Alien claw, p.1
Alien Claw, page 1
Table of Contents
NOTICES
ALIEN CLAW
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TRIGGER WARNINGS
CHAPTER ONE | Tok
CHAPTER TWO | Taylor
CHAPTER THREE | Taylor
CHAPTER FOUR | Tok
CHAPTER FIVE | Taylor
CHAPTER SIX | Tok
CHAPTER SEVEN | Taylor
CHAPTER EIGHT | Tok
CHAPTER NINE | Taylor
CHAPTER TEN | Tok
CHAPTER ELEVEN | Taylor
CHAPTER TWELVE | Tok
CHAPTER THIRTEEN | Taylor
CHAPTER FOURTEEN | Tok
CHAPTER FIFTEEN | Taylor
CHAPTER SIXTEEN | Tok
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | Taylor
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | Tok
CHAPTER NINETEEN | Taylor
CHAPTER TWENTY | Tok
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | Taylor
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | Tok
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE | Taylor
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | Tok
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE | Taylor
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX | Tok
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN | Taylor
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT | Tok
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE | Taylor
CHAPTER THIRTY | Taylor
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE | The Stone Sky God
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO | Tok
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE | Taylor
NOTICES
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, used, transmitted, or shared via any means without express authorization from the author, except for small passages and quotations used for review and marketing purposes.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.
Alien Claw Copyright © 2022 Veronica Doran
ALIEN CLAW
Fated Mates of the Sea Sand Warlords
Book Ten
By Ursa Dax
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks, as always, to every reader, reviewer, and new friend on this journey. And to my husband, RSH, and my parents, who support everything I do.
TRIGGER WARNINGS
Contains consensual primal play/chasing. Alien/inhuman hero. Consensual biting, fang, venom play. Depictions of fighting and violence, including gun violence and non-lethal electrocution/being stunned by an electrical weapon. Mentions of deaths of family members.
CHAPTER ONE
Tok
“Not you too.”
Hakah Gog levelled his blue gaze at me under the star-pricked sky. We stood just beyond the edge of the settlement. Endless, waterless sand stretched behind him. The desert men called this place the Sea Sands. But it was nothing like the Bitter Sea of our homeland. Although, at night they seemed more alike than during the day. The silver-skinned night turned the sand into shifting shades of burnished indigo and black, similar in colour to the water I knew so well. But these Sea Sands lacked the movement and the liquid moon-gleam of Bitter Sea water.
“It is true, Hakah. I have a mate from among the new women.” I stated it flatly and plainly. I would not apologize for the waves of fate, though this news may have been paining my Hakah. Bitter Sea men having foreign mates had caused him immeasurable grief in the past – first, in losing his brother. And more recently, in dealing with the rogue warrior Grim.
The Hakah, my people’s king, growled low in his throat, throwing his great head to look behind me. I turned to look, too, seeing the craggy wall of the Cliffs of Uruzai there, the tents of the settlement like little stems of sea grass dotting the sand in front of it.
“She is here?” Hakah Gog asked.
My claws flexed involuntarily at my sides, my spikes tensing along my spine and tail.
“Yes.”
Oh, yes. She was here. Visions of her before I’d arrived here had plagued me. And now, slices of her in reality plagued me further. I was plagued, instead of buoyed up with potent joy, because of one stark and terrible fact:
The new women did not feel the mate bond.
“I suppose that is good, then. I will not lose my best warrior and my right claw for days the way we lost Grim.”
I grunted at that. Grim had been released from his chains only a few days ago. He was still being disciplined – he had strict orders about when and how he could leave the settlement and was under constant supervision when away from the cliffs. He had been chained, and was being supervised thus, because he had disappeared from his duties to find and protect his mate out on the sands. She was the human soldier we had been hunting, and instead of turning her over to our king for questioning, he’d fled with her.
Once again, my spikes prickled, this time at the thought of my own mate being hunted. Though I had been the one to beat and drag Grim back here for his betrayal of duty, I understood everything he’d done. And if I’d been in his position, I could not guarantee that I would have acted any differently, despite being the right claw to the king.
But I did not need to worry about such things. My mate was here and safe. And now that Grim’s mate Thaleria had given us more information – confirmed that as of now, there were no other human soldiers to hunt – I could finally find some time to speak with her.
Find some time to win her love to me.
Hopefully...
No. There was no hope. I’d never hoped for anything a day in my warrior’s life. I only planned and executed those plans and succeeded. Always. My position as right claw to the Hakah proved this, as did the dozens of grogar pearls pierced into my shaft, one for every victory against a great beast of the sea. So in this most worthy and precious of feats, I would not hope. I would win.
Would I not?
Something twisted in my guts.
Not only was I feeling hope for the first time but also...
Doubt.
I did not like it.
If Grim and Kor could win their mates, then so will I.
Grim, despite his recent foolishness in the eyes of our king, was a strong and courageous warrior, so it was not so surprising he’d won his mate to him. Kor, too, was brave and noble and was nephew to the king, though smaller and not as strong as one of the full-blooded Bitter Sea men. If a smaller, weaker warrior like him could win a new woman’s heart, then a huge and hardened warrior such as myself should have no trouble...
