Free Conquest by REBECCA YORK

 
    PART I
    CLIMAX
    Elena slipped the knife under the pillow, then moved quickly away from the bed, clutching the collar of her fur robe tightly around her neck. If she killed her new husband, would the Guardians condemn her for murder? Or would they simply give her to another one of the barbarians? Perhaps it would be wiser to use the knife on herself. Better a quick death than a life of suffering at the hands of a man.
    No, not a man, she corrected herself, but a savage. A male animal who bore only a superficial resemblance to a human being.
    She shivered, unable to control her reaction to the thought of being possessed by a Jalaran. Since the day a hundred years ago when the colony ship from earth had crashed on Jalar, with no hope of rescue, her people had battled for survival on the harsh planet. It was a world beyond human scope, a world of impossibly high mountains where the air was too thin for humans to breathe, “ironwood” trees so tall they seemed to touch the sky, and oceans full of creatures more fearsome than the nightmares of ancient earth mariners.
    The greatest threat, though, had been the Jalarans, the warlike race that dominated the primitive world. Vicious, merciless in battle, they had slaughtered the newcomers, forcing the humans to barricade themselves in stone fortresses on the northern-most continent, where winter was long and dark, and summer was nothing more than a brief respite.
    Elena, like all of the colonists’ descendants, had been raised on stories of the atrocities committed by the natives. The morals of the stories were always the same: it was only due to their superior technology and intelligence that the humans had carved out a tiny foothold on Jalar.
    That foothold was precarious, though, and it seemed the cruel, unforgiving planet would win in the end. For, over the years, fewer and fewer children had been born to the colonists, and in the past twenty years, not a single woman had conceived. The doctors knew the cause of the problem---a type of radiation in the alien atmosphere had rendered the human males sterile---but all efforts to find a cure or means of prevention had failed. If their species was to avoid extinction, the doctors had told the Council of Guardians, they must forge a truce with the enemy; the most fertile human women had to be impregnated by Jalaran males.
    Elena counted it as her misfortune to have been named one of those women.
    A noise in the hall outside her bedroom door made her body go rigid. Rohan. Her new husband.
    He didn’t knock but simply opened the door and stepped into the room. She had met him that afternoon at the wedding ceremony, though neither she nor any other of the women had been given the opportunity to speak with the Jalarans to whom they were being wed. He was still very much a stranger, and the sight of him was every bit as shocking as it had been earlier. He was a giant, perhaps six and a half feet tall, with massive shoulders, long muscular arms, and legs like tree trunks. His prominent brow and high forehead, corrugated as it was with bony ridges, seemed more suitable to an animal than a man. Above his forehead, a thick mane of wavy black hair hung to his shoulders, adding to his wild appearance.
    His eyes were deep-set and dark, and his fierce gaze pinned her where she stood.
    Resisting the urge to fold her arms across her chest, she raised her blond head, her blue eyes flashing defiance as she returned his stare.
    He set a heavy leather satchel on the floor. His clothes, she guessed. He had a weapon hanging from his shoulder by a strap---a long, curved blade mounted on two shorter prongs that connected it to a horizontal handle, both long pieces honed to lethal points at the ends. He removed the weapon, along with the knife tucked into the scabbard tied at his waist, and set them beside the satchel. He broke the silence with a comment that made her flush.
    “They told me you are not a virgin. Is that true?”
    She nodded