The Alien Hunter's Prize

By Skyla Stone

Aliens might be real, but the little green men aren't so—little.

My whole life, since I can remember has been about science. Which means when I got a chance to conduct my research in actual space, there was no way I was turning that down. After all, space is the newest frontier, more accessible than ever, and I've always wanted to explore.

But working for NASA, my interest in aliens has always been purely theoretical. When I've talked about signs of life in the universe, it was organisms. Small ones. Not the ripped, demanding, horned aliens that my best friend is always reading about.

Now, though, my ship has crashed. My crew is dead. And the seven-foot-tall green alien standing in front of me? He's definitely horned, ripped, demanding to know why I'm on his planet—and not small in the least.
 

And I'm pretty sure I'm about to find out in just how many ways that's true.

Captured is a standalone, quick-read novella set on the jungle planet Zaxellia, where the aliens are green, possessive, all horned up--and looking for their forever mates. They just don't expect them to be human. Let the adventures in space begin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PNK Publishing
• Release date: Oct 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223767664

Book preview

1

EVE

"Genevieve, akh ti."

Ugh, I think. Please, not now.

I’ve never been this tired in my life, and that’s saying a lot.

I don’t even remember last night. That is not a good sign. The incessant pounding of my head isn’t exactly promising, either. And then there’s the fact that whoever decided to wake me up, is—one—apparently speaking gibberish, and—two—calling me by the wrong name. He—

Wait.

Whose voice is that?

I groan and throw a hand over my eyes. The impact stings more than it should.

God, my head is seriously tender.

Think, Eve. Just think for a second. That’s what you do best, right?

Last night. Xiomara was working late on her sample analyses, the ones she always refuses to show the rest of us, so Luke and I ate alone. He had a glass of HyperClear; I stuck to artificial orange juice, which really isn’t that bad after several weeks of subsisting on recycled water and caffeine powder. All of that was normal enough.

So why don’t I remember going to sleep? Why do I feel like I got steamrolled while I was out? And who the hell is calling me by my grotesque full name?

I force my eyes open, and a single glimpse of my surroundings rewards me with about thirty more points of confusion.

I’m outside. Which means I’m on land—and some seriously weird-looking land, at that. Nothing like what I know from Earth, unless you count the pics in old history files. Everywhere I look, it’s crowded, sun-dappled, and vividly green, as if the conservatory back at the lab managed to mutate and explode all over itself. After spending so much time in the cramped, blank-walled corridors of our ship, the sheer complexity of dancing leaves and rippling shadows is enough to make me nauseous… really nauseous.

I’m so overwhelmed, in fact, that it takes me a moment to notice the alien.

That’s the word that my mind immediately conjures. Alien. And not alien in the academic sense. Not the sort of prokaryotic bacterium that I’ve been researching for half a decade. Far from it—in fact, he could be right off the cover of one of those stupid sci-fi romances that my friend Cleo-Marie was always reading back home. This is a full-blown green-skinned, human-faced, bipedal fantasy alien, and he’s staring down at me like I’m the weird one.

Then again, if this is his planet, I suppose that I am.

Genevieve, he says again, holding something out to me.

I recoil automatically—but the little silver box, even smaller-looking in the palm of his massive hand, isn’t a weapon. It looks like one of our emergency info kits—and when I bring my hand to my chest to find my lanyard torn, I realize that it is an EIK. My EIK.

He pushes a button on the side. My own voice blares from the tiny speakers.

I am Genevieve Martinez. I am an Earth citizen. I am a scientist. I am peaceful.

I can still remember recording those things at the start of the mission. I thought it was ridiculous, but Xiomara compelled us to take it seriously—to the point where Luke and I spent about two hours each trying to get the recording just right.

You need to focus on the inflection, Xiomara said emphatically, rolling her knuckles along the tabletop between us. You’d be surprised how many creatures can recognize meaning without knowing a language. Repetition like this, the consistent ‘I am,’ tells them that you’re making a statement. Most sentient species will be able to conclude that the statement is about yourself and, therefore, about your intentions. But only if the tone is right.

