The Warrior's Pet
Stephanie West
Preface
Giselle didn't know how long she lay near catatonic willing the terrible headache to go away. She sat up as one of the reptilian aliens entered. Giselle backed up and looked around realizing she was alone in a gilded cage.
"What's going on?" She stammered.
"If you're wise you'll keep quiet, pets don't speak on this planet." The creature admonished.
A pet? Giselle's eyes widened. She hadn't misheard.
Her cage was moved into a large tent. There were hundreds of aliens gathered for the auction, and these creatures were the largest yet. Their flesh was red like some kind of demon might be, with hair a uniform dark black. From what Giselle could see their eyes were a stone cold obsidian hue. Giselle noticed the fearsome creatures had long tails that rose out from what looked like chain mail kilts. Giselle shrunk back when she saw the creatures also had sharp fangs.
How in the hell could she get out of this and if she did how could she possibly survive on an alien planet?
Kagan beheld his pet. Nothing like her kind had ever set foot on Cadi. Kagan wondered where in the universe her unique species hailed from.
Giselle refused to behave and even enjoyed his attempts to rebuke her, reveling in the rough handling a male usually held back with females. Giselle was brave instead of meek, standing up for herself in a sea of foreigners.
Kagan had at first insisted that Giselle understand her place in Cadi society. But something more valuable than precious metal or jewels would be lost if Giselle was forced into the role everyone thought she belonged.
Can Giselle find acceptance and love on an alien planet or will she always be nothing more than a warrior's pet?
1 Assessment
Giselle
Giselle roused. As her lashes fluttered open she was accosted by a harsh bright light that made her quickly squeeze her eyelids tightly closed again. Subtle murmuring reached her ears as she lay in a bed that was clearly not her own.
"Where am I? What is going on?"
Her mind blurted the questions as Giselle flexed first her fingers then her toes. Perhaps some sort of accident had occurred while she slept safe and sound in her apartment. She wouldn't put it past the four wannabe frat boys next door to do something stupid like set the apartment on fire.
The guys were partying hard last night and just as Giselle wandered out the door to tell them to shut the hell up, she'd been greeted by the king of idiots blowing a spray of vodka ignited by a lighter. The moron nearly singed her hair with little more than a slurred apology. At that point she went inside, stuffed cotton into her ears and prayed to get a few hours of sleep before her first midterm as a grad student.
"Midterms!" Giselle's eyes flew open.
She had to get to Ballentine Hall. If she screwed this first semester up, they'd pull her scholarship for sure.
What greeted Giselle was not her bedroom, it wasn't even a hospital room, at least not the kind at the university hospital. She looked over to see the shadow of two figures talking behind a frosted wall.
"Hello?" Giselle said with a scratchy voice in desperate need of a drink.
There was no response.
"Hello! Excuse me." She stated louder.
Still the people conversed, ignorant that she'd awoken. One of them was gesturing emphatically as she spoke. Giselle sat up the rest of the way to hear better. She threw her leg over the sleek stainless steel bed covered in an odd transparent blue rubber sheet, then paused. The simple motion made her tired and somewhat dizzy.
"What the hell? I wasn't drinking last night!" Giselle wondered with a shake of her head. "I bet those idiots did burn the place down and I barely survived carbon monoxide poisoning." That would explain the dizziness and scratchy throat. "Well at least I have a better excuse for my professors than oops I overslept."
Giselle leaned forward and listened to the couple, waiting for a break in what seemed to be a heated discussion.
"Ion I understand how you feel but the female's genetic anomaly makes her unsuitable." A deep almost resonant male voice stated.
"Exo surely we can do something besides euthanize the female. What if we sterilize her and have the next group pick up another subject to replace her?" A melodic higher pitched voice replied.
Giselle wondered if she wound up in a vet clinic instead of a hospital. That would certainly explain the rubber sheets on the overly large metal bed. Wasn't there an exotic animal sanctuary not far from town? There must've been some major catastrophe if they were diverting patients here.
"Ion you know the colony cannot support her at this stage of its development."
"But this was not her doing. We did not do our jobs well and now she must suffer." The woman responded her voice going high tinged with anguish.