Page 72 of Alien Prince’s Fake Bride (The Tentacle Throne #1)

- Umbra -

“It’s delicious,” the Empress purrs with an undertone of shrillness. “Take it.”

I know I hit her, but the gun doesn’t seem to have done any damage at all.

Juriniel smiles. “Oh no, little menace. That little thing won’t work on me. If it could, the Vyrpy wouldn’t have let you keep it.”

“Stop!” Someone crashes through the plants nearby.

“Take it!” Juriniel hisses, pushing the leaf into my face and rubbing it on my lips.

I have no idea how toxic it is, and this is desperate self-defense. I aim the knife-gun between her eyes and push the firing button.

Again the gun jumps in my hand, and a hole appears in the Empress’s face. And again it’s as if she doesn’t notice. There’s no blood, not even a tinge of red. It’s just… empty.

“Open!” she screeches and pushes me to the ground, putting one knee on my chest and making it feel heavy despite the lack of gravity. “Take it! It’s yours!” Her immense mass is keeping me in place.

I fire the knife gun two more times. Each shot hits the Empress, with no effect. I try to push her away with the Syntrix.

“ Warrr!” There’s a mighty roar and a clang , and the Empress’s strangely huge mass is completely off me.

Holding himself in place with one hand grabbing a bush, Mareliux reaches down, gently takes my hand, and pulls me to my feet. “Are you all right, my love?”

“No,” I tell him truthfully. My arm is bleeding, and I’m badly shaken. “But I will be. Nerox said to tell you that the Empress is dead.”

His eyes widen and there’s a sharp intake of breath. “Nerox said that?”

“Traitors!” the Empress screeches. She’s holding onto a sapling to not drift upwards. “You can’t escape! My Vyrpy will kill you all and we shall own the Tentacle Throne!”

“ We, ” Mareliux says, keeping a good grip on me so that he’s between me and Juriniel. “You don’t mean the Khavgrens, of course. What exactly were you planning?”

The Empress stares at him. “With us in power, with us owning the Tentacle Throne, the whole galaxy will be ours! Nobody sees its true power. Only we do. We were supposed to have that Throne! It should all be ours, to use to keep the Syntrix in balance and chaos. And now it will!” She flicks the silver leaf away and it drifts into the bushes.

“You hurt my wife,” Mareliux says, his voice flat and deadly.

Juriniel tries to scratch him with her finger blades, but Mareliux easily evades.

“Your wife? ” she scoffs, voice going shrill again.

“Oh, stop it. Nobody believes that. But it was a good attempt. She really had strong Syntrix, that little Earth girl. Strong, but wild. We had to shield that pitiful little planet from the Syntrix when we first found it. They were the only people that could rival us. Oh, you should have seen what they did with their planet, Mareliux! The buildings, the palaces, the giant triangular tombs made from immense stones, cut straight from the heart of their planet! Even the Khavgren can’t make anything like that, despite the Syntrix and despite that technology you’re so proud of.

But Earth could. That’s how strong their Syntrix abilities are.

I don’t mind admitting that we fear them.

And so of course you come dragging an Earth girl to Khav.

Married! No, nobody believed that part. But no matter.

The Vyrpy will kill you now, the Emperor will soon die, and then the Tentacle Throne will be mine.

How long do you think this pitiful empire will last after that?

I estimate four days before I can receive my Primarch on Khav and present the Tentacle Throne to him!

He can rule all the Syntrix. And that means he will rule the whole galaxy! ”

“You hurt my wife,” Mareliux says again, taking a step closer to the Empress. “And you will never have the Tentacle Throne. Certainly your Primarch will never set one claw on Khav.”

I’m starting to have some idea of what they’re talking about. It’s obvious that Juriniel is not what she seems.

“There’s nothing to stop me,” she says with great sincerity. “There’s a thousand Vyrpy in this ship. You have a hundred warriors with you, at the very most. And who knows how many of them are really mine, like the Calanians?”

“And Nerox,” Mareliux scoffs. “But my warriors aren’t that weak-minded.”

“I haven’t been able to convince Nerox yet,” Juriniel admits.

“But he won’t be a problem. I’ll make sure he stays entertained and busy with one girl after the other.

Oh, do you hear how quiet everything is?

The battle is winding up. We should end this, too.

And since my first offer was rudely refused—” There’s suddenly a small knife in her hand and she lunges at me so fast she’s just a blur.

But Mareliux is ready. Bellatriz’s edge strikes the Empress at shoulder level and stops her in her tracks with a resounding clang and a shower of green sparks. One of her robes falls off her.

