Heart of a Minotaur: A Sci-Fi Monster Romance (Monster Hearts) Read online

  HEART OF A MINOTAUR

  MONSTER HEARTS SERIES

  - science fiction monster romance -

  Copyright © 2022 by Cara Wylde

  Character artwork by Nomad Raccoon

  Cover by Otilia Jakab

  Edited by Laura Keysor

  All rights are reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One – Emily

  Chapter Two – Travak

  Chapter Three – Emily

  Chapter Four – Travak

  Chapter Five – Emily

  Chapter Six – Travak

  Chapter Seven – Emily

  Chapter Eight – Emily

  Chapter Nine – Travak

  Chapter Ten – Emily

  Chapter Eleven – Travak

  Chapter Twelve – Emily

  Chapter Thirteen – Travak

  Chapter Fourteen – Emily

  Chapter Fifteen – Emily

  Chapter Sixteen – Travak

  Chapter Seventeen – Emily

  Chapter Eighteen – Travak

  Chapter Nineteen – Emily

  Epilogue – Emily

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Emily

  “What do you think it’s like on the other side of this portal?” Keith asked. It was difficult to understand him with the screwdriver gripped between his teeth. I shrugged and realized for the first time that I hadn’t thought about it.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. I rested the piece that I had been trying to disassemble on the floor and considered the question. “Cold.”

  Keith blinked his clear blue eyes at me as though he was trying to decide if I was kidding or stupid. He removed the screwdriver from his mouth with his right hand and shook it at me. “Cold?” he repeated. “That’s all you have, cold?” He scowled at me and started prying off another piece of the star portal.

  “Well, we got it off the minotaur ship,” I defended myself. “Our working theory is that the other side of this portal must lead to their planet, right?”

  “Obvs,” he replied, his voice impatient as he waited for my point. “Or at least, it did until it hit status FUBAR.” He gestured around at the scattered pieces and parts laying all over our workspace. Counters, tables, even the floor contained haphazard bits, and an outsider might have wondered if we’d ever get it back into one working piece.

  We were professionals, even if our current state of disrepair might’ve suggested otherwise. Along with the mess, there were thorough notes and drawings depicting how it had been assembled before we tore into it. With some luck, we’d be able to get it back into a working state. For now, we were trying to understand how the thing worked. Then we could worry about getting it working.

  “The minotaurs are covered in hair,” I explained.

  I hadn’t seen the aliens that we captured the star portal from, but I had heard my crewmates discussing them. In fact, I had gone out of my way to listen in on their conversations, trying to sate my own curiosity. The discovery of aliens wasn’t an everyday occurrence, not even for a technician on a classified outer-space secret research station. They were aliens, not technically minotaurs, but everyone had begun to call them that, since it was the closest thing to describe what they resembled.

  “Their planet must be cold, or they wouldn’t have developed all that fur.” I had thought it was a reasonable assumption, but I was beginning to regret answering what seemed to be a hypothetical question.

  Keith’s mouth dropped open. I wasn’t sure what I had said wrong, but I could tell it was something. I was used to getting that reaction from people. He started jabbing the screwdriver into a groove in the portal, trying to see if there was anything inside. He shook his head at me.

  “I guess,” he admitted, though he sounded like it frustrated him to concede my point. “In any case, I’m glad I get to work on this thing while it’s defective,” he continued after a moment. “I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to go check out what’s on the other side. Those minotaurs scare me. I don’t need to see a whole planet of them.”

  I didn’t say anything at first, unsure of how to explain that I might like to see them. I was intrigued, and the idea of learning more about aliens sounded like a job perk to me. But I didn’t want him to think I was weird, so I continued my work.

  Keith and I were technicians on the Belua Space Station – a secret base hidden in outer space. Only a few days before, I thought that our job was to build spaceships that could travel faster than the speed of light.

  The spaceships were still part of our mission, of course. We hadn’t been successful yet at breaking the light-speed barrier, but that seemed like a minor problem that we’d work through any day. If it were easy, everyone would do it, right?

  It was a dream job for someone like me. I had always been a bit of a nerd, and working on something with such scientific importance sounded like my chance to finally be someone. I had struggled since I finished high school finding what other people referred to as their calling. But this… this could be it.

  The fact that we had to sign a non-disclosure agreement promising not to reveal the details of our work didn’t discourage me. Neither did the part where I had to leave Earth and spend my time in space. Both of those things appealed to me, convincing me that I was special. I was getting to do something that most people never would.

  It wasn’t a lie. I was getting to do something unique, something – literally – out of this world. But, while the job had been presented as building spaceships, I hadn’t expected the alien research component. I hadn’t even known aliens were out there.

  But a few months passed, and all that changed. That was when we captured the alien ship. I didn’t know if the existence of aliens was new to the other thousand or so employees of the Belua Space Station, but it was new information to me and Keith.

