Ensnared Bride Read online

  Ensnared Bride

  by

  Yamila Abraham

  Copyright © 2016 Yamila Abraham. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  DEAR FRIENDS, please don’t share this ebook online. Piracy has absolutely devastated my ability to make a living. I beg you to please not post this or any of my works online. I wouldn’t go so far as to ask this if it didn’t REALLY, REALLY HURT ME! Thanks so much to everyone who has supporting me with a legal purchase.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

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  Chapter 1

  “By my clock you should have 36 cores done,” Ducra said to Monica in perfect English. The alien overseer dumped the slave’s pile of pink luminescent saccus nut cores off the metal plate she’d piled them on.

  Monica continued struggling to remove the core she was working on without rupturing it (a ruptured core was a tr’sark zap). She didn’t know how many were on the plate. Each one she fell short of her quota was a zap.

  “…thirty-three, thirty-four…” Ducra put the last core back on the plate. “Thirty-five.” The alien’s pale yellow eyes narrowed at her.

  She gave a final gentle tug on her nut and the core popped free. Monica’s chest heaved with rapid breaths. Her thundering heart felt like it was going to erupt from her chest.

  Ducra took the final core and placed it in her collection bag. “Thirty-six.”

  Oh thank God!

  Fortunately Ducra wasn’t one of Monica’s crueler masters, who would shock her anyway just for fun. The red and purple hued alien seemed to see doling punishments as just another chore.

  “Empty your waste bucket before you go to sleep,” Ducra said. She placed Monica’s paper-wrapped food ration on her workstation and filled her metal pitcher with water. “Keep the stink down. We have visitors coming.”

  “Yes, serat,” Monica said with her head bowed. She waited for the alien to move on to the slave next to her before snatching the bundle.

  Monica gobbled what she assumed to be a clump of soggy ground beef. She downed the liter of tepid water with loud gulps. Once her thirst and hunger pains had been seen to she gathered the bucket she defecated in.

  The other two women in her small work area didn’t earn any shocks. Monica let her tightened shoulder muscles slacken when she heard Ducra exit the room.

  She brought her bucket to the sewer hole across the concrete floor. Another slave, Emory, came beside her to dump hers also.

  “Visitors, huh?” The bony blond woman in her fifties tipped her bucket into the hole. The stench that repelled upwards no longer bothered Monica. “Maybe it’s the Alliance?”

  “Why do you get your hopes up?” Monica said.

  She took her empty bucket back to her station. The cot behind her work stool was only half the length of her 5’ 6” body. She had to curl her knees to her stomach in order to fit.

  Nine days without a zap. Monica drew a deep breath of air into her slender frame. Keep it going. You may never have to feel that pain ever again. The pitiful hope didn’t raise her spirits, but at least it kept her from sinking any lower.

  She imagined herself swimming in an Olympic-sized pool until she drifted to sleep.

  Hours later high-pitched alien voices worked their way into her dream. She squinted in a state of half-wakefulness trying to make sense of the noise. Then something touched her hand.

  Monica jolted awake. Hovering over her cot were two tall pale green aliens with grotesquely long faces and glistening black eyes. Panic seized her at once, but then her morning amnesia faded. She remembered that she lived in a world where weird aliens were plausible.

  The beings, clad in long gray gowns with long arms jutting from draping sleeves, spoke to each other in high-pitched noises that seemed to echo from inside their own mouths.

  Monica stared at them, huddled against the wall. They’d pushed aside her work table to get to her. These must have been the visitors Ducra mentioned.

  “Let me taste your skin.”

  Monica’s eyes widened. The alien switched seamlessly to English.

  “Don’t!” A sick thud of horror hit the bottom of her stomach.

  The bald alien scowled. “It won’t hurt.” Its gangly arm lowered to clutch her wrist. An impossibly long tongue fell out of its mouth. The tip moistened her palm and then withdrew. It let her go to resume its chatter with the other alien. Monica assumed it was reporting what it had tasted.

  “Good friends,” Ducra said from behind them.

  They both turned and their gowns separated enough for Monica to see past them. Ducra was wearing a flouncy red dress, something that had belonged to an Earthling at some point. It fit her bulky muscles poorly.

  “May I present the Mek-lord, Javintore.”

  She stepped aside to reveal a towering Hax-Rah male, clad in a black shoulder mantle, a black cowl which hid his eyes, and low black pants that strained to hold bulging leg muscles. The rest of his red/purple flesh was bare. Monica’s eyes absorbed the regal nose, lips, and chin left exposed by the cowl, and then dripped down to thick muscular pectorals capped with dark pink nipples. From there her gaze lowered to his bare torso, catching the definition of his abs. She stopped at his low waste band, which had the darkening of pubic hair. The sides of his groin muscles made a V shape over his hips.

  Unnggghh.

  She realized he was the first pleasant sight she’d seen in the last ten years. The vision stirred up feelings she scarcely recognized. She thought her body had been long dead to desire. Years of torture made sex the furthest thing from her thoughts.

