Betrayed

The Fallen World Series Book 3

C.R. Jane

Mila Young

Contents

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

School of Broken Souls

Preface

Chapter 1

About C.R. Jane

Other Books by C.R. Jane

About Mila Young

Books by Mila Young

Betrayed by C. R. Jane and Mila Young

Copyright © 2019 by C. R. Jane and Mila Young

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

For permissions contact:

crjaneauthor@gmail.com

milayoungauthor@gmail.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

For all the girls who looked up at the stars...and dreamed.

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Betrayed

Survival is just the beginning. Ella must fight for love and freedom on the rim of the galaxy...

Years ago, the skies blackened with the arrival of the Vepar to Earth. Dominant and secretive, they changed the world, ruling over Earth with fear.

Ella’s always been a survivor, a fighter. But now kidnapped, she finds herself on a foreign planet and running for her life.

The three men she fell for made a mistake. A grave mistake, and now their blood-mate, Ella must pay the price.

Fear drives them to keep Ella safe from the monsters who are determined to hunt her down and use the power in her blood for their own deadly purposes.

But what happens when Ella finds out that Thane, Derrial, and Corran might be the monsters she needs to fear the most….

Book 3 of the Fallen World Series

Chapter 1

Beeeeeeep….

It felt like someone was trying to drill a hole through my head. Something tugged on my arm and pain sliced down my skin.

My eyes grew heavy like they had been glued shut.

What happened? I tried to retrace my steps. I had won the competition. The guys were mine. We were going to go somewhere…and then?

Fuck.

I tore my eyes open when I suddenly remembered what had happened. I say tore because that’s what it actually felt like. Maybe those psycho scientists had glued my eyes shut. I wouldn’t put it past them.

The room was white and sterile and there were beeps coming from everywhere. I wanted to go back to sleep just so I didn’t have to hear their screeching anymore. It was hard to move like my body had been paralyzed. I started to take stock of all my body parts one by one.

I wiggled my toes first, giving a huge sigh of relief when they moved. I wouldn’t put it past the Vepar to decide that baby incubators didn’t need to have use of their limbs. I tried to move my legs next but all I could do was twitch them briefly. They must have given me some heavy meds because it felt like the hardest thing I had ever done to move my legs an inch. Giving up on my legs for a moment, I moved to my arms. I wiggled my fingers first and gave another sigh of relief when they moved. As soon as I tried to move my arms though, piercing pain shot through me. Glancing down, a scream gurgled from my throat.

There were at least ten wires or IVs or something sticking out of my arms. Panic curled in my chest, a scream building in my lungs. I pulled at them even though the movement made me want to throw up from the pain. I was faintly aware of an alarm sounding, mixing in with all the other beeps in the room, creating a cacophony of torture for my ears.

I heard frantic footsteps, and then I was surrounded by what seemed like twenty Vepar in white coats. They were yelling and gesturing and grabbing at me, but my mind was in such a state of panic that it was hard to comprehend what they were trying to say. Finally, one of them pulled out a sharp-looking needle and stabbed it into my upper arm.

I was so sick of being knocked out.

* * *

When I woke next, I saw the same scene. Except this time when I tried to move, I realized that I had been bound to the table underneath me with thick fabric around my hands and with leg cuffs. Before I could scream, a gorgeous Vepar with ebony hair pulled back severely from her face stepped into my field of vision. She wore a stark white lab coat and carried a calm expression on her face as if it was perfectly normal to chain humans to a lab table and stick things in them without their permission. Maybe it was on their planet, but back on Earth, it was called kidnapping. Veon needed to get with the times.

“How are you feeling today, Ella?” she asked kindly.

I stared at her shocked that she could even ask that with a straight face. “Let me out of here and I’ll let you know,” I ordered, struggling with my restraints.

“Now, Ella,” she began, while typing in notes on her tablet as she observed me. “We really need you to calm down. It’s very important your body is stress-free right now.”

Was this Vepar for real?

“Are you having any cramps? Do you feel bloated?” she asked.

Why was she asking that?

She must have seen the confusion on my face because she smiled and patted my shoulder. I flinched, but she pretended not to notice. “We’ve been giving you a steady dose of fertility drugs and they often cause cramping and bloating. We just want to make sure that you’re comfortable,” she explained.

Sick dread spread all over my body. It was happening. My worst fear was being realized.

Where were the guys?

I started gagging as I tried to trace back my steps. What if the Trials had been a trick to get me to lower my guard? What if the guys were behind this?

I took a breath, trying to calm myself down. They wouldn’t do this. Not after everything that had just happened. It would be like playing with your food before you ate it... making me do the Trials while they intended to use me as a baby-making machine the whole time.

Someone else was behind this… because they wouldn’t do this, would they?

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice sounding scratchy from disuse. How long had I been out, and what had they done to my body?

She laughed self-deprecatingly. “Forgive me for being so rude. My name is Dr. Cryon. I’m one of the head researchers in this lab.”

When I didn’t respond to her introduction, she turned her attention to her tablet and started scrolling through something on it.

“Looks like it’s time for your Bromocriptine,” she remarked, setting her tablet down and grabbing an angry-looking syringe from off a stainless-steel table next to her.

The sight of the needle sent me into hysteria, and I began to thrash like a madwoman.

“Oh, dear,” she said calmly before setting down the needle in her hand and picking up another one. “It looks like you need to spend a little bit more time relaxing before you’re willing to cooperate.”

I continued to pull at my restraints as she inserted the new syringe into my I.V. Her amused eyes were the last thing that I saw.

* * *

Coming out of whatever drug-induced sleep the doctor had put me in was a bitch. I lay there for what seemed like an hour, awake, but unable to open my eyes. It ended up coming in handy when some of the scientists started talking near me.

“We’ve searched every one of his databases, the entire file is missing.”

“It’s one piece of the puzzle, surely we can come up with it ourselves,” barked a voice I recognized as Dr. Cryon’s.

"It's a little more complicated than that," another voice said. "It took Corran years to find the right compound that made up for the genetic differences between the Vepar and the humans. Without that information, I just don't see how the subject can have a successful pregnancy. The genetic differences will just be too much," he continued worriedly.

"There hasn't been any sign of him has there?" Dr. Cryon asked.

"They've all disappeared. And a member of the Council's disappeared as well. They think it has to do with them."

"Are the risks just to the fetus?" the doctor asked suddenly, her voice contemplative.

"No. Unfortunately, there's a good chance that the subject would pass as well. In the tests that were initially run on subjects the genetic differences would always lead to the host body attacking the fetus."

"Attack? What did that consist of? Is there a way for us to control that?"

“In every experiment, the host body would get confused because the fetus’s blood and host’s blood would somehow mix. That would lead to an all-out assault on all of the host’s internal organs. Their death was usually very messy. If I remember correctly, there was a lot of blood involved coming out of every orifice.”

