Page 16 of Hunted By Khor (Alien Mate Hunt #1)

T wo days of volcanic hell brought us here. Two days of Vek's group trailing us like scavengers, keeping their distance since the yellow one nearly died from volcanic pearl gas. Two days of my feet leaving bloody prints on obsidian glass while the Sketh-kar singing grew louder each night.

Now we stand at the crater's edge, and I understand why hunters die here.

The crater spans maybe a mile across, its walls dropping in terraced levels toward a center that glows with heat distortion.

The air tastes like copper and sulfur, thick enough to chew.

But it's the bones that make my stomach turn.

Thousands of them. Different species, different sizes, all picked clean and scattered like offerings.

The Sketh-kar did this.

“There.” Khor points to openings in the crater wall, maybe thirty feet down. Lava tubes, dozens of them, creating a honeycomb pattern. “They nest in the tubes. Come out to mate, fight, feed.”

“I don't see any.”

“Because you're looking for something that makes sense. They don't.” He sets down his pack, begins pulling out collection vials. “First rule of harvest: expect nothing shaped right.”

A wet chittering echoes from below. The sound I heard two days ago but worse. Multiplied. Like hundreds of insects drowning in syrup.

“Second rule: don't look directly at them first time. Brain needs adjustment period. Look sideways until you understand what you're seeing.”

Something emerges from a tube.

I follow his advice, using peripheral vision. Even that makes my head hurt. Too many limbs, all different lengths. Translucent sections showing organs that pulse with colors that shouldn't exist. It moves by flowing, solid becoming liquid becoming solid again.

“That's a Sketh-kar?”

“Young one. Adults are worse.” He finishes preparing the vials, each one specially treated to preserve the secretions. “Going down now. You stay here. Watch. Learn the patterns.”

“Alone?”

“Vek won't approach the crater. Too dangerous even for stupid youth.” He checks his blades, all volcanic glass, metal would dissolve in Sketh-kar secretions. “If something goes wrong, run. Don't try to help.”

He descends before I can argue. The crater wall is almost vertical, but he finds handholds I can't see, moving with careful precision toward the nearest tube opening.

The Sketh-kar notice immediately.

Three emerge from different tubes, their chittering becoming a harmony that makes my teeth ache. They flow along the walls, defying gravity, converging on Khor's position. He freezes, waiting.

One gets close enough that I can see it clearly. Mistake. My brain rebels at the anatomy. Too many joints bending wrong ways. Mouth parts that split into smaller mouths. Eyes that aren't eyes but collections of sensing organs that track movement in all directions.

Khor moves fast, slashing at the creature with his blade. It splits where cut but immediately reforms, angrier. The chittering becomes a shriek. More emerge from tubes. Five. Ten. Twenty.

He's climbing back up, but they're faster. One spits something that hits the wall beside him. The rock hisses, melting. Another sprays a different substance that crystalizes instantly into the secretion we need, but Khor can't stop to collect it.

He barely makes it over the edge before the first Sketh-kar follows. I grab a rock, throw it. The creature explodes into liquid where struck, then reforms and retreats. They don't like projectiles.

“Well.” Khor is breathing hard, something I've never seen. “That failed spectacularly.”

“You're hurt.”

His shoulder has a spray pattern of crystallized secretion stuck to the scales. Where it touches, the scales have changed color, gone from crimson to deep purple. He reaches to scrape it off, but I stop him.

“Don't. It's eating through.”

“Not eating. Changing. The secretion causes mating response in anything it touches.” His breathing gets rougher. “Need to remove it before...”

His breeding cock emerges violently, fully engorged in seconds. His pupils dilate until his eyes are almost black. The secretion is triggering the same mating frenzy it causes in the Sketh-kar.

“Mara. Need to get away from you. Now.”

But he doesn't move away. If anything, he moves closer. His control is fighting the frenzy, and losing.

I use my blade to carefully scrape the crystallized secretion from his scales, collecting it in one of the vials. It's what we came for, even if we got it wrong. The purple fades from his scales, but the damage is done. He's fully in frenzy now, both cocks emerged and dripping.

“Can't... control...” His hands shake as he forces them to stay at his sides. “Run.”

“No.”

“Will hurt you. Won't mean to. Can't stop.”

“Then don't stop.”

Probably the wrong thing to say. He's on me instantly, no finesse, no control.

We fuck right there on the crater's edge while Sketh-kar chitter below.

It's violent, desperate, his body responding to chemical commands that override everything else.

When he knots, it's too fast, too hard, forcing its way inside before I'm ready.

I scream. The Sketh-kar scream back, like they're cheering.

When it's over, when his knot deflates and reason returns to his eyes, he looks horrified.

“Hurt you.”

“I'm fine.”

“Tore you. Can smell blood.”

He's right. I'm bleeding where his knot forced too quickly. But I've been bleeding for days from my feet. What's a little more?

“We need a different approach.” I watch the Sketh-kar patterns while he tends my damage with shaking hands. “They responded to you as a threat. What if they responded to me as... not a threat?”

