The Breeding Prize: A Scifi Alien Romance (The Breeding Games Book 2) Read online

  I nod, as if a single thing he just said is anything other than batshit insane. If he weren’t very clearly an actual, living and breathing alien, I wouldn’t believe a word of it.

  “Where’s the portal?” I ask.

  “Squirrel Hill,” he says.

  “Ah, the portal in Squirrel Hill. Of course.”

  “It will take us to Lakria.”

  “Where is that?”

  “It’s a planet hundreds of thousands of light-years from here. My half-brother lives there.”

  “What if the others just follow us through the portal?”

  “If you stop asking me questions and let me drive, we can minimize the chances of that happening.” He looks down at the parking brake. “Disengage that device, little human.”

  “Can you please stop calling me that?”

  He shoots me a cocky look, which tells me that he is indeed going to continue calling me “little human.”

  “One last question, Raiska.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “What if you just let me out? I go back to the library, and you go wherever you want to go.”

  “One of the other competitors would breed you.”

  “But you’d be fine, right? So why not just let it go?”

  He puts one hand over his bare chest and bows his head down. His horns come dangerously close to my face. “When I first laid eyes on you, little human, I swore on my life and honor as Valittu that I would protect you. I swore I would put your safety and well-being above all else, and I will not back away from this promise.”

  “If I asked you to let me go? What would you do?”

  “We will go where you like,” he says. “If you wish to continue on in your librarian duties, I will protect you there. I can assure you that our chances of survival are much higher on Lakria than in the library.”

  “Okay…” I say, “I want to go back to the library.”

  He glares at me.

  “Let me out of the car, Raiska.”

  He nods again, and steps out of the car. He goes around and rips the door off to get me out. As he walks, he flashes those strange colors again, and his blue skin and horns are gone. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt again. When he pulls on the door to let me out, the whole thing rips off its hinges. He holds the torn-off door in his hand and smiles at me as I get out of the car.

  He jams the door back on, bending metal somewhere to get the ruined door to lock in place.

  “Um,” I say, “if you leave the car here in the middle of the garage like this, you’re more likely to get caught.”

  I expect him to get back into the car, put it in reverse, and park it again. Instead, he just grabs hold of the car and lifts the whole thing up into the air. He carries it several steps and lowers it down into the parking space.

  “I guess that works too,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.

  To my surprise, he walks with me to the elevator, and soon we’re back in the library again. We’re surrounded by people, and I realize I could very easily just scream for help and…

  Well, could I really get away from him? He just lifted a car up like it was about as heavy as a bicycle. He has an orb that can start cars without keys. He can disguise himself almost magically. Even if I had a bunch of police come in to protect me, could they really stand up against Raiska?

  The library is big and old, and the hallways have marble tile and very high, ornate ceilings. My voice would echo very nicely if I screamed right now, and there are people all around us.

  I don’t scream though, I stay quiet. We stop at an archway that leads into the main space of the library. Raiska takes hold of my arm just as I’m about to walk back in.

  “Listen to me, human.”

  “I’m listening.” I look up at him just long enough to assure him that I am listening, but I don’t hold eye contact with him. I want to see if he’ll really let me go at all.

  “This is a very poor strategy. This library has multiple entrances, and my competitors will not hesitate to attack you with other humans around.”

  “Show me that you will let me go,” I hiss back to him. “Show me that you really are on my side, and I’ll consider going into your alien portal.”

  His lips go tight, and his jaw clenches as he grinds his teeth together.

  “I will wait in that chair,” he says, pointing over at one of the leather chairs set up in the study and work area. From there he’ll be able to see me most of the time, but not all of the time. It will depend where I’m working.

  I look down at his hand on my arm, and then back up at his turquoise eyes. Now that I’ve seen his true form, his eyes remind me of that. His skin as a human is far too white, and he barely passes as one when you really stop and think about it. Still, he fooled me, and he’ll fool everyone else who sees him now.

  “Are you going to let go?” I ask.

  He holds on for a few heartbeats longer, but finally he does let go of me.

  I walk fast, feeling the rush of freedom. He really just let me go? I still have like fifteen minutes left of my lunch break, but I decide to start working again early. I want to feel like I’m doing my normal, day-to-day thing, because the alternative to that is to think about the Breeding Games.

  You are the fertile prize.

  I look down at my hips. I do have wide hips, but there’s no way, right?

  I turn my head and search for Raiska. He’s sitting in one of the chairs and just staring at me from over fifty feet away. He’s not even pretending to read a book. He’s just staring.

  I’d almost hoped that I’d look up and that he wouldn’t be there. That I’d just completely imagined the whole thing.

  He’s there though, and even from this distance I can see the unnaturally pale whiteness of his skin and the bright gleam of those alien eyes.

  Shit.

  He let me go, but if everything he’s said is true, then I’m not free. Other aliens are coming for me, and the only thing standing between me and them is Raiska.

  Will they also be strong enough to lift up a car? Is Raiska stronger than all of them? Will he really be able to protect me, or—

  “Annabelle? Annabelle!”

