Hunted by khor, p.1
Hunted by Khor, page 1
HUNTED BY KHOR
ALIEN MATE HUNT
BOOK ONE
ZARA CROWE
CONTENTS
Run. Survive. Surrender.
Mara
Mara
Khor
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Khor
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Mara
Khor
Mara
Mara
RUN. SURVIVE. SURRENDER.
On alien worlds, the only way out is the Mate Hunt—where human women are chased, caught, and claimed.
We weren’t alone in the universe. And maybe it would’ve been better if we were.
When the star portals tore open the sky, alien factions carved Earth into zones of control—and left the rest to rot. The lucky hide beneath sponsor domes. The rest of us scrape by, waiting to be used up.
There’s only one way out.
Human women are universal breeders. Desired. Coveted. Hunted.
The Galactic Alliance offered Earth a deal—trade compatible mates to resource-rich worlds, get the medical technology and credits that keep our dying planet alive.
The Mate Hunt is the bargain: agree to be dropped on a savage alien world, run for your freedom, and if you’re caught… the choice is yours. Refuse and fight until the end. Or surrender—be claimed, marked, and bred by the hunter who takes you.
It isn’t kind. It isn’t safe.
But it’s a chance.
And sometimes the only choice left is whether to let the monster chasing you become the mate you can’t resist.
MARA
The pen weighs nothing, but my hand shakes anyway.
“Miss Barnov.” The intake coordinator's voice cuts through recycled air that tastes like desperation. “You need to initial all seventeen boxes.”
Seventeen ways to say: yes, I'll let an alien use me. Seventeen variations of: I understand Earth law stops at the portal.
The underground facility used to be a shopping mall. I can still see the old Macy's sign through the paint. Now it processes human women like inventory. Send us through. Collect the credits. Pretend it's voluntary.
Lily's medical bills sit in my bag. $847,000 for the surgery she needs. Two hundred more every day she stays on life support. The math is simple—thirty days in the Hunt, or watch my sister's machines go dark.
The Alliance calls it the Cultural Exchange Initiative. Pre-industrial worlds provide raw materials; we provide breeding stock. Everyone pretends there are other options.
“Miss Barnov?”
“I'm reading.”
Lie. I'm thinking about Lily's last words: Don't do anything stupid for me, Mara.
Too late. Already here. Already holding this pen.
Initial here to confirm you understand Pyraxian males have a breeding imperative. M.B.
Initial here to acknowledge the mating process may result in permanent physiological changes. M.B.
Initial here to confirm you've been informed of Pyraxian anatomy designed to secure a partner and ensure conception.
My hand pauses. The clinical phrasing can't hide what it means: mating with a being built to trap you, to make refusal nearly impossible once it begins.
“The briefing videos covered all this,” the coordinator says, not bothering to look up. “Signature indicates understanding, not consent to specific acts.”
Right. Because consent matters so much when you're being hunted.
M.B.
Initial here to acknowledge that survival for thirty days without accepting a permanent bond bite grants return passage through the portal.
“Bond bite?”
“The formal claiming mark. Junction of neck and shoulder. Without it, you're technically unclaimed regardless of…” she waves a hand, “…activities.”
“So I could be used every day, but if I don't accept the bite—”
“You can return after thirty days. Though,” she finally looks up, “no one has lasted that long without accepting the bond. Biology makes it unlikely.”
M.B.
She swipes through the forms like she's reviewing invoices. Just credits. Just units.
“Payment releases immediately upon portal entry. Your designated recipient is Lily Barnov at Detroit Medical. She'll have surgery within six hours of your arrival on Pyraxis.”
“Even if I die in the first hour?”
“Even if you die in the first minute. You've volunteered. That's all that matters for payment.”
Volunteered. Such a clean word for what this is.
“Follow me.”
The medical bay reeks of antiseptic and fear. Three other women wait in curtained cubicles. One cries quietly. Another stares into nothing. The third fingers her neck, rehearsing for a collar she doesn't own yet.
We don't look at each other. Eye contact makes it too real.
“Behind your left ear.” The tech's voice is flat. “Neural integration takes three seconds.”
The injection gun looks like something for livestock. He presses it against my skull, and I think about dogs being microchipped. Tagged for return if lost.
Except we don't get returned.
The needle punches through cartilage. Fire, then ice, then a bright crackle that makes my teeth ache. Sound splits into two streams—English and something guttural, like stone grinding.
“Test phrase,” the tech says, but I also understand: Keratha nu slavek ti?
Both languages. Clear as water. The implant doesn't translate—it lets me comprehend. Like the alien words were always there, waiting.
“I understand.”
“Nu slavek.” The acknowledgment slips out in their tongue before I can stop it.
“Strong integration,” he notes. “You'll do well.”
Do well. Like this is a job review.
The prep room is last. White walls. White floor. A drain in the center that makes my stomach clench.
