Stolen By Them: Read online

  Stolen By Them

  Between Rebels Book One

  Skye MacKinnon

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 15

  About Planet Athion

  About the Author

  Also By

  Stolen By Them © Copyright 2019 Skye MacKinnon.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book contains space pirates. Don’t be like them. Don’t pirate this book.

  Cover by Peryton Covers.

  Published by Peryton Press.

  perytonpress.com

  skyemackinnon.com

  Created with Vellum

  In honour of Russel T Davies, my personal writer hero, who inspired me to write about wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

  Blurb

  I always knew that one day, I would be taken. It was just a matter of time.

  There are two basic facts every woman needs to know.

  The Trads are bad. They will impregnate you and use your womb to bear their children until you die.

  The Athions are good. They're strong and protective, and you'll practically be begging them to father your babies.

  But none of that is true. Not for me, anyway. I was kidnapped by Athions and now two Trads are trying to rescue me. Has everything been a lie or are these guys just pretending to be different from the rest?

  I can’t let down my guard. I need to get away. But how do you escape when you’re trapped on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere?

  Planet Athion is a shared world contributed to by multiple authors. Discover more about this exciting new Reverse Harem, Sci Fi Romance series today! Travel over to planetathion.blogspot.com for more information.

  Author’s Note

  Please be aware that this book contains scenes of violence that may be triggering for some readers.

  This series has been written by a Scottish author and therefore uses British spelling, idioms and expressions.

  Enjoy the ride!

  Prologue

  The day I found Tonya dead in the bathtub was the day I realised how shit my life had become. She didn’t even leave a note. Everyone knew what had happened. She’d fallen for their charm, their spell, and got pregnant. It was a miracle she’d managed to return to our home before the Trad kidnapped her, taking her to his spaceship. Maybe he hadn’t realised he’d managed to get her pregnant. Maybe she’d escaped him. It didn’t matter.

  Tonya was dead and I was alone. We’d been the two last young women in the village. After the invasion, many had thought that we’d be safe in our little dwelling. Three hundred souls, the next school half an hour away by bus. No Trads would ever come here, right?

  Wrong. They were everywhere, not just in the cities, but even in the tiniest hamlets. Maybe the women in small towns and villages were easier picking. Less police, less information.

  I’d heard that they had set up safe districts in the cities where no men were allowed. We couldn’t do that in Stonefall. Our advantage was that everyone knew everyone in the village, but that didn’t mean that we never had contact with outsiders. Including the outsider who’d killed Tonya.

  I stared down at her body, wondering what to do now. Her wet clothes clung to her pale skin, highlighting her slender shape. She’d put on her favourite dress. Had she worn it when she met the Trad or had Tonya put it on after, before she threw the hairdryer into the full bathtub?

  Tonya and I had never been the best of friends, but the cruelty of life had brought us together after the invasion. We’d been six women living in this house. Now I was the only one left.

  I stroked a stray lock of hair out of Tonya’s pretty face, then left the room without another glance. It was time to move on.

  Chapter 1

  The bus to London was packed. I was squeezed against a large, bulky man, who smelled of sweat and stale beer. He definitely wasn’t pretty enough to be a Trad. The aliens were flawless when they disguised themselves as humans. No scars, no impurities, and if they had even a single grey hair, it was because they wanted it. It was how you could recognise them. The prettiest men were likely Trads. But simply knowing what they were wasn’t enough. They had a trick up their evil arses, being able to enchant women, even those who suspected that the man in front of them wasn’t human. Our scientists were trying to figure out what it was that made Trads so irresistible, and hopefully develop an antidote, but so far, they hadn’t been successful. I doubted it was very easy to capture a Trad and get him to take part in their research.

  The smelly man shifted in his seat, pulling out a newspaper. I glanced at the headline.

  Our Athion Friends Promise Paradise For Women.

  I grimaced. The Athions had arrived shortly after the invasion. The good aliens. Blue, pretty and on our side. They’d explained why the Trads had come to Earth: after a virus struck their entire planet and killed most of their women, they needed to find an alternative to keep their species alive. Somehow, they discovered that human females were compatible with their anatomy. Which is why the Trads stole women, impregnated them and used them as living breeding machines. I’d heard that the baby wouldn’t even be half human but fully Trad. I shuddered at the thought of having a monster growing inside of me. No wonder Tonya killed herself. Death seemed preferable to life as a Trad breeder.

  The Athions had lost most of their females as well, but they didn’t steal women. They gave us a choice: move to their planet, be safe from Trads and be loved and treasured by the Athion men we chose to take. They were big about us being there voluntarily, although I sometimes wondered what would happen if I took them up on their offer to move to Planet Athion and then refused to take a husband. Or several. That’s what they seemed to like. I wasn’t sure if that was due to there not being enough females or if they’d always been polyandrous.

