Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

twisting marble staircase.
    “ Domina ,” Lennai said sharply, looking at her. “You always call me 'domina.' And I don’t like it when slaves ask questions, but given your background, I’ll let it slide. This time. In the future, you will trust that I will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it, to properly serve me.”
    “Fine,” Alaina muttered. “Domina.”
    “Rua recommended you as a bed slave,” Lennai went on. She shrugged, and fiery red curls slipped across her shoulders. “But I have plenty of bed slaves. I don’t need another. Despite all of his insistence.”
    Alaina exhaled, relieved.
    “However, I do need an exceptionally unique donara, and I think you will do perfectly.”
    Alaina hesitated. She had no idea what a donara was, and now she was afraid asking would get her snapped at again, or worse.
    In the minute she spent struggling with whether or not to ask, Lennai led her to the foot of the staircase and then out a pair of glass doors, onto a high porch that overlooked what Alaina realized was a training yard. Two dozen men and women populated the yard, all of them practice fighting in a miniature arena scattered with soft sand. Lennai went to the porch’s railing, settling her hands upon it, and looked down at the fighters with pride.
    Not just fighters, Alaina reminded herself. These were gladiators. The gladiators Yfia spoke of, who fought whole wars in the Arena to keep interplanetary peace. Alaina saw Errai and Jiayi and Ankaa among those training in the yard, and felt an anchor of dread drop right through her stomach. Was she going to be made to fight? Would Yfia’s prediction come true? If she had to fight, surely she would die. She had no idea how to fight the way these aliens were fighting. Some of them had weapons she’d never seen before, could not have even imagined how they were used. She’d barely ever thrown a punch in her life.
    Lennai lifted her hands and clapped them three times.
    The fighters reacted instantaneously, as if whipped, all stopping what they were doing and falling into a tight, straight line before the balcony, looking up at Lennai. Shoulders straight, hands at their sides, chins high. They’d moved almost in concert, and swiftly, until they were perfectly positioned beneath their domina’s gaze. And they were all rippling with muscles, even the Jiayi, who were still slender but chiseled. Even in the women, there wasn’t an inch of body fat on any of them. Scarred, sandy faces, and eyes hardened by bloodshed and determination. Alaina was terrified of all of them.
    One of them in particular drew her eyes, and then she couldn’t look away. He was Errai, she could tell, and the scales that wound over his shoulders and chest were black, shiny, like obsidian. He was gorgeous, Alaina thought, and that single thought was very jarring. Along with his black scales, his hair was black and long, braids and baubles threaded into it, pulled back from his face in a short ponytail. He was tall, shoulders broad and every inch of him was one defined muscle after another. He had violet eyes, so bright Alaina could see them all the way from the balcony. But his expression was dark, ferocious, and angry.
    “Cursii of the House of Chara,” Lennai announced, smiling. “In preparation for the upcoming games, I have bought a gift to further inspire you along your path to glory. This,” and she indicated Alaina, “is to be your donara if you win the day. Whosoever of you reaches the top of the list, that is the cursu or cursana who will claim this very exotic creature.”
    Claim .
    Alaina was starting to think she knew exactly what a donara was.
    The gorgeous black-scaled Errai fighter looked right at her, then, and a chill when down her spine. She shivered.
    “Does this please you?” Lennai asked them.
    The gladiators roared their approval, so loud Alaina jumped in spite of herself, staring at all these screaming aliens who wanted now to win her. All except