  I look up and see Priya. She only works part-time, so she often comes in after lunch.

  She snaps her fingers in my face. “Did you hear me?”

  “Um, what did you ask again?”

  “Is that him?” she asks, tilting her head in Raiska’s direction. “The really big guy?”

  “Who?”

  “Everyone is talking about it. You left for lunch with him. You came back holding his hand.”

  “He was holding my arm.”

  “Same thing. How did you find him?”

  “He found me.”

  “What do I have to do to get a guy like that to find me?”

  I take in a deep breath and let it out in an exhausted sigh. You just have to be the fertile prize, Priya. You just have to get almost abducted. You just have to try to decide if you want the alien breeding competition to happen in the Carnegie Library, or if you want to sneak into an alien portal and hide out with Raiska’s half-brother. It’s a small price to pay for a hot guy to show interest in you, right?

  “Uh,” I stammer. “I guess I just got lucky?”

  “So you’re dating him?”

  Two

  Raiska

  I stare her down as she speaks to the darker-skinned one. Human females are intensely fascinating. While we worked with the Council to fend off the Ulkar, we were told to view them as things to protect and not things to interact with. We were not meant to consort with them, or do anything at all to interfere with their day-to-day lives.

  I’ve kept my distance until now. When I heard I was going to be selected as a competitor in the Breeding Games, I didn’t think it mattered who the fertile prize would be. I knew only that a human female would be in danger, and that if I didn’t protect her, I’d be killed. I wanted to find Annabelle largely out of my own self-intere
st. I didn’t want to lose the Breeding Games and have the Ulkar kill me for being the weakest of their offspring.

  That all changed the moment I laid eyes on her. Now I no longer care about my own life, I only want to protect her.

  I watch her talking to the other female, the one that I can barely see. Annabelle is a sun so bright that her light buries all the other stars. I can see only her.

  It’s a problem. I’m meant to be a warrior. I’m meant to put my mission first. Even if I’ve decided to protect her above all else, then I should not be here. We should already be through the portal to Lakria. Instead, I’m doing what she wants.

  It’s a huge tactical and strategic error. I am the only Valittu with the ability to mind control lesser humanoids, and I walked into the library fully ready to put Annabelle unwillingly under my power. The moment I saw those deep amber eyes and those glorious curves, I no longer could bring myself to impose my will over her.

  I’d hoped she’d listen to reason once I told her about the portal, but now she’s chatting with her friend as if the Breeding Games hadn’t already begun.

  My fingers dig into the strange faux-leather material of the chair, and my muscles clench. My weapon may not be visible to humans, but I’m ready to grab it at an instant’s notice. Every few moments I have to tear my gaze from the deep gravity well that is Annabelle’s beauty in order to scan the library for potential hostiles.

  I should be able to sense other Ulkar half-breeds, but I must also assume that other competitors can mask their presence, just as I’m able to mask mine.

  Annabelle and the dark-skinned woman walk around a corner, and I lose sight of her.

  I jump out of the chair and move to get a better angle. I turn the corner and can see her again, so I stop there.

  Three

  Annabelle

  “I want to get your opinion on something, Priya.”

  “I think you should go for it. That guy is big, imagine how big his di—”

  I take her by the arm and pull on her. I walk her further down the rows of the new releases, until we turn the corner enough that Raiska can’t see us anymore.

  Priya tilts her head at me. “Why did we stop here?”

  “Watch,” I say, pointing at the corner.

  We both stand and watch, and just a few seconds later Raiska appears from behind the corner. He looks at me again, and he just stands there with half of his body obscured by the corner. He’s peeking out from a corner and staring at me, barely blinking.

  “He just needs a trench coat, and maybe some kind of scary rusted hook to murder me with,” I whisper.

  “As long as he’s naked under the trench coat, and as long as he makes me cum before he murders me, I’d take it.”

  I look at her with my “please be serious” face. She purses her lips and nods. “Sorry, Annabelle. Yeah, so he’s kind of...intense.”

  “Think with your brain. Not with your pussy. If he didn’t look as good as he does. Even if he were an 8 out of 10…”

  I look over and he’s still just standing half behind the corner, his eyes glaring intensely at me.

  “If he were not so damn good looking, I’d be terrified,” I whisper.

  Priya is nodding, but her mouth is hanging open. She’s just staring at Raiska.

  I snap my fingers in her face. “See?”

  “I see the problem,” she says. “What did you guys talk about at lunch? Or did you not do much talking?”

  This is hopeless. I can’t tell Priya the truth. There’s no way I’m going to be able to get a second opinion on any of this. If I told her the truth, she’d never believe me. We are good friends, but if she came and told me that she had been selected as the fertile prize in the Breeding Games, I’d never have believed her. I can’t expect her to believe me. Hell, I barely believe me. I keep half-expecting to look back and not see Raiska. I keep thinking I might wake up in bed and realize this was all a very inventive and fucked up dream.

  “You know,” I tell Priya. “At lunch we just talked about normal date things. We just got to know each other, stuff like that.”