Luke and I spent that night joking about the likelihood of alien life being courteous enough to check our EIKs—and that was if we managed to find a habitable planet in the first place. We narrowed the chance down to something barely short of impossible.

Either Xiomara knew more than she let on, or we’ve just gotten extremely lucky.

Genevieve, the alien says for a third time, and I finally find my voice.

Eve. Just Eve.

Or Dr. Martinez, preferably, but that’s a linguistic bound that I doubt either of us can make right now.

He—I can’t think of it as anything but he, with that sculpted bare chest and eerily human face—tilts his head slightly. His eyes are pale and narrow, with catlike vertical pupils. They dilate ever-so-slightly as I watch. It makes me feel like I’m trapped beneath a Petri glass, just like all the creatures I’ve studied throughout my career. For once, not the observer, but instead the observed.

Despite the heat-thick air, I can barely suppress a shiver.

This can’t be real.

I squeeze my eyes shut, shake my head rapidly back and forth, and look up again.

Still green. Still alien. Still watching me like a biologist with a new frass sample to parse.

Okay. Okay.

So if this is real, what the hell happened?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I don’t want to know.

If I’m on an alien planet, that means we landed. And if I don’t remember landing, it must have been a crash.

That would explain the soreness. And the disorientation. And the shattered scraps of the escape pod that are sticking jaggedly out from the undergrowth all around me.

Oh no.

Where the hell is Luke? Where’s Xiomara?

Where am I?

Gen—

It’s not Genevieve, okay? I blurt out. Of course, I know he can’t understand me, but rationality is pretty far in my rearview mirror at this point. "I’m Eve. Eve. I’m a scientist. And I need to find my friends."

He seems to take several moments to digest that much verbiage. I take advantage of his confusion to haul myself upright—and immediately discover that my legs are numb below the knees. I keel sideways before I can even get a foot properly beneath me, landing hard on my left shoulder. An involuntary yelp escapes my lips at the impact.

The alien says something else in his bizarre language. Somehow, I’m almost positive he’s asking whether I’m all right.

Maybe Xiomara did have a point about tonality.

I’m fine, I say, managing to sound incredibly not fine.

He makes a noise low in his throat, almost but not quite like a laugh. I don’t even have the energy to be offended.

The others aren’t here. I can barely walk. And this man, this creature—as intimidating as he may be—seems like my best bet at survival.

It’s starting to seem like my only choice is to trust him.

Propping myself up on one elbow, I finally take a proper look at my would-be savior.

I can’t get over how human he seems—and, at the exact same time, how not human. The vivid green skin, for one thing, is more than a little offputting. Offputting but not repulsive, rather than the acidic lime tone of the aliens in Cleo-Marie’s books, his is as deep and verdant as the jungle around him. The color of fresh, damp moss or water-slickened jade.

And there’s a lot of that skin on display.

His whole chest, for one thing. It’s broad, bare, and almost impossibly sculpted—though my only recent basis for comparison is Luke, and he’s more skinny-nerdy-tech-guy cute than… whatever this is.

I must look pathetic to him. Tiny, bruised, completely out of my element… and I can’t even imagine the state of my hair.

What’s the matter with me? Did the crash take half my brain with it? I’m being stared down by a seven-foot alien man, and I’m worried about my hair?

I can only blame the way that he’s staring, locking me in place with those vivid green eyes. The expression on his strong-boned face is as impossible to read as it is to escape. I can’t tell why he’s looking at me, what he wants, or whether I’m in danger.

But I guess none of that really matters. Even if I could run, it wouldn’t get me very far. I guess I’m doomed either way.

So when he extends one of those wide, long-fingered hands, of course, I have to take it.