His words terrified me. All of this was said with total objectivity as if they were discussing the weather rather than whether someone lived or died. It was terrifying how little the Vepar seemed to care about what happened with the human race considering they were depending on said human race for their race’s continued existence.

I made myself stay still as they continued to talk even though the urge to pull at my restraints was strong.

Just then a voice interrupted the conversation, a voice that simultaneously made me furious and filled me with dread.

"I would stop talking if I were you," said Zeni. "She's awake."

I heard footsteps and then there was a sharp poke in my arm that made my eyes fly open as I gasped in pain.

"Told you," Zeni said viciously.

I realized that the sharp pain I had felt was from her nails, nails that had been sharpened into talons. They fit her perfectly.

The doctors looked annoyed to have her there, but they didn't say anything when Zeni began fiddling with various objects on the table behind her.

Whatever deal she made with the Council in order to get me away from the guys obviously had come with a change in her title.

"So has the deed been done yet?" Zeni asked, playing with a wicked-looking needle.

"There have been some delays," Dr. Cryon said stiffly.

"What does that mean?" Zeni seethed.

"It means that my boyfriends weren't entirely pleased with your plan to get me pregnant without them, and they took some of the information with them," I said triumphantly, even though I was in no position to be triumphant in any form.

The doctor shot me an exasperated look.

“Corran was somehow able to take his research with him and we’re missing a key part of the treatment," the doctor explained.

Zeni’s face scrunched up in displeasure. “I believe the Council gave you specific instructions to deal with this creature," she said, gesturing to me. "She’s to be fertilized immediately."

Dr. Cryon immediately objected. "Considering the risk and that this human is our best possible chance for a successful Vepar surrogacy, it would be unwise to attempt to do the embryo transfer without Corran’s missing research."

"The Council is not going to wait. You need to do the transfer now, and then I suggest you start working your asses off to make sure that you uncover the missing information,” Zeni ordered.

Dr. Cryon opened her mouth to object once more.

“Have you heard about the new law passed by the Council?” Zeni asked with a very satisfied look on her face.

“No, I haven’t,” Dr. Cryon explained stiffly. “But I’m sure that you’re about to tell me.”

Zeni’s face flushed scarlet at the doctor’s impotence. “Anyone found to be disobeying the Council’s direct orders will be immediately imprisoned with the potential for further discipline if needed.”

She looked over at me. “You can thank your mates for that,” she said with a smirk.

The doctor and her companion both looked ill at the possibility of imprisonment. I could tell them it wasn’t a walk in the park from first-hand experience.

Tears burned in my eyes. There was no way they weren’t going to do the procedure now.

"You know it really is a pity," said Zeni. "This all could have been avoided if you had just taken me up on my offer and left when you had the chance."

I seriously doubted that I would've been allowed to leave the planet. Zeni would probably have arranged to have me shot down and killed or something like that.

"At least you can take comfort that if you die, absolutely no one will miss you," said Zeni sweetly.

“Are you meaning to talk about yourself?" I responded snidely. "Because we both know that the males around you have a habit of picking me over you.”

“Let’s get this started,” Zeni barked at the doctor, her face turning red with fury at my words.

A resigned look passed over the doctor’s face. She placed a hand over her ear. “Get the team in here,” she ordered through the communicator device I knew that most of the Vepar had stored in their ear.

A team of at least ten Vepar began to flood the room.

This was really happening, my panic-filled stomach clenched. I tugged against the restraints frantically.

“A big congrats to the mother-to-be,” cooed Zeni.

I had never hated someone more.

“I’m sorry about this,” Dr. Cryon whispered to me, actually looking sorry.

I guess it was one thing to force someone to get pregnant. It was another thing to knowingly kill that person.

I didn’t accept her apology.

“See you soon...or maybe never,” Zeni crowed delightedly.

It was really too bad that the last thing I was going to remember was her disgusting face.

Dr. Cryon approached me with a needle that I knew would put me to sleep again.

All I could think as the room started to fade around me was that I wished I could have seen their faces one last time.

Chapter 2

(Derrial)

“They’ll never find out,” I growled, sick of this shit and tired of looking at the Councilman’s slackened body. Gritting my teeth, I ripped my gaze away. “Just shove him inside already and be done.”

Thane’s lips twisted into a frown, but he knew I was right. He knew there was no other way. This Councilman, Chloped, ordered the blood tests on Ella and tricked us into surrendering our hold of her once she signed to enter the trials. Now, she was in a lab being experimented on.

My blood boiled at the thought.

I looked down at his security pass in my hand. This was our key to saving Ella. Torturing him to get information had been easy, he broke instantly. And once we learned the names of the scientists involved, we’d hunt them down to make them pay for their deceit. The Council was on that list too… they wanted us removed from power for gaining too much attention, too much popularity. My arms tightened at my side at the betrayal.

Not wasting a moment, Thane scooped his arms under the Councilman’s armpits and dragged him into the space cruiser before dropping him. He landed on his back, his head hitting the floor with a thump, and laid there unconscious.

“Corran, everything’s ready to go?” I looked over to him as he jabbed his finger onto the control monitor in his hand. Shadows crowded under his eyes, his posture curled forward, his black cork-screw horns now a deep gray… he always responded this way when he was angry. We all were angry; we weren’t playing games anymore. We had Ella to rescue and nothing would stand in our way.

Corran nodded. “He won’t wake up for the next month. His nutrients patches are inserted. All comms and navigation systems will disable by the time he wakes up. By then, he’ll be on the outer edges of our galaxy, right into Nebian territory. Then he’ll be their problem.”

Thane dusted his hands and climbed out of the ship. “Those bastards will imprison anyone who steps foot in their territory.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

He deserved so much worse but getting him off the planet didn’t make him or his disappearance our problem. I gave Corran a nod and the door to the cruiser slid shut as he returned to his monitor to get the cruiser into space.

Thane and I marched across the hanger, my thoughts darkening each time I remembered the Councilman’s words. The human is currently being escorted to a secure lab where we will begin the procedures.

With the information I’d dragged out of him, we’d found the location where they held Ella.

“Our ship’s ready,” Thane stated. “We won’t be detectable on entry, but once we land, we’ll have about ten minutes to get in and out of the place with Ella before they sense the vessel.”

“That’s tight, but we’ll make it work.” I shoved open the door to my small hideout I had built long ago once I realized that the Council pried into everyone’s business. I had never truly trusted their agenda. Of course, my instinct had been right, and this place had come in handy. It wouldn’t be safe for long though… not after we got Ella.

“We pack with no plans of returning,” I ordered.

“Corran and I already have the coordinates set for our escape with Ella.” Thane’s words were clipped and short, all business. It was how he dealt with the fear that we’d somehow be too late, somehow find her gone or worse… dead.

My gut knotted; I couldn’t think like that. “Perfect.” I turned away and prepared to leave.

I was going to spill blood and break spines.

