Page 94 of Bred by the Alien Prince

Another blow sent them reeling, and the boat rocked harder with the waves created by the shock. My arms felt heavy, but I didn't stop. I just couldn't!

They prepared arrows from a distance. I stood to get better leverage on the crank.

"Oh, God!" The sharp metal pierced my gut, and the force caused me to stumble back and plant my ass on the boat.

"Hold on!" Zai yelled and pulled an arrow from his shoulder. He took over the crank, guiding us away.

All my strength left my body. The arrow had pierced my belly, leaving a trail of blood pooling into my belly button. "I'm going to die! My baby is going to die!" I panicked as the pain rippled through my body.

"Hush, you don't know that." He rushed over, shielding me from another volley of arrows. We dropped hard, and something sucked us into the cool, rapid waters below.

The boat was gone, and the water slammed me to the rocky bottom like an inescapable vortex. I felt his hand on me, gripping me and pulling me to the surface. So far, it was just the two of us down here, and I couldn't hear anything else over the waterfall. I hated myself for being nothing but dead weight. "Leave me and go," I said, meaning every word.

"Nonsense. We need shelter to lie low." He stood on one of the wet rocks to scope ahead. He then helped me up. "I think I saw a clearing in the woods."

Sure enough, he was right. There was a small wooden cottage there, and it didn't seem as if anyone was home.

"We have to move fast," he said, laying me on the bed and tearing a larger hole in the tunic. He rolled me over. "I need to see if the arrow pierced the other side." He yanked the thing out of me, causing me to groan. "I'll be back," he said, leaving me inside alone. He returned with what looked like ashes in his hands and rubbed it over the hole. "This should accelerate the healing. Let me find something to dress the wound. You should heal soon."

"What about...?"

He pressed his hand against my stomach. "I don't know. I'm no doctor, but I'll do my best to monitor you for any complications." He looked away from me, and I could tell he was hiding something, but I didn't want to hear the words that my baby was most likely injured and lost. "Optimism is the best way to go here."

"Me and optimism rarely go hand in hand," I chuckled ruefully, thinking of how I got here. Not wanting to be left behind or face Derek and Fran alone, I behaved like a child, not like someone's soon-to-be father. I was stupid and selfish, and now I was paying the price for it. Or rather, my child paid the ultimate price for my recklessness!

CHAPTER 38

Icouldn'tremembermuchafter that. I think I fell asleep, though I couldn't tell by anything other than feeling the gunk build up inside my mouth. Zai bandaged my wound with a cloth. Outside, he was taking some strange-looking bloated creature from a net. I assume those are supposed to be fish?

"Mind if I help?" I asked, feeling better aside from the dull ache of the wound.

"That won't be needed. You should focus on healing. We don't know the owners of this place, and if I'm correct and we are in the Rackni lands, then we don't want to get captured. They'll kidnap you and breed you for certain."

"Jeez! What happened here? Aren't you all Valisian?"

"I believe they crashed here who knows how long ago and have been unable to escape. Or perhaps, they came here willingly." Zai shrugged. "All I know is that some of the plant life here causes a slow deterioration of the mind. I imagine that being trapped here, they must have eaten some before realizing their mistake. I do not know when they began calling themselves Lucanis and Racknis or when they began to fight one another. All I know is that Rackni have been kidnapping the omegas among the Lucanis and raping them to breed them and the Lucanis had enough."

"If they've been trapped here I sort of feel sorry for them."

"Don't. Whoever they were before they came here is long gone. The only thing that can be gained from being here is knowledge and very important medicine, which I now must sadly abandon to save myself."

"You came here for medicine?"

"Yes. Though we were meant to land exactly in the region the plant grows in, our systems went haywire and we crashed a long way away. I suppose it was a blessing and curse. The plant grows in a region that is so harsh we would have died in hours. The curse is that we landed near these primitives." he heaved a sigh. "It's not as if I dreamed of going to sleep in the end. I knew I would one day die. but dying without achieving what I set out to do is unforgivable."

"I think I heard that phrase used before... going to sleep."

"Valisians who are lucky enough not to die an unnatural death eventually succumb to sleep instead."

"So they just sleep and not die?"

He nodded. "Family usually care for them by placing them in a safe location."

"That's something I can't even begin to comprehend." I watched him continue to work. "Are you sure you don't need any help? I think I'll lose my mind if I lay in bed all day."

"We won't be staying long. We have only a few hours before we're trapped here for a few more centuries. I'm cooking us something to eat, and then we'll leave," he said, slicing the animal open and yanking a bunch of greenish goo from the inside. After slicing the eyes off, he tossed it in the fire. He followed with the second before looking up, but not at my face. His eyes lingered on me, but below...

I looked down and saw spotting the rear end of my pants. I gasped my heart in my throat. It was official. I've lost my baby... I felt like my body was numbing, the feeling you get when your leg is about to fall asleep, but it was all over my body.

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