were damaged. Another jolt, and the pod swung around. Kaylee felt panic rising as the cluster of pods, now as tiny in her port as headlights in the far off distance, swung out of sight. She spun around in her seat, but there was no rear window. Her final connection to the shuttle and the professionals on board who were going to get them all to safety was severed. This was real. There had been an accident, a horrible, horrible accident, and now she was separated from the group. She was in an accident of her own. There was no way of getting back to them.

  Keep it together, Kaylee, she thought. Don’t panic. You’ll be fine. You’re still alive. The pod kept swinging slowly when the viewport window was taken over by the emerald green face of an alien planet. It was getting larger. She was going to crash land onto it.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  The pod began to shudder.

  TWO

  The jungle was awash with the frantic calls of beasts hidden away in the dark as Tor of the Ulduuk made his way through, spear in hand and young Toovah tied firmly to his bare back, the small carcass of a liklik strapped to his waist. The shrieks and howls made his heart beat faster and his tail swish nervously, but he had come this path hundreds of times over the course of his life and he knew that with the light of the stars and the Great Eye up above him – the ringed gas planet that cast a dim yellow light over everything – he would be safe. The Great Ones needed praying to, and tonight was the night that it was to be done, when the Great Eye was high in the sky.

  Tor was more concerned about something else than the creatures that watched deep in the thickness of the jungle. They could smell the scent of the sacrifice he carried on his belt and of Toovah’s weakness, and he knew they were curious about a potential meal, but with his hunting spear he could handle any creature that might try to attack him, small child with him or not. What concerned Tor was far more troublesome, and it wrenched at his heart and his mind. Three days prior, Velah had succumbed to the sickness, reducing the population of their people to just two: her son Toovah, and Tor, a hunter. He had taken it upon himself to care for her child, to protect him so that there might be the slim chance that their people would survive the horrible sickness that had decimated what once was a proud village of many. Over the past two months as their numbers diminished, he, the wise man, and the other hunters made continuous visits to the place of the Great Ones when their eye hung high in the night sky. They made sacrifices and prayed for their protection, but the sickness only grew worse.

  Tor had been unaffected. Now little Toovah had grown sick, the fever consuming him.

  Tor heard Toovah stir from his position strapped to his back, the shrieking howls of the vizer beasts disturbing his already restless sleep, and so he used the soft furry end of his tail to stroke the child’s cheek to comfort him. Toovah took hold of it and held it close to him like it was a toy, and continued to sleep. His little body felt burning hot against his back, and Tor wondered how long the child had.

  Tor picked up his pace into a quick stride, his bare feet thundering across the dirt and deftly dodging over the twisted roots of trees that cluttered the trail. He kept an eye out for the hanging vines of the zinsu zinsu plant which could snatch him up in an instant if he walked through them. His ears were vigilant to the noise of the creatures hidden around him, but they all kept their distance. He crossed through a gurgling stream that marked his close approach to the place of the Great Ones, and Tor thought about what he would ask them.

  Before, he had begged them to spare his people, to stave off this sickness. He asked them to spare Velah, but it had taken her. Tonight he would ask them to spare Toovah and to show him a way to rebuild his peo
ple. He held on to the sliver of hope that they might answer.

  He followed the stream, walking down the shallow side with the cool water pleasing his feet, the Great Eye shimmering off its chuckling surface with sparkles of yellow light. The stream looked like a glittering pathway of gold, and Tor felt himself grow tenser. It was usually a sight that filled him with excitement because it meant he had almost reached their place, and if it weren’t for his tightening nerves he might’ve even considered waking Toovah up to glimpse this magical sight for himself. It was something that Tor hadn’t even experienced until he was of age as was the tradition, but he figured the Great Ones would understand. He couldn’t just leave Toovah alone in the village.

  The stream cut a path down through the jungle until it reached a point where it filled a reflecting pool at the base of a half circle of towering, jagged rocks rising in the air like the teeth of some great beast, or like towering figures of watchful giants. The jungle opened up here. Behind the rocks the ground dropped off into a sheer cliff where a waterfall poured, fed by the pool, roaring and crashing down the cliff into the depths below. The front surface of the rocks facing the reflecting pool had been carved out generations ago into the visages of the Great Ones, their appearances weathered down over the years so that they now only had the vague appearance of faces in a thick fog – just shapes undefined. Out past them the jungle stretched on forever, a carpet of green with the rising arcs of mountains in the distance, and above was the open canopy of stars and the Great Eye that hung directly over the center of the Great Ones, casting its reflection in the middle of the pool.

  Tor approached slowly, walking down the stream with his head bowed in reverence. He held his left hand out at his side in an open palm and his right hand held out gripping his spear, its point tipped down towards the ground. His feet sloshed through the water of the stream, and asides from the low roar of the water fall hidden behind the Great Ones which cast up a mist into that air that gave the atmosphere a mystical, hazy quality, the place was quiet. It was as if all the creatures of the jungle knew this was a sacred place and held their tongues when near it.