  I tried to read the article in the man’s paper, but he flicked the pages to get to the sports section. Boring. My e-reader had run out of battery two bus stops ago and I still had another two hours to London. Hopefully, this journey would be worth it. I was planning to go to one of the sanctuaries and live there. As a virtual teacher, I wouldn’t even have to leave the safety of the refuge for work. All I needed was my laptop and my VR headset.

  I gave the man a sideways glance. This might be one of the last times that I saw a man. At least until I was either too old to conceive or the Trads were defeated. To be honest, I wouldn’t miss this one. His smell was enough to make anyone celibate.

  It was years since I'd last had a boyfriend. I broke up with my ex a few months before the invasion happened, and after that, I preferred to stay single. It was safer that way. I’d much rather endure an eternal dry spell than being impregnated and kidnapped. It was all about priorities in this horrible new world.

  “Where are you headed?” a melodious voice suddenly asked from behind, shaking me from my reminiscing.

  I tur
ned around, craning my neck to take in the man sitting in the row behind me. An Athion. His blue skin was striking, the colour of lapis lazuli on a rainy day. One thing I’d learned pretty quickly was that there are hundreds of shades of blue. Just like us humans, Athions have different skin colours, except that they’re all hues of blue. Azure, cobalt, sapphire, navy… you name it, they have it. I’d always wondered if their shade of blue corresponded to where on the planet they were from, but I’d never really talked to an Athion before. We’d had one come to our village a year ago as some kind of human-alien-relations programme, but all he did was hold a speech in our small town hall and then he left.

  I realised the man was waiting for a reply. “London.”

  “Visiting friends?”

  I frowned. “Moving to one of the sanctuaries, actually.”

  He smiled. “I should have guessed. Someone as pretty as you would only be safe there or on Athion.”

  I was glad he didn’t ask me why I wasn’t moving to his planet.

  “Do you know which sanctuary you’re going to live at? My brother and I are headed to the Golden Star Refuge, actually, and we’d be pleased to accompany you there, if you’d like. London isn’t safe for solo females.”

  Another alien waved from the row behind the Athion. They looked almost the same, except that this one had his hair shaved rather than in loose curls.

  “He’s right,” the guy next to me grunted. “A girl like you shouldn’t be walking about there on your own.”

  I hadn’t even considered that. I’d only ever been to London once and that was before the invasion. Back then, there had been no question about me going there by myself, but now, things had changed. I’d hoped that a big city like London would be busy and anonymous enough to avoid dangerous encounters while walking from A to B, but it seemed I’d been mistaken.

  “I’ve never heard of the Golden Star,” I hedged, a little uncomfortable.

  The Athion grinned. “It’s fairly new, only a couple of months old. Run by twin sisters in their seventies. I can’t remember my own grandmother, but I’d like to imagine she was as kind and generous as those two.”

  That did sound good. I’d looked at the websites of various sanctuaries, but they all sounded the same. Having a personal recommendation was better than any anonymous review I could find online.

  The man next to me folded up his newspaper. “Take their offer.”

  I didn’t feel comfortable about leaving this bus with two strangers, but they were Athions. They were the good guys, so what was the worst that could happen?

  I was glad to be breathing fresh air again, even though it was the smoggy air of London. It was better than the stuffy, smelly air inside the bus.

  “Shall we take a taxi?”

  The two Athion brothers were flanking me, but to my surprise, they didn’t make me feel safe, on the contrary. I was uncomfortable with them being so close. I didn’t know them, yet they behaved as if I needed them. I shouldn’t have accepted their offer.

  “Is it far?”

  “Half an hour to walk, ten minutes by taxi if the traffic isn’t too bad.”

  That was an easy decision. I didn’t want to spend half an hour in their company.

  “Then let’s take a taxi.”

  The curly-haired Athion lifted his wrist and typed into a cyber bracer. It looked very different from the smart bracelets that existed for humans, but then, Athions had mastered space travel centuries before us, so of course their tech was far more advanced.

  He grinned at me. “Taxi will be here in two minutes. I’m Arri, by the way, and that’s Laki.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Wren.”

  “Where are you from, Wren?”

  “A village in Yorkshire, you wouldn’t know it.”

  Laki rummaged in his pockets and pulled out three small squares wrapped in silver cellophane. “Want one? They’re my favourites.”

  “Are they sweets?”

  Arri snatched one of them and unwrapped it in record speed before popping the turquoise square into his mouth. It looked like toffee, except for the colour.

