BEAUTY AND THE ALIEN BEAST: GALAXY ALIEN WARRIORS Read online

  BEAUTY AND THE ALIEN BEAST

  GALAXY ALIEN WARRIORS

  Sedona Venez

  Contents

  1. Ella

  2. Ella

  3. Teken

  4. Teken

  5. Ella

  6. Teken

  7. Teken

  8. Ella

  9. Teken

  10. Ella

  11. Teken

  12. Ella

  13. Teken

  14. Ella

  15. Teken

  16. Ella

  17. Teken

  18. Ella

  19. Ella

  20. Teken

  21. Ella

  22. Teken

  23. Ella

  24. Teken

  25. Ella

  26. Teken

  27. Ella

  28. Teken

  29. Ella

  About the Author

  OTHER TITLES BY SEDONA VENEZ

  Excerpt: Taming the Beast

  Excerpt: Claimed by Her Two Alphas

  Copyright © 2018 Beauty and the Alien Beast by Sedona Venez

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published in the United States of America

  This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  1

  Ella

  My eyes snapped open as I woke from the weirdest nightmare I had ever experienced in my life.

  A moment later, I discovered I was in a cage. Pale metal bars, very shiny and set in a wide mesh pattern, surrounded me on five sides. The sixth was a narrow door and frame made from some thick, transparent material. The bottom, made of the same stuff, was on casters and seemed locked in place.

  Oh God, what the fuck is this?

  I was too uncomfortable for it to be a dream. My knees were tucked too hard against my full breasts. My belly, back, and shoulders ached stiffly.

  My heart started to pound with terror, and it took all I had to keep quiet and not panic.

  I’ve been kidnapped… but by whom?

  Using the bars, I pulled myself to my feet and felt my joints crack from being balled up on the bottom of the cage. Seeing a small fold-down seat attached to the inside of the cage, I flipped it down, perching my ass on it uncomfortably, barely fitting a cheek and a half on the damn thing.

  Fear died back a little as I caught my breath, eyes still blurry. I felt off-kilter.

  Have I been drugged?

  I looked down at myself and realized the tank top and fleece sleep shorts I remembered going to bed in were gone. Now I was dressed in a translucent cream-and-gold gown that accented my dark skin perfectly and clung to my ample curves. Beneath the dress was a gold harness that held up my large breasts, while a gold-belted loincloth matching the gown was the only thing that covered my ass—barely.

  Shit. I’ve been kidnapped and turned into eye candy.

  To make matters worse, I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten here. My last clear memory was of dozing off under my fluffy comforter with an open book on my chest.

  I gave myself a quick once-over. No injuries, but I could tell I’d been bathed, perfumed, and my thick, curly hair was now pulled back from my face, allowing the tendrils to tumble loose down my back. My nails were clean and gilded. My feet were bare, and someone had painted my toenails gold.

  What the hell? I felt like an involuntary model in a lingerie show.

  I looked out through the bars at a gleaming, well-lit space with a mirrored ceiling, shiny black floor, and walls made up entirely of flat-screen panels.

  For a moment, I looked up at my reflection. I was covered in sparkly gold dust, with more of the glittery substance coating my lips and eyelids.

  I focused back on the walls. Shimmering golden lettering in a language I didn’t know scrolled across some of the panels, and other surfaces displayed scenes of a beautiful, pristine landscape. Drinking it all in, I tried to glean some information on where I was being held.

  The scenes being shown on the walls didn’t look like Earth.

  My stomach plummeted.

  The scape depicted towering, conical mountains and a purple-tinged sky set with a small blue-white sun. A cluster of four jewel-colored moons rode the track of a faint, shimmering Saturn-like ring. In the foreground, there was a shining city with slim towers composed of a reflective metal-like surface studded with multicolored lights. And a flock of heavy-bodied, alien-looking four-legged birds soared through the air.

  My body shook, and the dizziness intensified.

  Oh God… am I dreaming? Or… am I really on an alien world?

  I shut my eyes, trying to gather my shattered memories.

  Okay… think, Ella…

  I remembered lying in bed at Mom’s cabin upstate, where I’d come to enjoy one of the last warm weekends of the year. I had been sleepy from too many glasses of wine and a lot of good food, so I’d decided to go to bed earlier than usual. My mind locked on to those memories of normalcy.

  I smiled slightly just thinking about Mom. Coming up to the cabin with her had done a lot to help me decompress from a long week of work in Manhattan. She and I had spent hours just sitting on the porch, talking and sipping wine while quietly regretting that summer had faded. We shared hilarious yet nostalgic stories about Dad, who had been gone three years now.

  Of course, true to form, Mom had asked if I was happy being single. It had been the subtlest, most easygoing sort of pressure I was used to, so I didn’t complain. Mom just didn’t get why I hadn’t dated in years, and she refused to accept my insistence that I just plain didn’t have time.

