CAPTIVE (The Survival Race, book 1) - CHAPTER 44

Before we get to last week's recap, I wanted to take the opportunity to share some personal writing news. I'm thrilled to announce that my small-town contemporary romance WILDE IN LOVE is a finalist in the NJ Romance Writers' Golden Leaf Contest. Woot! 

Okay...now back to our regularly scheduled blog post...

In last week's episode, a new captive had been introduced into Max and Addy's cage. How will they handle this murderer who refuses to share the food the aliens provided?

An abducted cop and a gladiator prisoner must learn to trust each other with their lives…and their hearts…to escape their alien captors.    

 

Catch up reading on CAPTIVE here for free:  Chapter 1  Ch2  Ch3  Ch4  Ch5  Ch6  Ch7  Ch8  Ch 9  Chs10&11  Ch12  Ch13  Ch14  Ch15  Ch16  Ch17  Ch18  Ch19  Ch20  Ch21  Ch22  Chs23&24  Chs25&26  Ch27  Ch28  Ch29  Ch 30  Chs31&32  Chs33&34  Ch35  Ch36  Ch37  Ch38  Chs39&40  Chs41&42  Ch43

 

CAPTIVE

Chapter Forty-Four

“Stand down, man. I’m an alpha gladiator.”

Red Beard spit a seed, hitting Max’s neck. He refused to acknowledge it outwardly, though the beast within stirred. He could almost feel it pacing the cage he’d locked it in, waiting to be unleashed. “Don’t make me hurt you. This is your last chance to hand over—”

Red Beard charged. Max lunged, closing the distance. Addy snatched Noah and ran to a small open space away from the blows they exchanged.

“Stop! Stop it!”

Was she kidding? There’d be no stopping until he defeated Red Beard. All her yelling did was make the kid cry harder.

Max struck high and low, creating an opening for a takedown. Red Beard fell hard, and they rolled. On his back, Max took a grappling position from the bottom. Though Red Beard ground his forearm into Max’s throat, the guy didn’t have enough leverage to choke him out. He wrapped his legs around Red Beard’s and pushed them apart, taking the guy’s base away. Max controlled this fight, no question.

In his peripheral vision, Addy bounded toward them with the sword in both hands. Noah cried in a corner, out of harm’s way. She pointed the blade at Red Beard’s face. “Break it up. Now.”

“No, Addy,” Max wheezed too late.

A black rod jabbed into her back. She cried out and dropped the sword before collapsing. He’d murder that damn poacher for hurting her, but there was no time to act on his anger. An electric current zapped through his nerve endings. His muscles spasmed.

The Hyborean alternately shocked him and Red Beard until they separated. Then came a long, paralyzing zap that allowed the Hyborean to safely reach a furry arm into the cage and confiscate the sword.

All he could do was watch the poacher carry from the room their only means of escape.

The devastation and hopelessness in Addy’s eyes crushed him. She was the first to regain motor control and took the opportunity to collect their share of the food. His muscles fired again about the same time as Red Beard’s.

Red Beard crawled to his side of the cage. “You let them take the weapon. You brainless bitch.”

“Shut the hell up. She didn’t know.” There hadn’t been time to explain it to her. He picked up Noah and cradled the baby in his arms. A few minutes of rocking would stop the crying.

“What didn’t I know?”

Red Beard wiped sweat from his face. “That you were supposed to take the food, but leave the weapon hidden. How stupid are you?”

“I’m stupid? If you shared the food in the first place, there wouldn’t have been any fight to attract the poachers. If anyone is stupid in here, it’s you, you...red-bearded bastard!”

Max snickered. She was a feisty woman, but she needed to work on her insults.

“Besides, if you knew you couldn’t protect your horde, why bother fighting?”

In an attempt to settle her down, Max stroked her arm. She shrugged him off. It took two to fight. No doubt, she thought he was as stupid as Red Beard for drawing the poacher’s attention. She had much to learn about this barbaric world. Too bad he had to teach her about it instead of protect her from it. “It was never about the food or the sword, Addy.”

“Then what was it about?”

“Dominance.”

“What!” It wasn’t a question. It was more like her are you freaking kidding me shout. Her teetering armload of fruit nearly spilled, but she managed to rebalance it.

“If one male shows his aggression and the other backs down, the hierarchy is established. If no one backs down, they have to fight.”

“Why?”

“How else would they determine the alpha?”

“Are you two dense? We’re stuck in a freaking cage. Who cares who the alpha male is?”

“Everyone in here should care. It could determine who gets food, who gets killed, and who gets”—he glanced at her breasts—“other things.”

“Why can’t you both promise to share the food, not kill one another, and leave other things alone?”

“Addy, two beasts can vow not to eat each other, but will they keep that promise when they’re starving? This isn’t a world of gentlemen and assurances. This is a world of animals and survival.”

