Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance Read Online Free

Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance
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and scrambled to my feet, shaking as I walked.
    “Where are you going?” one of the passengers demanded, a human woman who was about ten years my senior.
    “To see what the problem is,” I replied, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Don’t worry, I know the pilot.”
    I made my way forward, and rapped lightly on the door to the cockpit. Tel threw it open, looking just as shaky on her feet as I was. Behind her, the control console glowed and buzzed in protest, all sorts of alarm lights blinking. Her co-pilot furiously flipped switches and typed in commands, his broad shoulders hunched forward. I furrowed my brow. “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” Tel breathed, steadying herself in the doorway. I tilted my chin toward her co-pilot.
    “What is he doing?”
    “Trying to get our nav system back online.”
    I started. Our navigation was offline? Tel registered the fear on my face, and her stern look told me well enough to keep my shit together lest I incite a panic in the rest of the passengers. I looked past her to the co-pilot, who eventually turned to look at me and Tel. He was a human male, mid-forties probably, with salt and pepper hair and a five o’clock shadow. If I weren’t terrified, I may have thought he was kind of cute, in a “daddy issues” kind of way.
    “I got nothin’,” he said, throwing his hands up in resignation. “Whoever snagged us has totally overridden our controls.”
    “Send a distress signal to the Atria . We can’t be more than a couple clicks away, and they should be able to send someone to our coordinates with some speed.” Tel sucked in a deep breath before she moved into the passenger seating area. The faces of the three other women turned up to look at their leader, who presented a demeanor of calm. But I knew Teldara well enough to know that she felt anything but.
    “Ladies,” she said, pressing her fingers to her lips for a moment as though she were going to be sick, “we’ve been thrown out of hyperdrive, and someone has taken remote access of our navigation. I have my co-pilot sending a distress signal back to the Atria , along with the names on our passenger roster and our cargo list. I’m confident that we should be on our way in short order.”
    The other women began to chatter amongst themselves in desperate whispers, even as Teldara turned her attention to me. “Keep them calm,” she muttered, and all I could do was nod, my jaw hanging slightly agape. But when Tel turned to go back into the cockpit, I caught her by the arm.
    “Tel,” I whispered, “what do you really think is going to happen?”
    She considered me levelly, and spoke: “I think we’ll be boarded, and I think all our cargo will be taken. If we’re lucky, we’ll leave with our lives.”

***
    The Keldeeri, not to paint with too broad a stroke, are not exactly what you would call a peaceful people. At least not historically. Their war-torn planet had necessitated the evacuation and relocation of some three million Keldeeri. And while their women are not extinct, per se, they are so few in numbers that they have been continuously petitioning the Echelon for a cross-breeding program, the same way they did for the more peaceful Qetesh. The Echelon, however, have denied this request, saying that it is too invasive a maneuver for a ratio of three males to every one female, and that the Keldeeri would do well to try to fix the problem on their own. This has been met, thus far, with begrudging compliance.
    The Keldeeri are also not what you might call a beautiful people, what with the mandibles and carapaces. They tend to be on the stouter side, rippled with muscle, and looking rather like someone had crossed an insect with a lizard. Hairless and aggressive, with a sibilant style of speech, the Kaldeeri I had known had never really become my best friends.
    Given all that, I had to say that I wasn’t entirely surprised when a contingent of Keldeeri smugglers strode
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