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EXCERPT FROM HEALED WARRIORS (INTERGALACTIC ENOSIS: THE PYXIS SYSTEM, BOOK 5)
UNEDITED—SUBJECT TO CHANGE

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Welcome to your new home
Lyra

My cheeks hurt from how wide I was smiling, and a giggle escaped, broadcasting my joy to the universe. I was piloting a state-of-the-art motherfucking alien ship. How many humans could claim to have done so?
   None.
   The soft buzz of my internal alarm rose in volume, but for the first time in my life, I chose to ignore the warning.
   What could possibly go wrong with Callibohr and his fleet watching over me?
   Nothing.
   And I should at least enjoy this experience to the fullest because soon enough, I’d have to choose whether I’d obey my orders, knowing if I did, I’d destroy whatever was blooming between me and the aliens.
   The thought alone cut me deep, but the alternative was equally terrifying because disobeying meant I’d be court-martialed when I returned to Earth. I’d be facing jail time and who knew when or if I’d see Hunter again.
   Fuck.
   Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. No matter what I ended up doing, I’d hurt someone I cared about. My feelings for the two alien males made little sense—I’d only known them for a short while—but they’d slipped past my defenses and had wormed their way into my heart, becoming two more people I doubted I could live without.
   There had to be a different way.
   Callibohr and Brarn insisted I was their mate, which for them was the equivalent of a wife. What if I explained the situation to them? Would they willingly give me something to take back to my superiors?
   The General hadn’t clarified what exactly I was supposed to bring back. It could be something small, a portable device or even a small tool—surely the Wravukians could spare one of those.
   The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me, and the more the weight lifted off my shoulders, allowing me to relax and enjoy my flight.
   Decision made, I cleared my mind and focused on executing the maneuvers Callibohr had showed me in the simulator. There was a particular one I was itching to try because testing limits was what I did best.
   A simple notion of my hand forward was all it took for the Destroyer to speed full throttle ahead. Every single muscle in my body tensed as I flicked the control that sent the spaceship into a nosedive. I had expected the tail over nose move would send me flying in the cockpit, but it hadn’t. Still standing on my feet, I’d barely felt any pressure from the extreme change in direction, and the hull was perfectly intact. If I’d tried this trick with the TR-3 Alpha, the damn thing would have broken apart into a hundred pieces from the various sudden changes of force and pressure. “Damn, this ship is something else.”
   “Of course it is. Wravukians made it.” The disembodied voice filled the cockpit, startling me.
   “Argh! Shit. You can hear me?”
   Mentally, I face-palmed myself. They wouldn’t allow me to fly their jet unless they monitored me closely.
   “Wait. Can you see me too?” I asked, but instead of a reply, I got static, and my inner warning system started shrieking at me. “Imperial, do you copy?”
   An ear-piercing alarm blared in the small space, jolting me into action.
   The scanners didn’t reveal any other presence besides the Imperial behind me, but something was very wrong. I wrenched the controls to my left, turning a hundred and eighty degrees before going full speed toward safety—toward the Wravukians.
   Suddenly, I was catapulted toward the side wall. Black spots filled my vision, distorting reality into a hazy dimension where pain blossomed, consuming my other senses until it was all I knew.
   Despite my efforts, thoughts slipped through my grasp. Trying to focus on one was like trying to stop water from flowing through a sieve. Pointless.
   My brain had turned into a jumbled mess. Nothing made sense.
   There was something I had to do, though, something I was forgetting.
   The incessant buzzing in my head was getting louder by the second, drowning out all other noise. But instead of making me feel worse, it lifted the fog that had filled my mind, allowing me to think clearly again.
   Bracing on my forearms, I got off the floor and looked around.
   Something must have crashed into my ship, but for the moment, the cockpit was intact.
   Damage control first, contact the Imperial second, the voice of my subconscious ordered as I swayed on my feet.
   Stumbling toward the control panel, my suspicions were confirmed. Several lights kept flashing, indicating damage to the engine, but a careful scan told me the integrity of the ship hadn’t been compromised.
   Okay, floating in space isn’t the worse thing that could have happened. Callibohr and Brarn will come to retrieve me.
   The thought was enough to calm me, but then a dull thud echoed in the chamber, and I tensed.
   “Imperial, do you copy?”
   Static was my only reply when I lurched backward.
   Shit. Someone was towing the Destroyer, and one glance at the scanner confirmed it wasn’t the Imperial reeling me in. They were still too far away.
   Shit. Shit. Shit. I need a weapon.
   I grabbed my helmet and rushed to where Callibohr had said the tools were, hoping I’d find something to use in a fight because there was no doubt it’d come to that. I was being fucking abducted.
   Why hadn’t I taken my blaster with me, damn it? I thought as I upended the toolbox and started throwing its contents left and right.
   My search was semi-fruitful. There were three objects that might help tip the scales in my favor in an altercation—an alien blowtorch, a mean-looking wrench, and a knife. Now if only I had a pocket to hide the knife.
