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Chapter Three

Freya

My memories were still a blur. One month had passed, and I still felt nothing.

While most of the other woman stood trembling, afraid to be sold to some alien warrior at auction, I was unmoved. Besides, the worst thing had already happened to me. I couldn’t even figure out who I was.

I found it odd that the only time panic rose in me was when one of the alien warriors made it known that he intended to take some woman named Aurora as his mate. This Vaxar had no problems with threatening the other warriors to a fight to claim her.

For whatever reason, I thought I knew this raven-haired Aurora. I had this hunch…

From the way she looked at me while we were kept in the dorms during acclimation, I was sure she knew me better than I knew myself right now. She was the first to have called me Freya when they led us onto the spaceship, and I had felt compelled to answer to that name. The only problem was, I didn’t think I was ready to unveil the past me.

My memories seemed to be hidden deep inside me buried under a mountain of pain.

There were times when I thought I could remember something. An image would flash in my mind. Simple things like eating or dressing would remind me of the clothes I liked to wear or the food I liked to eat while on Earth. Sometimes I’d remember a face, but nothing else. But as fast as the memories rose in me, they’d disappear again.

I turned my attention back to the auction.

“Cut her ropes,” the King ordered.

But the King wasn’t talking about me at the moment. They were preparing to take the woman named Aurora away.

The determined warrior Vaxar came forward and claimed her. What surprised me further was how she looked at me one last time before disappearing with him. My heart sank when she was gone.

I should’ve let go of this stupid fear and asked her what I wanted to know when I had the chance to. At one point when I ran into her in the dorms, I wanted to ask her who she was and how she knew me. Every time I got the courage to talk to her, my fear stopped me.

The other women were cruel. Either that, or they looked at me with pity. I knew their scorning of me had something to do with what happened on Earth, but my memories were like a vortex. And I wasn’t sure that I wanted to remember what made these women hate me so much. Whenever those snippets of my past would come back to me, I remembered feeling powerless and awkward. Now here I was feeling empty and alone.

Abducted from Earth…

Memories gone…

Marked for breeding…

None of the other women’s memories had been erased. Why mine?

Those initial memories of being boarded up on the spaceship only meant one thing—my memory erasure had happened on Earth. My nurse Meriuam claimed they hadn’t caused my memory loss. Why would they do that when some of them could read minds and even predict futures? But what human would do such a thing to me, and why would they do it?

All the abducted women, including myself, spent an average of two weeks in a cleansing chamber. I met my nurse Meriuam almost immediately after they woke me up. For the next two weeks, we were tutored and schooled and learned the ways of the Zunatorians. I still had trouble with even the most common words of their language. I walked around in a daze, wondering why my memories were gone and why I felt nothing. Other than Aurora and my assigned nurse, no one else would talk to me. I sat alone. I ate alone. I was truly alone.

Meriuam actually wanted to help me with my memories. I told her everything I knew, and she concluded that I must have come from a very rich family on Earth. Some of the girls had whispered the same thing about me. Governor’s daughter, they claimed. She said I was wearing gold jewelry and diamonds when I was captured. My mannerisms were not like the others who all admitted to being servants, regular citizens, or captured rebels. Other than the remnants of some drug running through my system, I was in good health.

According to Meriuam, my memories weren’t completely gone. They were just locked away. If my warrior permitted it, I’d be allowed to visit some cave that was said to heal the mind, body, and soul. And then…the memories could come back. Could being the key word.

The King rapped something on arm of the chair to silence the room, jolting me from my daydreams yet again. “Let’s get on with it. I have to prepare for my talk with the Aurrakian ambassador from Xalxa 5. Their group will be here soon. Hand me the ballot box, Talyn.”

Suddenly, it dawned on me…I was going to be auctioned off. Just like Aurora.

Not sure if I would be able to hold my lunch down despite the nausea and bile steadily creeping up my throat, I pressed my lips together and directed my gaze back to the floor. I wrung my hands in front of me as the big alien warriors watched. They looked anxious and downright ravenous. They were big and strong. I’d never seen men like them. But they weren’t men at all. They looked like huge gladiators with impeccable gray skin that appeared tough enough to withstand almost anything.

Some of the women gossiped about the warriors while we were in the dorms being groomed and trained to be their mates, breeders, and whatever else they expected us to be. They talked in awe about the sheer strength these beings possessed since some of them witnessed the fighting that went down between several humans and a couple of warriors during the raid. Some of them even secretly looked forward to being dominated in bed by these soldiers, while others were scared out of their minds. As for me, I stood somewhere in between. How could I know what I wanted? I didn’t even know who I was.

These warriors were said to have possessed powers. More spiritual than magical. Their auras—or ǔre, in their language—gave their talents away. Zunatorian aliens with blue auras, just like the King possessed, were said to be telepathic. They could read thoughts, whether you openly projected them or not. Beings with white or silver auras, like Meriuam possessed, were known to heal, nurture, and bring life into the world. White or silver auras could also mean the opposite, which I assumed that Meriuam meant destructive. A majority of the aliens possessed red auras, which meant they were empathic and absorbed emotions and feelings through touch. There were others, but I couldn’t remember them all. This was the first time that I had seen so many of them in one room.

“Yuvim.”The King spoke. “We have a name. Braken. Congratulations. You get first pick. Chose wisely. Breeding should begin as soon as possible. Should you fail to convince your human to accept you, you will relinquish any rights to keep her. Understood?”

The one called Braken smiled. “Understood, Your Majesty.”