“Oh well, if you insist,” she says in a strange, unpleasant voice

Then my mind turns inside-out as she changes shape.

Her tall and thin form morphs into something else.

Her skin, once so smooth and pale, starts to ripples like disturbed water.

The haughty lines of her face distort into a horrifying parody of a smile.

The bones in her body crack and shift with a sickening wet sound, and her limbs lengthen and grow thin.

Her fingers stretch into long, wicked claws as the gloves drop to the ground.

Her clothes tear and shred as her body expands, and a sickly, dark fluid oozes from her pores, coating her in a shimmering, oily sheen.

She grows taller and taller, her neck elongating and her jaw jutting forward.

Her eyes, once a normal yellow, turn to glowing, slitted emeralds.

It’s an alien, that’s obvious. But it’s not a Khavgren or a human. It’s dark and jagged and tall, with an iridescent sheen to its smooth body. It looks war-like and deadly, with claws and spikes and wide, slitted eyes that glow green.

The Syntrix changes, too. It’s as if there’s a buzz in it, a disturbing element that makes it feel unpleasant.

“A Phrexz shapeshifter,” Mareliux growls. “I wish I’d suspected it sooner.”

I clench my knife. No wonder my shot didn’t do anything — that thing must be bulletproof.

“Vermin,” it says as it slashes one long, clawed arm through the air, narrowly missing Mareliux because he pulls back fast. “Vermin of the galaxy! We shall exterminate you, and the Syntrix will be ours! We will make it quiet again!” The voice is now very different from the Empress’s, deep but with a screechy undertone like that of a blown loudspeaker.

“Umbra, stay here if you can.” Mareliux attacks the alien and pushes it back with several hard slashes with Bellatriz.

The alien has to defend itself with its long, scythe-like claws that tip its arms. It’s a ferocious fight, and sparks fly.

Leaves and twigs too, because these two are like hedge-cutters gone wild.

I duck down and grab onto the roots of a bush to not drift away.

The terrifying alien the Empress has become suddenly kicks off and zooms up towards the sun panels in the ceiling.

Mareliux makes his way over to me, careful to not drift up. “Do you need me to patch you up?”

“Not yet,” I tell him as I stare past him up at the alien. “We have to win this. What is that thing?”

“It’s a Phrexz,” Mareliux says tightly. “The most dangerous of their type: a shapeshifter. A master of the Forbidden Arts. It must have killed my mother years ago and taken her place.”

I put my hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry to hear that, Mareliux.” It’s one of the first phrases Vera taught me.

“ That is likely correct,” Bellatriz says.

“ Phrexz are extremely rarely seen, and the shapeshifter variety has only been recorded by the Empire four times before. According to the lore, they send single agents into places they want to take over. Usually on a smaller scale, though. I’ve never heard of them trying to take over a whole Empire in that way.

But why not? The Khavgren Empire is extremely centralized.

Everything grows from that Tentacle Throne.

This one probably killed your father back then and tried to kill you .

Be aware that the Phrexz in their base form are immensely strong and feared for their speed. ”

“Mareliux,” I say and stare up at the alien. “It’s almost at the ceiling. Do you think it will?—”

I immediately sense a strange tug on the Syntrix, a nasty feeling that someone is using it for evil.

The huge Phrexz crouches at the ceiling, then kicks off so hard it breaks the sun panel with a hard crack . I swear I can hear the sonic boom from the alien breaking the speed of sound as it dives straight down towards us, scythe-like claws stretched out in front.

It all happens in a flash, but it’s as if time slows down and I see everything ultra clearly.

We don’t have time to get out of the way.

That alien is now a jagged-edged missile coming towards us so fast it sounds like a jet fighter ripping through the air.

And there’s nothing I can do. Those claws are going to absolutely skewer Mareliux.

In a flash my Syntrix is white hot with fury and fear, wanting the Phrexz gone with an intensity that makes me gasp. My Syntrix ring flashes, and so does Mareliux’s.

For the first time I feel the bond between us, our minds melding in a blissful feeling of togetherness and sheer power. It’s like an embrace and a kiss at the same time, of joining and becoming one. My body feels translucent and warm, filled with his light as mine fills him.

Through our combined Syntrix, we push at the Phrexz.

It’s total overkill. The alien immediately starts to spin, its aim off as it slams into the ground between Mareliux and me, making the ground shake and throwing up a thick cloud of greenery and dirt that blinds me for a split second.

