Page 21 of I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos #1)

Lok tightened his grip on my waist and hoisted me to my feet, barely a breath before the intruders stampeded their way to the top of the hill. Blair tugged angrily at her chains while swearing muffled curses under her gag. The king kept his cold green eyes trained on us, not saying a word until they rode to the apex of the hill and formed a semicircle in front of us, leaving no route of escape. My spine stiffened. I stared at them with wide eyes, feeling like an ant under a magnifying glass.

With a long look, the king silently appraised Lok. In turn, Lok fixed him with an impassive stare. A hush fell over the surrounding air, tense and filled with an awful, unnameable heaviness that clung to everything.

“You’re still alive,” King Osid remarked.

“That I am,” Lok responded. He took a drink from his waterskin. “You poisoned my wife.”

“You wouldn’t answer my letters.” The king’s voice was bored and dismissive.

Lok gave a noncommittal shrug. “I was busy.”

“Busy taking the—”

“Osid, you conniving little fuck, you took my wife hostage in order to force me to accept your challenge on the grounds of dishonor, and then you poisoned my armor. If you accuse me of taking the coward’s way out by abandoning my position, I will rip your head off and drink from your skull, just like I did to your uncle.”

Oh my.

“Fine. Let us speak plainly. I don’t give a damn if you want to spend your days knee-deep in yix shit. If our race is going to survive on this planet, we need to work together under a single cohesive rule. One king, one banner, no more warring clans. This is not a matter of honor; this is about saving the Sankado race. We need unity if we want to build a kingdom strong enough to withstand the Rumbling. Your clansmen refuse to see that. Too stuck in the dogmatic ways of the past. Which makes you the last thing in my way.” King Osid dismounted from his triceratops and approached and drew the longsword from his back. “I’m going to kill you now. Bid your Zhali a final farewell.”

Lok’s face hardened into an icy mask. He held out a hand and Kizolo tossed him his spear. “So be it. I accept your challenge.”

They circled each other, warily, like two predators sizing up their opponents. As much as I might have wanted to see Osid take that ass whupping, I was not convinced my alien was in any condition to challenge anybody to a fight to the death.

“Wait, hold on,” I called. “Neither of you has to fight, I know of a way to fix thi—”

“TEAR HIS HEAD OFF, LOK!” Yengro roared.

Across the circle, one of Osid’s men threw up a hand sign and roared back. “As if that sniveling coward has a chance!” The warriors shouldered past me, drowning out my attempts at a less idiotic solution.

Despite still being weakened from the poison, Lok confidently twirled his spear with flashy flourishes, showing off to the crowd. Osid sneered at the display, but underneath the bravado, I could see the hesitation in his eyes. He was expecting a much weaker opponent. Even without his armor, Lok unnerved him. Even better, Lok knew it.

Yet Osid had his pride. As king, he could not back down now. With the eyes of his warriors upon him, he had no choice but to see this through. I held my breath, heart pounding, as I watched the two kings prepare to clash. At some unseen signal, they flew at each other. Spear met sword in a ringing chorus of metal, both striving for the upper hand.

They broke apart, circled, and clashed again in a blur of strikes and parries. Osid knocked Lok’s spear aside and landed a gash along his thigh. Lok seized Osid’s wrist, pulled him forward, and rammed his face so hard I could have sworn I heard his skull crack. The king stumbled, barely catching himself from falling. His opponent lunged for his fallen spear, then aimed a strike at his neck. Osid recovered quickly, feinting left before sweeping low and slicing a cut across Lok’s calf that made him grit his teeth.

With a roar, Osid charged, sword leveled at Lok’s chest. Lok spun away, knocking the sword aside with the shaft of his spear, then whipped around to drive the butt of it into Osid’s back. The king faltered but quickly recovered, slashing viciously. At the last second, Lok knocked the sword aside, the point grazing his shoulder.

Blair shouted something, and I turned to see her glaring daggers at me from atop the triceratops. Casting a worried glance at the duel, I slipped out of the crowd and crept over to her. She nodded to a keychain hanging on the beast’s saddle.

I grabbed the keychain and quickly released her. As soon as she was free, Blair ripped the gag from her mouth and jumped down from the triceratops.

Rage boiled off her in waves as she turned to dig through a pack on the saddle. “Mad Max me to a fucking dinosaur, will you?” With an evil grin, she found what she was searching for and pulled her pistol from the satchel. “I got something for you, darling.”

With the click of a switch, the safety was off and Blair rounded to shove her way past the cheering men. “Move!” Blair cocked her pistol and took aim at King Osid’s back as he dueled Lok.

Osid’s body went rigid before he spun around to spot Blair. With lightning-fast reflexes, he deftly dodged a strike from Lok and seized him by the horn, yanking him forward as a makeshift shield.

With a guttural scream, I lunged for her arm just as the shot rang out. The blast echoed in my ears until I fell to the ground. Dazed, I reached up and touched my face.

Everything slowed down as my hand came away bloody. The ringing in my ears was deafening. Lok’s and Sol’s faces blurred as they leaned over me, shouting words I couldn’t hear.

I blinked slowly, trying to process what had just happened. The bitter smell of gunpowder hung in the air. Blair stood frozen, the smoking pistol still aimed ahead. Her face was pale with shock.

Lok knelt to examine me, growling in dismay when he saw the blood. He gently turned my head to inspect the damage. I winced as his fingers found the graze along my temple where the bullet had narrowly missed my skull.

The panic and fear in Lok’s eyes melted into relief. He pressed a scrap of cloth against the wound to slow the bleeding, then leaned in close so I could read his lips. “It’s not so bad, Stardust. Just a scrape. You’re going to be just fine.”