  “Delicious,” he muttered with a satisfied smile.

  “Yes, they’re sweets, flavoured with a plant that’s similar to your Earth mint,” Laki explained. “Try one, I have more if you like it.”

  “You never offer me more,” Arri complained.

  His brother shrugged. “You’re not as pretty as her.”

  I took the sweet he offered me and gingerly nibbled on it, not quite daring to eat it all in one go. I wasn’t particularly choosy when it came to what I ate, but this was alien food.

  It was good. Delicious. The cooling aftertaste did indeed remind me of mint, but as if it had been crossed with vanilla and something spicy, almost like pepper. The way the flavours mixed in my mouth was decidedly alien, but definitely something I could get used to.

  “Good?” Laki asked with an amused smirk.

  I nodded and ate the rest of it. The Athions watched me and once again, they made me uncomfortable. Were all aliens like them? If so, then I had no idea why women would want to live with them. Despite their smiles, there was something dangerous about them.

  A black cab stopped next to us and Arri checked his wrist. “That’s ours.”

  He opened the door and gestured for me to get in. His brother walked around and entered from the other side, meaning I ended up squeezed in between them on the leather backseat. There was a fold-down seat opposite me, but I didn’t want to offend the men by changing my position. After all, they’d been nothing but nice to me. Ten minutes, that was all the time I needed to spend in their company before we’d get to the sanctuary and I could be away from aliens for the rest of my life.

  They didn’t tell the driver where to go, but I assumed Arri had done that via his communicator.

  We sat in silence until Laki offered me another sweet. I took it, glad to have something to do besides staring out of the window.

  My own yawn surprised me. I’d slept on the bus for at least two hours, but I guess travelling always made me tired. I swallowed my sweet and stifled another yawn.

  “Tired?” Laki asked, his eyes fixed on mine.

  I shook my head. “No, just exhausted from travelling.” I looked at my watch, realising we’d been in the taxi for almost fifteen minutes already. “Will we be there soon?”

  Another yawn escaped my mouth and my eyelids twitched. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, no matter how much I blinked. I was so tired all of a sudden. Maybe I could take a nap at the sanctuary.

  Laki was still watching me, a smile curving his blue lips. As if he was happy seeing me this tired.

  “Did you...?”

  Talking became too exhausting and I let myself drift off, fading into the darkness of sleep.

  Chapter 2

  Never trust men. Humans. Trads. Athions. Never trust men.

  I repeated my mantra over and over again as I sat on the bed, staring out into space. Into actual, black, endless space. A few stars far, far away, but nothing close. No planets, least of all the Earth. The window was large, too large. When I’d first seen the darkness outside, I thought it was there to swallow me. A slice of glass was all that separated me from the abyss. It had to be something stronger than glass, right? Something that could withstand the sheer nothingness of space.

  I wrapped my arms tighter around my legs, making myself as small as possible. I’d woken up several hours ago, in a tiny room with no more than a bed and a small wardrobe built into the wall. There was no bathroom and my bladder was starting to complain. My throat was parched. How long had I been here? How long since they abducted me? I was still wearing the same clothes, but that didn’t mean anything.

  I knew nothing about Athion technology. Had they beamed me up into a spaceship or had we departed from Earth? Had there been a small shuttle or a massive rocket? I had no idea. It had never been my intention to go to Athion, which meant I hadn’t really read up on their kind. It had been
enough for me to know that they were the good guys.

  As if. It was naïve to think that an entire species was good. Just like you couldn’t say that all humans were good or evil. There were nuances and there were always some rotten apples. I just wish I’d realised that before. Now it was too late. I was trapped on a spaceship.

  My eyes stayed dry. I’d cried enough tears when I’d first woken up. I’d shouted, screamed, banged against the door. Nobody had come. I’d searched the room for cameras, but I’d not found any. They were either hidden really well or the Athions weren’t watching me. If I was on an Athion ship. For all I knew, they could have sold me to Trads to be shipped to one of their breeding facilities. I shuddered. I’d kill myself before I let that happen to me. Just like Tonya. She’d been strong enough to do it. I would be too.

  I forced myself to look away from the window. The darkness made me even more scared of what was about to happen. With nothing else to occupy my mind, I started doing mental arithmetic. My mother had taught me to do that whenever I got frightened by something. Take some random numbers and make them meet.

  452 times 17.

  7684.

  Too easy.

  6000 divided by 43.

  That one took me a little longer.

  I’d always liked numbers, even though I wasn’t a maths wizard. I enjoyed the way they were solid, reliable, unemotional. When I concentrated on my calculations, the world didn’t seem as scary.