Page 4

Freya glanced up at me with her expression pained, but her actions were solemn. She didn’t fight the medic as they laid her down into the pod. She seemed at ease given the circumstances, but then I remembered what her fate would be. Somehow, I didn’t blame her for not fighting to leave this place. Freya closed her eyes and they shut the lid on her.

“Please, let me go,” I jerked out of the medic’s grasp. All through my struggles, women were being placed in the pods around me. The big warrior must have seen my protests and came to me. I didn’t expect him to aide me because, after all, it was he who declared in front of everyone that he’d already claimed me.

He told the medic something that I couldn’t understand. The medic stepped back and went to strap another woman down into the pod to the left of me.

I looked up at the handsome brute. God, he was big and meaty. He was made up of miles and miles of muscles. His gray skin looked like smooth stone. He might as well have been naked. The straps of cloth and leather that covered him…well, it barely covered anything at all. Beyond his perfect Adonis belt, I could make out the imprint of his manhood behind the cloth. His thighs were thick as tree trunks. His hands were big and calloused. I jerked my attention up to his battle-hardened face. Weird as this whole situation was, he was the handsome male person I’d ever seen.

I couldn’t let him see me give in. “You cannot claim me! I am not an object. So, you can take your bag of treasures and stuff it up your ass.” I gestured to the bag of spoils he had strapped across his shoulder.

He leaned forward. He was so close, I could smell the dominance rising off of him. “I know you’re not an object, she-devil. You breathe and live, just like me.”

“I’m not just like you! You’re an alien. This is all fake.”

“Not fake. What you see is what you get. I wear no cloaks or disguises. This is who I am. Ǔre and all.”

The veins in his body began to light up with what looked like lightning red flashes. His eyes even beamed a red. What magic and evil was this?

“Then again, you’re right,” he said. “I am gifted with senses beyond your own. Senses of the ǔre. Your body was not made like mine. Perhaps it was made as a distraction to lead me to my quick end for these cravings for you are great and unrelenting.” His feral gaze danced across me. “You can demonstrate your differences some other time when you are without the rags of your common people. Your body was meant to wear much finer things.”

He was talking about the drab, dull blue dress I was forced to wear as a personal maid after being sentenced to a life of servitude and forced to remain chaste. Pent-up anger over what had happened to me controlled me. I couldn’t help myself, and maybe I didn’t want help.

I slapped him hard across the face. “Say nothing about my body. It’s not for you. It’s not for anyone.”

He grimaced and his lips twitched. “In under thirty minutes, we take off. The air will be pressurized. Low oxygen. Under these conditions, the human body may not survive. It may, but the transition to our dimension is very unpleasant the first few times. Many cannot endure it. You are, of course, too fragile, little devil.”

I had no idea if his touch was making me delirious, but I felt myself being led to lie down in the pod. I didn’t struggle much either.

He continued his explanation, “You do not know how to conserve energy during this stage so you must go into cryo-pod and there you must stay until we reach home. When we meet again on Zunator, she-devil, I will take you to my bed and claim your body over and over again. That is my promise to you.”

He meant what he said and he closed the lid. The last thing I remembered was my breath fogging up the glass until I couldn’t see my handsome alien warrior anymore.

I woke up one or two, maybe even three times after that in different settings. But everything was a blur…

What wasn’t a blur…my warrior’s claim and intentions for me and the fact that my body, despite my show of arrogance, wanted him.

Chapter Four

Aurora

Twelve days. I slept in a pod for twelve days in a cleansing chamber and that didn’t even include the days it took the aliens to transport me back to their planet. Zuna. I’d never heard of it. Nor the colony of Zunator.

After waking up, I’d felt a sense of serenity. That was a change. On Earth, even though, I lived in what others would consider a castle, I often woke in the middle of the night with a start and filled with anxiety.

In the hospital, or whatever it was, the walls were white. Some were even made of glass or crystal. The nurse who took my vitals remained calm even when the machines showed that my pulse had skyrocketed.

Tak’mena was the first alien women I saw when I woke up. For three days, I stayed in a little room where she claimed she was preparing me for their world and making sure that I hadn’t contracted any illnesses on Earth. I spoke to no one but her. I only had the sounds of calming instrumental music and the hum of the machines as my vitals were recorded every hour on the hour.

No one was permitted in the room but Tak’mena. Her hair was blond with highlights of black. Just like the other aliens, she was gray—maybe a little lighter. She didn’t say much and sometimes she danced around my questions about what would happen to me. But of course, her English was very broken. She gave me a notebook. I drew things I wanted her to interpret for me.

The beam under their skin, within their irises, and running through their veins was called ǔre. Or aura.

The aura foretold a Zunatorians purpose. Tak’mena had a white ǔre for healing. Sometimes white even designated that the person was very destructive, as in causing the death of others.

I remembered the warrior who supposedly had already claimed me. His red ǔre meant that he was an empath. He intercepted and fed off many different emotions and energies.

The pretty silk tunic I wore was called tʼǔn.

When I asked Tak’mena what they called me…what did they call all of the women they captured. She said nothing. I asked my purpose. She told me nothing, only that it hadn’t been decided yet. There was a king named Crencik and he would decide.