Grut, the Cruel E-Book

Nova Edwins

• Herausgeber: Black Umbrella Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Horgerians
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 98

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Just a while ago I was in my car in Nevada. Now I'm on another planet and sitting in a cage—in front of some aliens who are clearly eyeing me a little bit too curiously. Then another alien saves me. A Horgerian called Grut, the Cruel, of all things. What a concerning name. He's convinced that I'm part of some kind of test in which he has to prove himself worthy of a bride. But for that he has to take care of me—like I'm a damn Tamagotchi. So I have been taken from my home to end up as consolation prize? Great. Just great! Slightly dark alien romance with a happy ending.

Leseprobe

GRUT, THE CRUEL

HORGERIANS

BOOK 1

NOVA EDWINS

ALIEN ROMANCE

CONTENTS

Free Prequel

Grut, the Cruel

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

About Nova Edwins

FREE PREQUEL

Planet Earth as I knew it no longer exists, and I have no choice but to leave. However, I have only one chance of starting over: convincing someone with a spaceship that it's worth taking me with them.

When I hear the rumor that a Horgerian man will be leaving for his home planet Horgerion fairly soon, I decide to throw myself at him—shamelessly.

There are a few minor obstacles, though:

I'm not the only woman with this idea.

I know nothing about Horgerians or the planet Horgerion.

And when I find out that Horgerians like to eat human flesh, it's already too late ...

This short story contains a touch of the apocalypse, an unexpected savior, and a desperate heroine who is prepared to do (almost) anything.

click here to download for free

GRUT, THE CRUEL

Just a while ago I was in my car in Nevada. Now I'm on another planet and sitting in a cage—in front of some aliens who are clearly eyeing me a little bit too curiously.

Then another alien saves me. A Horgerian called Grut, the Cruel, of all things. What a concerning name. He's convinced that I'm part of some kind of test in which he has to prove himself worthy of a bride. But for that he has to take care of me—like I'm a damn Tamagotchi.

So I have been taken from my home to end up as consolation prize? Great. Just great!

Slightly dark alien romance with a happy ending.

1

GRUT

I was exhausted when I entered the village. My right arm hurt because one of the poachers had been able to hit me with a club. I hadn't been quick enough, and because of that my ego was bruised worse than my arm. But I'd get over it.

In contrast to the poachers, whose heads I now delivered to the tanner.

Thera, the Talented, sighed when he saw me. "More skulls for the rampart?"

"Aye." I pounded my chest with my fist.

"Put them with the others." He pointed to the pile of bones and skulls I had brought him over the course of the last few days. There were a lot of them—I had become impatient and restless, leaving at first light and usually returning after dark at the earliest.

"Your skins are in the back." He narrowed his eyes. "Could you slow down a bit, maybe? I can barely keep up."

"He's right," a voice announced from behind me.

I turned around. My father smiled at me and put his hand on my shoulder. "You need to rest for a while. Come with me—for a drink."

I didn't want a drink. I wanted a big and juicy Sirrel steak, I wanted to sharpen my swords for tomorrow, and I primarily wanted my peace and quiet.

Nevertheless, I nodded curtly because I didn't want to disappoint my father.

I picked up the furs from the back of Thera's hut, tucked them under my arm, and followed my father outside.

"Is something bothering you?" he asked.

"No." I trudged along beside him, heading for his house.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

My father sighed. "Why don't you just tell me the truth?"

"Because there's nothing to say."

He opened the door for me and let me go first. I put the skins down, went to the table, and pulled back one of the chairs.

"I have stew. Would you like some stew?"

"Fine with me," I grumbled.

With a nod, my father disappeared into the kitchen. I heard clattering before he returned with a bowl and, fortunately, a full mug of mead.

I emptied the cup before I began to slurp the stew from the bowl.

"You leave early every morning and always come back very late." My father put his big hands on the table. "What do you expect to gain from working yourself to death?"

"I'm not working myself to death. I'm doing my part."

He sighed. "The women. Is it because of the women?"

I didn't answer and instead just slurped louder. Hopefully he got that I didn't feel like having this conversation again.

"Grut," he said with a warning tone.

Rolling my eyes, I put the bowl down. "What do you even know about that? You have offspring."

"Offspring is not everything in life."

I pushed the empty bowl away from me. "That's easy to say when you've been blessed with it yourself."

"Believe me, son, I'm feeling anything but blessed right now," my father growled. He got up, stomped into the kitchen, and came back with more mead and stew. "Why can't it get into your head that it's completely random who the women choose? What's the point in working yourself into the ground if it's entirely possible that you might not ever get so see a woman?"

I shrugged, which immediately made the pain in my right arm flare up. A little bit of respite wouldn't be the worst thing—but how was I supposed to rest when there was so much to do?

"So far not a single woman has come down from the mountains this year, and there is no guarantee that one will come."

