Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance by Scarlett Rhone Page B

to fall for that again. Assuming she made it out of this episode alive. It also just reinforced all of her previously conceived notions about people, any people, on any planet, in any part of the universe: they all sucked. Nobody was just naturally kind. Everybody was in it for themselves.
    “I’m sorry, domina,” the gladiator was saying. “Lohar attacked me, hoping for a better spot in the games if I was wounded. The donara was at the top of the stairs and I begged her to come help me. She’s a healer.”
    “A healer?” Lennai stopped in front of Alaina, and she looked instinctively up at her. “What kind of healer?”
    Alaina blinked. “An EMT.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Alaina glanced at the gladiator’s profile, but his eyes were still low. She looked back at Lennai. “I’m an emergency medical professional. Not a healer. Not exactly a healer. More like a...patcher…”
    She had no idea how to explain what she did for a living to people who used robots for doctors.
    Lennai looked at the gladiator again. “And she did this, Vega?” She indicated the makeshift bandage Alaina had made out of the pieces of her dress.
    Vega nodded, and now at least Alaina knew his name. “Yes, domina. She seems very resourceful.”
    “It was so lucky,” Nyssa piped up, “that I was here to let her into the barracks, domina.”
    Alaina glared at her in spite of herself. Nyssa looked calmly back at her, the corner of her mouth turning slightly up. The expression was at once pleading and threatening, and Alaina was struck by the girl’s ability to convey both in a single look.
    “It was,” she finally said, through clenched teeth. “Very lucky.”
    Lennai looked at Lohar on the floor. “And is he dead?”
    “No, domina,” Vega said quickly. “I would never kill another cursu. Certainly not one of House Chara in these halls. I only defended myself.”
    “Small miracles,” Lennai sighed. She gestured at two of the guards who went to the fallen gladiator and started dragging him down the hall. Then the domina looked at Alaina again. “So not just a pretty face, it seems.”
    “No, domina,” Alaina muttered. “Not just.”
    “Well, get up. Both of you.”
    Alaina got to her feet and Vega did the same beside her. She knew she was supposed to keep her eyes low, but instead she watched Lennai look around and take it all in, watched how her expression remained so empty and neutral but her eyes darted all over, until they finally settled on Alaina herself. They looked at each other and Alaina felt a spark of defiance in her heart.
    “I can do more than just stand around like a trophy,” she told the domina, before she could think better of it.
    She heard Nyssa try to swallow a gasp.
    Lennai arched her eyebrows dubiously, but didn’t reply immediately. Instead she just gazed back at Alaina, looking her over. And then she smiled, but there was nothing kind in it that Alaina could see.
    “Well,” she finally said. “We’ll see about that. Since you are apparently so skilled , why don’t you work in the barracks in the morning? You can tend to the cursii after their games. Tend their wounds.”
    “Fine,” Alaina said. “I will.”
    Lennai’s eyes hardened. “And if any of them die, so do you.” Before Alaina could say anything about how ridiculous that was, Lennai clapped her hands and went on. “Return her to her quarters.”
    Guards grabbed Alaina by the arms, removing the security bracelet Nyssa had given her, and started dragging her back up the stairs. She looked over her shoulder, watching as Vega bowed to the domina and then turned to go back down the corridor and deeper into the barracks.
    Nyssa looked up, meeting Alaina’s eyes behind Lennai’s back, and her expression was fierce. And furious. Alaina knew that they weren’t done with each other, but she’d be damned if she was going to let some petty, jealous girl get her killed in this place. Freedom might have been temporarily off the table,