“Well, thanks to you two animals, there won’t be survival for any of us. How are we going to escape now?” She dropped all but one piece of fruit at his feet, took Noah out of his arms, and then retreated to an empty corner away from both Red Beard and him to change the baby. She struggled with the diapers the Hyboreans left by the toilet. He refrained from helping. She needed time to cool off.

The woman would never get used to this planet. Honestly, he was glad. Addy should make deals and compromises and believe people could work together for the common good. She shouldn’t have to assess every situation from a survival standpoint. It would strip away her humanity. Witnessing that atrocity would kill him.

An entire wall of the room surrounding their cage sublimated. A motor hummed, and the floor vibrated beneath his bare feet as the cage backed out of the subaquatic through the gaseous door.

It appeared that they’d been on a hovercraft vehicle similar to a pickup truck. The Hyboreans drove in the cab behind the solid wall, and the cage comprised the truck’s bed.

There wasn’t a road per se, but the craft seemed to follow some sort of path, weaving among trees the size of giant sequoias and hovering over vegetation, downed logs, and boulders. Regardless of what was beneath the vehicle, the ride remained smooth.

The forest’s woody fragrance filled his senses. The air tasted of fresh earth after a storm. Funny how he’d remembered that after fifteen years. Addy closed her eyes and turned her face skyward. Did she smell it, too? Did the beams of summer sun peeking through the canopy remind her of home?

Did it remind her of all she’d lost?

As the hours passed, they remained silent in their own corners of the cage. The vehicle stopped occasionally. Each time, the poachers got out, disappeared into the forest, and returned empty-handed.

Night fell. Cool air blanketed him. Addy snuggled Noah closer to her body. His little pink face seemed content, but she didn’t. She shivered, and her tired, droopy eyes kept closing and opening wide as if forcing herself to stay awake. She feared falling asleep. Didn’t she trust him to protect her from Red Beard?

He moved next to her, wrapped an arm around her, and pulled her cold little body close to him. Her shivering stopped. Without a word, she rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

 

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Addy may be angry with Max, but snuggling against him proves her trust in him. I love how as the temperature heats up on their journey, so do their hearts. But will they ever get out of the cage and away from the poachers? Find out next week Chapter 45 or read the full story now at your favorite retailers.

K.M. Fawcett

Romance with a rebel heart  

www.kmfawcett.com

Autumn is Amazing

Fall is in full swing here in the southern Rockies, and she's putting on quite a show! 

For the first half of my life that I lived in a northern Midwestern state, autumn was not a happy time. The summer people all pulled their boats and docks out of the water, closed up their cabins and left us living in a deserted, virtual ghost town. My summer friends all returned to their cities down south, leaving my nearest year-round buds many miles away. For the most part it was cold, damp, rainy, overcast and drizzly, and though we had some pretty spectacular colors early in the season, it usually muted to dull grays and browns by this time of year. And then the blizzards came.

Not so much here in the Southwest. 

Fall is when everything really starts to come alive after the heat of the summer. There are fiestas, county fairs, our huge State Fair, rodeos, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta (most photographed event in the world), and the smell of fresh chilies and pinon nuts roasting at all the stores. 

As Halloween draws near each year, a major attraction right in our neck of the woods is McCall's Pumpkin Patch--which is acres and acres of fun times like a giant corn maze (which we got totally lost in for over 20 minutes!), laser tag shooting galleries, a western town, pig races, kid's zip lines, a mini-train ride, petting zoo, mechanical bulls, a fairy tale castle, live bands, shops, food vendors, and huge hay rides that take hundreds of customers in tractor-pulled wagons out to pick their own pumpkins in the field. Here's a family video taken this year that even includes a look at a Balloon Fiesta mass accension filling the sky on the way there. 

At night, things get really interesting with a haunted corn maze and a haunted house complete with a cast of actors trained to scare the heebeejeebies out of you. 

So, yes, this time of year doesn't bring on the doldrums and SAD (seasonal affective disorder) of my former life. As things start to wind down for autumn in other parts of the country, they are just getting wound up here.

This Fall came at the close of a very eventful summer, where half the state was on fire at the start, followed by record rainfalls. We had record rains last year too, but this year was 2021 on steroids. In a typical year, we get about 17"-22" inches of rain here in the high desert. This year, we've had well over 43" and it's still coming. The horses have loved munching all the knee-high grass in the pasture the last two summers, for sure. It's truly been a blessing.

I guess the state isn't drying up and blowing away like some predicted. Works for us! Of course, some are claiming that we're still in a *cough* drought *cough*. Uhhhh. Hokay. Whatever floats yer boat. 

The Farmer's Almanac says we're in for a warmer, wetter winter this year. That's sounding pretty good to us, too! 

All the unexpected weather this year reminded me of a piece of sage advice to writers:

Put weather in it. 