“Absolutely not.”

“They're in mating frenzy. Everything is about sex for them right now. You're male, you're competition. I'm female. Different category.”

“They would kill you.”

“Or ignore me.” I stand, testing my legs. Sore but functional. “Let me try. You watch with the vials. If I can distract them, you collect what we need.”

“No.”

But I'm already descending. Using the same handholds he did, though my reach is shorter. The Sketh-kar notice immediately, chittering rising in pitch. But they don't charge. They observe.

I reach a ledge near several tube openings. Stay still. Let them investigate.

One approaches, flowing along the wall. This close, I can smell it. Like rotted fruit mixed with ozone. It extends something that might be a sensory organ, not quite touching me. Tasting the air around me.

The chittering changes. Becomes almost questioning.

Two more approach. Then five. Then a dozen. They surround me but don't attack. One secretes something, the liquid crystallizing as it hits air. Exactly what we need, left as some kind of offering or marking.

Above, Khor descends fast, collecting the secretions while they're distracted by me. They don't care about him anymore. All attention is on the strange female who smells like nothing they know.

“More,” Khor calls. “Need three vials full.”

I move along the ledge, drawing them with me. They follow like a tide, secreting more in response to my presence. The crystallized patterns they leave are beautiful in a toxic way, spiraling fractals that hurt to perceive directly.

Something changes in their chittering. A warning. They all retreat into tubes simultaneously.

“UP!” Khor's voice carries panic I've never heard. “NOW!”

I climb without questioning. Behind me, something else emerges from the deepest tubes. An adult Sketh-kar. The size of three young ones combined, its form so wrong my brain simply refuses to process it. I climb by touch because looking back would break my mind.

We make it over the edge as the adult reaches where I was standing. It screams, the sound a physical force that cracks stone. Then it retreats, taking its young with it.

“Three vials.” Khor shows me the collection, each one full of crystallized secretion. “Payment complete.”

“That was too easy.”

“Easy? You were surrounded by things that eat their mates after breeding.”

“But they didn't. They were... curious.”

We're packing up when we hear human screaming. From the far side of the crater, Gresh appears, dragging his female. She's fighting now, the broken act abandoned.

“No! Not there! Please!” Her voice carries desperation that transcends language.

He's dragging her toward the crater edge. Toward the tubes. He means to use her as bait, but not the way I was used. He means to let them have her.

“Help me!” She sees us, reaches out. “Please!”

Khor doesn't move. “Not our business.”

“He's going to kill her.”

“His female. His choice.”

But when Gresh gets her to the edge, she does something unexpected. Produces a blade from somewhere, hidden all this time. Slashes his throat in one motion. He staggers, surprised, and she pushes. He falls into the crater, landing near the tubes.

The Sketh-kar emerge instantly.

I don't watch what they do to him. The sounds are enough.

The female collapses at the crater's edge, sobbing. Not from grief. From relief.

“Six years,” she says when we approach. “Six years of pretending to be broken while waiting for the right moment.”

“What's your name?” I ask.

“Does it matter? I was Sara once. On Earth. Now I'm nothing. No male. No protection. No way home.”

“Travel with us,” I offer before thinking it through.

Khor's spines extend slightly. Not anger. Surprise.

“You would take me? After what I did?”

“You survived. That's what we do here.”

We leave the crater as the sun sets, three instead of two. Sara walks behind us, silent except for occasional crying. Not sadness. Just the release of years of tension.

We camp at a thermal vent, the heat keeping night predators away. Sara sleeps immediately, exhaustion of freedom knocking her unconscious.

“Why?” Khor asks.

“Because she's what I could become. What any of us become if we choose wrong.” I pull out the extra vial I kept while he was fighting frenzy. “Like I chose to keep this.”

He looks at the vial of secretion in my hand. “You learn.”

“I survive.”

The celebration sex is different with Sara nearby. Quieter but not less intense. His knot locks inside me while steam rises around us, the thermal vent's heat nothing compared to what we generate together.

“Eighteen days until portal,” I whisper.

“Eighteen days to convince you to stay.”

In the darkness beyond our camp, I smell citrus and ozone. Vek, still following. Still waiting. Tomorrow he'll make his move. Has to. We're heading home with the payment complete. His opportunities are running out.

Sara whimpers in her sleep. Free but lost. Saved but homeless.

I hold the vial of secretion against my chest, feeling its weight. My final weapon, stolen while its owner was lost in chemical frenzy.

Everyone here is broken somehow. The only choice is how we carry the pieces.

By morning, Sara is gone. Took water, some dried meat, and disappeared into the pre-dawn darkness. The only sign she was ever here is a message scratched in the volcanic glass: “Settlement is safer.”

Smart. She survived Gresh for six years by being practical, not sentimental. She knows what's coming for us. Can smell Vek's determination on the wind just like we can.

“Will she make it?” I ask.

“Settlement is two days south. She'll make it.” Khor packs our supplies, the vials of secretion secured carefully. “Survivors always do.”

Eighteen days to decide which broken I choose to be.