Bestial

By Sarah Winters

Having her ship hijacked by space pirates was bad.
Getting thrown into a cage sucked.
Being sacrificed to a crazed alien beast as some sick form of entertainment for those same pirates?
Yeah, that's the pinnacle of a shitty day.

 

Kessia Donovan of New Terra is on the way to her next job when her life goes sideways. In the space of a few hours she's been kidnapped, stripped and offered up to the mercy of a terrifying alien. Assuming she's about to become his dinner, she's shocked when this brutal giant vows to protect her.

 

Stolen from his planet and kept like an animal in a cage, Baron is just waiting for a chance to escape. When it finally comes, he finds a female unlike any he's ever seen. Small, soft and curvy with a scent that tantalizes and taunts his mating instincts. He wants her. But first he has to get them both out of this situation alive.

 

With her brains and his brawn, they will form an unlikely alliance – and perhaps much more

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarah Winters
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9780995923256

Sarah Winters

Sarah Winters lives in Prince Edward Island, Canada. She has been writing since she was in elementary and self-published her first book in 2017. Having always had an active imagination and an introvert personality, writing seemed the best career choice. She believes you can never have enough socks and always needs more bookshelves for her ever expanding library. She writes best on rainy days with a glass of iced tea beside her and her writer dog, Tails, at her feet.

Book preview

Sarah Winters

Bestial: A SciFi Alien Romance

First published by Sarah Winters 2022

Copyright © 2022 by Sarah Winters

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Sarah Winters asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

First edition

ISBN: 978-0-9959232-5-6

Cover art by Nymphe Tuerlinckx

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

Find out more at reedsy.com

Publisher Logo

To Tails,

The Mafia Sheltie

You always gave me the courage

to travel new paths.

Contents

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

Epilogue

Want more?

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter 1

Kessia Donovan bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes, wishing she were somewhere else. The tight confines of the compartment she’d squeezed herself into seemed to close in around her. and she hugged her knees harder to her chest, trying to comfort herself in any small way.

The stark image of an escape pod disintegrating in open space as it was fired upon played through her mind’s eye and she shuddered. She’d caught that horrific sight through a viewport as she’d run with the other passengers to the nearest escape pods and had instantly changed her mind. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the raiders had boarded a Coalition transport ship, they had decided not to leave any survivors to attest to the crime.

It felt like hours since she’d made the panic-driven decision to hide instead of climb into an escape pod and face almost certain death.

She strained to hear the slightest noise beyond her hiding space, but there was nothing. The ship’s emergency alarm and the pounding of her heartbeat drowned out everything as she huddled in the darkness. Kessia bit her lip, unwilling to let the trembling that had overtaken her devolve into sobs. There was no time for that.

Dropping her head onto her knees, she closed her eyes and listened, waiting for some sign that the pirates had moved on.

Three days ago, she’d been so excited, hugging and assuring her parents she’d call as they’d seen her off at the spaceport. This was supposed to be her grand adventure, her years of training and mentorship finally paying off in a position with the esteemed MultiStar Corporation. She was supposed to be nervously getting ready to reach her destination tomorrow, worrying over who her new supervisor would be or which planet the platform she’d be working on would orbit.

She never could have guessed she’d be crammed in a storage cupboard, hoping she’d make it through the day alive.

Her thoughts turned to her mom, who was going to be so worried when she didn’t com her tomorrow. Her dad, who had hugged her so tightly and grinned at her with so much pride and unshed tears. The celebration her friends had thrown her days before she left, promising to keep in touch and taking tons of pictures on their handhelds. She missed them all.

If she had known this would happen, she never would have stepped foot in the spaceport. Hell, she wouldn’t have accepted the job with MultiStar.

Kessia jerked to alertness at the sound of people nearby. She must have dozed off at some point because the emergency alarm was no longer blaring through the hallways, allowing her to catch the sounds of movement and unintelligible voices in the distance. Freezing, she tried to remain as silent as possible. She didn’t have a plan. Kessia couldn’t stay tucked in here forever. Her legs were already cramping in the small space and she would have to use the washroom eventually. If luck was with her, the pirates would just scavenge the ship and leave. Then she could figure out how to get help from there.

The voices came closer, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She’d been sleeping in her bunk when the alarms went off and hadn’t thought to grab her Coalition-issued translator on the way out the door. The voices paused outside her compartment and she held her breath, praying to whatever deity might listen that they would go away.

The latch flipped and light flooded in, blinding her. Her hand came up to shield her eyes and she blinked, desperate to see.

A three-fingered hand reached in and caught her wrist, yanking her out of the compartment. She sprawled on the floor at their feet. Looking up, her stomach sank as she took in the pirates. With the deep brown carapaces and their narrow, hairless heads, they were easily recognizable as Rehulians. The insect-like species lived on the border of Coalition space and were well known for their villainous tendencies. It wasn’t unheard of for them to eat their victims. But it was highly unusual for them to attack a transport shuttle, even one on the edge of Coalition space.

P-please, Kessia stammered out in Universal. My company will pay for my safe return. At least, she hoped they would. She’d only just been hired by MultiStar and hadn’t even arrived for her first shift yet, so they might just write her off as a no-show and give her position to someone else.