Blair holstered her pistol, voice shaking as she said, “Dory, I didn’t mean to hit you. I—I’m so sorry, I was aiming for Osid.”

“You could have killed her!” Lok thundered.

“I was trying to—”

“Enough distractions!” Fury boiled in King Osid’s voice behind me, drowning out the screams of the crowd. “Gorvokk, grab my queen and keep her from causing any more trouble.” A hulking figure emerged from the chaos and seized Blair, dragging her away as she struggled against his grip.

The bloodthirsty king spat a mouthful of crimson onto the ground and leveled his sword at Lok. “Pick up your spear, yix herder . We end this now.”

But I couldn’t take it anymore. Tears streamed down my face as I pushed Lok’s hands away and rose to my feet. My whole body shook with adrenaline and fear as I faced the two opposing rulers. “I’m done,” I shouted, voice quivering. “I’m done with all of this shit!”

King Osid sneered, dismissing my words. “This has nothing to do with—”

“Shut up!” I roared, cutting him off. “I’m the one who just took a goddamn bullet to the side of my face, so both of you fuckers are gonna listen to me!”

I ran a hand down my stomach, trying to collect myself enough to speak. “All right, King Osid, your settlement needs to be moved out of the path of the dinosaur migration.”

“What?” he asked in confusion.

“You only want Lok’s clan to join you so you have enough people to keep the dinosaurs from flattening the place, right? You wouldn’t have that problem if you just moved.”

The king stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. He looked to Lok for answers, but Lok shrugged and pointed his thumb back at me and said, “She’s the animal expert, not me.”

“What are you talking about?” Osid asked.

His eyes held the same cold judgment that haunted my dreams. I’m ashamed to admit a small part of me cowered under the weight of it. Lok placed a hand at the small of my back. I closed my eyes and willed away the burning spotlight. Mustering up my best professional boss-lady voice, I answered. “Your ship crashed right in the middle of a migration pathway. Those animals aren’t purposely trying to ruin your settlement; you’re just in the way of their yearly migration. I’m pretty sure your best bet would be to assign a team to track the herds’ movements, figure out where they go and when, then find a new spot well out of their path.”

“You expect me to move my entire settlement on the hunch that you are pretty sure that we’re in the yearly path of these monsters?”

“They’re not monsters. They’re just animals. And yes, I do. I mean you could build the world’s sturdiest wildlife overpass, but seeing as we’re dealing with brontosaurs, that doesn’t seem like a viable option. So yes, I’d say your best bet is just to move. As a matter of fact— Hey, Sol,” I called. “Do you have to deal with any stampeding herds in the Night Ridge territory?”

“We do not,” he replied. “The worst thing you’d find in the mountains before the Gruulorak showed up were green billjaw. But at least those predators travel alone.”

A murmur broke out among the warriors; some looked skeptical, others who I assumed didn’t have the translator symbiont yet just looked plain confused.

King Osid raised his hands for quiet, and the murmurs died. He looked at me, his expression inscrutable. Then he sheathed his sword and walked toward me. I stood my ground, refusing to flinch under his glare.

He stopped a foot away and asked, “How do you know this is true?”

“I’m a wildlife biologist.”

A blank stare.

Right. He has no idea what a wildlife biologist is.

“I’m a naturalist, a scholar. I’ve spent a good portion of my life studying the migratory patterns of animals.”

“How?”

“With…observation?”

“Why?”

“For the same reason I do anything, because it’s interesting. Look, I get that this is a big thing for you and you want your people to stay safe, and I’m trying to help with that. What would it hurt to move? You mentioned earlier that you want to find out where the rest of the women landed so you can integrate them into your empire, right? Well, I doubt most of those girls are gonna be too keen to move to a kingdom that gets into a turf war with dinosaurs every great migration. Find out where the women were left and rebuild there.”

Lok threw an arm over my shoulders. He was a head taller than King Osid and used that advantage to look down his nose at him. “We could always go back to killing each other and fight over the rubble.”

Osid rolled his eyes. With a sigh, he turned his back to us. His gaze fixed on something in the distance. I looked, trying to find what it was.

All I saw were endless miles of lush forests, the distant blue smudge of a lake, and the Mirage Mountain Range in the background. “Fine,” he said after a moment. “I rescind my claim on the Singing Arrows.” He cast an annoyed glance at Lok’s men. “You bastards are more trouble than you’re worth anyway.” The king sheathed his sword and turned back to me. “How would you go about finding the other women?”

“Now, that part is easy.” Lok grinned down at me. “Still up for that date to the research center, Stardust?”

“After all this? I can’t begin to tell you just how much I want to punch that bird in the face—” The last words ended in a coughing fit. I fell to my knees as blood sprayed from my mouth to paint the grass red. I looked up to see the men staring down at me, wide-eyed.

“So, about that antidote?”

Without so much as a whisper, three Biwban hovercrafts appeared out of thin air above the monument. One of them flew ahead of us and landed gently on the grass. The windshield slid up with a hiss, revealing an extremely miffed-looking Intern. His proud crest was missing quite a few feathers, though one only had to look at the mouth of the lion squeezed in the chair behind him.

Intern’s hands tightened his grip on the steering wheel until I feared it would snap. He pulled out the orange Tamagotchi and inspected it with clear irritation. “Negative,” he announced before snapping his fingers and pointing at Osid. “Capture Subject 12 and her mate. They are to be delivered to the psych ward for couples counseling.”

King Osid let out a cry as a red Biwban zapped him with its ray gun, causing him to freeze in place before being lifted off the ground. I could hear Blair yelling as well before both of them were loaded onto a spacecraft.

Intern cast a searing gaze at Lok, then Sol, then finally settled on me. The little Biwban let out a shaking breath, his voice filled with barely contained rage. “Get. In. The. Ship.”