  At twenty-nine years old, I’d made my career a priority, and I didn’t have time for the bullshit drama associated with dating in Manhattan. I had stopped looking for a Sunday-afternoon man in Saturday-night places. It didn’t help that I was picky as hell and was simply exhausted of suited, thirtysomething men who were still trying to fuck everything that moved and wanted nothing to do with relationships. I wanted something “real” with a partner that was interested in me. A man I’d feel safe with at all times and who could accept me as is, not constantly trying to upgrade or improve me.

  I closed my eyes, leaning against the bars, trying to remember more about last night. We had retired early, maybe nine o’clock. I sat up a while in my room, working on my curriculum for my next public health seminar—a presentation on the real effects of health care legislation in the Tri-State area over the last ten years. I’d drifted off with one of my reference books on my chest, still sorting facts and figures in my head.

  My breath hitched when I recalled how I’d gotten here…

  I was lying in bed, sleepy as hell, when a faint light shined through my bedroom windows. Yawning, I rolled away from the illumination, determined to grab some rest while I could.

  The light got brighter.

  I mashed my face into my pillow, desperately trying to get some sleep.

  Then shit got so weird and scary when I was plucked right off the bed by some invisible force. I screamed, but there was no sound.

  I tried to move my limbs, but I was paralyzed while my body floated through the air and right out the open second-story window.

  My vision blurred from the bright glare before I felt a bruising pressure against my body, as though the energy were trying to skin me alive.

  My heart raced as I screamed again, and again, there was no sound. The light flashed several times before I felt myself floating lower and lower until the force against my body released.

  I was free… sort of.

  I stared at my surroundings in disbelief.

  This was my worst nightmare come true.

  I was inside a tiny metal room with no doors.

  On my hands and knees, I scuttled around like a cornered animal because there was no doubt in my mind what had just happened…

  I’d been abducted by aliens.

  2

  Ella

  Think.

  I dug the heel of my hand into my temple.

  What happened next?

  I vaguely recollected waking up, groggy and bound to a floating gurney with two figures—aliens—flanking each side. The creatures were half my size and wore dark-gray matte jumpsuits. Each had different-colored skin—one gray, the other green—but they both had enormous heads with almond-shaped black eyes and a tiny mouth that emitted low, unrecognizable sounds every time it moved.

  Am I remembering this right? Or is my mind playing tricks on me?

  Frankly, I didn’t know what was real anymore. Memories floated through my head in bits and pieces.

  Did I really see the aliens puffing away on sticks that had glowed various colors while billowing drifts of pungently sweet mist? And did the green creature remove my earrings, replacing them with a pair of pale-gold disks?

  Yes. That had to be real because as soon as the green alien clicked the small disks into place, the faint warbling sounds they made suddenly sounded like perfect English. And even though their voices were squeaky, like cartoon characters, I distinctly remembered their conversation…

  “Is that one of the new model translators?” the gray alien asked the green one as I lay there listening, staring up at the mirrored surface of the ceiling that reflected the entire area of the room. I tried to move, but I was frozen in place and not in control of my body—they were.

  The chain-smoking aliens continued chattering in bored tones like a couple of lab technicians.

  The green alien replied, “Just the receivers. I’ll have to put the Earthling back under for the throat unit. Let’s give that a minute. She’s still recovering from the last jolt we gave her.”

  My eyes tracked him in the shiny ceiling as he toddled across the cavernous lab to a worktable jutting from the wall and started poking around at the tools laid out on it.

  “Uh, well… Oh, fish crap. Bellbucz? Where’s the tranquilizer wand?”

  The gray alien was named Bellbucz?

  “You’re the head med tech,” Bellbucz snapped. “I don’t touch your stuff. Where did you leave it this time, Varbec?” he asked before blowing an extra-large puff of vapor as he got up reluctantly.

  “I don’t know! Come help me. We’re arriving at Planet Omers soon, and the earthling needs to be ready. They’re starting to condition the new batch of humans tomorrow, and we need to make our quota.”

  Humans?

  Alarm flooded my system. I wanted to scream… fight… run away… but I couldn’t do anything but lie there immobile due to whatever they did to keep me stationary.

  “All right. All right,” Bellbucz answered before joining Varbec. “Are you sure you calibrated the human’s new translator unit correctly?”

  “Of course. The earthling is worthless if she can’t understand her new owner’s commands.”

  My new owner? Oh sweet baby Jesus… the aliens are trafficking humans—aka earthlings—and I’m going to be sold like cattle.

  Varbec continued. “My mate just birthed twenty hungry younglings. And if I don’t get paid, I can’t buy food, which means they’ll eat me instead.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first Reticulan to get eaten by your younglings,” Bellbucz replied at little too matter-of-fact.