  The ship had contained the star portal, and we were tasked with working on it. We were trying to uncover the mysteries behind it. But first, it had been deactivated to let us get a good look at it.

  In the beginning, it activated a wormhole to who-knows-where every time someone looked at it funny. Nothing had come out of the wormhole, but we weren’t about to take any chances. Until we understood where it went, we had to use an appropriate amount of caution. The creatures who had the portal were enough proof that wherever this thing originated, there could be danger.

  It was guarded around the clock until we got the thing under control. There was too much unknown, and security here at the station was understandably serious about its job. People like Keith and I weren’t equipped to handle a surprise alien invasion, and there was no talking back when something was deemed a threat to the base.

  Now that the wormhole had been deactivated, and the portal showed no powers, it had been entrusted back into our care. In its current state, in pieces that were harmless, Keith and I could work on it in peace. No guards, no busybodies, no annoying scientists watching every move we made.

  Us two and our tools – the way that I liked it.

  As eager as I was to impress everyone at the station and win some praise with my stellar management of an alien star portal, I didn’t care much for having an audience while I worked. It made me nervous. I didn’t like people standing around, getting into my head as they waited for me to fail.

  I knew this portal was my chance to prove to leadership what a stand-out technician I was. But someone who looked around at the current disarray might’ve had some doubts. I didn’t need that kind of negativity.

  “What on Earth is this?” I pondered, sliding a smooth metal sheet. It seemed to be acting like a door and revealed a strange panel underneath. “Not Earth,” I corrected. “What on…outer space?” I tried. It didn’t have the same ring.

  “It’s out of this world,” Keith quipped, looking to see what I had found.

  The cover had been disguised, blending in to look like the rest of the portal. We hadn’t noticed it could move until now, assuming it was stationary like everything else. I held the piece out to Keith, who took it from me. He had a curious expression on his face. He pushed and pulled the door several times, covering and uncovering the panel. He grabbed a small pry bar, working the panel out of its casing.

  Keith turned it over in his hand and studied it while I looked over his shoulder. It had buttons that appeared to be made of crystal, each with a strange alien symbol. I reached over him and pushed one of the buttons. I noticed it moved, as though it should’ve been functional. That was, if we hadn’t broken the thing.

  “What do you think these pictures mean?” It didn’t take me long to notice that each button had one image, and each one was different. But what did these symbols mean to alien
s like the minotaurs? Were these their version of numbers?

  We both jumped at the sound of a door slamming. Keith fumbled with the panel but kept from dropping it. It was fortunate, because the sound was the Director coming in to check on us.

  Director Handy was a no-nonsense man. He was brusque and intimidating, or at least to me. I supposed part of it was his appearance, with his big square shoulders, stocky build, strong jaw, and deep-set eyes. He looked out of place among a small crew of nerds and science geeks.

  I knew that part of my nervousness around him was the obvious explanation – that he was my boss. This job was a big break for me, and I wanted to succeed. I wanted to impress my higher-ups, and who better than the Director?

  He wasn’t the sort of guy to give praise, which managed to make me more anxious. It was hard to know if he approved of what I was doing, and I had to avoid getting caught up in my head around him. If I did, I could spiral into a panic. It didn’t require a valid criticism from him. His natural grumpy expression was sufficient. I tended to overthink, invent problems, and blame myself for things. As a result, I had developed an instinctive fear of his presence.

  “How’s it going?” Director Handy said, arms folded across his chest as he surveyed our work. His eyes were narrowed, and I felt my heart flip flop. I’d have to tell Keith that we needed to do a better job of keeping our station neat.

  Not saying a word, Keith shoved the panel into my hands. His meaning was clear – since I had found it first, he didn’t want to steal my credit. I cleared my throat to draw the Director’s attention, and held the panel up.

  The Director’s interest was piqued. He took it from me and peered at it with squinted eyes.

  “I think it’s for putting in some kind of code,” I offered.

  He lifted his head and stared at me. He had that same unreadable look, as usual, and I flushed. Did he think I was stupid, that I had stated the obvious?

  He spun on his heel and marched over to an intercom. “Bring me the Captain,” he barked.

  I glanced at Keith in confusion, but he shrugged. Either he had no explanation, or he wasn’t going to offer it to me. He didn’t appear to care, in either case.

  I had no idea who the Captain might be. I had been working with IMRA at the Belua Space Station for a year, and we didn’t have anyone who answered to that term. It might have been an inside joke, a friendly nickname. I wasn’t someone who made a lot of friends or got invited out much. It was probably why I was willing to leave everyone on Earth for a job. No one would’ve noticed I was gone. It turned out it was no better in the middle of outer space. I was still out of the loop in most ways. I didn’t fit into any of the cliques here, but at this point, I was used to that.

  It seemed unlikely that he was referring to a friend as “Captain”. The Director wasn’t a misfit like me, but he was hardnosed and wouldn’t bother with friends or nicknames. It would be unprofessional in a work setting.