  “Wonderful,” one of the greenish aliens said. “There is no chance the Alliance is aware of your presence?”

  “Well,” Ducra said, “we had to make up an excuse for a ship as large as his being in orbit. We said he’s picking up energy cores for the robots. They’ve no idea why he’s really here. These underground bunkers are the perfect place for a meeting. The Alliance doesn’t even know they exist.”

  “Let’s hurry up, all the same.” This was Javintore. “I have a mission to get to.” His voice was baritone and husky, sending electricity down her spine with every word.

  “Come.” Ducra led the Mek-lord and the greenish aliens into the next room.

  Monica allowed herself a pleasurable shudder. She was now glad the disgusting aliens had woken her, despite still needing several more hours of sleep. She quickly faded back into oblivion.

  Chapter 2

  When she next woke, she worried the earlier interruption might have caused her to oversleep. She scrambled to her work station and warmed up her laser to harvest the cores.

  The greenish aliens entered the room talking to each other in their language. Monica ignored them. She lined up the easiest looking saccus nuts to start with.

  Long sickly green fingers clasped her wrist. Monica looked. The aliens had invaded her space once more. One of them was holding what looked like a pure black Fabergé egg on a small golden platter. It was something that could have been hiding in a
pocket of their gowns when they walked in.

  “Take this to the Mek-lord,” the one clutching her said.

  Monica gaped at them. “I have to start my work.”

  “What a good slave you are,” the one holding the platter said. “But we must give the Mek-lord and the overseer our gift, and it’s forbidden to present gifts directly.”

  Oh for fucks sake! “I don’t have time for this.”

  The first one started to pull her from her stool. “Your overseer will understand—but she will be vexed at you if we complain you would not help us.”

  Monica ground her teeth. Damn it! No matter what she did she’d end up with a tr’sark zap. Just the thought put tears at the back of her eyes.

  She stood and took the platter from the alien.

  “Tell them the Ali-aries asked you to give them this gift, with their fondest compliments.”

  “Fine.” She headed for the other room, measuring her angry steps so she wouldn’t knock over the stupid piece of shit.

  She had to lean it on her shoulder in order to open the door. The disgusting aliens should have helped her. When she looked back she realized they were gone.

  The exit was through a door beside her station which led to a key-coded elevator. She had no idea where the door she was now opening led to. Her hand trembled around the doorknob. Leaving the workroom was forbidden.

  Stupid fucking aliens.

  She entered a dark corridor that had concrete walls and exposed light bulbs lining the ceiling. Her stomach began to twist. She wasn’t supposed to be here and had no idea where to go.

  Monica knocked on the first metal door on one side of her. “Serat? Please forgive me…um, serat?” It was locked. She moved on toward the next door.

  A low murmur of voices made her look to the far end of the hall. That door was cracked open with light spilling out. She headed for it. As she grew closer the voices of Ducra and Javintore became audible.

  “The morons! They were unreasonable,” Ducra said.

  “Deliberately,” Javintore said. “They were never going to buy the robots.”

  “That’s what you believe? Why would they go to all this trouble then? Why would they risk angering us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The egg parted at a seam girdling its middle. A red glow spilled outward. Monica’s brow twitched. It does tricks?

  She got to the door and ignored the stupid thing to collect her nerves. Her slender hand pushed the metal door open.

  “Serat…please forgive me.”

  Ducra leaned forward to scowl towards the door. “Who is that?”

  Javintore was seated in front of the door with his cowl off. He had gleaming tresses of blue-black hair that spilled in sultry wisps over his shoulders. He met Monica’s eyes then his gaze dipped over her body.

  She didn’t want to imagine what he saw. What she could see of her own body was filthy and emaciated.

  She entered the room holding out the platter. “Please forgive me, serat.”

  Ducra’s scowl evaporated into a neutral expression. “A gift?”

  Javintore snatched it off the platter. “It’s a cluster bomb!”

  Ducra shoved past Monica in a desperate bolt for the corridor. “Korroth!”

  Monica found herself unable to move. Javintore threw the egg to the far end of the conference room and shoved her.

  “Run, girl!”

  She forced her legs to work, but got only two steps before gigantic arms scooped her off her feet. Her mind was unable to keep up with what was happening. The alien sprinted with her clasped tightly against his body.

  He ran fast enough to catch Ducra at the end of the corridor. Javintore thrust Ducra into the workroom. She tumbled on the concrete floor. The other two slaves looked up from their stations in shock.

  Javintore slammed the metal door closed behind them just a moment before the ear-ringing boom. The metal door bowed toward them, barely holding to its hinges.

  He set her down. Monica’s shaky legs could barely support her and her ears were ringing. She looked up to see the handsome alien’s angry grin.

  He laughed softly. “You desperate fool.”

  Monica gaped at him.

  “It wasn’t…I didn’t…”

  Ducra yanked her by a clump of her brown hair. The muscular female slapped her off her feet.