He pulls me to my feet in a surprisingly swift motion. My legs are still weak, and they threaten to give out on me again—but he lifts another hand to grip my shoulder, suspending me effortlessly upright. His touch is firm but not rough; I can tell that he’s holding back, and trying to imagine his full strength is enough to make my stomach drop.

Thank you, I mumble.

He just stares at me.

I, um…. There may be no mutual intelligibility between our languages, but trying to talk to him is probably my best bet, regardless. Complicating matters is the fact that I don’t know what to say. Take me to your leader? Absolutely not. And I’m not about to beg for help, no matter how much I might need it.

I don’t know where I am, I say at last. To embellish the words, I make a show of shrugging my shoulders and waving my hands toward our surroundings. I don’t know where to go. I’m lost.

He contemplates me for a few moments, then releases my shoulder.

"Kaliop ti."

What?

He turns away, pausing only to glance back at me.

"Chiwaya. Kaliop ti."

Right. I don’t know what I was expecting.

Maybe he’s telling me to follow him. He could just as easily be instructing that I stay behind, but that’s not about to happen. The jungle is far too dense, full of strange noises and shiftings, and I don’t care to be left here with no sort of protection.

So when he starts to walk away, I stay right at his heels, my eyes fixed upon his powerful shoulders as they twist and ripple beneath the canopy’s shadow.

Whatever this planet has in store for me, I won’t be facing it alone.

2

TORION

The creature is a female.

I know that. And very little else.

It’s clear that our languages are not the same. Wherever she comes from, they must not know how to build translation chips. Unusual for a culture that has progressed to the level of long-distance space travel… and the distance between her home and mine must be very, very long indeed.

I’ve never witnessed anything like her. Soft brown skin, small frame, and those strange words that she speaks… though she bears a passing resemblance to a Zaxellian in many other ways, those traits are unlike anything that I’ve ever seen from our other interplanetary visitors. The chances of her landing here, and furthermore being able to breathe our atmosphere… well, at least I assume that she can breathe it. She may very well be on the verge of collapse at any moment, and I can’t keep myself from glancing over my shoulder every few steps to ensure that she’s still following.

I at least know her name, or what I think to be her name.

Genevieve.

Such strangely delicate syllables, all uttered with only the frontmost part of one’s mouth. A word that begs to be whispered rather than spoken.

Perhaps that’s why she scowled so harshly at me when I attempted to replicate it. My tongue is not fit to sculpt such fragile sounds.

My only choice, I remind myself now, is to take her back to the village. Perhaps Xanarath will know what to do… though he certainly isn’t eager to grant me any favors as of late. Ketharia may have readily forgiven me for what happened between us, but her father most certainly has not.

I can’t think about that right now.

The bottom line is that Xanarath does not care for me, nor does he care for outsiders. Genevieve and I will both draw his ire when we enter the village.

I simply have no other options.

She lasts for a surprisingly long amount of time, considering that she couldn’t even get to her feet at first. But we’re deep in the woods. I’ve already been out for hours, checking the traps that I placed yesterday morning. We’re perhaps halfway back when her breaths begin to roughen and speed up; at the same time, her footsteps stagger out of rhythm.

I pause and look back at her. Her eyes are bright and determined over red-tinged cheeks. She glares, as if daring me to say anything.

I don’t. Instead, I hold out my hand and wait for her to take it.

Genevieve hisses through her teeth—a sound of pain as much as frustration. I expect her to stall for longer than she does, but it seems that her intelligence outweighs her pride. She knows as well as I do that we have only one way forward.

She takes my hand, and we make it a bit farther that way. When our pace slows to a crawl, I shift to wrap my arm around her shoulders, careful not to crush them. I’m acutely aware—and therefore terrified—of how easy it would be to do so.

But I can coach my body in the subtlest of ways. Restraining one’s strength is twice as important as utilizing it. Every good hunter knows that.

Still, she resists. Her eyes blaze as she pulls herself away from me