Kyro - A.G. Wilde

What has gone before…

Life takes an unexpected turn for five human women who are taken from their lives on Earth, abducted by slug-like beings called the Isclits.

Along with their hired muscle, the Isclits manage massive trade ships that carry cargo across the galaxy.

The women are captured and held captive on one of these ships, enduring torture underneath the Isclits’ who seem devoid of any emotion. But the females’ problems have only just begun, as the real evil is soon shown to them: the High Tasqals.

Big, bulbous, green, and diseased, the Tasqals are a twisted species that prey on the weak and the vulnerable. Each woman is bought by a High Tasqal and thrown in a cell where they each encounter an alien male.

But these aliens differ from the others the women have met so far…and they soon realize just how much.

Plans are set into motion when Xul, leader of the group of rebels infiltrating the ship, kills a head Tasqal. He’s with one of the human females, Athena, and they have to fight their way across a desert planet before returning to the slave ship to rescue the others (Read Xul for this story).

Back on the slave ship, they throw Piper into a cell with Crex, a bloodthirsty alien that looks like he’s ready to cut her to pieces. Except, he doesn’t. Though tortured so he would harm her, Crex refuses and he and Piper end up forming a bond while they wait for Xul to return to complete the mission. The book ends with the crew and human women reunited as they fight their way from the slave ship to freedom (Read Crex for this story).

The mission was a success. The slave ship destroyed. But they are not safe yet. As they make their getaway, the Tasqals shoot down their ship. Now they must each take a human to look after as they make their way to outposts on the desert planet’s surface. Yce is tasked with guarding Diana, but while guarding her it seems he forgot to guard his heart. As they fight for survival, he finds she is the chaos he always needed and one he can’t let go of (Read Yce for this story).

Kyris lands on a section of the planet far from the others. With Song in his care, he pledges to protect her no matter what, regardless if it means losing his treasured wings. Fighting for their lives as they are hunted across the sands, the two form a bond that will link them for eternity (Read Kyris for this story).

The team reunites and returns to camp at the Restitution base. Life continues and the humans are settling in.

Now it’s time for Kyro’s story.

1

Humans were confusing.

He had spent countless hours trying to understand them; yet, his efforts were in vain.

Their way of life, their motivations, the way their minds worked...it was all very... alien.

Most other species he could understand and assimilate to. But the harder he studied the humans, the more confused he became.

For instance, he'd discovered that most humans adopted other species into their homes only to pretend those species were human.

Whatever they called a “dog” was often asked if it was a “good boy” even though a “boy” was a young human male.

Dogs did not speak human.

Humans had no way of knowing what any dog’s reply was. Yet, humans asked dogs this question repeatedly, and pretended dogs replied in the affirmative.

Kyro stared at the screen before him, contemplating all the human peculiarities in the data.

To think this treasure trove of information would have been lost if he hadn’t been on that specific mission and hacked the enemy ship’s mainframe before his brothers had destroyed the enemy ship.

He’d managed to gather archive upon archive before they destroyed the vessel, collecting information on human civilization that spanned hundreds of years.

Other executive officers wouldn’t have bothered to go through the trouble of gathering transmissions downloaded from the invaded planet’s surface.

But he wasn’t just any executive officer.

Information always came in handy at a later date.

Every Vorti knew that.

And ever since he’d started going through the data, plus after meeting the human females they’d rescued, he’d found that human life was not what he’d expected it to be.

He didn’t know quite what he’d expected, actually.

Not that humans were the most alien of aliens he’d ever encountered—he was Vorti. Some would argue his people were the strangest of all species combined.

But humans...intrigued him.

HREX4X1, or “Earth” as the humans referred to it, was a beautiful blue planet with large oceans,