I’m closer, so I calmly reach into the cloud of dirt and grab a clawed, jagged, three-fingered hand, ignoring the sharp edges.

Then I whirl the alien around in a circle and throw it like I did with Vector back in the Cube.

But the Phrexz has greater mass than even a burly Space Force sergeant, and despite my fury, I simply don’t have the strength to toss it as far as I wanted.

Still, I don’t think I have to toss it far, just in the right direction, straight towards Mareliux.

“Good work, my love.” Mareliux is still down, and his position is far too awkward to swing the sword.

Instead he stabs Bellatriz up and out, and I swear the crystal blade flicks out of existence for a split second before it emerges in the middle of the Phrexz’s chest, exploding the thick armor in shards that zing past my head.

The alien is cut in half lengthwise by its own speed as Bellatriz passes through it.

At the same moment the gravity comes back, and I drop to my butt in surprise.

The Phrexz lands with a dry sound like a huge heap of sticks, spraying a green fluid. But it’s still moving, and one clawed hand shoots out towards Mareliux, grabbing the arm that holds Bellatriz. He groans in pain and dark blood starts to flow from the arm.

But I’ve had enough of this. Lifting a hand that now feels unreasonably heavy, I aim the knife gun at the center of the Phrexz’s face, right above the slitted, green eyes. I’m not supposed to do this inside a spaceship, but if it fails, nothing matters anyway.

“Stay away from my love,” I snarl as I push the button.

It’s the last shot in the gun, the armor-piercing one. And while it only makes a neat little hole in the Phrexz’s face, it blows the back of its head away in a dense, green spray. The hand goes limp, and Mareliux shakes it off him.

“Stand back, Umbra.” He kicks the Phrexz away, still spraying bright, green fluid as it spins before it hits the ground thirty yards away.

Its shattered body still moves, crawling its way back towards us.

Mareliux goes over and stabs Bellatriz into the center of the Phrexz. It shudders once more, then goes limp.

“ Don’t touch that blood,” Bellatriz says urgently. “ And clean me right away, Prince.”

Mareliux rips big wads of leaves off the plants nearby and cleans the blade with them, making them smoke.

I look quickly around. There’s no other threat nearby, but I keep the knife ready.

Mareliux replaces Bellatriz in her scabbard and picks up something from a nearby bush.

“Look.” He drops it into the little pool of Phrexz blood and then stands back.

It’s the small, silvery leaf that the Empress wanted me to eat. A second after it makes contact with the green blood, it starts to grow very fast until it’s become a mass of silvery threads the size of a beach ball.

“That would have killed you,” Mareliux says when he comes in to embrace me as if desperate to see that I’m all right. “Sorry. I wanted her to still be my mother. I suspected she wasn’t, but I just couldn’t bring myself to…”

I hug him back, more exhausted than I’ve ever been. “It’s all right, my love. It played the part very well.”

He grabs my hand, and we walk a hundred feet towards the wall of the big room. Then he steadies himself on the wall and just breathes.

I get it. He just saw his mom turn into a horrific alien that tried to kill him.

I reach up to put a hand on his shoulder. “That was terrible.”

“Yes,” he says and gently takes my hand, squeezing it.

“I think I suspected since I was a boy, but I couldn’t be sure.

I didn’t want to think that thought all the way through.

” He straightens up. “Good work with the Syntrix. If you hadn’t pushed it off course, it would have killed me.

Oh, thank the gods you are alive still!” He pulls me in and embraces me again, hard.

The room is surprisingly quiet. I only hear the sounds of what I think is boisterous talk from the other side of all the greenery. They sound like Khavgren voices.

“You came back for me,” I say into his chest. “If you hadn’t...”

“I was almost too late. I’m sorry, my love. I thought you were safe in the palace.”

I gently free myself from his warm embrace. “Are there still Vyrpy to kill?”

He stomps the ground twice. “If the gravity is back, it means that our forces control the ship. It looks like we won. That Phrexz couldn’t concentrate on using its Syntrix to control them and make them fight better.

These were unusually weak Vyrpy. We’ve fought much better ones before, strengthened by this same Phrexz, I think. ”

“That was probably when the Emperor let it sit on the Throne so he didn’t have to,” I add.

His eyes go wide again. “He let Juriniel sit on the Throne? No wonder our forces were so weakened! The Phrexz must have done everything it could to weaken them.”

“Can we secure the rest of the ship?” I ask. “There’s a big room with cages. There are many prisoners there, most Khavgrens. Sigise is there, too.”