Chapter 3

I hadn't expected to wake up, so when my eyes opened and the procedure room was visible around me, I immediately began to cry.

Looking around, there was no sign of Zeni or the doctor. There were just a few of the doctor’s team huddled around a tablet, discussing something with each other.

I tried to move quietly, taking inventory of how my body was feeling. They hadn't explained the procedure to me, so I wasn't sure how they put the Vepar fetus in, if it was like how humans did IVF, or if it was put in another way.

Besides my head hurting, I didn't feel too different. Maybe they experienced a change of heart?

Remembering the look on Zeni's face and the fervor in her voice when she had ordered them to start the procedure, I didn't think that they would have been able to get around it with her in the room.

Dr. Cryon suddenly walked into the room with her male companion that had been introduced to me.

She looked very focused on me, and I expected her to start asking questions about how I was feeling. Instead, she turned to the two Vepar that had been talking on the other side of the room.

"You’re needed in the east building," she said to them.

They immediately nodded and left the room, not even glancing over to where I was strapped in.

The doctor waited for a long minute. She seemed to be listening to their footsteps as they faded down the hall. I wondered what was going on.

Suddenly her companion was by the table, unbuckling the straps that had me trapped to the table.

I looked over at them confused. "What's going on?" I asked, wondering if I would now be allowed more freedom because the procedure had been done.

They didn't answer any of my questions, not even when all of the straps had been released, and I was sitting up. Dr. Cryon carefully helped me off the table since I was feeling weak after laying down for who knows how long.

"Can you walk?" she asked, a hint of urgency in her voice.

"I think so," I croaked, my voice groggy from my latest blackout session. Hopefully, there wouldn't be long term damage from being knocked out so many times. I wondered how much the effect of Vepar medicine on the human system had been studied. I was doubting very much based on their attitude towards the human race as a whole.

I wasn't sure why I was thinking of that at the moment. I really should just be excited that I seemed to be alive. Unless this was the afterlife and I had been doomed to hell, the hell where I was the Vepar puppet for eternity.

Now I was just being dramatic.

"We need to go," the doctor’s male companion said fiercely to her.

I was so confused.

Dr. Cryon began to quickly walk towards the door. Her companion nudged me to follow them. I began to walk, my gait unsteady as we went along.

The doctor looked back. "We’re going to need to go quicker than this," she ordered.

Nodding, the male Vepar picked me up in his arms and began trotting behind the doctor who had left the room.

“What’s going on? What’s the rush?” I asked, but he kept his focus dead ahead. “Please just tell me where you’re taking me.” Fear slid down my spine, and I began to jerk in his arms, trying to get away.

"Keep still," he muttered under his breath. “We’re helping you.”

I stopped struggling immediately. Helping me? “How?”

All of a sudden, one of the doctor’s team members came out into the hall. A younger woman with short cropped orange hair and matching irises. She stopped short, looking at us confused. "Isn't she supposed to remain laying down for at least a few hours after the procedure? What's going on?" she asked him.

Dr. Cryon stepped forward. “It’s okay, Teky, We’re transferring her to the lab. We received instructions for additional tests.”

Teky’s wide nostrils flared, her fierce gaze meeting mine, and I could have sworn somewhere behind that gaze, she held pity for me. My head spun with confusion and I wanted to scream, to run. But the man’s arms tightened against me like he sensed me panicking. I had to believe him and the doctor were helping me, had to trust these strangers who experimented on me at Zeni’s command. I had no plan B to escape aside from my three Vepar coming to rescue me.

Teky stepped aside, and I was rushed forward, bouncing in the man’s arms. I let myself cradle against him, my head resting on his shoulder as I prayed for once that something was going to go in my favor.

It wasn’t long before we stepped outside, bright sunlight beaming down on us. I lifted my head, squinting my eyes to find that we stood behind a building made of a kind of plexiglass… or maybe it was glass, minus the transparency. Wide open land spread out before us... all green grass and trees of varied colors in the distance.

A small gray space cruiser sat a few feet away.

The man set me on my feet. I wobbled at first before I caught my balance. “You’re free,” his rushed words whispered as he pointed to the ship. “That ship will take you from here and back to Corran.”

“You’re letting me go?” I faced him and the doctor. I knew the looks on their faces. Something terrible was going to happen to me and they wanted no part of it.

“Is Corran on that ship?” I asked as I stared at the vessel.

“It’s a friend. He’ll help take you to Corran. Now go, stop wasting time.” Dr. Cryon gave a shove to my back, and I stumbled forward.

My heart sank to my feet as I stared at them over my shoulder, tears pooling in my eyes. “Thank you.” Both of them met my gaze for a sliver of time, worry pulling their expressions taut, then they turned and rushed back into the building.

They risked too much to release me, to not follow Zeni’s orders, and I didn’t blame them. She was a massive bitch and I was sure there would be repercussions.

Wasting no time, I burst across the field, moving as fast as my exhaustion allowed, my sights set on the ship. Each step shot pain through my body, but I wouldn’t stop. Not when it meant seeing my guys again and stopping the experiments. Corran would help me, he’d fix whatever they did in that lab.

Vibrations suddenly traveled up my legs from the ground, and I glanced down and around me, seeing nothing. I turned to stare at the building, expecting to find guards chasing me down.

Except, a long ship with upward bent wings hovered in the air between me and the lab. My breaths were barreling out of me as panic lashed over my chest.

They’d found me!

I spun and ran, my feet punching the ground.

My teeth chattered, and I sprinted madly. Adrenaline pushed me, numbing all pain. But the closer I got to the gray cruiser, the more something looked wrong.

The side of the vessel came into view and it had a gaping hole across the back half, its edges charred black. Someone had shot the vessel. My brain wasn’t catching up with the sight fast enough or I might have burst out crying.

Ice-cold fingers gripped my arm, and I jumped at the touch, but they swung me around with such force, I tripped over my own feet.

Stumbling, I fell to my knees and looked up to an alien wearing a black body-hugging suit that glinted in the sun. Dark oily hair was slicked off his face, and his cheeks were hauntingly gaunt. Black eyes blinked down at me.

“Khonsu!” I whimpered, punching his grip with my free hand, trying to scramble backward. “Leave me alone!”

“So, this one can talk. She’ll be popular.” He wrenched me to my feet and tossed me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing, and in two flashes, the darkness stole the sunlight.

I glanced up to find myself inside a ship… the enemy’s ship. He tossed me onto the floor, and I landed so hard, all the air was knocked out of my lungs. I gasped for air, when the forcefield shot up in front of me, trapping me inside a confined corner of the ship.

Jolting to my feet, I cried out, “Release me now.”

But the two Khonsu settled into the seats at the front of the vessel and the shuttle trembled before we lurched forward. Unlike Corran’s ship, this thing shook like a rust bucket.

“Let me go!” I continued to scream while searching the area for any weapons, but the place was barren. Just black walls closing me in.