  I learned that he can’t drive very well, and that he can lift an entire car up.

  “Is he rich?” she asks, smiling.

  “Uh, I don’t think I asked about his income.”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “I guess you don’t want to give gold digger vibes. And if a guy looks that good, he could be broke. Hell, I’d be a sugar momma for a guy like that.”

  “You’re a part-time librarian. You aren’t going to be anyone’s sugar momma.”

  I end the conversation with her before she asks me for more specifics. My break is over anyway, so I get back to work.

  Working while Raiska all but stalks me is slightly uncomfortable and slightly endearing. Still, it reminds me that I’m in actual danger, and I feel safe having someone as strong as Raiska standing vigil over me.

  There’s a man sitting near Raiska in the work area, and every time I look at him, he’s eating a cheese steak. I keep thinking my brain is malfunctioning, because sometimes the cheesesteak has gotten larger than it was the last time I looked, and yet he’s taking a bite and chewing every single time I see him. After almost twenty minutes, when I see him with a cheese steak that has one single bite out of it, I decide to pretend to shelve some books where I can keep my eyes on him through the rack. I watch as he devours the sandwich, and when he’s done, he reaches into a briefcase and pulls out another sandwich. He bites into it.

  He’s a big man. Almost as big as Raiska, but it’s mostly muscle. There is no fat on him. I wish I could eat cheese steaks by the half-dozen and still be in perfect shape.

  With that mystery solved, I head back to the children’s section. Even though I just organized it before lunch, it’s a complete mess again already. There are kids playing on the train table, and there’s a pile of books near their feet.

  I smile at them and wave. “Would you like me to put these books away?”

  “I’m reading that one,” one of the kid says, not looking up from the train or down at the book. He is about four years old. Maybe a young five.

  “Can I take the rest then?”

  He smiles and nods at me.

  I carefully gather the books up and put them in a neat stack so their spines are all facing the same way, and just as I’m about to put them on the cart, I catch four boys who look about the same age as the 4- or 5-year-old staring at me.

  They are sitting on a little play slide, all together. All wearing the same outfit. They look almost like quadruplets, but their hair isn’t the same color. Their eyes are a very piercing shade of blue, but the most discomforting thing about them is that they are sitting much too still for four-year-olds. Even when most kids this age do sit still, it’s only for brief moments, and they are rarely just sitting and staring like this.

  I wave to them, and they don’t wave back. They just smile.

  A chill runs through my spine.

  I catch Raiska creeping around a corner and watching me from a distance. I get the feeling he would very much like to be right behind me and breathing down my neck, but he’s worried if he does that, he’ll lose my trust.

  I take another quick look at the creepy children and consider asking him to come sit near me, but I’m not going to let a few kids scare me.

  I go back to shelving the books I’ve gathered, and then I start back in the “A” section and organize all the other books that the children have managed to mess up in less than two hours.

  As I’m shelving, I get a bad feeling, and when I look behind me, the four boys are right behind me.

  I try to ask them if they need help, but my voice catches in my throat and cracks. I try again, and my voice comes out in a thin and creaky whisper. “Do you need help finding something?”

  “We found it,” the red-headed one says, a big smile filling his face.

  “Yes,” the blonde one says, “isn’t it nice?”

  “The fertile prize,” th
e dark-haired one says, and his eyes glow a color I’ve never seen before.

  Before my fear can even fully register, they aren’t children anymore. They are tiny little things with sickly-green skin. They look almost like goblins, but not everything about them is tiny. Their dicks are hard and erect, and they are bigger than any human’s dick.

  I jump back, but I’m up against the bookshelf. I scream, and other parents and kids start screaming too when they see the disgusting little things.

  Just as one of the little goblin aliens gets its hands on me, Raiska appears behind them.

  He’s big and blue again. His horns are tall and sharp, and he’s holding a scythe. It’s the same non-colors as the orb from earlier, and it’s glowing almost as bright as his eyes.

  He slashes his scythe and cuts the head off of the little goblin thing that got a grip on my arm.

  The others hiss and scream as if they had been cut. They jump away from me and onto Raiska.

  One bites into the flesh of his neck. It digs its long, sharp nails into Raiska’s hand. the other bites into his arm and grabs hold of the scythe.

  Everything around us is utter chaos. People are coming to see what is happening, taking one look, and running away screaming. The children have all run away. I absently hope that they will manage to find their parents.

  Raiska grabs hold of the one on his neck. He tries to get his scythe around, but the one holding his arms digs more nails into his forearm, and I see the nails poke out the other end. The little monstrous thing has completely skewered Raiska’s flesh with its nails. Blood is gushing out everywhere and staining the already stained carpet.

  I watch in frozen horror. I’m on the ground trembling. My back is pressed up against the bookshelf. I watch as Raiska claws at, punches, and tries to head butt the little things. The third one is tearing into his leg and ripping skin off in sheets.

  This is all my fault. I should have believed him. I should have gone through the fucking portal. He warned me this would happen, and I wanted to live with my head in the sand instead of letting him protect me in the way he knew would be best.