Sold to the Alien Smugglers: A Fated Mates Romance (Captive Mates Book 4)

  Sold to the Alien Smugglers

  Corin Cain

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Foreword

  Welcome the world of the Aurelian Empire, where the dominant, powerful alien warriors come in three!

  This is a steamy reverse harem alien menage romance, which features submission, adult themes, thrilling danger, and Fated Mates. It is for adult audiences.

  I truly hope you enjoy!

  - CC

  1

  Excerpt: Aurelians go Rogue only because they enjoy breaking a woman. To them, it’s not just about the fucking – it’s about the mind-fucking. They get off on making a helpless, terrified woman submit to them; to break her until she embraces her fate as the property of three, brutal warriors. It’s something they enjoy almost as much as sinking their thick cocks inside her and emptying their straining balls.

  Power. Dominance. Aurelians are legendary for their obsession with submissive women. Even in the harems of the Aurelian Empire, the warriors are infamous for their desire to spank the women who flock to their estates; turning them into submissive little toys who’ll eagerly serve their every whim.

  Rogue Aurelians take that a step further. Their love is for the thrill of breaking a woman in, as if she’s a wild horse – taming her, and stripping the fire and rebellion from her through brutal punishment and relentless, dominant sex.

  JAMIE

  Our first three rescue missions went smoothly.

  This time, they were expecting us.

  Ten slaves freed.

  Ten tempting pieces of bait.

  The moment we’d walked into the trap, we’d been cut off from our escape route.

  “We need to get out of here!”

  I remember the shock when I realized that scream had emerged from my own mouth – and then been stifled by sheer panic.

  Ling, right beside me, didn’t flinch. Ice-cold under pressure, Ling had given me a quick, reassuring touch on my arm and then darted around the corner, sprinting out of sight.

  She’d made it ten feet.

  I’ll never forget the sound of Ling’s rattling, fluid-filled gasp as I heard it from around the corner.

  As the sound burned itself into my memory, I’d also felt it – travelling up and down my spine like icy fingers.

  I’d barely dared to follow her around the corner. A thousand gruesome images filled my imagination as I tried to imagine what could possibly have elicited that deathly rattle from my friend.

  None of them could have prepared me for the reality.

  As I turned the corner, I saw the sight of Ling – and the vision burned itself into my retinas.

  She was skewered – pinned like a butterfly on a collector’s rack. Blood drooled down between the blades of my mentor’s shoulders, where six-inches of gleaming carbo-steel protruded from her flesh.

  Attached to the other end of that bloody shaft was a towering Bullfrog – looming above Ling like a skyscraper. The alien beast was ten-feet-tall; a bulging, gangly-limbed abomination of swollen muscle coated with gelatinous fat. He held the end of that carbo-steel electro-rod tightly in his slimy, webbed protuberances – keeping Ling skewered at the end of it like a barbecued Womp.

  The blade had gone straight through her. The keen, gleaming blade spluttered with electricity; crackling with enough volts to make her lifeless body convulse.

  As Ling died on the blade of that crackling, razor-sharp electro-rod, the Bullfrog who’d killed her lifted his bulbous eyes – and stared right over her toward me.

  It was like time suddenly stood still.

  You might think one Bullfrog is indistinguishable from another – but you’d be wrong. This monster was one I’d remember every detail of for the rest of my life. As my eyes scanned his glistening flab, it was like looking at landmarks on a familiar map.

  An old scar had turned calloused and white across the Bullfrog’s powerful shoulder – the contrast unsettling against his glistening, green flesh. I remembered that scar as well as I do the ones on my own body. The Bullfrog had received it from me – when I’d unloaded my firearm into him three times during our first rescue mission.

  That had been two years earlier – but, apparently, I’d left as indelible an impression on him as he had on me.

  The Bullfrog’s eyes had widened as he recognized me.

  His hatred was bottomless.

  With a shake of his electro-rod, the Bullfrog un-skewered poor Ling – watching her slide limply to the floor and gurgle out a splatter of her life blood.

  I couldn’t save her.

  I’d watched as Ling’s head had rolled limply to the side. In the glassy reflection of her sightless eyes, I’d instantly realized she was already gone.

  So, I’d turned. I’d run – leaving the lifeless body of my only friend behind me.

  I sit up sharply, gasping desperately for air in the complete darkness, and slam my head hard against the top of my metal sleep compartment

  Holy shit.

  I shouldn’t surprised. It was the same dream again – the same haunted nightmare that follows me every night.

  As always, I’d awoken panting and drenched in sweat. The realization that this was reality didn’t help calm me.

  Three hard bangs come in response to the sudden pain in my head.

  The man in the cubicle above me was slamming his fist against the bottom of his thin-walled sleeping compartment.

  “Shut the hell up!”

  I feel anger flood my veins – but despair quickly drowns it. Instead of yelling in response, I close my eyes and slow my breathing instead; bringing myself back to reality the same way Ling had taught me.

