Barbarian's Taming

What Has Gone Before

Aliens are real, and they're aware of Earth. Fifteen human women have been abducted by aliens referred to as "Little Green Men." Some are kept in stasis tubes, and some are kept in a pen inside a spaceship, all waiting for sale on an extraterrestrial black market. While the captive humans staged a breakout, the aliens had ship trouble and dumped their living cargo on the nearest inhabitable planet. It is a wintry, desolate place, dubbed Not-Hoth by the survivors.

On Not-Hoth, the human women discover that they are not the only species to be abandoned. The sa-khui, a tribe of massive, horned blue aliens, live in the icy caves. They hunt and forage and live as barbarians, descendants of a long-ago people who have learned to adapt to the harsh world. The most crucial of adaptations? That of the khui, a symbiotic life-form that lives inside the host and ensures its well-being. Every creature of Not-Hoth has a khui, and those without will die within a week, sickened by the air itself. Rescued by the sa-khui, the surviving human women take on a khui symbiont, forever leaving behind any hopes of returning to Earth.

The khui has an unusual side effect on its host: if a compatible pairing is found, the khui will begin to vibrate a song in each host's chest. This is called resonance and is greatly prized by the sa-khui. Only with resonance are the sa-khui able to propagate their species. The sa-khui, whose numbers are dwindling due to a lack of females in their tribe, are overjoyed when several males begin to resonate to human females, thus ensuring the bonding of both peoples and the life of the newly integrated tribe. A male sa-khui is fiercely devoted to his mate.

The humans have now been on the ice planet for over a year and a half, and most have adapted to tribal life. New babies are being born of human and sa-khui pairings, and the tribe stirs with life once more. The last of the human castaways resonate, and the remaining men despair of ever having a mate. Josie, who ran from her resonance to Haeden, stumbles across the wreckage of the spaceship that Kira destroyed and discovers the unthinkable: two more human women are trapped in stasis there. Josie and Haeden return to tell the rest of the tribe, and a rescue party is sent out to retrieve the new women. Sisters Lila and Maddie cause issues amongst the tribe's hunters the moment the women arrive. Hassen steals Lila in an attempt to force resonance, only for Lila to run away from him. She's rescued by Rokan, who resonates to her, and they make their way back to the tribe.

Meanwhile, Hassen is exiled and Maddie remains angry that Lila was taken in the first place.

This is where our story picks up.

Chapter One

Maddie

It's weird when you don't fit in.

I thought that once I hit adulthood, I'd be all done with feeling like an outcast. That once I got past those awful high school years when I felt like the round peg in the square hole, it'd all just be a bad memory. That someday I could look back and laugh at how much it bothered me to be the weirdo on the outskirts.

Sitting here in a cave at a party for my sister, surrounded by aliens, I feel like I'm reliving my high school years all over again. It's pretty garbage, I have to admit. I wasn't popular then, being fat and opinionated. These aliens don't care if I'm fat or if I have a big mouth, and yet I'm still on the outskirts.

It's weird.

Someone dances past me, laughing. His tail smacks against my arm and then he spills a bit of his drink on the stone floor in front of me. Lovely. I absently swipe a bit of my tunic on the spilled alcohol because I don't want someone slipping on it in front of me while I sit and hold down a cushion in the corner of the room by myself.

It's not that people are unfriendly. Heck, it's not even that I'd have to sit alone if I didn't want to. It's that I'm really not sure where I stand with any of these people. I stare out at the celebrating tribe, not paying attention to the people who dance past with a skin of sah-sah, or the woman who pulls her top down to breastfeed not one but two blue babies. I ignore the exclamations over the fruit that they've managed to savor all damn night, and I sure as shit ignore when they start singing again.

Everyone's so damn happy. Everyone but me.

Me? I'm struggling.

In the space of the last month or so, my world has been upended. I went to sleep one night and woke up in the arms of blue space aliens on a frozen planet. Apparently I was kidnapped by bad aliens in my sleep. Apparently they took my sister, too. Apparently we were also stuck in sleep pods for over a year and a half and missed out on the bad guys being shot down.

It seems we slept through a lot.

Even if I thought it was all too strange to be believed at first, it didn't take long to realize this shit was legit. There are two suns, two moons, and endless frost and snow. The people here are blue, covered in a downy fuzz, and act like a blizzard is a nice spring rainstorm. Oh, and the parasites. I don't even want to think about the parasites, especially not the one living inside me now, helping me "adapt" to this alien world.

My sister is thriving, though.

It's strange. Lila's always been a shy introvert and even more of an outcast than me. She was born deaf, and though she got cochlear implants at age twelve and no longer needed me to speak up for her when lipreading was too tricky, I've always felt the need to protect her and care for her. But here? We've been separated and she's been killing it. Lila is usually the lonely, lost one and I'm the bold, outgoing one. I have to be because that's how you Get Shit Done.

Except Lila's doing fine on her own and now I'm just kind of . . . lost. I'm the single human that doesn't have a mate. I don't know the others. They're all pregnant or getting pregnant or juggling babies already and I'm sitting here, twiddling my thumbs with my vacancy sign over my vagina.

Not that I want a baby, mind you. Or a mate. But it feels weird to be the only chick who's not hooked up in this place. Even my sister's lovey-dovey with an alien and mated.

She's happy here despite all the snow and ice and man-eating creatures and lack of toilets. She wants to stay (not that we have a choice).

And me?

I'm just kind of here.

Alone.

