Draco an alien warrior r.., p.1
Draco: An Alien Warrior Romance, page 1
DRACO
AN ALIEN WARRIOR ROMANCE
HATTIE JACKS
Copyright © 2023 by Hattie Jacks
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover: Reva Designs
Editing: Polaris Editing
Created with Vellum
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All my thanks go to everyone who believed in DRACO and backed it as a Kickstarter.
In particular I would like to thank the following backers:
Emilie Kunz
Chance C. Hightower
Hillary E Spencer
Natasha Wimmer
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CONTENTS
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Draco
Amber
Epilogue
Amber
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Also by Hattie Jacks
Just who is this Hattie Jacks anyway?
AMBER
The blank white wall in front of me is not the worst of my problems.
It’s the sound from behind me, part snarl, part guttural horror. Wet, sharp, and as I’ve already seen, emanating from something with far too many limbs and eyes.
If it wasn’t for the pain in the cuts on my arms and legs it has already inflicted, this could be a nightmare brought on by too much cheese.
But it is absolutely not a nightmare. This is completely real and most probably deadly. I slam my hands on the wall, leaving red streaks from my blood as I run my fingers over the surface. This can’t possibly be a dead end.
It can’t possibly end like this.
The screechy snarl comes again, only louder, and although I don’t want to, I look over my shoulder to see the thing.
Bright reds, greens, and iridescent blues. It could be beautiful like a butterfly. Only it’s not. It is bladder emptying terrible.
I scrabble at the wall, and my finger finds a small depression which I push.
The ground gives way. I hear a long, low howl as I drop into a chute. Looking up, all I can see is spiny legs, scrabbling but failing to follow me.
I’ve escaped.
So, when I land and the wind is expelled from my body, the first thing I do is laugh. This is not a nightmare. This is my life.
I think the creatures that chase me are aliens. I’ve been running from them for…I don’t know how long. Given the healed and healing injuries I have, it could be two weeks, maybe. I have no concept of time. From the moment I woke up suddenly, gasping, screaming, and believing he had found me, caught me, taken me, to the realization that it actually was much, much worse.
Not only do aliens exist, but they really do abduct humans. There’s just a lot less probing involved.
Instead there is an alien maze, and I’m the mouse.
My only reprieve is that, so far, whatever is controlling this place seems to want me alive. But my near death experiences are getting fractionally closer every time. I’m beginning to think anything would be better than this place, even being back on Earth, in my old life, racing around my home town of Newcastle as a photographer for our local paper.
Dealing with all the rituals I had to go through in order to ensure he didn’t find me, my ex who decided he just couldn’t accept that we were over and had to continue to stalk me across the North East of England, from city to city, town to town. Until I no longer had a home, or friends, or family. Rituals which have become singularly useless to me now.
I finally catch my breath and check my surroundings. I’m back in a cell. One door, no obvious windows, even though I always feel like I’m being watched. Metal walls. Metal floor.
I look up at the ceiling. The hole I dropped through has gone.
There is no escape for this mouse. I’m not sure there ever was. Despite myself, despite my intentions not to cry, a tear slips from beneath my eyelid, running over my face and dripping into my ear.
And then the floor gives way again. This time, because I was on my back, I’m falling headfirst down a chute, and I twist as much as I can, because I refuse to die here, and if I do, it’s not going to be by dropping on my head.
This fall is taking a long time, the chute less of a dead drop and more of a slide, allowing me to finally turn myself around. Ahead, I see a block of light, rapidly getting larger as I barrel towards it. I put out my arms and legs to attempt to slow my descent, but the walls are coated in something which is incredibly slippery, so it doesn’t matter what I do—I’m going to slide out at speed, whatever happens.
It’s then the smell hits me. So far, most of my time here has been devoid of scent. The strange wafers I was given to eat both smelt and tasted of nothing, the liquid I drank, again, nothing.
But this is a stink, rank and nasty and almost making me gag. Now I do not want to end up wherever I’m going, and I redouble my efforts to slow down, to no avail as the odor envelopes me and, with an unpleasant plop, I drop out of the chute and onto something spongy.