  “Quiet, fool!” Varbec barked. “We’ll get paid if we configure her correctly. She’s a prime mating vessel… the kind that will go straight to the Omers for conditioning, then sold to the Wulfaen Gladiators to rut with.”

  Mating vessel? Conditioning? And what the hell is a Wulfaen Gladiator?

  Bellbucz hissed, “I almost feel sorry for the weak humans. The four-armed Gladiators are brutal, disgusting, and hideous when they shift into their furry beasts.”

  I swallowed hard. Four arms? Furry beasts?

  “I agree,” Varbec said. “But at least they don’t fuck their females in beast form, which we can’t say about the Omers.” He snorted. “A sexual mating with the horned Omers would kill the females very painfully. The hard shell at the tip of their staff would tear the females apart inside. They would bleed out, and the pain would be excruciating. I wouldn’t even wish it upon an enemy.”

  My stomach rolled with panic.

  Bellbucz nodded slowly. “The Earthlings are lucky that our physical exam of the first human female we abducted confirmed they are not capable of breeding with the Omers or giving them sexual relief.”

  Varbec replied, “It is good that we finally convinced the idiot Omers that since the Gladiators no longer have females, the human slaves might be worth something to the Wulfaen.”

  “The slaves might be the key to saving the Gladiator race from extinction,” Bellbucz retorted. “Which means more pay for us. Too bad we still can’t cut the Omers out of the transaction and do business directly with the Gladiators ourselves.”

  “I am working on a way,” Varbec answered. “But it will take time to get an audience with the alphas of the Gladiators. My sources tell me there is conflict among the Gladiators on whether they should buy the earthlings. Some nonsense about them not wanting to force the humans into mating with their males.” He paused. “They are a proud race… Too proud, if you ask me, given that they’re facing eventual extinction if they don’t find a race of females to breed with their Gladiators.”

  Bellbucz laughed before saying, “Barbaric idiots.”

  “Yes, they are,” Varbec conceded. “Even when their own attempts to find suitable females from other alien races have proven fruitless, they still hesitate to buy the humans.”

  “Maybe that is why they hesitate,” Bellbucz said, “because they don’t think the humans are the answer to their problem.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Varbec snapped. “Our data shows that at least the earthlings are sexually compatible with the Gladiators, so they can pass them around to their males for rutting.”

  Fear struck me deeply.

  “Gladiators don’t share their females,” Bellbucz said.

  Varbec snapped, “Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.”

  I heard something else being jostled around, then Varbec said, “Let’s get back to the matter at hand—getting this female ready. The calibration is fine on the receivers. These humans have simple auditory centers in those squishy little brains of theirs. I’m just worried the impatient Omers will forget to install the right power crystal once we deliver her. They’ve done it twice already. The wrong one will slowly fry the circuits, and then she will not be able to communicate with the male she ends up with.”

  They both came back over, dragging some huge cart with them.

  “Don’t we have a purple-grade crystal here?” Bellbucz started searching through the cart.

  “No. That’s the problem with the sudden huge demand for female earthlings. The Omers are greedy and are ordering them too fast, but they don’t pay us enough up front, so we always run out of supplies.” Varbec’s voice dripped with resentment. “I can’t wait to get to Planet Omers so we can get paid.”

  I must have drifted off in the middle of their strange conversation because I didn’t remember anything after that. But now, mulling over the aliens’ dialogue, I touched my throat and felt a small tender spot just over my voice box.

  This is it. This is real. I’ve been abducted by aliens.

  And I’m going to be “conditioned” by horned aliens called “Omers” and then forced to have sex with “Wulfaen Gladiators” who turn into furry beasts.

  Fuck. My. Life.

  I was terrified but had to keep my shit together to cope with the situation and figure out a way back home.

  Glancing around the room, I thought it was strange that I was alone in a space that was so huge my cage took up very little of it. And then there were all the images on the walls of an awe-inspiring alien world.

  Am I already on Planet Omers? And can I survive here if I manage to escape? Eat the food? Breathe the air?

  As I stared at the shifting images, one thing I noticed was the huge swaths of wilderness between the shining cities, trees the size of skyscrapers and bizarre vegetation. And here I was, a city girl born and bred, with absolutely no experience in wilderness survival.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. First, I had to escape and then figure out a way back to Earth.

  My first objective was to find out who the hell the Omers and Wulfaen were and then show them they’d messed with the wrong damn woman. My second was to negotiate my freedom, which seemed like a long shot at best. In any event, I wasn’t going down without a fucking fight. And I was going to survive and find a way out of here.

  My head snapped in the direction of the door that opened across the showroom. A whole panel of the wall simply slid aside, letting in a pair of very tall figures. They were speaking to each other in rumbling, musical voices with a faint, unfamiliar accent.