Page 10 of Taken By the Alien Triton King

We had barely begun our descent when the shadows moved. The first Shadefin struck from the side, a blur of dark tendrils andglistening teeth. Aenon snarled, darting forward with his blade. Bruinen spun, catching another before it could strike from above. More came, surrounding us like a tide of nightmares.

I kept Samantha behind me, my trident spinning as I drove it into the nearest creature. Their screeches vibrated through the water, a sound that sent instinctual rage through my blood. I fought, my movements swift and brutal, but we were outnumbered. Bruinen shouted something, but my focus splintered when I felt Samantha jolt against me.

A Shadefin had reached for her. I tore through it with a single strike, its body ripping apart in a cloud of dark ichor. But it was too late. Thin, glimmering streaks of spores marred her arm, faint against her pale skin. My stomach dropped. “No,” Firia breathed, horror in her voice.

Bruinen was already moving, grabbing Samantha’s wrist as if to inspect the damage. His grip was too tight, his gills flaring. “She’s infected,” he said—the words I dreaded to hear, that I wished were never spoken. They were the fear of any harvester, any family member of those who braved the far reaches to supply us with what we needed to keep power on inside the palace and the town.

Samantha looked down at herself, confusion flickering across her features. “What—” She reached out with a hand, curiosity rather than fear in her eyes, intending to touch the pretty bioluminescent marks that now marred her skin. The Shadefin attack had ended the moment she’d been infected, as if these evil, ever-breeding, and multiplying monsters had planned this. Such tactics should have been beyond them, but the clever withdrawal despite their upper hand made my senses tingle.

“Do not touch them,” I snapped, grabbing her shoulders. My hands burned with the urge to wipe them away, to take away the filth that now marked her. But to do so would be to infect myself, and it would not help her. My heart clenched painfully in my chest as I considered our only method of treatment. How far up had the spores spread? How much did she have to lose?

She met my gaze, unafraid but uncertain. “What does this mean?” I did not answer. I would never be able to get such words across my lips. Someone else would have to take the lead for once, be the bearer of bad news. I had sworn to protect her, sworn she was mine to cherish, and I had failed her. The weight of that failure was almost as bad as the fear of losing her.

I pulled her to me, gripping her tightly as I propelled us downward. “We get back. Now.” The others didn’t argue, though Bruinen, the male brave enough to quietly explain the danger of the spores to my mate, spoke with a tone heavy with remorse. And Aenon, my hot-headed friend, who not long ago had seemed so opposed to my connection with an outsider, hung his head and fought to keep his composure as we swam.

When Samantha let out a horrified gasp as Bruinen came to the part about treatment, my heart clenched in my chest. “I’m so sorry, my brave mate. I should have protected you from this.” Panic made my tail ache as I propelled us ever faster down to the palace and its medical center. The spores had climbed to her elbow, spreading and multiplying. We did not have long. If it spread much further, it would be a death sentence.

Chapter 13

Samantha

I struggled to wrap my head around what was going on, unwilling to believe that everything had gone from marvelous to deadly so fast—again. I wanted to rail and shake my fist at the sky, yell, “This isn’t fair! I’m just a nerdy labrat, not an adventurer!” But what was the point in that? It had happened, and I had to find a way to deal with it.

First, my communicator had refused to work, and the screen had been all wobbly and wonky. It was damaged somehow, possibly by the water, the water pressure, or maybe I’d knocked it into something when I fought those guards yesterday. Regardless, without that communicator, there was no way I could get Kaerius’s people the help they needed, and I couldn’t call home to tell the others I was fine, either. It sucked.

What happened next had sucked even more. I thought all those eyes in a coiling, writhing mass of black had been terrifying, but seeing several of those fully grown things attack was worse. Kaerius had protected me, shielding me with his body, and even so, one shadowy tentacle had whipped past and briefly brushedagainst me. It did not hurt, but it had caused what I’d call massive panic among the Ondrithar. Even without Bruinen—Kaerius’s head guard—explaining to me what it meant, I knew it was bad.

When he told me that, with an infection like mine, the only possible way to save my life was to stop it from spreading to the rest of my body, I knew I had to come up with a better plan; I did not want to lose my arm or my life. By the time I’d decided I didn’t want to lose my arm, I had already spent most of the rush back to the palace panicking. But that whole freeze thing—I was over it, and now I was ready to start using my head.

