Page 2 of Bound By the Alien King

Mind-strength is the greatest strength. Important for a warrior. Even more important for a king. Though he’d love to drop his waterlogged burden now and race to repair the salt damage, he could never forget that his duty to his people outweighed his own petty cravings.

Damir tightened the belt of control around his thoughts, forcing them into submission the way the moons forced the sea to their whims. He was so lost in his mind that he almost didn’t notice the tiny sound. It came again, barely audible over the distant crash of the waves below, a soft moan from the dead human in his arms.

Dead human? No. Now more like thrashing, wailing, writhing, slippery, alive human. She’d only been asleep or unconscious. Awake, she was like a fish fighting to return to the waves after being thrown onto the beach, every thrust of her form moving her away, away, away. She would die a second time if she managed to free herself from his arms.

“Quit, female! We are too high up,” he grit out in common tongue as he ignored the deep scratches she gouged down his shoulders and the backs of his arms. The djum blood would heal them, too, Corek’s favor in every drop. “If you want to swim so badly, I will fly closer to the surface where you won’t break your bones when you land.”

Thankfully, the human listened and stilled, though she still gasped like a fish out of water. “Flying?” she asked, and went limp again.

Salaan smite him, now what? He’d thought a dead human in his territory would be trouble for his kind, but a live one? That was far worse.

Chapter 2

Aster woke from a nightmare. She’d been kidnapped by a seabird and then dashed on the rocks like a mollusk, where she’d oozed and bled into the waves. The image was gruesome and unbefitting the imagination of a council lord’s daughter, likely to earn her punishment at the back of her father’s hand. She would tell no one of it, not even her dear nightmaid.

She rolled over in her warm bed, determined to go back to sleep, but immediately met resistance. Hot, solid resistance. She was too distracted to investigate because at the same time, a knifelike stab to her ribs reminded her that, while the seabird had been a dream, the reality was not far from it.

She had fled the colony, but the sea had stolen her chance of escape, battered her against the rocks, nearly frozen her to death. And someone or something had stolen her from its grip. She had a vague memory of flying, but that couldn’t be right. More likely she’d been dragged from the choppy waves by a dockworker.

Her broken rib complained when she tried to sit up. Aster moaned in pain, and someone stroked a hand down her back. Her bare back.

Her eyes flew open but met only darkness. She reached out and touched velvet. Immediately she knew it was not the deep red velvet of the wool skirts she’d been wearing, the ones that had nearly drowned her. It was living, breathing, warm velvet, velvet that rose and fell with someone’s breath.

The breath caught, and an accented growl warned, “Careful, female.” Though it spoke in common tongue, it was no human voice. Not a dockworker who saved her, then. A Nightborn.

She wasn’t in the colony but on the shore, she realized.

In the arms of a predator.

Naked.

She felt for her ribbons, and they were gone, too. Her ears rang with panic. “Where are my clothes?” It came out a squeak.

“Hung to dry. Too dangerous to light a fire. I had to warm you other ways.”

Heat flooded her face as she was suddenly conscious of velvet touching every bit of her front, its soft brushes against her breasts and the swell of her belly both soothing and stimulating. She scooted back as far as the arms that clasped her allowed. “We didn’t—? You didn’t—? My ribbons!” she burst out, unable to voice the question in her heart as her pulse swelled and choked her.

“With your clothes,” the deep voice grunted. “They were a beast to unknot. I nearly cut them with my claws.”

“They’re supposed to be!” Heat spilled down to her knees. She was so unsettled by the thought of male fingers working her ribbons, unpicking their complicated twists and bows and slowly unwinding them from her hips and thighs, that she hardly registered the word claws. “Did you ruin me?”

“Obviously not.”

Nothing was obvious. Aster dipped her fingers between her legs, testing for some telltale sign that she’d been changed by him. A slick wetness coated them, the secret kind that sometimes came from dreams or when she read stories of husbands kissing wives. Had he done this to her? Or was it her own wicked enjoyment at the thought of him seeing her ribbons?

Him.

He caught her wrist and inhaled, a slow, soft sound that made her skin prickle with awareness. Who was he? Her savior…or her captor?

All the stories she knew of Nightborn males were of their appetites. For violence. For females. And for blood. As this one had kept her alive and claimed to have no interest in ruining her, that left only one possibility. He’d saved her to feed from her.

An image flashed before her eyes in the pitch blackness, one of long, silvered canines sinking into the wrist he still gripped. To her shock, it was not one she wholly disliked.

“Who are you?” she asked, ears burning.

“Better if you don’t know.”

Aster knew male condescension when she heard it. On any other day in the colony she might have accepted his tone as the way things were, but this wasn’t the colony. This was a hole in the ground, judging by the scent of damp earth. The rules didn’t apply here.