  In a few moments, I got my answer. A guard came in, holding the minotaur Captain at gunpoint. Keith blanched and scrambled away, and the fear in his eyes was evident.

  Though I knew about the spaceship that we’d captured and that it had been full of a race of alien creatures that looked like minotaurs, this was my first look at one. I didn’t share Keith’s sense of panic.

  The alien was restrained by thick, heavy chains. They wrapped around his arms and ankles. Even without the gun that the guard had trained on him, he would’ve struggled to move. I saw no reason to fear a creature that had been rendered harmless.

  I wasn’t scared. I was intrigued by him. His face was like a human’s, but his ears were covered in soft brown fur. On top of his head, there were two big horns, like a bull’s, and long, straight hair came down his shoulders. Below the neck, the rest of him was covered in the same brown hair as his ears. His hands were like a human’s, other than the layer of fur, but his feet had cow-like hooves. He stood on them, his posture and movement like ours. He was taller and larger than an ordinary human man, and I wondered if that was true for the whole race, or if he was large for his species.

  The one piece of clothing that covered his body was a wrap around his waist. It was something human made that we had put on him. Had he been wearing clothes of his own? Had we taken them?

  His eyes had a hard glint to them, as though he refused to give up his pride. He may have been captured and stripped near naked, but he refused to accept weakness. I had to admire that. It intrigued me that he could be hard in the face of adversity.

  He glanced around the room to take everything in. I could see the briefest shadow flicker across his eyes as he looked at the star portal, in pieces. It made me feel guilty, though I had been doing my job.

  Director Handy looked between me and Keith and pursed his lips. Though he didn’t say anything, I could tell that he was noticing that Keith was scared and would be useless. He focused on me. The Director waved me to come closer. I did as he wanted, with no hesitation.

  He returned the crystal panel, setting it into my hands. With his hand on my shoulder, he steered me next to the minotaur.

  “Show her the way to use this,” he commanded him.

  We had been given a special translator that was implanted behind our ear, which translated alien languages for us. I had been given mine when we began working on the portal, but this was the first time I was using it. I turned to the minotaur, excited to hear my translator in action.

  It didn’t get much of a workout. The minotaur stiffened and lifted his jaw in defiance. With a fierce glint in his eye, he spoke one word.

  “No.”

  Chapter Two

  Travak

  I was trapped in my cell, feeling no small amount of remorse. I had chastised myself on a loop over the past few days since my capture. And I had plenty to feel guilty about.

  What kind of a Captain was I, to lead my entire crew into danger this way? Now, most of them were dead. Those that remained were, I was sure, being experimented on or abused. All because of my deadly lack of judgment.

  As Captain of my ship, the Oneiro, I prided myself on being able to read a situation. Force and brute strength weren’t enough, though ignorant people believed that it was. The inexperienced thought that the key to winning was to be stronger than your opponent, but that was false. Instinct was vital – a necessary skill to avoid danger in the first place.

  My own misgivings about my strength had led us into this trap. The humans were small and fragile compared to us, and I assumed they were no threat. It turned out my logic had had a fatal flaw. They were delicate, but more devious than I had imagined possible. What they lacked in strength, they made up for in dishonor, in tricking their opponent into vulnerability. This behavior was disgraceful on my home planet of Niuvis.

  We reached out to them, trying to contact other races on a mission to explore space. They pretended to welcome us and vowed to come in peace. Like an idiot, I believed.

  They attacked us the moment we docked. Though we were stronger, we were caught off-guard. We didn’t expect the onslaught and were unprepared to defend ourselves.

  The humans, I learned, were a despicable race, to be avoided at all costs. The lesson came too late, at the loss of many lives.

  I vowed to at least prevent them from shedding any more unnecessary blood. I couldn’t bring back those who’d died because of my actions, but I refused to tell them anything about the star portal, not wanting them to use it to spread their terror.

  I paid for my opposition. They tortured and interrogated me, determined to break me. But a Niuvian Captain was unbreakable, and I refused to shame myself by helping them. In between their beatings, they kept me in a small cell.

  My cell was my current location. It was one of many in a ring that I heard the humans call the Omega Ring. I filed this information into my mind for the future. It could come in handy trying to rescue what was left of my people. I wondered if there were other rings, and which one might house my crew. I wasn’t sure about the number that remained alive. But I knew that I owed it to them to get them out, since their capture was my fault.

  Saving my own life was unimportant, but I had to return them to their homes. I would send them to their homeland safely. With that complete, I would beg forgiveness from the Basileus. I had failed and was a disgrace. I deserved whatever punishment he gave me. Should the Basileus find it in his heart to spare me for my misdeeds, I would live out my days in isolation in the mountains, attempting to atone for my crimes. It was the place for someone like me, who had ruined innocent lives. My position in society deserved to be revoked.