Claimed by the Warlord: A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Romance (Ash Planet Warriors Book 2) Read online

  Claimed by the Warlord

  Ash Planet Warriors Book Two

  V. K. Ludwig

  Ink Heart Publishing

  Contents

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  1. Katedo

  2. Jessica

  3. Katedo

  4. Jessica

  5. Katedo

  6. Jessica

  7. Katedo

  8. Jessica

  9. Jessica

  10. Katedo

  11. Katedo

  12. Jessica

  13. Katedo

  14. Jessica

  15. Jessica

  16. Katedo

  17. Jessica

  18. Katedo

  19. Jessica

  20. Katedo

  21. Jessica

  22. Jessica

  23. Katedo

  24. Katedo

  25. Jessica

  26. Katedo

  Also by V. K. Ludwig

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  Copyright © 2021 by V. K. Ludwig

  www.vkludwig.com

  Cover Art: Eerilyfair Design

  Editing: Tami Stark

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, locations, or any other element is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Warning: This book contains explicit sexual content.

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  One

  Katedo

  A breeze from the air handler above brushed along the black collar of my uniform. It relieved some of the humidity trapped between the stiff fabric and my skin, though it did little to calm the painful throb of damaged flesh that lay beneath.

  A punishment for my failures.

  I rubbed my thumb across the worst of my scars, a proof of my disgrace for all to see: a deep furrow of puckered skin that stretched from one temple toward the corner of my mouth. Winding around my cheek, it split into three thinner ones that wrecked the side of my nose, my chin, my upper lip.

  A reminder of my guilt.

  Beside me, each step of Sevja’s black combat boots echoed from the silver palathium that lined the hallway toward med bay. “As soon as airspace control told me the Empire stargazer had touched the landing pad, I sent guards to escort the healers from Earth to the meeting room.”

  Where I would greet them. It was my responsibility as the warlord currently occupying Noja, the only city on Solgad and a stronghold buried deep beneath a mountain. “It was generous of Warden Torin to supply some of his people.”

  Sevja scoffed and shook her head, which let the end of her silver braid bounce on her shoulder. “Warlord Toagi will need them once he brings his tribe to occupy the city with the next moon.”

  Because his tribe was disease-ridden and exhausted. “Some of his people carry this… new strain of ice fever.”

  “The Empire seems rather terrified of it, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered sending a virologist as well.”

  Perhaps the main reason why I’d agreed to receive them, since nobody in my tribe was currently trained as such. “We need to get a handle on this disease quickly.”

  “Warlord Toagi shouldn’t have traded with the freeraiders where it’s running rampant.”

  The scar on my cheek pulsed.

  Freeraiders.

  Nothing but filthy criminals who stole females and destroyed families. A stain on the reputation of Solgad and the ruling warlords. One I would cut out soon enough. Feed the thirsty ashes of the plains their blood, and finally have my revenge.

  “They’re growing too bold.” I turned into med bay, the lingering bite of disinfectant in the air undeniable. “With each rotation, they creep closer to Noja and take over the best hunting grounds. Then they offer to move without conflict in exchange for medicine and technology. They’re not as unorganized as they used to be.”

  “Almost as if someone’s leading them now.” She retreated into silence at the alarming prospect.

  I rubbed a hand up along my black horn, fingertips tracing the sharp edges where it had splintered and broken off: courtesy of a freeraider. “As soon as things are taken care of here, we’ll discuss strategies about how to make the Hariatu Plateau safe to settle. Razgar agreed to join me in a campaign to eradicate the group that’s hiding there.”

  “It’ll take those healers time to learn their way around Noja.” Sevja gave a tug on her embroidered uniform collar, which gave her away as my advisor; one of the few people I trusted with my family’s lives. “Warlord Toagi will have to deal with most of that, because I won’t spend a sun longer down here than I have to.”

  “We’re all eager to leave at the end of the next moon,” I said, nostrils twitching at an unexpected whiff of sweetness. “Once we’ve made certain the healers are set, we can pack for the plains.”

  And I would count down the suns until then. The stale air lingering in this city, the black rock creeping toward me, the incessant noise level resonating from the chambers that held the common areas… as much as we needed Noja’s reprieve, Jal’zar belonged into the plains.

  “Urizayo!”

  I spun toward the warrior who hurried across the black, polished rock underfoot. Mud clung to his strands and caked the ridges of his horns, while angry red cuts decorated an arm protruding from behind a shredded uniform sleeve. My jawline hardened at the sight of what he held in the tight grip of his fist.

  My son.

  His black horn, to be precise, a color not currently visible. Neither was that black hair he’d inherited from me, or his features, or his clothes. Kamenji stood before us covered in mud, ash, and filth, blinking up at me from those vibrant, orange eyes that haunted my dreams.