In theory.
But so much about the new women defied all experience, all philosophizing.
It would only be in action that I would find out.
“Now that our hunt for the enemy warriors has ended, I will pursue her. I will make her mine.” I said the words to my king, but even more as a vow to myself. It was not often I made such a command of my own destiny in front of the Hakah. But in this, I could not be swayed, nor would I be ordered otherwise. I would still undertake whatever duties were assigned to me, though I would no longer solely be pledged to my king.
But to her.
“I trust you to keep your head in this matter, Tok. But then again, I would have said the same for my brother. And look where that belief has led me.”
A note of dark pain lanced Hakah Gog’s words. His brother Kon had left our island many ages ago to claim his mate, a desert woman named Jara. They had lived together for some time and had their son, Kor, together. But Kon had never returned to our island, our waters. And he’d died before Hakah Gog ever got to see him again. When Grim had disappeared to find his own foreign mate, it had brought back all that old and bloodied grief.
“Fine, Tok,” he said. “Go. You have no other duties this night. Go attend to her. Just make sure you remain ready to be called upon whenever I may need you. Just because there are no other foreign soldiers to hunt now does not mean the threat facing us no longer looms.”
That threat, of course, was more of the foreign soldiers coming down upon us. I pounded my brow ridges with fierce fists. I would always be ready to fight any enemy. No one would threaten this world.
Especially not now that it had my mate in it.
Hakah Gog turned from me, casting his regal gaze out over the dunes. I took my leave from him, turning and swiftly heading for the settlement. My instinct was to fall to all fours and lope back as quickly as possible, but I refrained from doing so. All of the new women and desert people walked and ran on two legs. When my kind ran on all fours, it seemed to unnerve them for some reason. Well, I would give my tiny mate no reason to turn from me. I would approach her as she was used to – on two legs.
But I still moved as quickly as I could on those two legs.
Soon I was past the guards that lingered at the settlement’s edge, past the outer ring of unmated warriors’ tents. Before long, I was in the heart of the settlement.
Acrid smoke filled my nostrils, and I forced down a growl. The desert people cooked their meat with smoke and heat. I would have found it utterly repulsive if I had not noticed my own mate enjoying her meat this way. If she liked her meat that way, there had to be some value in it.
I still had not been able to bring myself to eat the meat so charred myself, though.
The evening fire in the centre of the settlement was dying down, mostly embers and little licks of flame here and there. I searched the faces of those seated at the fire hungrily, that hunger mixing with disappointment to see that my mate was not there.
There were desert people – mostly males, and a few females. The children were missing – put to bed for the night, perhaps. A few new women sat at the fire as well, my mate not among them. No Bitter Sea men sat the re. They were either on guard or patrolling duties or in their cliff caves for the night. The smoke and fire had little appeal for our kind.
I turned from the fire, breathing deeply through my nostrils, trying to locate her scent. But the cursed smoke was making it too difficult. Scent or not, I knew where she likely was at this hour.
In the new women’s tent.
No unmated male warrior was allowed in there. I’d never even seen a glimpse inside – I’d never been around at the right moment to see its flap opened. As such, it took on a sacred, almost forbidden air, and I ground my fangs wondering what was happening in the tent’s dark structure. What was my mate doing at this moment? Something mysterious and unknown to me, some strange ritual or habit of the new women? Or was she asleep in there? Soft and defenceless, her brown hair strewn about her, her body naked and -
The tent flap flew to the side and a small figure stepped out.
Not just any figure, I realized with a low hiss.
Hers.
CHAPTER TWO
Taylor
Outside the tent, I took a deep breath. The cool air bit down my throat and against my skin after the stuffiness of the tent. Despite the heat on this planet during the day, the temperature dropped wildly at night. A shiver went through me, and I clutched my bundle of clothing closer to my chest. It wasn’t cold enough to say it was right bitter out here, but without my jacket, I was starting to feel a wee bit o’chill.
I wouldn’t be cold for long. A smile spread across my face as I thought of where I was going.
The hot springs.
It was one of the few things that made this planet liveable. And frankly fucking speaking, this planet seemed like it was trying to kill us every other bloody day. So a little bit liveable was saying a lot.
I wiggled my bare toes in the cold grainy sand, shivering again.
But this shiver felt... Different. Not just temperature-related. My skin prickled, and goose pimples erupted on my arms.
I glanced over at the remains of the evening fire, unable to shake the sudden sensation that someone was watching me. But no one over there seemed to be paying me any mind at the moment. A few warriors moved between tents, but none of them looked my way long enough to have caused such a weird, tingly, someone’s got their eyes on you lass feeling. I wiggled, transferring my weight from foot to foot, trying to dance the weird feeling right out of my bones. And when that didn’t work, I took a breath and ignored it, hurrying towards the cliff wall behind all the tents.