"So?" I blinked slowly.

"Get some rest! It's not your job to rid all of Horgerion of poachers."

"But it's my job to prove myself worthy."

My father threw his hands up in the air and groaned in agony. "It's like talking to a rock."

"Maybe I just need to work harder."

Huzoga, the Heartless, was forty winters older than me, but he moved faster than anyone I knew. The words hadn't quite left my mouth when he gave me a painful blow to the back of the head.

"Did I really raise such an idiot?" He clenched a fist and banged it on the table. "You're going to rest tomorrow! That's not a request!"

"Yes, Father." I hunched my shoulders and nodded devotedly, although I had no intention of following his order. Doing nothing wouldn't help me prove myself worthy.

2

KAYLA

If I ever met George Lucas in person, he'd have to listen to me rant. He had given me the absolute wrong idea about space, after all.

I had always imagined lots of neon colors, strange bars, cramped streets, flying transport shuttles, and classic spaceships. Well, of course there was also Tatooine, but even on this ball of sand and dust they'd had at least some technology.

Yet here I was, sitting in a wooden cage on a simple trailer that was pulled by three aliens, rattling over some sort of country road.

Next to my cage were piles of boxes emanating an intense smell of decay that made me nauseous.

I still didn't entirely grasp what had actually happened.

Just a while ago I had said goodbye to my friends in the parking lot in front of the restaurant, got into my car, and drove off—and just a moment later there appeared this painfully bright light in the middle of Interstate 80.

When I opened my eyes again, I was here. Not right here in this cage, but in a kind of hall. One of the aliens had laid me down on a table and was fiddling around behind my ear when I woke up and promptly started to panic. I jumped off the table, but I hadn't gotten far before the alien had forced me into the cage.

The cage I was sitting in right now.

I carefully felt for the small bump behind my ear. It didn't hurt, but it definitely hadn't been there before, and that made me pretty nervous.

"Faster," hissed one of the aliens. "If we get caught here in daylight, we're dead."

I assumed that the bump behind my ear had something to do with why I could understand them. I still wasn't sure how I felt about the fact that I had most likely been operated on.

"Faster, I said," the alien hissed again.

The three of them reminded me a little of scarecrows. Their skin looked leathery, their hair stuck out from their heads like straw, and their eyes were dull, black orbs.

Scarecrows didn't have long claws with sharp talons, though, but I could only come to grips with one shock at a time.

Ever since they had put me in the cage, I had been toying with the idea of asking them what was actually going on—where they wanted to take me, who they were, and how likely it was that I was going to survive any of this. But I didn't dare.

Sometimes the tallest of them turned around and licked his lips with a rather dark tongue. Even without words, I knew exactly what it meant.

I didn't know what stressed me out more—his obvious sexual interest or the fact that his tongue looked like a rag made from clay. Hopefully he wouldn't get too close to me with that thing.

Even though I didn't have the slightest idea what to expect, it couldn't be a good sign that I was in a cage. Besides, there were three of them and I was . . . a human.

My stomach twisted as they left the path and pulled the cart across a field toward the forest—at least it looked like a forest to me. I wrapped my fingers around the thick wooden bars of my cage and squinted. I could make out the leaves and trunks of the trees, but I couldn't identify them. They weren't oaks, they weren't firs, they weren't maples, they weren't . . .

Okay, that was all I had. Not that it made a difference. It was clear that they were definitely not trees like the ones on Earth. My faint hopes that I had stumbled right onto a movie set were quickly fading.

My surroundings kind of resembled Earth, though. The sky was blue, there was a gentle breeze, and scattered shreds of clouds drifted past. Yet I had never seen other planets back on Earth when looking up, especially not with the naked eye, whereas here I could easily spot three orbs in the sky. One of them was whitish and had a ring, while the other two were smaller and pale pink in color. They looked pretty.

The sun was on the other side, high up, and it seemed strangely familiar to me. Was I perhaps at least still close to my home planet? In the same system at least? I sank back down and wrapped my arms around my upper body as a feeling of helplessness washed over me. Unfortunately, those were the only words to describe my current situation: helpless and lost.

The path became increasingly uneven, and soon I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering as the wagon rumbled over the forest floor. The silence here was eerie, and only a few rays of sunlight made it through the dense canopy above us. My breath condensed in front of my lips. Why was it so cold all of a sudden?

The aliens chatted quietly, constantly reminding each other to hurry up.

Although I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open, sleep was not an option right now. Instead, I strained my eyes by staring into the dark forest while trying to come up with a strategy to escape.

The moment I got the chance, I would run. That much was certain.

When we finally stopped, I was so cold that I was shivering, but I tried to ignore it as I watched the aliens set up camp. One of them was gathering wood, another was unrolling three primitive sleeping bags, and the third had disappeared between the trees with a bag in his hand.