Pain flooded her as one of the Rehulians kicked her in the stomach, her breath rushing out on a gasp as his big boot met her flesh. She doubled over on the floor, retching for a moment as she tried to draw a breath into her abused body. A three-fingered hand caught in her hair and she found herself being dragged across the floor. Crying out, she scrambled to get her feet under her as they hauled her bodily down the hallway.

The group split and two of the pirates dragged her onto a lift while the other wandered off to continue their exploration. While they descended the floors of the transport ship, she managed to get to her feet, but the jerk who had her hair refused to let go, so she ended up crouched at his side. As soon as the doors opened, he yanked her forward and she stumbled along behind him, bent awkwardly at the waist.

As the floor beneath her feet changed from the cool, clean silver of the transport to the rust-pitted tarnished metal of the pirate ship, she started to panic in earnest. They were taking her onboard their ship. Nothing good could come from that. At best, they would keep her captive until she could be ransomed. At worst, she could be their next meal or sold off on the illegal flesh markets. She stumbled along, trying to get a good view of her surroundings as they hauled her through the ship. One hallway, a left turn into another hallway, a lift down into the belly of the ship. When the lift doors opened, a wave of hot air hit her in the face and the clamour of machinery assaulted her ears.

Her captor dragged her farther into the bowels of the ship, every step sinking them farther into the shadows. The overhead lights here were grimy, barely illuminating the passageways and casting the machinery on either side into darkness. A right turn and they came to a stop in front of a set of crudely constructed cages. The Rehulian fought with the locking mechanism for a moment before the door swung open with an ominous creak. A vicious yank on her hair had her stumbling forward into the cell. As soon as her hair was released, she spun, only to have the door slammed in her face. The lock slid into place with a clunk of finality.

You can’t do this! She blurted, horrified at her predicament. You’re in Coalition space! You won’t get away with this!

The Rehulian eyed her with disgust but said nothing. He turned and walked away, not even bothering to glance back.

Kessia gripped the bars of her cell door and shook it with all her might, letting out a cry of frustration as the pitted metal held. Glancing around, she took in her surroundings carefully. She was in one of five cages that had been welded to the wall of the ship. The rest appeared to be empty except for a lumpy pile of rags in the very last one that she seriously hoped was not the remains of another former captive. She only had enough space to go to her knees, and even then her hair caught on the rough edges of the bars above her head. Her vision was limited to her current pool of watery light and the noise of the machinery drowned out everything else.

Resigned for the moment, she sat against the hull and tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. She had to do something. She might be a hostage on their ship, but she didn’t have to sit here and await whatever fate they had in store for her. Kessia gave herself a few moments to collect her thoughts, then searched her pockets for anything that might come in handy. Looking into her palm, she eyed the small collection of items she’d left in her uniform pockets: lip balm, a half-empty container of mints, and a hair elastic.

Well, that’s not helpful.

Drawing in a bracing breath, she swiped her lips with balm, popped a mint in her mouth and tied her mussed dark curls back in a ponytail before getting to her knees. The first matter of business was to get out of this cage.

Kessia moved to the closest corner and started methodically testing every bar, looking for weak welds or rusted spots she could use to her advantage. She moved around the cage until she got to the other side. A sharp sliver of something resembling wood was lying on the floor of the next cage. Stretching her hand in, she pressed herself against the bars and just managed to catch it with her fingertips, dragging it closer until she could grab it. It was a shard almost the length of her finger, but it didn’t quite feel like wood. The idea that it might be a fragment of bone struck and she shuddered. Great. With my luck, I’m going to end up as take-out.

Shrugging off the horror of that idea, she moved to the lock and felt around, trying to figure out how the mechanism worked without being able to see it. Her hope for an old-style mechanical lock became fruitless when she felt the cool surface of an identity scanner. Fuck.

Disappointment wracked her, but she continued to search, looking for any flaw in the lock or welds to the bulkhead. All she needed was a small advantage, just a tiny stroke of luck.

After what seemed like hours, she sank down in the corner and pulled her knees into her chest. This was bad. She’d checked every inch of her cell and there was nothing. No way out. No option but to sit here and wait to see what they had planned for her. She leaned her head back against the bulkhead and stared at the watery light.

A distant bang jerked her from sleep sometime later. She glanced around, trying to see where the noise had come from. The thud of heavy footsteps closing in was her only warning as the biggest Rehulian she’d ever seen stepped into the pool of light, a bulbous metallic bottle clutched in his fist. He grinned lasciviously at her, the sharp pincers at his mouth flexing. He spoke, his tone discomfiting, but his words were still undecipherable hisses. Evidently, he didn’t feel the need to speak in a language she might understand. He pressed his palm to the lock and dragged the door to her cell open, reaching in for her.

Kessia scrambled to stay out of reach, kicking at him when his big hand closed around her ankle and yanked her toward him. She cursed, gripping her small sharp shard tightly in her hand. As she was pulled out of the cell, she kicked out, hitting the bottom of his bottle and spilling putrid liquid all over his hand and onto her. He growled and let go of her ankle, his bottle hitting the floor and rolling away into the darkness. Deciding it was