Resisting the Alien Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides Book 3), page 1
RESISTING THE ALIEN RIDER
COWBOY COLONY MAIL-ORDER BRIDES
BOOK THREE
URSA DAX
NOTICES
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, used, transmitted, or shared via any means without express authorization from the author, except for small passages and quotations used for review and marketing purposes.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.
Resisting the Alien Rider © 2024 Peace Weaver Press Inc. President Veronica Doran
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Content Notes
1. Magnolia
2. Garrek
3. Magnolia
4. Garrek
5. Magnolia
6. Garrek
7. Magnolia
8. Garrek
9. Magnolia
10. Garrek
11. Magnolia
12. Garrek
13. Magnolia
14. Garrek
15. Magnolia
16. Garrek
17. Magnolia
18. Garrek
19. Magnolia
20. Garrek
21. Oaken
22. Garrek
23. Garrek
24. Magnolia
25. Magnolia
26. Garrek
27. Magnolia
28. Magnolia
Books By Ursa Dax
CONTENT NOTES
For content notes and warnings, please visit my website.
1
MAGNOLIA
Night was falling, and I hadn’t stopped smiling since we’d left Darcy and Fallon’s ranch at dawn. My cheeks were on fire, only slightly beating out my tush in the pain department. I was dusty, exhausted, positively bedraggled, and I couldn’t have been happier.
Because I was finally on my way to meet my groom, Oaken.
“We’ll make camp here.”
Without any more preamble, Garrek, my Zabrian cowboy-cum-nature-guide, practically launched off the shuldu from where he’d been riding behind me all day. Instantly, he was moving, striding purposefully away from me as if I’d done something deeply offensive to him. Or maybe smelled bad. A surreptitious sniff in the area of my armpit told me I wasn’t quite as fresh as a Terratribe II daisy, but I certainly wasn’t rancid enough to warrant that kind of fleeing. Because that’s what it looked like he was doing. Running away from me.
There was no wind, but his open leather vest flapped and snapped because of his speed, his long, muscled legs propelling him swiftly through the dust. The indigo-tinted light of dusk lent his dark blue skin a shifting, shimmering quality, half purple, half bronze.
I watched him go and my smile finally slipped.
Maybe he has to pee.
Or maybe he wanted to check on Killian. Killian, Garrek’s young convict-ward, was riding his own shuldu at the back of the herd of Zabrian cattle called bracku, bringing up the rear. In the gathering darkness, I could just barely make out his sweet little face with its giant white eyes and matching white hair.
Zabrian eyes seemed to go off and glow white all the dang time. Killian’s were always white. I still hadn’t quite pieced together what it meant. I’d meant to ask Cherry or Darcy, my two friends who were already married to Zabrian males in this colony, but in the hustle and bustle to get packed and ready to leave with Garrek, I hadn’t had the chance.
I would have pulled out my comms tablet right then and there to send Darcy a message about it, but Shanti suddenly tossed her head and shifted on her hooves.
“Whoa!” I grasped the front of the saddle for balance.
Shanti moved again, making a snuffly noise that didn’t sound particularly happy.
“Good girl, Shanti,” I crooned softly to the shuldu. She was a good girl. She’d carried both Garrek and me all day without complaint and was easily one of the prettiest creatures I’d ever seen. Shuldu were similar in shape to Terratribe II horses, but they didn’t have manes or long tails. Instead, their tails were cute little tapered puffs that stuck straight up from their backsides, and they had curving horns on their heads. Shanti’s hide was a gorgeous velvety cream all over, except for one spot on the right side of her rump, where a splash of natural pink was shaped exactly like a heart.
There was something distinctly hilarious about a guy as brooding and irritable as Garrek riding such an adorable mount with a pink heart on its ass.
There was something distinctly unhilarious about how that adorable mount now seemed so increasingly nervous having me on her back without him.
“I know, Shanti. I’m not much of a horsewoman. Shulduwoman. You know what I mean. Sorry,” I murmured soothingly.
I frowned, craning my head around for Garrek, nerves tightening in my belly as Shanti twitched. The man could have at least helped me down before he went storming off to do whatever the hell it was he needed to do! Much like their Zabrian riders, shuldu were absolutely massive, Shanti included. I eyed the ground below and felt my throat clench in an involuntary gulp.
I probably could have scrambled down somehow if Shanti had been a boulder or a statue or some other inanimate thing. But she kept shifting her hooves, tossing her head, and generally making it impossible for me to get my bearings so that I could dare to shimmy or slide or jump.
Damnit. I was going to have to call Garrek back for help. I didn’t want to, but there didn’t seem to be a way around it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Shanti was sensing my nerves and that was feeding into her stress. I sighed, petting her exquisitely soft neck, already picturing Garrek’s look of taut disappointment when he realized I couldn’t even get down from the saddle on my own.