  That had been one of her first lessons, from back when she’d originally taken me under her wing. I can genuinely say that it’s the only thing that’s allowed me to cling onto my sanity more times than I’d care to remember.

  As reality coalesces around me, I look around – and sigh.

  My sleeping compartment is the size of a coffin.

  It might as well be one, given the way this transport ship is held together. I think the structural integrity of this tub is maintained by tape and bubble-gum.

  It might well end up being my final resting place.

  I’d booked this “room” on the transport ship Elnor without any expectation of luxury – but even I’d been disappointed in what I’d discovered when I’d stepped on board.

  If you can call a slab-like bed that extends from the morgue-like shelf a “room” then I question your sanity. This sideways closet is nothing more than a human-sized box adorned by the thinnest mattress technology could develop. Instead of room service, or chocolates on my pillow, I’d received nightly doses of claustrophobia - interspersed by the coughs, moans, and groans of the other two-hundred-odd passengers crammed into the sleeping compartments of this dormitory unit.

  It’s just one dormitory of many – interchangeable units attached to the Elnor’s central spire, resulting in a transport ship laden with ten-thousand desperate souls. Each of them – each of us – is risking the wildest space in the sector to make it to Planet X12. />
  I’m just lucky I’d found one of the only space-faring ship captains still brave or foolish enough to cut that year-long journey into a month – by taking a dangerous shortcut through Untamed Space instead of the protected routes.

  But at what risk?

  I roll over in my coffin-bed – reaching out to feel for the sack of seeds I’d stowed with me. I curled my hands around the heavy bag and sigh in reassurance.

  I’d spent my life’s savings on these seeds. Bio-engineered, they could grow in a desert. Perfect for someone like me who has never grown a crop in her life. .

  These seeds are my ticket to a new life – a new me.

  Soon, the Elnor will make planetfall. There, the deed to my new property has already been digitally registered to my DNA; all stored and communicated through my smartwatch.

  I’ll scan my watch the moment the Elnor reaches Planet X12.

  In two weeks, I’ll start my new life.

  While the alternative journey would have taken a year, waiting even a month is like torture to me. The old me wouldn’t have tolerated it. I’d have paid for passage on a real ship – one that could Orb-Shift, and complete this month-long journey in an instant.

  But that was before the risks became more widely spoken about. In recent times, Orb-Shifting has become dangerous. Ships have been disappearing when they Orb-Shift – snapped out of reality, and lost in that place “between.”

  The place you go to when you leave this point of reality, but before you snap back into form at your destination.

  The place where an eternity and an instant are interchangeable.

  Maybe I should have taken the risk regardless.

  Truth be told? Disappearing into the void might have been the best thing that could have happened to me.

  Instead, I’m cursed with life, and burdened with the guilt of survival.

  Only I remain.

  Out of the first four missions we’d embarked on, they’d all been against Toads. Ling had told me the fifth would be against Rogue Aurelians – the most powerful beasts in the universe.

  Aurelian warriors are over seven-feet-tall – towering statues hewn from brutal muscle and violent strength. Those that turn Rogue are even more fearsome – forsaking the cold, but noble ways of the Empire to practice the Old Ways.

  The Old Ways harken to the ancient past of the Aurelian Empire – a brutal time of slavery and conquest. In that era, Aurelians openly owned human women like property, and forced them into service in their harems.

  Those times were meant to have been consigned to history – but the Old Ways suddenly aren’t so Old anymore. In recent history, a growing faction of Aurelians began practicing the much lauded Old Ways – first in secret, and then openly; despite those being caught doing so being branded Rogue and forever hunted by Aurelian Law Enforcement.

  Their defiance demonstrates that the universe has become a powder keg – and just one little spark could ignite a civil war on Colossus. It would pit the Aurelians who still honor the Empire against those who’d return to the Old Ways – when they could own women.

  Owning women. Slavery.

  Disgusting.

  The old me had been eager to take on the scum who preyed on such women, and those who’d hold them against their will. I’d been eager to punish them.

  But the old me is dead.

  She’s served her purpose. She did her job, and there are fifty slaves who’ve regained their freedom because of her. Over the course of four rescue missions, the old me made a difference – her, and her mentor Ling.

  But – Gods – at what cost?

  The price I’d paid – well, was it worth it?

  That last mission rescue mission… I’d barely made it out alive, and only by the luck of the Gods.

  Ling hadn’t been so blessed.

  That day, I lost my best friend, my mentor, and the woman I wanted to be. She’d been skewered by a Bullfrog slaver, hell-bent on revenge for the slaves we’d freed.

  That day, all my training disappeared. In a single moment, the old me had been revealed to be an illusion.

  I’d stared oblivion in the face – and blinked.