Sometimes writers get so caught up in plot, setting, conflict, character motivation, black moments and shocking plot twists, we forget to include the nuances of how weather affects the characters, the mood, and sometimes even the plot. 

If you've been reading co-blogger K.M. Fawcett's novel, Captive, you've been experiencing a great example of how weather and climate can affect characters and their adventure. Be sure to check it out!

Have a great week.

GET YOUR VOTE ON!

Early voting starts this week in many states.

Yes, the midterm elections for Congress are still three weeks (or so) away. And you may be sick and tired of seeing the political ads on television already. But we all have a part to play in our democracy, a part that is increasingly important the more it is threatened by those who would replace it with autocracy, a single-party system, gerrymandering and restrictions on voting. We need to VOTE, and the best time to do that is NOW, during the early voting period, when crowds are thinner at the polls and you are free to choose your timing.

 

Early voting started yesterday, October 20, in North Carolina, and as soon as I posted this little message, I headed to my county's early voting site and cast my vote for local officials, Senate, House and State legislature. The national races are vital, but don't forget, that as the venerable Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, once said, "All politics is local." Your local officials have a direct effect on your daily lives--what industries are allowed to conduct business in your town; how loud your neighbors are allowed to be; how problems like homelessness and littering are addressed. Elected school board members determine whether your school system holds the line against those who would ban books
or cave to narrow minority interests. Local elections are important.

 

So, get out there and do your duty as a citizen of these United States! Don't let a tiny minority of motivated voters make your decisions for you.

 

For democracy,

Donna

The people on the book covers

One of the biggest problems I have in writing science fiction – especially romantic science fiction – is not so much creating the characters in my mind as realising them as images to put on a book cover. It's easy enough if your leading man is a youngish white human or a cyborg with a six pack and abs. The stock photo sites have plenty of those, and they're getting better for people of colour. But I've always found it difficult.

I always imagined Admiral Saahren, who stars in the Iron Admiral books, as dark-skinned. He's not a kid, either, more a man around forty and while he's got an athletic body, rippling abs is not what he's about. I wanted him wearing a military uniform. Try asking for that on a stock image site and you'll get lots of Russians in camouflage gear, not the look I was after.

Having had some success with Ashkar Ravindra (as shown last week) I decided to see how I'd go in MidJourney, visualising this man I knew so well in my mind.

This is Allysha's description of him.

"He certainly stood out from the herd. Not handsome; Sean was handsome. This man was lean and hard, close to two meters tall. He wasn’t young, a bit older than Sean she’d guess and his eyes; his eyes were like obsidian. She was frightened for a moment, seeing the cold fury in his face after he’d felled that creep but it wasn’t directed at her. He’d been gentle and sympathetic. So different from the rest of the men here. She’d checked the Confederacy ID chip in his head behind his left ear as they walked. Single, no dependents. Divorced, perhaps? But wouldn’t the ID have said?"

Women are a little easier. More and more, we're finding images of tough women and I was able to find reasonable photos for the covers of my Morgan's Misfits series.Though I know I'd have trouble finding an image of a woman in an admiral's uniform.

Even so, finding suitable photos required hours of trawling through images to find an approximation of what I was after.

I turned to Midjourney to work on Allysha, an attractive woman in her thirties with unusual green eyes and a serious disposition.

Here's Saahren's first impression of her:

"Saahren looked past him, at the woman. He’d never seen eyes like that. The bright green of new leaves shaded to a dark green pupil. It was almost as though the colors blended together, instead of that stark definition between pupil and iris. Her skin was the color of cream and the dark, slightly wavy hair that hung around her shoulders held a hint of red. No slatternly serving girl, this one. Slim and lovely, dressed in simple pants and a shirt. The expression on her face was unreadable.

"Mister Ludovic. Don’t let me hold you up."

Ignoring the hand, she stepped past him, flashed a glance up at Saahren that sent his heart hammering and slipped out the door.

"Phew. Haughty piece." Ludovic turned to stare after her. "Quite the ice maiden." His voice oozed sexual innuendo. "I wouldn’t mind melting her." He jiggled his hips in a thrusting motion.

"Who is she?" Saahren asked. He was staring, too. He’d met a lot of women in his day, women who threw themselves at him at official receptions but not one like this. She had an accent, one he didn’t recognize.

"Oh, she’s not on the menu. More’s the pity. She’s an expert on information systems, here to do some work for van Tongeren. Integrating the systems. Hard to believe somebody so good-looking would have brains. Except for those creepy eyes. Still, you wouldn’t see ‘em in the dark, would you?"

Those eyes. They were beautiful. She was beautiful. If she threw herself at him, he might even consider catching her, something he hadn’t done for many, many years. But somehow, he didn’t think she was the type to throw herself at anybody.

 

 

 I'm very happy with both these images. Midjourney is a seriously useful tool. I'll have to have a go at a Ptorix next. That will be challenging.

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Cheers,

Greta