Barbarian Alien

The second installment in the Ice Planet Barbarians series picks up where the first book left off: A group of human women, kidnapped from Earth by aliens to be sold at an interplanetary trade station, have crash-landed on a frozen world they call "Not-Hoth." Their only hope for survival lies with the sa-khui, a tribe of seven-foot-tall, blue-skinned, horned aliens stranded on the planet generations ago.

Liz Cramer, a sharp-tongued 22-year-old from Oklahoma, helps orient six newly freed women from stasis pods inside the crashed ship. She explains their situation with blunt honesty: their abduction, the deaths of two women in the crash, and the sa-khui's offer of rescue. The offer comes with a significant catch. The planet's atmosphere is lethal to humans, and the only cure is accepting a symbiont the sa-khui call a khui, which the humans nickname a "cootie." Once implanted, the cootie regulates body temperature, accelerates healing, and adapts its host to the environment. It also selects a genetic mate through "resonance," a persistent chest-vibrating reaction that compels its host toward a specific partner until reproduction occurs. With only four sa-khui women in a tribe of roughly 30, the human women represent desperately needed mates.

Raahosh, a scarred, surly hunter with one broken horn, has been hovering around Liz since the rescue party arrived, forcing broth and blankets on her despite her hostility. His narration reveals what Liz does not yet know: His cootie has already begun resonating for her, though he hides it. A lifetime without a mate or lover has left him both desperate and deeply insecure, and when he overhears Liz call him "scarier than most," the words cut deeply.

The tribe kills a massive woolly creature called a sa-kohtsk to harvest cootie symbionts from its body. Georgie, the group's unofficial leader who has mated with Vektal, the sa-khui chief, accepts her cootie first: The glowing, worm-like organism wriggles into a small cut in her throat, and she collapses. Liz, whose late father taught her to hunt and who recognizes that parasites kill their hosts, panics and backs away. Raahosh intercepts her, appearing to relent. Then he returns, pins her to the ground, and forces a cootie into a cut at her collarbone. She tells him she will hate him forever and passes out.

Raahosh carries the unconscious Liz to a secret cave, intending to hide her until she is pregnant and they are an established pair. He sets her broken toes, bathes her, and dresses her in clothing he had stashed. When Liz wakes, she discovers the cootie sealed inside her and her chest vibrating in resonance for Raahosh. She is furious. He ties her wrists and ankles to stop her from clawing at her own throat, then feeds her by hand.

A tense domesticity develops over the following days. Liz secretly plans to build a bow and escape, but the resonance floods her with unbearable arousal, creating a charged dynamic between them. When she sneaks out to find bow materials, a monstrous aquatic creature attacks her at a hot spring. Raahosh kills it, and the adrenaline ignites their physical tension. Liz grabs his horns and kisses him, then guides him into performing oral sex. Afterward, Raahosh growls "Mine" in English, and Liz realizes he has understood every word she has said since the beginning, having learned the human language from a knowledge cache aboard the sa-khui's original crashed spaceship.

A fragile truce follows. Raahosh reveals his isolation: He has no living family and spends most of his time hunting alone to avoid seeing what others in the tribe have. Liz bargains with him, agreeing to sleep in his arms if he takes her hunting. Physical intimacy escalates, and Liz gives Raahosh his first sexual experience, discovering he is a virgin. When he asks if his scarred appearance is why she rejects him, Liz tells him her resistance is about lacking choice, not about him personally.

They hunt together, and a pack of metlaks, savage primate-like creatures, ambush them on a cliffside. Raahosh orders Liz to run, but she refuses and kills two with her bow. Overwhelmed, Raahosh grabs several metlaks and throws himself off a 30-foot cliff to draw them away from Liz. She scrambles down, finds him broken at the bottom, builds a travois, a drag-sled fashioned from felled trees and her cloak, and hauls his body for hours through the snow.

Liz nurses Raahosh through nine days of recovery, single-handedly hunting, setting his bones, drying meat, and tending the fire. When he finally wakes, they consummate their relationship and begin to function as genuine partners.

Two sa-khui hunters, the cheerful Aehako and the grim widower Haeden, find them and escort them back to the tribal caves. During the journey, Aehako tells Liz the story of Raahosh's parents: His mother Daya never loved his father Vaashan. When Daya resonated for Vaashan a second time and refused to bear another child, Vaashan kidnapped her and young Raahosh. Years later, Vaashan returned alone with only a scarred Raahosh, claiming Daya and the baby had been killed by metlaks. The tribe exiled Vaashan, and Raahosh grew up carrying his family's trauma. Liz realizes this history explains Raahosh's desperate possessiveness and resolves to stand by him.

At the tribal caves, the healer Maylak confirms Liz is pregnant. She tells Raahosh, and he lights up with joy. The next morning, however, Vektal formally sentences Raahosh to permanent exile for endangering Liz's life. Warriors drag him away as he and Liz scream each other's names.

Liz wages a campaign of calculated disruption to pressure Vektal into reconsidering, stirring dissent among the human women and making herself insufferable. She sneaks out at night to visit Raahosh, finding him gaunt and sleepless on a distant ridge, depositing kills at the cave mouth to feed her. Finally, she steals Aehako's knife and stages a mock hostage situation, demanding exile for herself since kidnapping is the crime that warrants it. She delivers an impassioned speech: She has never been given a choice in anything, but despite everything, she fell in love with Raahosh. He is her home.

After Georgie's private intervention, Vektal announces a revised sentence. Raahosh must serve a term of exile lasting until their child is born, spending seven days hunting in the field for every one day at the caves and filling distant food caches for the tribe. Vektal also declares that any woman who wishes to hunt will be treated as a hunter. Raahosh and Vektal embrace, their friendship strained but intact.

Equipped by the other women with new clothing, boots, and supplies, Liz and Raahosh leave the caves together. In the bonus epilogue and honeymoon story that close the book, the couple deepens their bond through vulnerability and play. Raahosh confronts his fear that he will repeat his parents' unhappy resonance, and Liz reassures him that she loves every part of him. She tells him he is her reason for living, and he tells her she has his heart. They set out into the snow as partners, choosing each other over comfort.