A female tech hands me a vial. Clear liquid that moves wrong—too thick, resisting gravity. The smell is cinnamon, copper, and something that makes my instincts scream.
“Preparation tonic. Drink it all.”
“What does it do?” I know, but I want to hear her say it.
“Enhances responsiveness. Increases resilience. Promotes compatibility.” She hesitates. “The changes are permanent. You'll heal faster, live longer, but you'll also… need things. Earth can't provide what your transformed body will crave.”
Makes it easier for them to use us. Makes our bodies betray us. Makes us dependent forever.
The liquid burns going down—not heat, but something alive unfurling in my stomach. My skin prickles. Every brush of fabric feels raw. I grit my teeth and endure.
“Normal response,” the tech says, already stepping back. “Portal room through that door. You have two minutes before it closes.”
Two minutes to change my mind. Two minutes to run. Two minutes to tell Lily I can't—
The portal shimmers like heat mirage. Beyond it: black sand glittering like broken glass. An orange sun. A sky the color of old blood.
Pyraxis.
One minute.
Lily in her hospital bed. Machines breathing for her. Machines that won't matter in six hours when the credits clear.
Thirty seconds.
I step through.
MARA
The heat hits like a wall. Air so dry it pulls moisture from my eyes. But the sand is worse—obsidian grains flood my boots through every seam. Sharp as glass. Hot as coals.
The portal snaps closed behind me. No sound. Just gone, leaving a circle pressed into the sand like a scar.
I'm alone. No extraction. No way home except surviving thirty days without a bond bite.
The packet said: find shelter. High ground. Water nearby. Like alien real estate shopping.
Walking is a battle. Every step sinks ankle-deep. The only mercy is a packed trail—sand pressed flat, like something heavy has traveled this way again and again. Too perfect. Too suspicious. I follow it anyway. Survival demands compromises.
The suit is already failing. Supposed temperature regulation just traps heat. Sweat slides down my spine, pooling at the base. The tonic makes it worse, turning every sensation sharp. Fabric scrapes my skin raw. I clamp down on the responses and keep moving.
The rock outcrop ahead is jagged glass, sharp enough to slice through my gloves. But there are handholds smoothed by long use. I climb. No elegance, just grit. Fingernails tear. Palms sting and bleed. My blood slicks the stone. At least that pain is mine.
The ledge is narrow, three feet high, six deep. I crawl into the back. Not a cave, but it blocks the wind.
Sunset comes like a dropped curtain. One moment blistering heat, the next biting cold. My sweat chills instantly. I wrap myself in the foil blanket and wedge in, counting breaths.
Beneath the sulfur, I smell something else—musky, male, territorial. The tonic is merciless. My body answers when my mind won't. I press my hands tight around the knife to focus.
Inventory: protein bars, purification tabs, a knife that's barely more than a toy, the blanket. No water. No fire kit. Survive the night. That's all.
Dark drops heavy. No moon. No familiar stars. Just constellations that make my eyes ache.
Breathing. Deep. Patient. Below my ledge.
The knife is ste ady in my hand. A comfort, and a lie.
Claws scrape stone. Slow. Deliberate. Climbing.
A hunter.
He stops just beneath me. He could haul himself up and pin me in a heartbeat. Instead, silence. He lets the fear work its way through me.
Then: “Kethra nala vei, small female.”
The translator shapes it: Found you, little female.
I don't move. My pulse hammers. My body betrays me with heat pooling low. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood.
“Vei tanu ketra. Vei tanu slavek nu ketra.” You can run. You will run for me.
Not a question. A promise.
Claws scrape again, moving down. Not leaving—resetting the game.
I don't sleep. Every shift of wind could be his breath. The knife trades hands when my fingers cramp. Finally, the sky bleeds orange and I creep forward.
Footprints below: three-toed, clawed, the size of dinner plates. Circling the formation again and again, patient as tides.
Older tracks too, half-buried by wind.
From the portal. To this rock.
He didn't find me here last night.
He guided me from the moment I arrived.
KHOR
The female's scent cuts through the sulfur stench like a blade through silk.
Sharp. Immediate. Wrong for this world, yet somehow more right than anything I've encountered in forty years of breathing Pyraxian air.
Human. Female. And beneath the fear-musk, that sweet chemical signature of preparation tonic working through her system. Making her body ready for claiming. Making her compatible with males like me.
But there's something else beneath those familiar scents. Something that makes me freeze against the cooling rocks, every nerve ending suddenly alive.
Her.
The recognition isn't conscious thought—it's deeper. Cellular. Every part of my biology screaming that this female, this specific female, carries the chemical markers that match mine. Perfect compatibility. The kind that happens once in a species' lifetime, if at all.
True mate recognition.
The pleasure cock emerges first—it never responds to anything but perfect genetic compatibility. In all my years of waiting for the Council's permission to hunt, it's never stirred for any of the demonstration females. The breeding cock follows, both organs swelling in response to her scent alone.