Chapter 4

I was in a corral, that was the only way to describe it. Inside were what seemed like hundreds of beautiful women around me, in various states of dress or undress as it may be. A girl next to me was wearing what looked like an outfit from Xena, Warrior Princess, that TV show that had been popular when I was young.

The ground was covered in a thick lush green grass, and there was a metal fence around the outside of us. A faint buzzing filled the air, and I suspected that the fence was electric. The women were trying to stay as far from it as possible.

I let out a small shriek when a creature passed outside the fence in front of me. It looked similar to the monster that we’d encountered and killed during the trials. Like that one, it was standing on two feet, the color of its skin a muddy green. It looked over at me, and its piercing yellow eyes had my heart beating faster. It opened its mouth and smiled at me, if you could call it a smile with its sharp teeth that looked to be leaking a fluorescent green saliva. Where in the world had I found myself now?

The leather bikini girl, as I'd been calling her in my head, put her hand gently on my shoulder.

"Are you all right?" she asked. I could tell she was a Vepar because of her vibrant, almost glowing, blue eyes. That and the horn that was extending out of the middle of her forehead. It didn't take away from the fact that she was beyond attractive though.

"What is this place?" I asked, choking in the delirious screams that were threatening to erupt out of me as another creature walked by outside the enclosure.

It seemed like they were acting as guards of some sort. Looking beyond them, I could make out brown domes dotting the landscape around the corral. They were similar to the Vepar structures, just a little rougher looking as if there hadn't been as much time or technology put into creating them.

"You don't recognize this place?" she said with a broken laugh.

I shook my head. "Those are Khonsu though, I recognize them at least,” I said, taking a deep breath to try and relax. I obviously wasn't going anywhere at the moment.

"This is their capital city," she explained, brushing off a piece of dirt on her arm.

Corran, Derrial, Thane. I suddenly thought, everything coming back to me.

Constantly being knocked out couldn’t be good for my brain, it was clear that I was beginning to forget things. If this kept happening there was going to be permanent damage.

Fear and regret darted through me. The doctor had said that Corran was in that grey ship. What had happened to him? Where were the others?

I began to look around for them frantically, just on the off chance they were here somehow. The female Vepar put another comforting hand on my shoulder. "You need to calm down. You’ll only attract their attention by acting like this. I'm pretty sure they can sense fear and they feed off of it,” she said.

I glanced over at her. She appeared perfectly calm. As if she wasn't in the camp of the Vepar’s worst enemy, or at least what I thought was the Vepar’s worst enemy. I still knew next to nothing about these people.

"How are you not freaking out right now?" I asked as my body began to tremble. "And what are we doing here? Why are we in a corral?" As I was talking, my gaze continued to scan the landscape for my men. I had been suspicious of them since the beginning. I thought we had finally gotten to a good place. I should be more trusting than this. There was no way they had been working with Dr. Cryon. Right?

"You're the human, aren't you?" she asked understandingly.

I nodded hesitantly.

"I thought that you were just hiding your Vepar features so as not to attract attention. But this is how you look, isn't it?" she asked, eyeing me head to toe.

"Yep, no horns for me," I said jokingly, not even sure how I was able to joke right now about anything.

"You would look good with horns," she said with a serious tone. That hysterical edge of laughter threatened to erupt again, and I had to use all my effort to tamp it down.

"So, you know what we're doing here?" I asked, redirecting her to the issue at hand.

Her face sobered. "I've only been told about it, but I believe that we’re here for the Tangazi, or Mating hunt in your language," she said softly.

The word "hunt" made my blood freeze. I knew all about being hunted by the Khonsu. First by the one who had come after me on earth, and second by the monster in the woods.

"Can the Khonsu take different forms?" I asked, realizing that no one had explained this to me.

"They have many different forms. What you see walking around this area is their real form. It's my understanding that they can look however they want, although I haven't seen that myself."

I nodded, that explained a lot. I had to admit that I much preferred their other forms to the monsters currently patrolling the area. I shivered, thinking of how that first Khonsu had tortured me, flaying off pieces of my skin while I shrieked in agony. Maybe I did prefer this form actually, at least it didn't look like they had whips on their person, if it were even capable of carrying whips in its clawed hands.

"What does this mating hunt consist of?"

She threw me a look of sympathy.

"Just what it implies. They let us loose, and then go hunt us. And whoever catches you is your new mate," she said in a haunted voice.

True terror surged through me. "It sounds so barbaric. Why wouldn't they just mate with their own kind?" I asked.

"Now what fun would that be?" she asked sarcastically. "They wouldn’t be the Khonsu if even their mating rituals didn't involve fear and destruction."

I saw a flash of blonde hair, or at least I thought I did. And I looked hopefully to see if it was Derrial. But whatever I'd seen had disappeared.

"Why are you here? Did you venture too far from the Vepar cities?" I asked.

A look of rage briefly passed over her face before she smoothed it out. "I'm here because many of the Vepars are just as bad as the Khonsu, if not worse."

A wave of pity passed over me. It was obvious that this poor woman had a dark story.

“I'm Ella," I offered with a small smile. I was grateful that this Vepar woman wasn't treating me as the rest had and was taking the time to at least explain things to me. I knew if Zeni were here, she would probably be throwing me up against the electrical fence at my audacity to ask any questions.

"My name is Bruda," she answered with her own small smile.

"Bruda," I repeated, thinking that the tough sounding name perfectly fit this Vepar who resembled a warrior Princess.

"Do you know when the hunt is supposed to start?" I asked, still desperately looking around for help.

It was interesting to watch the women around us. Some of the others were Vepars, but most were definitely of different alien races. They all were distinctly feminine, but also distinctly alien looking.

A woman off to my right was a dark, inky blue color. She had tubes coming out of her head instead of hair. The tubes were held back in some kind of elaborate headband. Her eyes were completely black, no white showing, and I jumped when they briefly turned to me, before losing interest quickly.

I was guessing it would be helpful in this situation that I resembled a form that the Vepar could take.

There were three gorgeous women off to my left, who were all a bottle green color. I gasped in amazement when I realized that there was a tube connecting the three of them. Literally, they were all one entity. It was like our conjoined twins back on earth, except in this case they had three distinct bodies.

Bruda must've seen me staring, because she made a small coughing sound to get my attention. They’re from the Dacasi," she explained.

“Many of the women there are born into groups of threes like that.”

"What do they do about dating, having sex, or anything else?" I asked.

She laughed. "Women on that planet who are born to a pairing like that, which is almost all of them really, all marry the same man. That takes care of all of those issues."

For a second, I wondered if my guys felt like that, like they were connected for life, since they were all dating me. What a strange life I had ended up having.

"Do they not have different species on your earth?" she asked.

We had gotten off topic, I needed to know about a million more things about this “hunt” before it started, but it was probably good for both of us to have some sort of distraction right now. It wouldn't hurt for me to answer a few questions.