  His mother’s eyes.

  I clasped my hands behind my back lest I wrap them around his throat. “What has he done now?”

  The Jal’zar warrior bowed slightly. “Urizayo, I was patrolling the western cliffs when I heard commotion. Your son fought another of the young males, but the rock was slick from the last torrent. He slipped off the boulder, straight down a ravine, and almost drowned in a pool of ashen sludge—”

  “I wasn’t drowning,” Kamenji snarled, and the bite in his tone served as a maddening reminder of this unruly attitude he’d adopted. “And I didn’t slip. Pertim pushed me!”

  “Thank you for coming to his aid.” I dismissed the warrior with a nod, and waited until he walked off before I gripped Kamenji’s horn myself, yanking him toward me. “What were you doing outside of Noja?”

  His horn only reached halfway up my chest, but he braced it against my hold. “All my friends sneak out.”

  “I don’t care about your friends.” I meant to shout it, but it came out wheezy, my chest already constricted by those familiar ropes of fear stringing my ribs tight. “It is dan
gerous!”

  He pushed his muddy palms against my chest and pulled his horn from my grip, his eyes blazing fire. “Everything’s dangerous to you! You never allow me to leave Noja. Everyone’s making fun of me because you won’t even let me tame my first yuleshi.”

  “You are too young.” Too weak, too slow, too…

  Too much loved.

  My mind dizzied at the thought of him facing a leap of those wild beasts. By Mekara, one wrong move and he might startle them into a stampede. Even if he managed to climb onto the back of one, what if the yuleshi reared? Sprinted off with him? Spun and tossed him against a rock? So much could go wrong.

  “I’m almost eight!” His chest heaved with that temper he’d inherited from Yara. “Pertim is my age, and he has his own yuleshi.”

  “That might be, but Pertim fights like a warrior twice his age.”

  I shouldn’t have said that, and the way Kamenji flinched before he peeled his lips over his fangs told me as much. “He fights better because you never ever let me spar.”

  “We spar every sun.”

  “Yeah, with low kicks and… slow tail swipes, and—” A thick swallow cut through his words and trembled his lips. “You treat me as if I’m a child.”

  “You are a child.” My child. The only thing I had left, aside from Mother. “And you’re not ready yet to tame a yuleshi.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’ll prove you wrong.”

  “Not if I post additional guards at the gates, and tell them to keep you inside this city at all costs.”

  The air between us zapped with an aggression that shouldn’t be there. Where had that sweet child gone that fell to sleep on my chest to the sound of my hum? What had happened to the boy who once gleamed up at me in awe, his eyes now filled with undiluted anger?

  He hissed at me. Actually hissed at me. “Then I’ll sneak out again.”

  “If the warlord’s quarters are built to keep everyone out, they certainly can keep my son in.” I took a strong step toward him, finger pointing toward the east wing. “You are grounded. Go to your room.”

  “I won’t!”

  “Yes, you will.”

  Arms, horns, tail… everything on Kamenji vibrated, and tears streamed down his filthy cheeks. “I hate you!”

  That stung, but not as much as the first time he’d said that to me. “And I love you, which is why I’m doing this. I won’t watch how you’ll get yourself killed. Now go to your room.”

  “I’m going to amimi,” he shouted, spun around, and ran off.

  A warning hiss slipped through my fangs before I barked behind him. “You’re going to your—”

  Sevja’s hand settled on my shoulder. “Perhaps he can go to his amimi, and she can bring him to his room once he’s calmed?”

  I breathed against a relentless pressure that kept building beneath my ribs, which swelled the shadowed void that once held my soulbond. Now, it harbored nothing but deafening silence and pain.

  “His grandmother will only pat his shoulder, give him imported chocolate, and then sneak him out herself.”

  My mother, Kamenji’s amimi, had a way of defying me, not as a warlord, but certainly as a father and a male. She had strong opinions about how Kamenji needed a mother, and I needed another mate.

  As if I was deserving of one...

  Twice, I’d chosen a female.

  Twice, I’d failed them.

  The third one, Ceangal, had been stolen away from me the night before our wedding. Perhaps she didn’t count since I’d never intended to touch her, or bind her soul. Still, the incident served as a sobering reminder of the dark, lonely truth.

  I was unworthy of a mate.

  Only the strongest Jal’zar males claimed a female. It was nature’s way of ensuring their safety and protection. I’d failed to protect my female. Twice. Whatever strength I might possess as a warlord, it never translated to my role as a mate, and barely to the one of a father.

  No, there would be no mate.

  Only a void beneath my sternum.