I rub at the wet spot on the stone floor while one of the humans-Georgie? Megan? I don't know which one-whips out a boob and starts breastfeeding her child mid-conversation with an alien lady. Lila's not attending the party any longer; she ran off to her cave with her alien guy to go make babies with him. Literally. She's literally going to make babies with him. It's something I'm still struggling to wrap my brain around. It seems that if my chest-cootie wakes up and starts purring, it picks a man I should make babies with.

I'm pretty glad mine is deciding to be mute.

Lila's thrilled to be "resonating," though. Of course she is-now she's one of the baby-crazy crowd of human women who've settled in with the aliens. Now she fits in even more, though she wasn't exactly having a tough time with that. She's mated to a popular guy. She showed up with fruit. She's taken to all the daily life tasks like they're a joy for her. Got a fire that you need made? Lila can do it. Skin a kill? Lila's right there. Make dinner? Arrows? Fucking slings or snowshoes or bear traps or whatever else these Grizzly Adams wannabes can come up with? Lila can do it. She can survive just fine because she's been learning how to be like them.

And they love her for it, too. The tribespeople have been learning sign language to speak to Lila and to make her feel welcome. I'm glad they've accepted her so readily, but it also makes me jealous . . . which makes me a terrible sister.

Everyone in the tribe adores her and they can barely tolerate me. I'm like a stinky fart that's lingering in the cave and everyone tries to ignore.

Not that I can blame them for treating me like a turd-I wasn't exactly Miss Pleasant to be around while my sister was gone. I was frantic with worry about her after she was stolen, and when they wouldn't let me go after her? I was kind of not nice about it.

Okay, I was a bit of an ass.

Well, more than just a bit.

But I was worried about seemingly fragile Lila on this hostile, cold planet. So I took it out on everyone else. I might have picked a few fights and dragged my feet, and okay, I threw a few things at people's heads. So what? Anyone else would have done the same if they were in my shoes, uncertain about the fate of their baby sister.

They don't understand what it's like to be so alone, even in a sea of people.

Everyone here's part of a family. There are happy women with babies, and men utterly devoted to their ladies. As I look over, the chief-Vektal-is tossing his baby daughter into the air and giving her exaggerated kisses just to make Talie laugh. And boy, does that baby laugh. It'd be adorable if it didn't make me feel so sour inside. He's got a wife and a baby. All of the humans here have someone.

I have Lila. Like I have in the past, I'm ready to shield her from the world's harms and interpret for her when someone doesn't know sign language.

Except my sister doesn't need me anymore.

Scared, timid little Lila has returned utterly confident in herself and in love with Rokan.

That leaves me . . . well, it leaves me sitting here by myself on a mat, mopping up someone else's spilled drink.

I sigh and stare out at the entrance of the cave, feeling alone and yet trapped at the same time. I don't fit in with these people, but I also don't have the option to find other people. There are no other people.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just up and left. Would they hunt me down like they hunted for Lila? Or would they be all "good riddance" and not care because I've been a bitch?

I scowl into the shadows of the cave's entrance. It would be so easy to get up and just walk out while everyone's drunk and partying. But even as I stare, glowing blue eyes blink back at me, and a big, bulky form emerges from the shadows of the cave entrance, spear in one hand, a dead animal in the other. It's a hunter, returning from a late-night jaunt out into the snow.

And not just any hunter.

It's Hassen. The bastard that stole my sister. The one that decided he wanted a mate so much he'd just up and fucking steal her.

Him? He can kiss my fat ass.

Though the look he's giving me right now? That tells me he'd enjoy that far too much. That he'd do more than just kiss it if I bared it for his inspection.

And for some reason, I find myself prickling with arousal at the thought of Hassen folding his big body down to give my plump ass a kiss. Which is all kinds of wrong. He's exiled. He's a dick. He wanted my sister. None of these put him on the "Ice Planet's Most Desirable Bachelors" list.

As I glare at him, his mouth twists into a fang-bearing smile.

I jerk my gaze back around to the fire, scowling. Totally not gonna keep picturing him with his mouth on my ass. Biting one of my rounded cheeks. Dragging his fingers over my body and exploring the fact that I have no tail . . .

I give my cheek a hard slap to bring me back to reality.

Nearby, Farli gives me a startled look. "Are you all right?"

"Just distracted," I tell her. Farli's a good kid, and the closest thing I have to a buddy here, for all that she's, like, fifteen years old. Right now? She's my ride or die, because, well, I don't have anyone else. Even my sister, Lila, is off in a corner somewhere, making out with her new hubby. I can't even be mad about that-she's so happy and she is such a wonderful person that she deserves every bit of joy. I'm thrilled for her.

I'm a little jealous of her radiant happiness, sure, but still thrilled for her.

I'm just a selfish jerk of a sister who doesn't know what to do with herself when she's not needed anymore and suddenly finds herself with no friends. Funny how I always thought I didn't need friends. Funny how being stranded on an ice planet can totally change your perspective on things like that. In a small community like this, not playing by the rules gets you left behind.

Hassen knows all about that.

I peek over my shoulder back at the cave entrance again. Just in case Hassen is still there. But he's not, and I ignore the little stab of disappointment I feel.

The last thing I need is to get involved with the bad boy of the ice planet.

Hassen

It is a cold night for me.

The laughter coming from within the tribal cave spills out into the snow, and I can smell the burning meat cooking for the humans. Someone is singing, and I hear Warrek banging away at his drum. They are all good sounds, happy sounds. My people are light and carefree and full of joy.

That joy does not extend to me.

I stand alone in the snow on a nearby ridge, a fresh-killed quill-beast in hand. And I am torn, because I do not know if I should ignore the punishment the chief has given me and join the celebration, or if I should turn around and leave.

I am exiled. I am nothing to my people now. I did not think I would care, but . . . I do. Their scorn hurts me.