My body knows what my mind is just beginning to process. She's mine. Has been mine since before she stepped through that portal. The universe decided it when it gave her that exact chemical signature, those perfect pheromone markers that sing to every receptor I possess.
I track her from the portal site, staying downwind. Watching her struggle through sand that would challenge even a Pyraxian. She's smaller than the usual volunteers—they normally send the large, hardy ones. This one barely reaches my chest, built for agility rather than brute strength. Yet she persists where others might collapse.
She finds the path I prepared, the compressed route that leads exactly where I need her to go. Smart enough to recognize the convenience but desperate enough to use it anyway. That's good. Intelligence makes the hunt more satisfying. Makes the eventual claiming more meaningful.
The rocks she climbs hold my scent from years of preparation. Every handhold worn smooth by my claws. Every approach mapped and planned for exactly this scenario. She doesn't know she's following a route I've walked a thousand times, but her body responds to the territorial markers. Her breathing changes. Her scent shifts.
The tonic is working faster than anticipated. Most females take a full day to show chemical changes. Her transformation began the moment she arrived.
I watch her settle into the shelter I prepared. The overhang that protects but doesn't hide. Where she can see but can also be seen. She's clever enough to position herself defensively, but she doesn't understand Pyraxian hunting protocols yet.
This isn't about capture. It's about pursuit. About the dance between predator and prey that leads to willing surrender.
When full dark falls, I make my approach. Let her hear me coming—the scrape of claws, the measured breathing. She needs to know she's being hunted, needs to feel the weight of my attention. But I don't take her. Not yet. Fear must season properly before it converts to anticipation.
I could climb onto that ledge and claim her now. Pin her down, work her body until she surrenders to what the tonic has already begun. But that would be taking, not hunting. She deserves better for our first encounter.
Besides, the other scent on the wind tells me I'm not the only one interested in this female. Young Vek has been testing my territorial boundaries for days, growing bold in his desperation. Let him catch her scent. Let him understand what he can never have.
This female is mine by right of recognition. Mine by biological imperative. Mine by the ancient laws that govern our kind.
But first, she has to run.
“Kethra nala vei, small female.” The words carry easily in the still air.
She freezes above me. Good instincts. But her scent spikes with more than just fear—arousal mixed in, the tonic converting terror to desire even against her conscious will. Her body already knows what her mind refuses to accept.
“Vei tanu ketra. Vei tanu slavek nu ketra.”
Let her sleep on that promise. Let her wake knowing that the hunt has truly begun.
I drop from the rocks, landing silent in the sand. My feet find the packed trails I've created over seasons of preparation. Water sources to mark. Territory boundaries to reinforce. A younger male to discourage from my claiming grounds.
The season's first hunt is always the most important. Set the pattern right, and everything else follows.
By dawn, she'll understand the game. By sunset, she'll be ready for the next phase.
And somewhere between fear and desire, she'll begin the transformation that will make her perfect for this world. Perfect for me.
The thought makes both cocks pulse with fresh arousal, but I hold my control. Patience has brought me this far. Patience will see me through to claiming.
Soon, little female. Run well.
MARA
Day 2. Water.
The thought dominates everything else—the heat building with the climbing sun, the obsidian sand that's already found new ways into my boots, the ache in muscles that spent the night clenched against fear. My lips are cracked enough to taste blood when I lick them. The protein bars from my emergency kit taste like chalk and require precious saliva to choke down.
But it's the tonic working through my system that makes everything worse. What started as simple thirst has become something more complex—a need that goes beyond water. My body feels wrong in ways the briefing never mentioned. Hypersensitive. Every breeze against my skin sends signals I don't want to interpret.
Three hours of walking, following another convenient path through the dunes. This one leads toward the sound of water—not the distant crash of waves, but the smaller sounds of flow over rock. A stream maybe, or a spring.
The smart move would be to approach carefully, scout for threats, verify the source before committing. Instead I stumble forward, driven by a desperation that's both physical and something else. Something the alien scent lingering in yesterday's shelter awakened in me.
The spring sits in a natural depression, surrounded by plants I don't recognize. They have thick, waxy leaves that catch light like metal but bend and sway like living things. As I watch, one snaps shut around a flying insect, trapping it with obvious predatory intent.
Carnivorous vegetation. Perfect.
But the water is clear, bubbling up from underground through volcanic rock worn smooth as glass. It smells clean—no sulfur, no chemical tang. Just water. I can see all the way to the bottom, maybe six feet down. No lurking predators. No obvious traps.
Except for the fact that it exists at all. A perfect oasis exactly where someone dying of thirst would need it. Located at the end of another conveniently worn path.
I'm being herded. Again.
But thirst doesn't care about tactics. I kneel at the edge, careful to avoid the carnivorous plants, and cup water in my shaking hands. The first sip is everything I hoped—cool, clean, tasting of minerals rather than the sulfur that taints everything else on this planet. I drink deeply, then splash water over my face and neck.