  “My urizayo.” Sevja’s voice pushed into my thoughts, making me straighten. “The healers are waiting.”

  “Of course.”

  We crossed the central intake of med bay, where healers vaccinated a small group of children. That strange sweetness lingering the air intensified with each step. It sent a shudder down my spine, but it didn’t concern me until the sensation reached my groin with a tingle, almost as if—

  No. Impossible. The females of my tribe weren’t due to come into heat for another three moons, so where did this come from?

  “Do you smell that?” I asked.

  Sevja lifted a brow and glanced over the restoration tubes and workstations. “Even the smell of vasani syrup and honeyed berries starts to stink if one spends too much time in Noja.”

  True, but this was different.

  Provocative.

  Tempting.

  So seductive, my ears pricked at every smack of a tongue, my eyes shot to every male daring to move, and my tail flicked in warning behind me. Raw and brutal, the unexpected urge to rut was second only to that compulsion to strike at every warrior in reach.

  I breathed it away.

  Nothing but instincts.

  Chasing a heated female was normal for males of my kind, yes, that urge to stab them with our tailclaw and create a soulbond inherent. An impulse I’d fought for the last few solar cycles, not once allowing myself to fall into a rut.

  I would not rut now.

  Whatever female had randomly gone into heat would be isolated before the other males picked up on her scent. Problem solved.

  Until Takay, one of the male healers, shifted from one leg to the other beside an elder with a swollen shoulder. His finger tugged on the collar of his black uniform, repeatedly, and he glanced around nervously, his nostrils flared.

  “A female is going into heat,” I whispered as not to draw unwanted attention. “We need to find and remove her before her scent triggers a bloodbath with how crowded the city is. Hundreds of unmated males might try to hunt her down for a claiming.”

  Sevja sniffed the air before she wrinkled her nose. “It’s faint.”

  Not to my nostrils. “Strong enough to waft across med bay, and it will only get worse.”

  She nodded. “I’ll take care of it before it turns into an issue.”

  That eased some of the tension on my muscles, but it returned twofold when a warrior appeared from the hallway across, stared at me, and said, “My urizayo, there is an issue.”

  I leaned into him, and kept my voice as low as possible. “If this is about the heated Jal’zar female, rest assured—”

  “Forgive me urizayo but—” He glanced over one shoulder then the other. “She is not Jal’zar.”

  “What?”

  He jutted his chin toward the hallway he’d emerged from. “It’s a healer from Earth.”

  Gesturing both of them to follow, I made my way toward the meeting room. “How could this happen? Unclaimed women in heat are not permitted on Solgad unless they use suppressants to mask their scent.”

  “She has, but there was… an accident,” the warrior said. “The dispenser insert the female carried with her must have broken when her bag caught on the overhead compartment of the stargazer. We didn’t notice the leak until we reached this room and she wanted to inject herself once more. I sent the unmated guards away right then.”

  What remained were two warriors, one posted to each side of the automated palathium door, which I approached with steps as rapid as the beat of my heart. “A wise choice.”

  The door opened.

  I stepped inside.

  My tendons snapped tight.

  Pure and sweet, the potency of the female’s scent slammed through me. Flesh that hadn’t experienced the wet heat of mating in too long hardened behind the constraints of my uniform pants. A primal growl vibrated my fangs; nothing but an innate warning to nearby males, but embarrassing, nonetheless.

  A woman, the only
in the room, lifted her brown gaze and met my eyes as if in answer. Violent heat rushed through my veins at the sight of that black, kinky hair that framed deep brown skin, taunting me to dig my fingers into them so I could restrain her.

  Every muscle ticked beneath my skin.

  Pupils fixed on every shift of her balance, nostrils flaring her way, I readied myself to chase her, sting her, claim—

  Only instincts.

  I didn’t truly want to bind this female to me, but that didn’t change the issue at hand: everyone else would try if we couldn’t get her to safety. “This female is going back home.”

  Two

  Jessica

  Back home?

  I hadn’t argued with the board members of the healer stratum for over a month to send me to Solgad just to turn around now. And go back to what? I no longer had a home. No family. Nothing to return to.

  Never did, actually.

  I pushed myself off the edge of the metal table, folded my arms in front of my chest, and faced the warlord straight on. “I understand this is an inconvenience and I apologize for it, but I’m only ovulating for another two days. Three tops.”

  “An inconvenience?” Warlord Katedo straightened himself to a height those holograms I’d seen of him must have failed to reveal, and narrowed his dark blue eyes at me. “Having sand stuck in your boots while walking the plains is an inconvenience. A heated female trapped in an underground city? With several hundred unmated males eager to claim her, many of them too young and inexperienced to fight a rut? That, female, is a news headline. One we can’t afford.”