   The Wravukian exosuit I had on didn’t have any, and Brarn had insisted I not wear any clothes under it. But I still had the disappearing and reappearing suit I’d forgotten to ask Callibohr how to remove.
   With lightning speed, I removed the outer garment, grabbed the dagger, and checked the inner one.
   “Damn it! Can’t I have a smidgen of luck on my side?”
   Exasperated, I lifted my arms in the air then let them drop, careful to place the sharp object parallel to my thigh.
   It’s all right, Lyra. Think. There must be another solution to this problem.
   Movement, along with a crawling sensation, interrupted my inner monologue and drew my gaze to the outer side of my thigh.
   I let an embarrassingly loud screech as I noticed the semiliquid material slither over the knife.
   The suit had somehow understood what I wanted and had gone on to grand my wish by creating a pocket. When the blade was completely covered, I let go of the hilt, and the suit continued its mission until the weapon was fully concealed.
   Moving my leg tentatively—for the last thing I needed was to stab myself—I realized that even though I felt the object, it didn’t knick me nor did it hinder my movements.
   Weird, but weirder things had happened, and I wasn’t in a position to look a gift horse in the mouth.
   I put my exosuit and helmet back on while contemplating my options. Capture was unavoidable at this point. My ship had no power, and even if I opened fire at them, I wouldn’t be able to evade a counterattack with a busted engine.
   Once they had my ship fully secured to theirs, they would infiltrate it. At some point, they would gain access, and the unknown of what I was dealing with presented a huge risk. How many aliens would I have to fight? I could maybe—and that was a huge maybe—come out victorious against one or two, but what if there were more?
   On top of that, I didn’t know how long my suit’s oxygen would last, and that worried me the most. Would I be lucky in my misfortune to be abducted by a species that breathed the same air I did?
   There were too many variables to decide on a specific course of action before I had more facts, but one thing was certain. I would not deliver myself on a platter to them.
   My inner warning system was telling me I had the best rate of survival if I ambushed them once they managed to break into my ship.
   But where the hell would I hide, I wondered while eyeing the place. The space was barren. There were a few alcoves in the walls, and I plastered myself on the deepest one. But no matter how I tried to flatten myself, part of my helmet and my boobs were protruding outside the niche. It would only take one cursory look and the intruders would spot me.
   Locking myself in a room would just delay the inevitable as well as reveal my position.
   “Dammit!” I reared backward, intending to bang my head on the wall, but my helmet saved me from the pain of the impact. For a second there, I’d forgotten I was wearing it.
   I rolled my eyes at myself, but in doing so, I noticed a hole in the ceiling. Perfect. Not waisting a single second, I threw the other two weapons in it and leaped upward but failed to grab the edge. “Fuck.”
   Using something to step on was out of the question because I wouldn’t be able to move it afterward, and a box in the middle of the corridor would be a dead giveaway.
   Finding another hideout was also out of the question because I would no longer have my measly weapons. Okay, Lyra, the ceiling isn’t too high, and the alien suit you’re wearing is super lightweight. You can do this.
   Not sure if it was the internal pep talk or the fact that the buzzing in my head was getting louder by the second, but I bent down lower than before to give myself the extra boost of force, leaned slightly forward, and jumped.
   This try my hands found purchase. Hope there aren’t any alien cockroaches hiding here, I thought as I pulled my body upward and into the hole.
   Luck seemed to be on my side—the space was big enough for a Wravukian, which meant plenty of room for a human to move, plus it was pest free.
   I crawled backward, deeper into the darkness, never taking my eyes off the opening and the space below.
   Now all there was left to do was wait, and the invaders didn’t let me wait for long.
   When the first being walked underneath the opening, chills raced down my back and my heart skipped a beat. He was a massive mother fucker with crimson horns jutting backward from the top of his head. He wasn’t as tall as Callibohr and Brarn, but he was way wider, with muscles bulging everywhere. If he got me in his arms, he’d crush me like a bug.
   Funny how less than an hour ago I had thought one of my biggest problems was choosing between betraying the aliens who claimed were my mates or my species. There was no way I was coming out of this alive to do one or the other.
   There, problem solved. My mind provided, sarcasm dripping from my inner voice. Bonus point, you won’t have to face Hunter either.
   A second raider followed behind the first, similar in built and size, but no one else followed them.
   On any other occasion, I’d usually say my chances in a two-against-one fight were in my favor, but these two counted double. And in a four-against-one fight, I was ninety-five percent sure I’d end up losing.
   Playing smart was the only way to go. If I managed to damage them severely, maybe that’d be enough to turn the tide. So I placed the blowtorch at the edge of the hole, opened the valve on the gas cylinder, and held my breath.
   It didn’t take them long to step under my hideout, and it was then I clicked the igniter. A green flame spewed at a constant rate, enveloping one of the males’s upper body while singing the side of the other.
   Their roars of pain and rage were deafening, but the acrid scent of flesh burning was the worst. Faster than I thought possible, they stepped out of range, and I followed suit because my cover was blown.