Which makes a change. Usually my poor bum takes the brunt of any fall, and I have the bruises to show for it. Especially as my clothing has been replaced by what can only be described as a set of bandages which leave little to the imagination.
This time the laugh which escapes me is one of relief.
Until the sponge beneath my butt cheeks moves.
I look down.
I’ve landed on a monster. Neon orange, it has two heads on long, individual necks, one of which is twisting to look at me with its eight black eyes, each eye the size of a fist. It makes a snickering sound like metal being rubbed together, and a mouth splits what I could call its face, revealing too many teeth.
They make a snap for me, but my time as a mouse has made me even more wily, even more ready to run than I ever was on Earth. I tumble off the thing, hit the floor, and jump to my feet, looking around wildly for an escape.
The walls are no longer white. Instead, they are a rough dull gray, like concrete and metal mixed together. In places, there are patches of moldy yellow and moss green. But as I stare, I become aware of eyes popping out to stare back.
The neon thing growls. It has no legs, so it’s slithering towards me, leaving a green trail. Both heads are snapping in my direction as I take in my surroundings which are increasingly familiar.
I’m still in the maze, only it’s much, much larger, and now I’m not a mouse anymore.
I’m a bug, and I’m going to end up squashed.
DRACO
“Not good enough.” I release a stream of smoke from my lungs, which feels good, but not good enough to assuage my rising anger.
The Jiaka cowers at my feet. I run my tongue over my teeth and look up at the ceiling of the ante-room in my extensive quarters.
A gilded cage.
My prison.
My domain.
“I told you I needed weapons, and you brought me useless trinkets.” I get up from my dais and grab hold of one of the spears he has brought.
Only the bones know where he got the nevving things from, but I can only think they were made as decoration, covered in jewels and of no actual value, not here. I snap one in half with one hand. The metal shears, as if it was waiting for this moment to be destroyed by a Sarkarnii.
The Jiaka’s three eyes widen in his pale blue face. I bend down to him and puff out more smo
“I should just throw you into the pit,” I snarl, and he squeaks slightly. “Just as an example of what happens when there is failure.”
My skin aches. My head aches. All of me wants to shift, to stretch, to be in my dragon form. But the collar around my neck buzzes a warning, and all I can do is heave up some sparks which splatter on the Jiaka, singeing his clothing.
“But you’ve shown an atom of ingenuity somewhere in there.” I point a vicious claw at the side of his head. “So, I’m going to give you one more chance. Find me some proper weapons.” I straighten and then fire out a kick.
He rolls over and quickly gets to his feet. “Yes, Draco,” he jibbers and then races to the door.
It doesn’t open, and he hops from foot to foot. I’d find it funny if I didn’t have a hide which I want to claw off my body and a need for the weapons he’s failed to find.
Jiakas are supposed to be good at this sort of thieving. It’s why they’re in the nevving prison in the first place.
“Open,” I growl out, and the doors snap into the walls, the Jiaka falling through them in his haste to get away and keep all limbs attached to his body.
“Still making friends in here, I see.” Drega strolls through the open door.
My brother’s skin shines with fresh bright blue scales compared to my dull gold. The lucky nevver must have recently shed. I don’t know how he manages it, given that the process eludes me most of the time until I’m just about ready to rip it off.
“I’m not here to make allies, brother,” I snap, throwing myself back onto my throne.
He snorts and drops onto another large chair nearby. “I’m worried about Draxx,” he says.
“Draxx can look after himself.”
My brother, the general, could always look after himself. He was the strong one, before everyone we ever knew was killed. Before he lost the female who was to be his mate.
“Draxx has taken leave of his mind. When did you last see him?” Drega grumbles.
“He was with us in the last run.” I drum my claws on the arm of my throne. The sound echoes around my quarters.
Quarters I obtained by making sure I was bigger and badder than all of the other convicts incarcerated in this prison. Quarters I fought for, destroyed for. Quarters I killed for. Quarters which belong to me, like the rest of this quadrant in the galaxy’s most dangerous, most feared prison.
Kirakos.
The word strikes fear into any law-abiding species.
