Kyris: A Sci-fi Alien Abduction Romance (Captured by Aliens Book 4)

sudden harsh pain in her head reminded her that she was still alive.
It was either that or she’d hit her head on death’s door.
The world stilled as she realized she was no longer moving, no longer falling, but there was an unmistakable feeling of something thick and warm creeping down her forehead.
As she brushed her fingers against it and brought her hand in front of her eyes, a deep red stain greeted her.
Blood.
The pain in her skull echoed and thrummed as she tried to lift her head. But it was as if her body couldn’t move. Her limbs were like jelly and the pain in her head…
Her vision blacked out before returning for a split second.
The pain…
She’d landed. On a dead alien world. She’d landed.
As her eyes closed despite her best efforts to keep them open, the world around her dimmed. But at least she was alone. Safe. Away from the horrors that’d been chasing her.
However, as the pain in her head called a darkness that crept over her and her senses faded, the silence was interrupted by a loud hiss followed by a high-pitched screech.
It was the last thing she heard before her eyes closed. The last thing that chilled her bones before she lost all consciousness.
There was something out there—something terrifying—and it was coming for her.

1
The human.
Where was she?
Kyris’ pod was coming in hard, falling toward the planet so quickly he had little time to grab the controls to slow his descent. But his mind wasn’t on the fact that he was about to crash into the desert planet’s surface or the fact that his descent was dangerously fast.
It wasn’t the first time he’d landed on Muk under less-than-favorable circumstances. However, the other times had been planned. Training sessions, if you will. This time, it wasn’t training. It was the real thing.
As his pod fell, he knew that by now, the Elysium was probably blown to pieces in space. Soon, debris from the ship would begin to fall. Soon, there would be nothing left of it.
It had been hard abandoning the ship and, even now, a shudder vibrated through his shoulders and down his wings at the thought.
“Descent unstable. Engage manual controls,” the AI said, as a loud beeping echoed through the pod.
The command only brought one thought to his mind.
The human.
The dark-haired human he’d rescued.
The human who was somewhere close by, falling towards the desert planet’s surface as he was.
If the AI was instructing him to assist with the landing, there was no doubt the human female was getting the same prompt.
Qrak.
He was as confident as the wings on his back that she wouldn’t know what to do.
At least, he doubted she would.
He knew enough about her planet to know space travel, shuttles, escape pods, falling towards a planet’s surface…all that was alien to her.
HREX4X1, or Earth as the humans called it, was embryonic in its development. It was a planet that had been discovered but one that was off limits to exploration or visits. Human society was still too new…too defenseless.
It was why she’d been chosen.
It was why the Tasqals had instructed the Isclits and Hedgeruds to defy interplanetary law and abduct beings from the planet.
Who would report their crime? Certainly not the humans. Defenseless, the beings of HREX4X1 wouldn’t even know what hit them. Defenseless, the Tasqals could gather as many “samples” as they wanted from the planet for their breeding experiments. Defenseless, the humans would probably not even know they’d been invaded if the Tasqals did it right.
Qrakking Tasqals and their minions.
They disgusted him.
They had no honor.
They were vermin.
Preying on defenseless targets was their game plan.
“Descent unstable. Engage manual controls,” the AI repeated, breaking into his thoughts even as his wings quivered with the ire that was growing within him.
As he grabbed the controls, his eyes scanned the sides of his escape pod as it fell with a blur through the atmosphere.
He couldn’t see her. Dark hair…dark eyes…the dark-haired human was nowhere in sight.
He must find.
He must protect.
Deep within him, from a place he hadn’t yet discovered, the fierce need to protect her swelled and grew. He didn’t know where it was coming from and he didn’t have time to question it. Not when he was falling through the sky. Not when she was in danger.
He only knew.
He could only feel.
And his hearts were beating with that fierce need that felt like it was burning through his blood all the way to his wing tips.
The human.
Defenseless, she was.
Where was her pod?
Before they’d abandoned ship, he’d paired her pod to his. It should be close, at least somewhere in his line of sight.
But it wasn’t.
The human.
Like a mantra, it repeated in his head. He needed to find her. Protect her. It was consuming him, this need, and he realized he’d felt it before.
He’d felt it before at a time that now felt like ages ago.
It’d been the first time he’d seen her. That first day when she’d been thrown in his cell on the Isclit slave ship.
In his ten orbits fighting for the Restitution, he had stormed countless Tasqal ships and rescued innumerable slaves. When the Tasqals had hired the Isclits with their large fleet of carrier vessels, he had encountered and freed even more slaves. When they’d hired the Hedgeruds to protect their operations, he’d still fought and freed slaves.
But never had a slave caught his attention. Never had one consumed his mind as this human was consuming his. Never had it happened, because he was a Vaen. Never had it happened, because it wasn’t something his people had the propensity for. Never had it happened…because it was impossible.
Until now.
“Descent unsta—”
As he pulled on the steering mechanism in the pod, the loud beeping stopped within seconds. The sudden lurch of the vessel was enough to take his thoughts away from the past for a few moments as he got control of the vessel and slowed it down.
Streaks of small fiery lights erupted around him as small bits of the Elysium fell towards the