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My legs were still tied and I lost my balance and fell to the ground. I twitched and wriggled around on the ground until the ropes loosened. Once they were unraveled, I sprung up and took off. This time, I was determined not to stop. For anything.

I couldn’t even see where I was going. My eyes were blinded by tears this time. I trusted my feet to take me wherever it guided me on this godforsaken earth. If I ended up dead at the bottom of the ravine, then so be it.

I had no idea that someone was following me until a large dark gray figure folded out less than two feet in front of me.

I collided straight into the man. He was hard like granite. The force of it knocked the wind right out of me. I saw the moon and stars before I was momentarily knocked unconscious.

When I came to, I was staring up into glowing red orbs—eyes. There was another set of eyes. They were golden. And another—blue-ish. The men were all dark gray in complexion. Visually striking colorful auras flashed under their skin. They looked like Viking warriors with the way they wore loincloths made of leather and hide with daggers hanging from their belts. Strapped to their backs were quivers holding arrows. Some of the men were completely bald. A few of them had long hair twisted with a rope into a single braid down their backs. And muscles…they had muscles for days. They started talking amongst themselves in some foreign tongue I didn’t understand. Not one word of it.

I was dizzy. Speechless. Scared. And totally caught off guard by the strange change of my fate.

When one of them reached for me, I screamed.

The big one with the red glowing eyes wrapped his fingers around the other’s wrist, stopping him from touching me. They exchanged a few gruff words in…once again, an alien-sounding language I couldn’t understand.

Aliens? Were these men really aliens?

I scrambled backward across the ground as the big gray warrior with the flashing red auras took a stance in front of me.

“Mine,” he declared, and then picked me up and threw me across his shoulder.

I struggled with all of my might but the alien warrior was determined to take me.

Chapter Two

Vaxar

“No one touch her,” I said, setting the female down with the others we’d captured. “No one.”

Even though I was the commander on this raid, I had to make my point clear. There were eight hungry warriors among us and they all expected one thing and one thing only from this mission: a human female to take back to Zunator to breed.

Before the raid, I’d been more than ready to give up my rights to claim any of them. As soon as we returned to Zunator, I had planned to make it known to King Crencik that my courting of a mate would not serve the Zunatorian people well. I was an alpha warlord. I was born to fight, raid for and acquire spoils, and protect our people. I had no plans to spend the rest of my days rutting a female or breeding offspring.

Then I saw her…

The she-devil with the violet eyes.

As I looked down at her, I wondered what kind of sorcery she had over me.

When I was younger and before my days as a warrior, a seer with a spirit soul once told me that I’d meet a woman with violet eyes and long onyx hair. She told me that this woman would be the one to bring me to my knees.

‘I was born an alpha. Alphas do not kneel. Only the weak kneel,’ I had told the seer. To that, the seer claimed, ‘Then she will be your weakness.’

I don’t take this she-devil because I wished to be brought to my knees.

I take her because, if she is my weakness, like all of my weaknesses, I wished to overcome them.

“You do not intend to keep that one, do you?” our medic, Xurkal, asked as he secured ties around more of the frightened females. “You cannot. They must all go to auction.”

He was right. The females were to be taken back to Zunator where the King would hold an auction and give the raiders and others of his choosing first pick.

But, I had already shot one human soldier in the back for grabbing her the wrong way. I didn’t want to be reduced to killing any of my Zunatorian brethren for doing the same.

“It is not within the protocol to select a breeding female before the auction,” Xurkal reminded me.

Loud enough so that Xurkal and all the other raiders could hear, I declared, “Then you shall weep for the soul of the one who tries to take her despite my claim, for I shall surely have his head.” I started off in the direction of the entrance of the cave. “Twenty females acquired. Lead them to the ship. Prepare them for transport. Braken! Aslak! Zu’ux! Come with me. Let us cover our tracks and then leave this wasteland.”

Chapter Three