It would probably look similar to his face this morning. I’d given him a gift of soap I’d made and he’d taken a bite out of it, thinking it was food, only to look at me like I’d betrayed him on a cellular freaking level.
In my defense, I’d only designed the recipe to smell good. Not taste good.
“Garrek?”
I said it quietly, almost like I was asking a question to someone who stood right beside me. I probably should have just thrown dignity to the wind and shouted for help, but a twinge of embarrassment held me back.
Garrek didn’t answer.
The herd of bracku snorted and lowed. I couldn’t see Killian anymore.
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” I snapped without thinking. My impatient tone sent Shanti violently jerking her head in alarm. I yelped and scrabbled to grasp hold of the saddle once more.
“Shanti, beautiful girl, I am begging you, please don’t buck me off,” I pleaded. Oaken already had a broken ankle out there in the mountains somewhere. It was why he hadn’t been able to come pick me up and marry me yet. The last thing he needed was a wife with a broken leg herself.
Or a broken neck.
“Oh, where is that big bad rider of yours?” I moaned, twisting around to look for Garrek. I decided I was past dignity now and sucked in a big breath to shout his name.
Only for the breath to shudder right out of me when a pair of huge, strong hands clasped my waist. My saddle-battered bum throbbed as the pressure of sitting was relieved. Suddenly airborne, I was lifted as easily as a sac of… I don’t know. Whatever Zabrians had sacs of out here. Cowboy hats, maybe. Or shiny buckles.
Apparently, I was a sac full of things that made Garrek frown, because he was doing it fiercely at me now, his broad blue face stern, his hard jaw tight. He let go of me the moment my boots hit the ground.
“Bad rider?” His voice had a uniquely gravelled, nearly charred quality that in any other circumstances – circumstances that didn’t involve me being scowled at like I’d just taken a shit on his boots – I would have admired. More than admired, if I was being honest with myself.
I could have listened to a voice like that all day.
“Ah. You heard that then, did you?” I gave an awkward laugh.
I hadn’t meant it like bad bad. Not bad as in incompetent or unskilled, because even in the brief period I’d known Garrek so far, I could see that he’d been doing this cowboy shit for a long, long time. He was downright masterful at it.
I’d meant it like big bad. Big bad monster, big bad man, big bad wolf. Even now, there was something wolfish in his face, in his stance, in his very energy. Something untamed and capable, I was certain, of brutality.
It was then I remembered that the only reason he was here at all was because he’d killed someone in his youth.
I cleared my throat.
“Hey,” I said, “how come you only heard that bit and not when I was calling your name before?”
“I heard that, too.”
So he’d just decided to ignore it, then.
Lovely.
His mouth pulled on one side, his frown turning into more of a grimace. The brim of his hat was slung low over his brow, but there was no way to hide the white glow of his eyes.
“I started making my way back towards you the moment you said my name.”
“Oh,” I said softly, feeling a tiny bit guilty about my annoyance.
But that guilt only lasted for about two seconds, until he opened his mouth again.
“I didn’t realize you couldn’t do something as simple as getting out of the saddle on your own.”
“Excuse me!” I cried, shocked, offended, and downright appalled at the slicing barbs of his tone. “Have you seen the size of Shanti? Have you seen the size of me?!”
I gestured towards Shanti with her marvellous alien stature, then at myself with my ever-so-slightly less impressive five-foot-one human frame.
With their bright white glow, it was easy to track the slow glide of Garrek’s eyes. From the top of my hat down to my boots and then back up. I swallowed, then froze when his gaze went straight to my throat in response.
For an absurd moment, I found myself wondering what Garrek thought of me. My looks, specifically. Did he think humans were attractive?
He hadn’t wanted a human bride.
So probably not.
“Besides,” I stammered, needing to say something, anything, that would distract me from the sudden need to know what was going on in Garrek’s big, blue head as he observed me. “I probably could have gotten down on my own if she hadn’t been getting so nervous. But she kept… wiggling.”
“Are you sure you weren’t the one who was wiggling?” His head took on a sardonic tilt, and I realized only then that I was bouncing on my feet, pressing my thighs together.
We’d eaten and drank on shulduback and hadn’t stopped all day. If we had stopped earlier, he would have known I needed help down from the saddle.
Only now becoming intensely aware of my full bladder, I blurted, “I have to pee!”
Garrek’s vest was open at the front, and I could see the way his abdominal muscles contracted, like I’d just poked him in a ticklish place. His gaze sliced down to my crotch with something that seemed an awful lot to me like inquisitive suspicion. As if it had never occurred to him that a human female might actually have to urinate at some point during the day.
Probably a good thing this one didn’t request a bride…
She’d have a hell of a lot of work to do, that’s for sure.
Would need the patience of a saint.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, turning and hustling away into the trees.
2
GARREK
When Magnolia had said my name, it had been like someone had fastened reins to my tail or my spine or my skull and yanked. Like there was no other option but for me to wheel my body around mid-stride and barrel back towards her. Like I was no longer in control of anything, least of all myself.