  I’d lost my nerve – and, with it, all the years of practice and training I’d undertaken to make myself strong. As I stood there helplessly, I lost everything that had ever driven me to risk my life over and over again in such selfless pursuits.

  It was as if the old me had died the same day Ling had.

  She’s certainly a ghost to me now. I can never be that ‘old me’ again. I need to put that life to rest, so I can begin accepting what the ‘new me’ will become.

  I’d shed the accoutrements of my old life like a Scorp sheds its bony shell when it comes of age. I’d sold the weapons that I’d use to free so many slaves. I traded the last of the credits I’d been rewarded for doing so. I even sold Ling’s modified mining ship – the one we’d used to steal away the women other species would call their ‘property.’

  I’d given up everything – all my belonging, my savings, and what felt like my very identity.

  I’d traded them all for a homestead on a quiet Human Alliance planet – a place where the venomous Scorp and greedy Toads can’t venture near, and far away from the imperious Aurelians. Even those of their kind who spurned the Old Ways kept vast harems of women, so I barely trusted their kind over the Aurelians with the shamelessness to declare themselves Rogue.

  I’d traded it all like that Old-Earth story, Jack and the Beanstalk. The inventory of my life, in exchange for a sack of three different types of seed; bioengineered so that even a beginner homesteader like me could grow enough to sell and survive from.

  It would be a new life.

  A new me.

  I roll over on my thin mattress and press a button on the wall. Instantly, the slab-like shelf extends outwards – letting me emerge from my cramped little compartment.

  As I blink in the dim light of the larger dormitory, I observe that it’s packed full. It’s difficult to believe I’m just one of two hundred souls crammed into this modular, space-faring dormitory – and that this unit is just one of many carried aboard the Elnor.

  The richer passengers travel more comfortably, of course. The wealthy will rent private rooms – and I mean entire rooms, with bathing and toilet facilities, and everything. If that’s still too uncomfortable for them, those who can afford to do so can sleep out the month-long journey in a state of cryo-sleep. That way, they don’t even have to experience the monotonous frustration of sub-light space travel.

  I’m bitterly jealous of those idle rich. My only consolation is that if pirates strike our vessel – as happens, especially out in Untamed Space - those rich bastards will be fucked.

  As if I wouldn’t be? I’d be no better off than they would be – just awake for the experience.

  Can you imagine that? To have escaped the horrors I’ve seen, only to be taken by pirate-slavers myself before I reach my final destination.

  I shake my head.

  Just two more weeks.

  If I can just endure two more weeks in this tin-can hell-hole, I’ll finally be free – really free.

  I’ll be independent and established on a lush, fertile, safe planet. I’ll finally be able to put down roots instead of always glancing over my shoulder, wondering who’s hunting for me.

  I’ll finally have peace.

  That’s what I need. That’s what I’ve always needed – especially after what happened to Ling.

  My heart aches.

  Maybe, after a few years on X12, the nightmares will stop.

  Maybe then, I’ll be able to sleep through the night without being woken by the image of her face.

  I clamber out of my compartment, closing the shelf and locking it behind me. My muscles are stiff and tight as I stretch them beyond the confines of my morgue-like box.

  Gripping the edge of the ladders on the side of this bank of compartments, I stiffly make my way down to the central deck. Whenever the steel toecaps
of my boots clang a little too hard on the way down, I hear groans and curses through the thin walls of the individual sleeping compartments.

  I check my movements – I don’t want to wake anybody up. Nobody on this vessel is looking for trouble, but when you’re traveling with two-hundred other people who each paid as cheap a rate as I did, you don’t want to risk pissing any of them off.

  I mean, tough luck for them if I do. How many times a night am I awoken by the sound of somebody loudly clambering down this same ladder?

  I envy the bastards in the luxurious transport rooms, or those in cryo-sleep. As always, the rich have everything – and the poor, like me, get nothing.

  It’s bitterly ironic. I used to fight the good fight – righting the worst injustices in the galaxy. Now, I’m just as powerless as those I’d once risked my life to rescue.

  My boots reach the deck, and I stretch my legs as I exit the dormitory unit and emerge into one of the central hallways of the Elnor.

  A short walk down the hallway is the small bar and viewing station where I like to come and gaze out across the nothingness of space. It’s not like there are any other views to be had on the Elnor, but I still enjoy it.

  There’s a stillness to space – an eternal calm I wish I could feel inside my own churning gut.

  I don’t make it to the end of the hallway, though. Something clunks ahead of me.

  I jump, startled – and then immediately feel a dagger of shame in my belly.

  There was a time not that long ago when nothing would have scared me. Just a year earlier, I wouldn’t have even flinched at the loud, unexpected noise.

  Now, I find myself jumping at shadows, and seeing danger around every corner.

  Right now, I’m shivering at the creaks and groans of this old spacecraft. I know in my head that these noises are typical of a modular space cruiser – but that doesn’t make my crawling nerves tingle less intensely, or my fists unclench.