  When her head hit the ground she blacked out.

  Chapter 3

  Monica lolled awake in the floor of elevator leading up out of the bunker. Javintore picked her up and carried her into the government building on top. She’d been sure it was nighttime, but sunlight streamed through the high windows. She saw the tops of skyscrapers outside of them. Several were black and caved in from the invasion.

  This was Cincinnati, right? She was unsure. She’d grown up in Ohio and the aliens took her only a short distance to the slave camp.

  A Hax-Rah woman, significantly smaller than Ducra, walked up to them. Javintore began to speak to her in some alien language.

  “I’m sorry, Mek-lord. I had to take out my Kras-din chip so I could fit all these stupid Earth languages,” she said. “Do you have the chip for English?”

  “Yes.”

  He placed Monica on the floor. Her head was spinning. She had to clutch his arm to keep from falling.

  “Run a healing trode over this slave’s head and face, and make sure she’s guarded. She’s another bomber. The bunker is almost completely destroyed.”

  Another?

  The woman gasped. “The overseer Ducra—”

  “She’s fine. I caught it in time to get away.” He nudged Monica over to her. “Don’t punish her. I’m getting this quadrant’s overlord.”

  The woman yanked her by her arm. “Let’s go, you disgusting di’tak! Oh—you wait until the overlord gets here!”

  She was brought to a small clinic and handed off to another woman who attached leads to the bump on her head and the reddened mark on her face. There was a hum and a feeling of warmth, then both places ceased throbbing. She patted her finger over the back of her head when the lead was removed. Her bump was gone. It wasn’t even sore.

  The attendant left her on the examination bed and locked the door.

  For the first hour she spent alone Monica stared blankly into the room with numbness in her middle. She didn’t attempt to think. The shock was keeping horrifying realizations at bay.

  After three hours she’d collected herself enough to no longer be numb. That’s when the reality hit her. She was going to be tortured.

  She bent forward to bury her face in her hands. Why couldn’t she shut her mind off to the pain? Why did it have to destroy her both physically and mentally?

  She’d just wanted to make her quota and go another day without punishment. Now everything was ruined.

  Why had that Hax-Rah man saved her? Things would have been so much easier if she’d just died in that explosion.

  The attendant who’d healed her unlocked the door and looked in. She snorted through large nostrils and walked away. Moments later an elderly Hax-Rah man entered with dark blue liver spots on his bald head. One of his hands clutched the crook of a shimmering chrome cane. The other held a tr’sark stick.

  Monica felt the color drain from her face.

  The Mek-lord Javintore entered behind the man.

  The elder Hax-Rah pulled a chair on wheels in front of her. He sat close enough to be able to attack her leg with the tr’sark. Monica felt like bugs crawled under her skin.

  “I’ve several questions to ask you,” the older man said. “Answer at once, and speak the truth, or you will feel the burn of the tr’sark.”

  Her breaths quickened.

  “Who was it that contacted you?”

  She shook her head. Her throat had tightened, but she forced out a word. “What?”

  He shocked her. The stick touched her shin for less than a second, but every nerve in her body became electrified with violent agony. Monica screamed for longer than s
he was shocked. The pain was all the more unbearable due to her long reprieve from it.

  She curled forward with her fists crossed against her chest. Tears wet both her cheeks. She couldn’t force herself to stop trembling.

  “You know what I’m asking you. Don’t feign ignorance.”

  He zapped her again before she could fathom a response. Monica relived her turmoil just as thoroughly as the first time. She wailed with sobs after her scream.

  “Who. Contacted. You.”

  “No one! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  She bent her legs away from him. He lunged up, but Javintore snatched the tr’sark from him. The elder Hax-Rah glared at him.

  “Give her time to answer.”

  The older man scoffed.

  Monica swallowed the thick lump in her throat. She stared at Javintore with wide eyes.

  “The other three suicide cluster bombs went off fine,” Javintore said to her. “Those slaves are dead.”

  Monica blinked.

  “You’re the only bomber who survived.”

  The older man fumed. “I know not how.”

  “I’d heard about two other blasts before I got there,” Javintore said. “That’s the only reason I knew she had a bomb. I had enough time to run.”

  “The gods shine their light on you.”

  “It was those green aliens,” Monica said through a choked throat. “The Ali-aries. They told me to—”

  “You know full well those weren’t real Ali-aries!” The older man darted his head to Javintore. “Let me shock her!”

  Javintore grumbled through his nostrils while keeping his eyes locked to her. “Give her to me.”

  What? What the Hell is going on!

  “But we know nothing!”

  “She might not know anything. She may have been ensnared.”

  “Ha!”

  “Your methods won’t get us anywhere. You can’t threaten someone who wants to die. I’ll get the answers in my own way.”

  The older man hoisted himself up from the chair with his cane. His face was twisted in a disgusted sneer. “You’re a sickening excuse for a Hax-Rah! The High Command will hear of this.” He went to the door and exited.