She’d said it quietly, uncertainly, like my name had been a question.
I’d wanted to answer it for her.
I’d wanted her never to have asked it at all.
Because now it was batting around in my head. An unwelcome echo. The lilting human softness of her voice wrapped around the rocky syllables of my name was a study in contrasts I somehow felt wholly unprepared for.
I did not like being unprepared, but by this point in my life I was resignedly used to it.
I’d been unprepared for the consequences of standing over my father’s lifeless body while a young Oaken shook, white-eyed and silent, behind me. I’d been unprepared for my half-feral convict-ward Killian being dumped in my lap.
I’d been unprepared for Magnolia. This human female who made irritating, unnamed emotions simmer inside me until they boiled over and spilled out of my eyes like the glowing oil of mutinous lanterns. Lanterns someone should have tossed into a black creek or a river long ago, because blast it all to Zabria and back, they were bound to give away my position any day now.
What that position was?
Who the blazes knew.
What I did know, though, was that I’d been charged with getting Magnolia safely to Oaken, and I planned to do it.
Starting with making sure she didn’t snap her skinny human neck or step on an ardu serpent while trying to find a place to piss in the woods.
Sighing through gritted fangs, I followed her.
It did not take me long to find her. My ears picked up on her presence immediately. Shadows cloaked her, but I could tell that she’d positioned herself beyond a wide, gnarled tree trunk ahead. Faint rustling told me clothing was being removed, and I did not like the way my heart momentarily seemed to stop beating at that thought.
That would be just my luck, I supposed. To get so far out here, close to three days’ ride from the warden’s, and die in this inky snarl of woods, leaving Killian and Magnolia and the animals to fend for themselves.
Killian would likely be able to take care of her, I reasoned. He was an unpredictable child, more violent at times than a hissing genka, but he was clever. He had the skills to survive, many of which I’d taught him but several he’d brought here himself. And while he seemed mostly to tolerate me, he already adored Magnolia.
Still. I would have appreciated it if my heart maintained a more predictable rhythm. One compatible with not dying. Just because Killian could probably keep himself and Magnolia and maybe even the animals alive didn’t mean he’d be able to get her to her groom.
That’s what I was going to do.
I owed Oaken that much.
A gentle sound, like a stream of cool rain hitting rock, shook me from morbid thoughts of my own death and what might happen after. An uncomfortable heat began to creep beneath my hide. Chest tight, I shifted from boot to boot, unsure where to look even though Magnolia was not even in my sights.
She made the act of pissing sound pretty. How was that even possible?
I’d let her urinate on me if she wanted to.
I jerked as if slapped by the foulness of that sudden and unwelcome thought. It had come seemingly from nowhere, but clearly had originated in the putrid recesses of my own brain. I could blame no one else for the perversion of it.
Stress, maybe. Yes. I could blame the stress. The stress of the fire at my ranch – the one Killian had set – that had destroyed my pastures and forced us into this taxing pilgrimage towards the mountains to keep the herd fed.
Taking care of Magnolia on top of this latest disaster was even more stress. Clearly, the mounting pressure had finally snapped my sanity in two like a dry twig, leaving the broken bits to rattle merrily around in my head where they were now free to come up with such useful and intelligent proclamations as, I’d let her urinate on me if she wanted to.
Empire help me.
The water-sound narrowed to a trickle, then more rustling, and suddenly there she was, picking her way through the bramble towards me. She was rubbing her hands together, the sharp smell of some sort of disinfectant wafting from them.
She did not see me until she’d nearly walked right into me. She stopped short, one of those tiny little hands flying to her chest.
“Holy- Garrek?!”
“Who else would it be?”
“Who else… What? What kind of a question is that? Why would anyone be out here right now besides me?”
“I had to make sure you were safe.”
“Safe from what? Tripping on a root and falling into a puddle of my own making?”
“No. There are genka. Venomous ardu. And a whole host of other dangers.”
“Like what?”
“You could have gotten lost.”
“Lost?” She balked. “I barely walked into the treeline!”
“You didn’t even see me until it was nearly too late,” I said on an impatient growl. “Forgive me if that doesn’t give me much faith in your human navigation skills and sight.”
“Sight… OK. Fine. I’ll give you that. It is really dark out here.” She paused and looked around, as if for the first time realizing how imposing the woods at night could be. She turned back to me. “You’re telling me you can see better than I can out here? You can see in the dark?”
“Reasonably well,” I answered.
“Hold on…” She gasped, then aimed an accusatory finger right at the centre of my chest. “If you can see so well, does that mean you were watching me pee?”
It was an annoyingly reasonable question, especially considering the bizarre turn my thoughts had taken mere moments ago.
I rubbed my knuckles viciously along my jaw.
Something told me this would be a very long night.
Something told me they’d all be long nights from here on out.