   I dropped to the floor, aiming my weapon their way.
   Both were still standing, albeit one of them was worse for the wear, but had nowhere near the damage I’d hoped I had inflicted.
   “Female, I’ll make you pay for that,” the burned one said and charged.
   Utter terror racked my brain upon watching this mountain of a being heading my way, foaming at the mouth. Out of reflex, my finger clicked the igniter again, but I knew it’d be pointless.
   I felt a crawling sensation all over my body and my head right before he collided with me.
   He slammed me against the wall, and the air whooshed out of my lungs in a rush as my helmet broke upon impact.
   A scream lodged in my throat as debilitating pain crippled me. It felt as if a Mack truck had hit me and my body was slowly exploding from the inside out.
   “Don’t damage her,” the second alien growled and shoved the other one off me.
   Having no one to hold me upright, I slid downward. My surroundings turned hazy, and black spots filled my vision.
   A thousand knives pierced my torso when someone lifted me up by my shoulder.
   I twisted this way and that, but nothing happened—my body didn’t obey my commands. As it was, I could barely draw in oxygen.
   “Look what you did, Ozark. She will need a Healer. If you’ve damaged her beyond repair, Loroc will take your head.”
   The stench intensified when the burned one stepped closer, and poked first my cheek, then my breast, making my pain flare and me whimper. “She has some kind of shield, so the vermin will be fine,” he said before leaning closer to sniff my face.
   The translator Brarn had put in me interpreted every single thing they’d spoken, and their words turned my stomach.
   “Even in a worse condition, she’ll fetch a good amount of units, and Loroc didn’t say we couldn’t use the merchandise before delivery.” He lifted his four fingered hand and clasped my neck tightly, almost as a warning, before he lowered his palm, grabbed my breast, and squeezed painfully. “So first, I’ll take out of her flesh what she owes me for attacking me.”
   My racing pulse spiked, and my heartbeat thrashed in my ears. Whilst I’d gone through SERE training that prepared us in case of capture and interrogation, the possibility of being raped by aliens had never been part of the curriculum. But facing the very distinct possibility of it happening, a tremor of terror went through me, chilling me to the bone.
   Then the last part of his sentence registered, and I started hyperventilating. They considered me merchandise? As in an object?
   Fuck my life! I had to escape, but I couldn’t get my limbs to do more than twitch. His tackle had rendered me useless.
   Hands gripped my waist, and I was thrown over a wide shoulder. He started moving toward their spaceship and blood rushed to my brain, making me feel light-headed. The combination of dizziness and this male’s stench caused bile to fill my mouth, and I couldn’t keep it in.
   I threw up all over his backside.
   “What the Veron!” he spat and shoved me off him.
   The cold surface of the floor was unforgiving, and upon impact, I screamed in pain. But before I had the chance to gather my wits, the vibration of a heavy set of feet drew my blurry gaze toward the corridor where a new threat stood.
   His gray skin was the same shade as the others’. But this fucker was bigger, wider, and more mean looking than the other two. “It’s just one female. What the fuck is taking you two so long?”
   An uncontrollable shudder swept through my entire body, and a fresh wave of adrenaline gave me the strength to crawl backward. The motion, though, drew the newcomer’s eyes, and I froze at the same time as a very important realization hit me.
   Meeting the Wravukians had been scary because I’d never met aliens before, but both Callibohr and Brarn had made me feel safe, cared for, and cherished. Never had I felt my life was under threat while I was with them.
   Now, though, looking at the third intruder, doubt filled me. Would I ever get the chance to explore what was between me, my husband, and my alien mates?
   Brarn had said there was a human man who was the final part of our Sacred Union, and deep down, I knew that person was Hunter.
   The same Hunter, who would have probably gotten my video message and who would think I was dead.
   My heart felt like it was shrinking. I’d made a mess of everything, just like my mother. But at least, she had been great at her job and had destroyed only one man whereas I’d failed my mission, Hunter, Callibohr, and Brarn.
   If I didn’t survive this ordeal, I wouldn’t get the chance to make things right.
   No. Failure was not an option. I’ll find my way back to them and fix everything, I vowed and braced myself to stand.
   Suddenly, the ship groaned, and immeasurable pressure thrust me back to the floor. My body was being pulled in opposing directions, and it felt like I was being torn apart from the inside out—the only thing holding me together, the Wravukian suit.
   I thought I was well acquainted with pain…was trained to withstand it.
   I’d been so very wrong.
   My screams filled the space until my voice box broke, but instead of compassion, my agony was met with booming laughter.
   Darkness had almost obliterated my vision when the excruciating sensation stopped.
   A pair of huge boots went in and out of focus as the third alien stomped my way, then kneeled next to my face, grabbed me by my neck and tilted my head his way.
   The nerve endings at the base of my scalp burst on fire, and I whimpered.
   His lips stretched wide in a lecherous smile that revealed double rows of pointy teeth three times the size of a human’s. “Welcome to your new home, slave.”