There were untold entrances into these cliffs. Hundreds of tunnels and caves and valleys. Our geographer/cartographer, Priya, had been working on a set of maps to keep it all straight. She and I spent a lot of time in the tent together – her working on the maps, me working on my catalogue of everything that had happened here so far.
What else was a history major who grew up writing endlessly in journals to escape the Scottish highland rain to do? Nobody had picked me (or been picked for me, I supposed) as a mate, so it wasn’t like I was spending my time doing anybody, either. So I spent my days writing – detailing the events of our time here, my reactions to it, everything. Everything that might be useful someday, to somebody, down the line.
Or if not useful, I hope it at least entertained. I mean, the story of a bunch of lasses getting dropped on an alien planet and all kinds of shenanigans unfolding as a result? Who wouldn’t find that entertaining?!
But I didn’t need my writings or Priya’s maps to know where I was going right now. All of us humans knew the path to the hot springs by heart. We’d shocked the water-hating Sea Sand people with our obsession, though the big Bitter Sea lizardmen seemed to understand why we liked it so much. Apparently, the water was a little hotter than the huge reptilian warriors liked it, but they still made use of the hot springs anyway.
Not at the same time as us humans, though. It wasn’t an official rule or anything, but there was this unspoken law that nobody had needed to speak aloud to understand and follow: No big alien lizards coming in to bathe when the human lasses were in there all rudey nudey.
If there were any lizard warriors in there right now, I’d just turn around and go back to the tent. More than likely they’d leave the water for me, but I didn’t want to kick anybody out of there. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that nobody is there.
I hurried through the settlement, past the evening fire, ignoring the growing feeling of eyes on my back. Even if someone was creeping on me, everybody here had treated us well. And despite the tensions in the various groups, we’d all grown into a pretty good team, united in the goal to protect this planet from whatever the human governments may have had in store for us. So if somebody was watching me hurry off to have a soak, it really didn’t matter all that much. These alien warriors, both the Sea Sand and Bitter Sea ones, were brutal and strong, but that strength had so far only been aimed at each other when tensions ran hot. Never at us human lasses.
The entrance into the cliffs that led to the pools was in a little nook area that Serena’s mate, Xyan, used as a weapons forge during the day. Now that it was night, the forge was empty – the fire kicked-over with sand and the stone table empty. I moved around the stone table towards the looming crack in the cliffs. Normally, that crack would have led into a pitch-dark tunnel. But we’d illuminated the way inside with small battery-powered lanterns retrieved from the ship’s cargo bay. There was one small lantern right at the entrance to the tunnel, and more inside, casting silvery light upon the stone walls. Like will-o-the-wisps, they glowed, leading me forward through the tunnel into a wide-open cave. This cave was large with high stone ceilings that arched up into a natural skylight. Stars and asteroids tossed their light down through the opening, adding to the glow of the lanterns here.
But this wasn’t the cave with the hot springs. That was further in.
Another lantern glowed on the sandy floor on the other side of the cave, marking the entrance to the next tunnel I needed to follow. I crossed the cave to it, then forged further into the tunnel, once again following the lanterns on the ground. I listened carefully as I got closer to the cave with the hot springs, trying to figure out ahead of time if there were any of the lizardmen lingering about. But I heard nothing, and when I emerged into the cave with the hot springs, I saw that they were unoccupied.
“Dead brilliant,” I said happily to myself, overjoyed to see I’d get to take my late-night bath after all. Now that I’d happened upon the empty space, I wasn’t too worried about a lizard warrior stumbling upon me in here. With their superhuman (super alien?) senses of smell and hearing, they’d know I was in here before they even cleared the tunnel.
I placed my clean clothing on the stone floor beside me, then shimmied out of what I was wearing. We’d set lanterns up around the perimeter of this cave. The light looked smokey and strange in the billowing steam, but it still allowed me to see what I was doing well enough.
This cave was smaller than the previous one I’d just come through, but it was large enough to house three hot springs. The largest heated pool was right in front of me, at ground level. Behind it, the stony ground naturally rose up into two platforms of sorts, each with its own smaller heated pool. I didn’t feel like scrambling up there right now, so I walked forward, stepping into the large pool directly ahead. I shivered as the water heated my skin. Sighing, I continued forward, revelling in the feeling of the hot water licking up my legs to my thighs, my hips, my waist. I didn’t go to the centre of the hot spring where the water was deepest. Instead, I waded around the side until I found one of the flat stones that created a natural sort of bench in the water. I settled myself on it, the water coming up just past my breasts. I breathed out, long and low, enjoying the stillness and the steam. Tipping my head back against the stone and closing my eyes, I listened to the silence.
Only...
It wasn’t silence.
My head snapped forward, my eyes flying open at the sound of murderous claws scraping against stone. Through the steam, a hulking figure emerged from the tunnel into the cave. I gasped tightly, hunching further down into the water, crossing my arms over my chest beneath the surface. Modesty around an alien may have seemed kind of silly, and I didn’t feel it around the Sea Sand women. But this was no Sea Sand woman.
