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Chapter One

Alliana

Muted voices. The sound of objects being shuffled and tossed about. The metallic smell of blood—mine and someone else’s.

Suddenly, it all came back to me as I regained my conscious. The right side of my head swelled with pain as I lifted myself up off the floor. My palms were clammy. My skin was drenched in sweat and…something sticky and slick.

I opened my mouth to form words, but none came out. The sound of footsteps approached me and a large pair of shiny steely boots came into view. I didn’t recognize them and I drew back, propelling myself upward.

I gasped when a hooded creature with red eyes looked back at me. Aside from its eyes, I couldn’t see anything else about it. The creature seemed like a dark ghost hiding under the thick, black cloak it wore.

It hissed what I felt was a command at me. I shrunk back when the creature reached out at me. My heart stopped and my body froze with terror. The oxygen became suspended in my lungs, refusing to release the air—as if holding the breath captive.

There was a second creature in the podhouse. It, too, wore a cloak. It raised it’s hand and exchanged a few words between he creature closest to me. They both grunted and the one that stopped short of touching me, spun around and left me on the floor as if I were an insect that merely got in the way.

“What…?” I croaked.

I blinked and tried to focus on the source of the anguish. I quickly discovered the root of the pain, and then the realization slammed into me like hitting brick wall at a hundred miles an hour. I was bound. My hands were tired behind my back. My wrists burned as I attempted to wiggle them.

Ropes were coiled around my wrists, restricting my movements down to the bare minimum. There was only an inch or two of slack to give. My wrists had swollen, raw and red abrasions on them that made my heart lurch.

My memory had failed me, but now that I was drifting back to consciousness, the details of how I came to be in this perilous condition started linking together in my mind. The last thing I remembered was getting ready for bed. Roult had promised to take me to the market with him first thing in the morning and I wanted to get some rest. And then…that was it. I woke up in the middle of the night groggy and feeling as if someone was looking over me and then…

I rubbed at the knot on my head, knowing that somehow, I must’ve been knocked unconscious, dragged from my sleeping quarters, and then tied up here.

The rope bit into my skin as I shifted my weight. Every muscle in my body protested at even the most meager of movements. I winced and grimaced as a throbbing headache thundered between my temples.

I gritted my teeth, attempting to breathe through the crippling blow of nausea that wreaked tremendous havoc inside my gut. My stomach felt like a buoy in the ocean, thrashing around in an angry storm.

I tried to make a sound. A grunt, a moan, anything would do—but my throat was as dry as sandpaper. My tongue felt gritty. Everything hurt.

“Roult…?” I whispered. But there was no answer. “Help!” I hollered, knowing fully well that the pod houses were virtually sound proof. Even if I had screamed loud enough who would come to my aid?

One of them hissed. “Sssssh.” It placed an index finger over its lips and then made a swift cutting motion near its jugular. I understand body language well. If I didn’t keep quiet, the creature would slit my throat.

Hooded figures encircled me, adding to my belligerent terror. I drew in a sharp breath and recoiled, but I didn’t have much ammunition against them to defend myself—given the fact that I was inhumanely tied up to a bed post. Roult’s bed post.

I blinked again as the shadowy objects in front of me. My vision sharpened and I saw the brutish creatures forming a ring around me. They were wearing hooded cloaks, secluding most of their features from view.

The whites of their eyes were milky, their irises in vertical slits, giving them reptilian traits. An icy shudder traveled up and down my spine.

I couldn’t understand any of the language. Not one syllable or familiar word. I had learned some of the language of the Zunatorian, but this manner of speech was different. One of the hooded figures hissed, its tongue long and red, its fingers scaly and slender as it pointed at me.

They carried sacks and they were filled with what I imagined to be Roult’s belongings. I could see that they had clearly ransacked through his things. Thieves.

Where was Roult? What had they done to him?

A third hooded figure revealed a sharp blade and its eyes burned a malicious hole through me that unsettled me to my core. They seemed to be fighting over something about me. They argued for a minute and the third creature put away its blade. Were they going to kill me or not? As I watched them continued to stuff items into their sacks, something else dawned on me. Something worse than being killed by red-eyed alien creatures. They could stuff me in a sack as if I were an object and take me away and I’d be abducted again. Only this time, I feared that my abductors wouldn’t be as sane as the citizens of the planet I was brought to. I swallowed hard, wishing I had the ability to melt into a puddle and disappear through the cracks in the bloody floor.

There was sooo much blood. It seemed that I was sitting in a puddle of it. But this couldn’t have been all my blood…

Bile rose in my throat and I shook my head, not wanting to think the worse.

“Who…who are you?” I stammered, eyeing each of them with growing suspicion. “What do you want with me?” Having forgotten about the threat to slit my throat, I screamed. That only earned a strap of fabric pulled tautly over my lips and tied tightly around my head.

The creatures cackled. It didn’t surprise me when they didn’t provide an answer. I hadn’t been expecting one, but asked anyway, just in case I got lucky. Not that I was on a lucky streak.

Since they laughed, it made me wonder if they understood me, but at the same time, they exchanged confused glances with each other. They made subtle murmuring noises to each other. These creatures were dangerous, violent, and unpredictable. I had already gathered that much. I didn’t want to become their next victim, but what other choice did I have? I didn’t understand anything they were saying. I closed my eyes, praying that this was an unimaginable dream—but it was unfortunately far from it.