"There are a lot of different species on Earth," I explained. "But before the Vepar invaded, we weren't aware that there were any other species from different planets on Earth."

Her eyes widened. "Really, there weren't any? So you thought…"

"So we thought we were all alone in the universe?" I asked self-deprecatingly. "Yes. As stupid as that sounds, we did think we were alone on the planet. That obviously has changed now."

She shivered. "Surely your leaders must have known. I can't imagine living in such a state of ignorance."

"We really didn't know any other way," I told her honestly. Thinking of the phrase ‘ignorance is bliss.’ I think I missed being able to be ignorant.

"I really don't think that our leaders knew either. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Our leaders are a bit lock lipped about state secrets to the common people.”

She nodded.

"Bruda, I would love to answer whatever questions you have about Earth and the humans, but I need to know about this situation we’re in before I can do that."

She nodded again, and I was once more glad that I had landed myself next to her. "Stories of the mating hunt are told to all Vepar children growing up. It’s a story that our parents tell us to try and keep us in line. “Be nice to your brother, Bruda, wouldn't want to have to send you to the Vepar for the hunt," my parents would tell us. “The stories could never compare to the real thing though," she said looking around us in disgust. "Obviously everything that I've heard is rumor. But how I've been told that it works is that sometime soon, sometime this week at least, the Khonsu men who are looking for mates will gather in an arena and we will be brought in to be inspected. They examine our looks, the strength of our teeth, use their technology to look at our fertility probability… Basically take stock of our assets," she explained.

My terror at this point was so thick that it was hard to breathe. They would know I was human. What if their technology could pick out what was special about my blood? What if I was already pregnant, what would they do? Horror like I'd never felt before swept through me.

"You're not fainting on me, are you? You’ve got to stay strong," Bruda ordered.

I took a deep breath, unwilling to tell her exactly why I was so afraid. A few more deep breaths seemed to calm me down.

"Continue," I said, proud of myself for keeping my voice calm.

“After they've showcased us to the hunters, they take us into the woods on their mountain.”

"Their mountain?" I asked perplexed.

She nodded. "The Khonsu have a mountain that they consider sacred. All of their important rituals are done within their woods or at the peak of the mountain. It's called Velati.”

She turned me around and I saw where the giant mountain was located in the distance.

"And what happens on that mountain?" I asked, dread trickling down my spine because I knew what she was going to say next.

"There, we are hunted," she said matter-of-factly. "Each Khonsu male who is participating in the hunt would've located their favorite based on the exhibition in the arena. They let us out into the woods under the guise that there’s a chance we could escape. But obviously that never happens,” she said with a whisper. “Once the Khonsu male catches their desired mate, the woman is then taken to the top of the mountain. And there she is raped on their sacred stone or in the woods or wherever they please." Bruda delivered this news in a voice void of any emotion.

My body felt like it was going to collapse. Raped. There had actually been quite a few times in my life where I had been touched without my permission, and there had definitely been situations that could've led to rape if I hadn’t been saved. I thought of the prison guard in the hallway where Thane had saved me.

Who was going to save me this time though? A wave of loneliness passed over me. I had just gotten to the point where I had felt safe for the first time in my life, and then it had been ripped away.

A thought hit me just then. What if the guys were dead? What if they had been found out after I had been captured?

"I'd been expecting that when I learned it was called a ‘mating hunt’” I said softly, trying to distract myself from the terrifying images that had filled my mind of the guys each being tortured and killed in various ways.

At that moment Bruda reached over and squeezed my hand, an act of solidarity and compassion that brought tears to my eyes.

"And then after the hunt, is there a marriage ceremony?" I asked with a faint laugh.

"According to what I've heard, by performing the...” she hesitated before continuing. "By performing the ritual, on their sacred mountain, that acts as the marriage ceremony."

I looked around and examined all of the women in the corral, all women that at least to me didn't look like they were Khonsu.

"Why don't they take their own women for their mates?" I asked.

“I've heard through gossip that the Khonsu women have the same fertility problems as the Vepar women. Unlike the Vepar, the Khonsu have no problem going outside of their race. From what I've heard, the Khonsu gene is dominant to all but the Vepar and any characteristics of other species are thus not carried over during the mating process. The child is born a Khonsu then for all intents and purposes."

I was immediately outraged upon hearing that. "If the Vepar genes are so strong, why was it so important to them then to take over Earth where the humans there have similar characteristics to them? Why couldn't they just go with another species and let the Vepar genes dominate whatever child was born?" I asked, furious at the idea that Earth could've been taken over for no reason.

Bruda was already shaking her head before I had finished ranting.

"Unfortunately, the Vepar genes do not work that way. The Vepar can only mate with compatible bloodlines, and your Earth is the only planet that's been found to have beings that are compatible to us.” She cocked her head, staring at me intently. "That is the reason that you are here, is it not? Even on Earth you were the only one found to be compatible."

I looked at her suspiciously. How would she know that? I knew it was common knowledge for the Council and Corran’s scientists, but I didn't think that the regular Vepar population would've heard about me.

She sighed. It was starting to get dark, and the last rays of Veon’s two suns cast her in a haunting orange glow. "As I'm sure you're aware now, the Council’s become corrupt. Your men were gone for too long. After they were gone, the Council decided that although they could not mate, they could still play."

I inhaled a shaky breath. The pain she had endured was so tangible, I could taste it on my tongue. Bruda had suffered immensely.

Her voice faded to a whisper, and I had to lean in closer to her to be able to hear her as she continued to haltingly speak.

"I was stolen from my parents and used as a slave for their pleasure."

"How did you end up here?" I asked gently, thinking that she was a beautiful woman. Whatever horrors she had been through had not affected her beauty.

"When I was first taken as the Council's pet, I complied with whatever they wanted thinking that it would make things easier if I just went along with it. But as time passed, I couldn't keep going. I started to fight back, making it so that every interaction was a battle. Although some of the Council members were into that sort of thing, the others didn't think that I was worth it. After all, there are a million women on Veon with the same looks as me. I was sent here as punishment, a gift to the Khonsu by the corrupt Council."

I didn't know what to say. I was shocked. I obviously had hated the Council for my own reasons but knowing the depths of their depravity took my hatred to a whole other level.

I suddenly remembered what she had said, that the Khonsu didn't mate with the Vepar because of the gene domination issues. Plus, the Vepar women were infertile so that wouldn’t work to begin with. I looked at her confused.

“You're wondering why I'm here if I can't have children?" she asked, a resigned look on her face.

I nodded, feeling bad that I was having her answer all of these difficult questions. "I'm here to continue what I was doing for the Council. But there's not a Khonsu male alive that won't enjoy my noncompliance."

I didn't know what was worse. If they thought I was a Vepar, or if they realized I was the evidently amazing alien baby breeding machine that I actually was.

Big ugly tears streamed down my face, garnering stares from the surrounding women. I didn't know how they were all handling this so well. If only they weren't, maybe we could all storm the walls or something and get out of here.

