Page 76 of Protected by the Alien Warrior Triad

18

Tammy

When I woke up, I immediately felt lost. There was no one next to me in the quickly-constructed shelter. I felt the first tinges of the morning sun through the cracks and panic hit me as I worried that I’d missed the battle – and my three Aurelians are already gone forever.

Yet when I pull myself up and rush outside, I see the three warrior-aliens standing and watching the first hints of the blood-sun on the horizon.

Oh Gods! No, no, no!

The three of them turn in unison and stare at me with the same grim expression. Hadone and Forn, usually so much lighter in mood than Darok, could today be his twins.

Diana gets up slowly. “What’s going on?”

I realize that the poor woman has been kept completely in the dark. She can’t speak the language like I can, thanks to this amulet. She has no idea what’s destined to happen today.

She is unclaimed. What will happen to her if these three Aurelians aren’t here to protect her? What customs are there in this tribe for an unclaimed human female?

“Please, don’t do this. I beg you. We can leave. We can… We can run away,” I beg, my eyes wet with tears.

The three Aurelians don’t respond, but Diana looks at me with soulful eyes – silently pleading for me to explain.

“The… the Scorp-Blood tribe doesn’t recognize me as their fated mate,” I explain. “There’s to be a fight for the right to… tohaveme,” I continue, and when I say the words they somehow feel more real and more terrifying than they did before; as if the mere act of proclaiming them to the morning light cemented them in stone.

“What the hell are you talking about? They can’t… They can’t do that!” Diana is still blinking the sleep from her eyes, but I can see the horror as she realizes that she’s not fated to any triad – and if this is setting a precedent, she too will be fought over and claimed.

I swallow hard. I always do that when I’m nervous.

“I wasn’t expecting this either,” I admit. “I didn’t know what I was expecting, coming to this planet… Oh, Gods, Diana. I’m so scared.” I shudder in front of her. “I’ve been trying to be a rock since the Scorp first attacked Barl. It feels like that frantic escape from the city was years ago. Now there’s no one to be strong for.”

Diana rushes to me and grabs me in a big hug. “Whatever happens, I’m on your side,” she promises, and I feel instant guilt for thinking of her as a stuck-up noble who’d be constantly looking down her nose at me.

“Thanks Diana. I’ll be there for you, too,” I say, breaking off the hug to wipe the tears from my eyes.

The three Aurelians stand in the first breaks of daylight. They’ve never looked so alien. Their eyes are narrow and stern, without a trace of mercy. Every muscle in their bodies is tense, and I understand that they aremadefor war. The Aurelians are born for fights like this, and I was foolish to think of them as anything but warriors – born and bred for battle.

“Did you learn anything about the sickness?” Diana asks, trying to change the subject.

I feel like a failure. There are hundreds of sick people in the cave, and I haven’t been able to help any of them.

“No. Not yet.”

Diana nods. “When I have a problem like this, I try to list out the facts. What do you know?”

I breath in the early dawn air and think. “Well, the sickness got worse in the last couple days. But Forn got better. Umm… I don’t know what else. I guess… I guess that means there’s something about this jungle, or else that’s a red herring and Forn’s body just beat the virus.”

“I’m not sick. You’re not sick, and you went into the jungle too.”

I furrow my brows. “You’re right,” I say, thinking deeply about what makes me different than the sick people in the cave.

What else? The blackness on the lips and beards of the sick?

The sun rises, and once it hits the zenith I know I’ll be out of time. My brain works rapidly, trying to find another way out of this situation.

If I can heal the Aurelians, then maybe – somehow – they’ll accept that I was brought here by fate itself and not some distant human’s experiment gone awry.

Anything to stop these warriors from fighting and dying. I’d do anything. It felt so right last night. It felt like everything was perfect, if only for a moment. I can’t go back to a world without these three amazing men.

The three Aurelians stretch in the dawn light. The sunlight dances against their bodies, glowing against their pale flesh and bringing out the venom green of their tattoos. They start to spar, lightly, practicing their unarmed combat. I wish that I could have brought their weapons to them, but there was no chance in the escape from Lord Aeron’s manor. They’ll have to battle with only their knuckles and the balls of their feet.

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