“What did you call those things again?” I said as Kaerius arrowed through an entrance and into the building, his speed never slowing. It tickled at the back of my brain, but Bruinen’s casual mention of amputation had made me forget the word. It was stirring some subconscious part of me, and I had a feeling it was big.

“Spores,” Kaerius growled furiously, his eyes flashing as he glared at the spreading green and blue tendrils that curled around my forearm. They had spread up to my elbow at this point, and they were advancing more quickly now, as if they’d gained critical mass. It was no wonder these things, and the Shadefin, terrified the Ondrithar. But spores… Yeah, that was the word that had already sparked an idea in my head.

I had to assume that Kaerius and his people had done all they could to fight this phenomenon, but what if they hadn’t tried this? They had fought the Shadefin centuries ago when they were new arrivals on the planet themselves. They had crashed their ship, according to Kaerius, and then used their fuel as a lastresort to poison the nests of these creatures. What else had they tried since? And how much did they still know about their own technology? The ship was mostly submerged—it had lights, and some computers functioned—but what about a fully kitted-out lab? I didn’t know what I could expect until we careened around the corner and arrived at the medical center.

It was a dry room, which made sense, and we surfaced through one of those pool entrances. Water sluiced off our bodies, but it beaded strangely on my affected arm, the drops protectively settling on top of each spore on my skin.

There were two people in the room, and they straightened as soon as they saw us. One wore a white coat, and the other a dark green dress, so I instantly assumed the pair were a doctor and a nurse. Neither introduced themselves but rushed toward me the moment Kaerius carried me through the entrance. The bright, sterile glow of the medical chamber stung my eyes, and I winced as the harsh white lighting glared off the walls. My arm had begun to tingle, the green-and-blue tendrils of the infection curling higher up toward my shoulder, pulsing like something alive beneath my skin.

“Put her down,” the doctor ordered, already reaching for a set of instruments on a nearby table. He had short black hair and a very serious expression on his face, one that bordered on grim. The nurse rushed to obey his commands, swiftly unrolling a pale-blue medical sheet onto a sleek metal bed. “We need to begin preparation immediately.”

Preparation. My breath hitched. “No,” I croaked, twisting in Kaerius’s arms. “No, wait—what exactly are you prepping me for?”

There were quick, grim looks shared all around the room—from the medical staff to the pair of guards, and even the councilwoman, Firia. Kaerius’s arms tightened around me, squeezing as if he feared to let me go, or I’d disappear.

“We must halt the infection before it spreads to your torso,” the doctor said gravely. “If it reaches your vital organs, there will be nothing we can do.” He was already holding up some kind of syringe, and when I looked past him at the tray next to the bed, I saw an array of sharp knives and something that looked suspiciously like a bone saw. Heck no.

“I know what you’re implying,” I said, my stomach dropping. “But I amnotlosing my arm.” I flexed my fist, and my skin burned along the trails of color the spores had left. This was a barbaric solution, but this room looked high-tech enough to offer better options. Surely they had tried everything before resorting to this?

Kaerius let out a snarl, his voice edged with fury. “You willnotrefuse treatment.” I heard what he wasn’t saying, the fear beneath that anger: his fear of losing me. It made my chest ache with a weight of all kinds of feelings, but this felt so wrong. I couldn’t accept it.

I met his glare, my own rising frustration matching his. “Not until I know more! What treatments have you tried?” Kaerius’s eyes flashed silver-bright, his scales pressing against his skin as if his body couldn’t contain his fury.

“Everything,” the doctor said impatiently. “Nothing has stopped the spores from taking root once they reach this stage.” I sucked in a sharp breath, my mind racing. Spores. A fungal infection.The pieces clicked into place, pulling from hazy memories of an elective I’d taken years ago in college.

“I’m not a mycologist,” I admitted, glancing at the spreading tendrils on my arm. “But I took some side courses in fungal biology, and I know that some spores can be destroyed with a hydrochloric acid solution.”

Silence filled the room. Now, the glances shared all around weren’t grim so much as uneasy, confused. The doctor shifted closer, his gray eyes narrowing. “Hydrochloric acid? What is that?” He crossed his arms over his chest, but he was leaning closer, listening. I could also see how he was keeping careful watch of the tendrils that climbed my arm. They had almost reached my shoulder, and I knew he wouldn’t want to wait much longer.

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