I laughed a little bit hysterically. That obviously wouldn't work. Not with the Khonsu in their beast forms patrolling the area. One swipe with their claws and we would be goners.

Then Bruda did something I would never forget. She gathered me in her arms and began to softly sing a haunting melody. Thanks to Corran’s language chip, I was able to understand it even though it was in Vepar.

I didn't understand all the terms. Even translated some of the Vepar words were too alien for my mind to comprehend.

But it filled me with peace. The fact that someone like Bruda, who had been through a life that was a literal nightmare for who knows how long, could offer comfort to me...Well, the world...or worlds as it was couldn't be that bad of a place.

I stayed in her arms as the sun set. Too scared to go to sleep, we spent the night talking about Earth.

"I would like to visit it one day," she said wistfully. "It sounds beautiful."

I thought of Veon and how beautiful it was, even compared to Earth. I thought of the poverty I had experienced on my planet, the loss of my parents. "Beautiful things sometimes hide the most terrible things,” I told her.

She stared off into the distance as a pack of Khonsu in their beast forms ran by. "I know all about that."

We both somehow drifted off to sleep, but we were awakened savagely by loud horns and laughing and roaring crowds that had gathered outside of the corral.

I sat up in alarm as did Bruda. "It must be time," she said sadly.

I couldn't answer her. I finally saw that the other women in the pen were starting to look nervous. They looked even more nervous when at least a hundred of the Khonsu in their beast forms surrounded the pen and started to chant loud savage sounds that shook the ground. It was terrifying to see so many of them in one place, gnashing their teeth. I noticed that the ground sizzled where their green saliva fell on it.

"Do they hunt us in those forms?" I asked in a horrified voice.

"I don’t know," Bruda said in a worried tone. "I don't know how we would make it to the top of the mountain if they did though, so let's hold off panicking about that."

I had become accustomed to the slight buzzing of the electrical fence, so I noticed right away when it stopped. Suddenly, a section of the fence started to slide by, creating an opening. Several of the Khonsu guards came to the opening and grunted at us to start moving. Apparently, they weren't able to communicate in their beast forms.

One by one we started to file out. I could feel the Khonsu’s leering gazes as we walked by, and it reminded me of that first Khonsu who had looked at me like I was more food than a person.

I couldn't help but look in the crowd for any of the guys. Despite my initial doubts, I was sure that they hadn't betrayed me. If they had wanted to use me for a certain purpose, they would've given me to the Council to begin with. As it was, they had sacrificed everything to try and make me safe. I was pretty positive that they loved me.

Although Bruda had said that the exhibition happened in their arena, there were so many Khonsu both in beast and man forms gathered around us, that it seemed like the exhibition had already started.

I was sure the view of the women as we walked resembled a kaleidoscope of colors. It seemed like almost every female there had to be from a different planet.

A Khonsu near me made strange moans as I walked by. Just like some of the more despicable men on earth, the Khonsu grabbed themselves and started rutting their hips like animals as we walked by.

I was going to be sick.

There were females sprinkled among the crowd, and I assumed they were the Khonsu women. They looked worn down, unhappy, and resigned with their lives. I didn't think that bade well for any of the women marching in this line.

I was still dressed in the hospital gown that I had been put in, and I was sure that my hair was all over the place. It didn't seem to matter though as the Khonsu’s eyes seemed to always find me. And it looked like they liked what they saw.

It became easier to try and ignore their looks, and I concentrated on studying the Khonsu city. It seemed like unlike the Vepar, who preferred to have space between their dwellings, the Khonsu didn't mind living close to one another.

They didn't seem to have the technology that the Vepar did to cook food, as I could see smoke coming out of the tops of some of the dwellings. Most of the buildings were plain, but occasionally we would pass by some that had silvery markings all around the entrance.

Bruda leaned closer as we passed by an especially elaborate one. "Those markings denote the elite of the Khonsu culture. The ink used to make the markings is very expensive, and only certain families possess it.”

I nodded; thankful she knew so much about the Khonsu.

I came to a screeching halt a moment later when we passed by what looked like a courtyard. There were five very human looking Khonsu playing with the black whips that had been used to torture me. My mouth opened in a silent scream as I saw that they were using the whips on a dozen tiny creatures that possessed shiny white fur. The little creatures were emitting shrieks of pain that threatened to burst my eardrums.

Losing my head momentarily, I took a step forward to go to them. I was only stopped by Bruda grabbing my arm tightly. "You cannot intervene. Do you want them to use those whips on you?" she hissed urgently.

Resuming my slow walk in line, I shivered as we left the screams behind us.

Bruda was silent for a moment as we marched. "What was that back there? Do you have no sense of self-preservation?" she asked.

"I know exactly what those whips feel like. Forgive me if it was hard to see them using them on such innocent creatures," I said softly.

"You're going to need to toughen up if you are going to survive this next part," Bruda said matter-of-factly.

I could see what had to be the arena rising in front of us in the distance. Unlike the dome like structures that made up their dwellings, the arena looked to be a perfectly square copper colored box. I had never seen anything like it.

"From what I've been told, the Khonsu will do whatever to get their prey in the hunt," Bruda continued urgently. "If you're going to fight, be prepared to have those whips used on you again."

The thought of those whips touching me again almost made me want to just give in. “Almost” being the important word.

We arrived at the arena. Unlike the crudeness of their dwellings, the arena’s outside walls were perfectly smooth. A few of the guards at the front of the line made some grunting noises, and the wall in front of us began to slide open.

I gasped as we walked inside. There had to be thousands of Khonsu in both beast and their human looking forms sitting on stands that appeared to be floating in the air. The bottom two rows of the stands held only human looking Khonsu, however. They were all dressed in dark purple tunics. The fact that their eyes were lit up in anticipation let me know that these were the Khonsu who would be taking part in the hunt.

“I bet their dicks are small,” I muttered to Bruda, who let out a surprised snort.

The guard ahead of us looked backwards to make sure we were following him and must've seen the smirks on both of our faces. He rolled his eyes. "Pay attention," he barked at us. We immediately sobered up.

In the center of the arena was a large open space with packed dirt that was so smooth it almost looked like a giant basketball court. A pedestal stood in the very middle, where I presumed we would be put on display one by one for observation by the crowd.

The beastly guards at the head of our line made a roaring sound and the women in front of me all stopped. A Khonsu with oily black hair that reminded me of the first Khonsu that I had met, dressed in crimson robes, appeared from behind us and walked towards the pedestal, paying no attention to the prisoners he passed by.

He stood up on the pedestal and tapped his throat three times. The arena immediately went silent.

"Let the Tangazi begin,” he said in a voice that reminded me of a hissing snake. The crowd immediately began to roar again. The Khonsu dressed in the purple robes stood in unison as if they had practiced the movement. They began to beat their fists over their hearts. The loud thumping sound echoed across the arena, sending shivers down my spine.