But not me and not my brothers. We have nothing to fear anymore. Not least, time spent incarcerated in the maze prison where the galaxy puts its most troublesome species.
“For all of half a seccari,” Drega says quietly. “You do know how much time he’s spending in the pit, don’t you?”
“Like I said, he can look after himself,” I growl. “As can you. We need to prepare for the next run, and so far, all I have are those.” I point to the remaining spears.
“Toothpicks?” Drega smiles, revealing his sharp teeth. Subconsciously, he trails a claw over the collar.
They would have been, if we could shift into our Sarkarii forms.
“Your job was to find a way to get these nevving things off.” I tug at my collar and ignore the sharp spike of pain I get from ‘interfering’.
Drega sighs. “They weren’t designed to come off. You know that as well as I do. It’s what’s driving Draxx to distraction, and it’s not something we should be worried about.”
“Oh.” I lean forward, blasting out smoke and sparks. “You think they’ll just release us if we’re successful in a run?” I snap my fingers. “Just pop these things off and wave us goodbye?”
Drega rolls his eyes and growls low in his throat. “You know what I think, Draco.”
My brother, once a healer, now a destroyer. Like me. Like Draxx. Although Draxx was always the dangerous one.
This den, my quadrant, contains the last of our species.
“Which is why we need weapons, Drega.” I echo his use of our full names. “I’m not leaving without it and without blowing this place to atoms.”
“It isn’t here. We’d have found it by now. Someone would have found it.” Drega turns away from me and starts rooting through a platter of meat left out until he finds something he likes and pours out some ale-wine into a golden goblet.
There are luxuries in the maze prison, if you’re prepared to gouge eyes out and take them.
“The map is here. It’s the reason we got ourselves sent to the Kirakos.”
“That and all the piracy,” Drega mutters.
“You enjoyed it as much as I did.” I laugh at his haughty expression. “And we’re not doing too bad out of it all, anyway, are we?” I gesture around, knowing his quarters are as opulent as mine.
It helps you are a feared species in a place like the Kirakos. It means we get what we want, when we want it.
Drega doesn’t answer me.
“The next run is going to be soon. It’s been half an ev already since the last one. If I don’t have the weapons I need, I’m going to use it for information gathering. Are you in?”
“I’m always up for a run.” Drega gives me a feral grin. “Nice to stretch a few muscles other than knocking heads together.”
I extend my claws. They’ve not been used much in a while, and I miss tearing through flesh. If I can’t shed and I can’t shift, killing is the next best thing, and the run provides the perfect opportunity.
My scales ripple with the need to shed, itchy, irritating. I want to roar out my flame and frustration. Shedding is awkward and uncomfortable. I hate most things, but I hate them even more right now.
We might be providing entertainment to those who have incarcerated us in the Kirakos, but every run brings me closer to my objective.
I don’t want to get out of this maze prison. I want to gain control of it. The map is the key.
A squealing alarm rips through the air. I frown at Drega. “Draxx?” I query as the noise sounds like a pit escape.
“Unlikely. He doesn’t trigger alarms.”
I get to my feet. “This could be fun.”
I love new. New is a threat, and I love to deal with any threats in my quadrant. Each one I put down just enhances what I already have. It gives the other inmates another reason to fear me.
“It could also be deadly.” Drega stares into his goblet with a frown. Like he’s ever been afraid of anything.
I ignore him. He loves to play as much as I do, and if I’m right, we’ll have something to take our mind off things until the next run.
My mouth curls up in a smile as I head out into the maze.
AMBER
I have my back to the crumbling wall. It is incredibly tall, so high I can’t even see the top. Exactly the same as the one opposite. The mottled surface looks like it might be climbable, until you get close and it has a weird smoothness which would make such a thing impossible, unless you have suckers.
Not going to rule out something in here having such things. The neon orange, two-headed snake is still coming. It grumbles rather than hisses as it weaves its way towards me.
I don’t get the chance to consider what the point of all of this is as the two-headed snake lunges at me, and I dart to one side. It hits the wall with a “splat” sound, and I don’t hang around to see if any damage has been done.