The Khonsu on the pedestal stepped down and impatiently signaled the first female prisoner to step up on the pedestal. Another Khonsu male stepped forward with some kind of device in his hand. He waved it in front of the terrified looking female, a beautiful alien with gold looking skin and green hair that shimmered down her back. A series of numbers appeared above her head.

I leaned toward Bruda. "What are those?" I asked, gesturing to the numbers.

She looked at me wide-eyed. "I have no idea. But it can't be good,” she admitted, and her response terrified me.

The Khonsu with the device said something to the female and she opened her mouth, displaying her teeth.

I again leaned towards Bruda. "What’s their obsession with teeth?" I asked. I must have said something humorous because a smile crossed her face despite our dire circumstances.

"Are good teeth not important on your planet?" she asked.

"I mean I guess they are, but not to this extent,” I replied, listening as the crowd cheered at the beautiful alien’s display of her shiny, shark-like teeth.

I suddenly regretted all of the dentist visits I had been forced to attend growing up. Maybe if my teeth weren’t so straight and shiny the Khonsu wouldn’t want me.

The Khonsu must've been pleased with her exhibition, because she was led off the pedestal much more gently then she had been put on it.

Dread curdled in my stomach as female after female was displayed. Some of them garnered appreciation so loud that my eardrums threatened to burst while others had much quieter receptions. I somehow thought that those prisoners were the luckier ones as they were more likely to have less Khonsu after them once the hunt began.

Bruda had been standing behind me, but when there were only three females in front of us, she stepped in front of me. I wasn't sure why she was so intent on protecting me, but I was grateful for it. She grabbed my hand behind her back and squeezed it in solidarity. Her strength gave me strength. Whatever happened, I could get through it. I would live through it. If Bruda could do it, so could I.

Bruda was finally called. She stepped up onto the stone pedestal, her head held high. Shrieks, hisses, and loud cheers from the crowd filled the air. They obviously could tell that there was their enemy, a Vepar, standing in front of them. And they loved that she was their prisoner.

Bruda clasped her hands behind her back, the only sign of nerves a slight trembling of her hands. She kept her head held high, her brown hair floating in the soft breeze. She really did look like the picture of a warrior princess standing there.

The crowd grew louder and louder, and I could see the anticipation in the purple clad Khonsu’s eyes as they stared at her. They would be well aware that she couldn’t provide them children, so the glimmer of excitement in their eyes could only mean one thing-that they were excited at the prospect of torturing her. I couldn't think of anything I could do to help her.

The Khonsu were yelling strange words at Bruda, words that my translator once again couldn't pick up. I could tell by their connotation though they weren't anything good. Still Bruda kept her chin held high, refusing to let them know that they were affecting her.

Numbers appeared in the air over her head. I still hadn’t figured out quite what they meant, but I saw that the bottom score was a zero. Perhaps that was her fertility score? That would make sense it was a zero and none of the others had been a zero if the Vepar was the only race that the Khonsu couldn't have children with.

Bruda’s teeth were checked, and then she was finished, and it was my turn.

I took a deep breath, determined to put on as brave a face as Bruda had just done. I stepped onto the pedestal and the same hissing and cheers filled the air as they had with Bruda. They thought I was another Vepar so of course it made sense for them to act that way. I kept my chin held high, holding onto the sides of my hospital gown. I was well aware of how naked I was underneath it and wished so badly that I had some form of undergarments on. I had never imagined myself in a position like this.

I could tell when the numbers appeared above my head, because the crowd all of a sudden descended into silence. I took a peek upwards, and was terrified to see that the bottom number, the one that I suspected was a measure of fertility, read one million.

It was like the crowd took a collective breath, and then all hell broke loose. Khonsu, even the ones not dressed in purple tunics, were trying to clamber off their benches to get onto the field to get to me.

The two that had been in charge of the exhibition started screaming and yelling to try to gain order, but there was nothing they could do.

It was pure pandemonium, and I was pretty sure that my worst fears were about to be realized a little bit earlier than I had anticipated.

Evidently, I was never going to make it to the sacred rock.

I was going to die out here.

When an especially fierce looking Khonsu, who was halfway transformed between his beast form and his normal form was just about to touch me with a long clawed hand, a sudden bolt of electricity burst out of the ground, covering the entire field with an electrical shock save the stone pedestal I was standing on. All of the Khonsu who had rushed the field had been struck down with the blast. I watched as they convulsed in agony, some of them still attempting to move towards me despite their obvious pain.

At this point, all semblance of me remaining calm was gone. I was shaking as I watched them all writhe on the ground. Some of them looked like parts of them had been charred. It was a gruesome sight.

Looking behind me was even worse. I cried out when I saw what had happened. There had been three captives left in line behind me. They had been roasted to a crisp in the blast and were almost unrecognizable. Obviously whatever electrical waves went out catered towards the Khonsu and was deadly towards other races.

The beautiful blue alien that I had first caught sight of in the corral was one of the fallen. I only could tell it was her because her headband had been bejeweled, and somehow it had survived the blast and was lying near her body. A deep sense of loathing passed over me. This had happened because of me. Whatever mutation was in my blood that caused the alien male species to absolutely lose their minds, had also caused these females’ deaths. It was bad enough that they had been prisoners to begin with, but there could've been a chance that maybe the Khonsu who caught them would've been a good mate for them. Not a large chance, but still a chance. Or maybe they would've even escaped or been saved by their planets. Now they would never get that chance.

I was yanked out of my mourning by the Khonsu who must've set off the blast, the one who had been in charge of the ceremony, with the crimson robes. He pulled me away without saying a word.

A path had been cleared to where the other prisoners had been taken. I could see them huddled in the tunnel we were walking towards, their faces alight with fear. Bruda was at the head of them, her face twisted in horror and relief at the sight of me.

She rushed toward me. "Are you all right?" she cried.

I was shaking so much I could barely respond. "I can't believe that happened," I said.

I didn't get a chance to speak with her further. The crimson robed Khonsu dragged me by an arm past the long line of frightened prisoners.

“Where are you taking me?" I cried.

"Somewhere safe," he growled. "You'll be in isolation until it's time for the hunt to begin." He looked back at me, his eyes dragging from my head all the way to my toes, making me feel like I was naked and dirty. "It would be to the benefit of our race if I let all of them have you though," he said with a smirk. "You're so fertile, who knows how many Khonsu children you could give us."

I threw up right then and there. There was nothing but bile since I hadn’t been fed in twenty-four hours, but it was enough to make me not look as palatable.

“Let's go," he ordered with a disgusted look on his face.

I was thrown into a concrete cell. Two guards were set up outside of the entrance to my cell. They didn't even look at me, and I wondered what special orders they had been given concerning me. At least it didn't seem like they were going to jump me.

I was alone and freezing, but a tray full of food that resembled vegetables was pushed into the room eventually along with a faded, threadbare blanket. I guess they figured that it wouldn’t be good for my fertility for me not to eat at all.

I picked at the food despite the fact that I was starving. It was hard to muster up a willingness to eat when I couldn't get the scene from the field out of my head.

The night was long. Without Bruda to help me pass it, it felt like it stretched on forever. Like I had actually lived several nights instead of just one.

I was exhausted when one of the guards finally opened the cell door.

“Get up," he barked.

My joints felt frozen with the cold, and I stumbled a bit trying to get up. He led me down a long hallway. When we finally got outside of the arena, I was relieved to see the rest of the female prisoners waiting outside of a small spaceship that I assumed would be transporting us to where the hunt began. It reminded me of the ship we had been taken on during the Vepar trials.

That had seemed a lot less foreboding then the situation now did, however.

Looking around, I realized that I didn't see Bruda anywhere. Were their multiple ships? Had some of the female prisoners already been taken? I hadn't counted how many of us there were, but it looked like all the other prisoners were here based on the ones I had remembered. What had happened to her?

I felt a sense of panic. Once I was released by the guard to mingle with the rest of the prisoners, I turned to the alien closest to me. "Excuse me, have you seen the Vepar that I was with yesterday? The one dressed in a leather outfit with dark brown hair?" I asked her. The alien I spoke to was gorgeous, just like all the others, with shiny orange skin and hair that was a flaming red color. Her eyes matched her hair.

She scanned the crowd around us. "I haven't seen her. Not since last night. I didn't notice anyone being taken away though, so she must be around here somewhere."

“So there hasn't been another ship that's left for the mountain?" I asked.

She shook her head at me sympathetically. "No, as far as I know, with the exception of the ones who died yesterday, the rest of us are still here."

I nodded despondently. There wasn't anything I could do about Bruda’s disappearance at the moment. I just hoped that she was okay. It was a stupid thing to hope since how any of us could be okay in a situation like this as a prisoner of the Khonsu. But I still sent up a silent prayer that something good had happened to her. She deserved it.

If I ever got a chance, I would try to find out what happened to her.

The golden skinned alien had asked me a question, but I'd been so lost in my thoughts that I didn't hear her until she was almost done speaking.

She tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. "What planet are you from?" she asked curiously. “You look like you could be a Vepar, but with that performance yesterday, there's no way that you are,” she continued, studying me closely.

"I'm from Earth," I responded absentmindedly, my thoughts still on Bruda’s whereabouts.

"I've heard of that place. It is one of the Vepar colonies, isn't it?" she asked innocently. Earth being called a Vepar colony filled me with a hate so strong that I could barely answer.

"I suppose you could call it that," I said stiffly. "Colony does denote that the planet was taken over. Which is what happened," I continued.

She nodded uncomfortably. Obviously, I wasn't doing a great job of keeping my emotions in check when it came to that subject.

"I'm sorry, as you can imagine by my presence here, it's a little bit of a sore subject," I said conciliatorily.

"My planet was taken over by another as well. You don't have to apologize to me about having anger over such a thing."

I opened my mouth to respond, but just then a horn sounded, and we were surrounded by a horde of Khonsu guards who began to push us towards the spacecraft. A long plank descended from the opening of the craft and we walked on it into the ship single file. The inside of the ship was set up somewhat like the aircraft I had seen in military movies on Earth. There was a long row of seats on each wall with harnesses attached to each seat. Staying in line, we all took a seat and strapped ourselves in the harnesses under the careful watch of the guards.

There was still a part of me that expected one of my guys to appear at any moment to save the day. But as everyone filed in, and the doors were closed, it looked less and less like that was going to occur.

I was truly on my own.

The ship took off, and I felt my stomach heave at the sudden movement. There were no windows inside the craft, and that didn't help my motion sickness. Obviously the Khonsu hadn't bothered installing the technology or didn’t possess the Vepar technology that allowed you to travel without sickness.

I couldn't decide whether it was a good thing or not that we landed so quickly. On the one hand, I didn't feel like I had to throw up anymore, but on the other hand, this meant that the hunt was about to start.

I guess there was no sense in delaying the inevitable.

We unhooked the harnesses and again left the ship single file. Stepping out, I could see that we had landed at the base of the Khonsu’s sacred mountain. The mountain was covered with an assortment of trees. The trees all had different colored leaves, kind of like how fall had looked back home. Things were different here than where the Vepar lived, however. The colors weren’t nearly as vibrant. It actually reminded me a lot more of Earth in general than the Vepar side had.

When I was younger, my parents took me on a trip to Utah during my school’s fall break and we had hiked Mount Timpanogas. This mountain reminded me of that, and a sudden bout of homesickness hit me.

Looking around to distract myself from the feeling, I realized I didn't see any of the purple tunic clad Khonsu anywhere in sight. Where were they? Were they hiding in the mountains, intent on pouncing on us as we tried to run for our lives?

My question was answered when a more decadent ship that was obviously superior to the ones that they had put us in (it had windows at least) landed a little ways away from ours.

The Khonsu filed out of the ship eagerly, looking immediately to where their prey was standing. Most of their eyes were centered on me, and I had the feeling that this was going to be the hardest experience of my life.

We were led to the edge of the forest at that point. The Khonsu didn't seem to have any intentions of giving us instructions. Looking around at my fellow prisoners, they all looked terrified, but also resigned. They must've grown up with stories of the hunt as well.

The Khonsu warriors stayed close to the ship. Evidently, we were going to be given a head start...how kind of them.

Just then a loud blast went off. The females in front of me started to run into the woods.

It was starting.

I took off after them, and then took a hard left after a few minutes. If I was going to have to go through this, at least I could take some of the pressure off of the rest of the prisoners since I knew most of the Khonsu would be after me.

The woods were like a whole other world. Large trees blocked the sun, making it cool and dim. Dead leaves crunched under my bare feet. I was lucky that my feet had toughened up during the trials or I would be limping right now.

There were strange noises all around me, and occasionally I got a glimpse of the end of a tail or the feathers on a wing as whatever creatures I was disturbing as I ran through the woods tried to hide.

Another blast sounded. I could tell it was for the Khonsu warriors because despite the fact that I'd probably made it at least a mile away from where we had first started, the ground shook a bit as the warriors entered the forest.

It only took a few minutes for me to hear the screams start as the Khonsu found some of the prisoners.

A burst of adrenaline sent me pushing forward. There had to be a way out of this, there just had to be.

I was so caught up on running as fast as I could, that I didn't even hear the first Khonsu when he reached me. I wasn't aware that he was there until a thin, silver colored rope was suddenly wrapped around my neck, choking me.

Stupidly, I still tried to lurch forward, desperate to get away. This only served to choke me even further. Maybe I would die before the rape happened, I thought to myself as the world started to fade to black.

Suddenly the rope was cut behind me, and I fell to the ground, heaving huge gulps of air. The sound of flesh hitting bone had me turning around to see the scene behind me.

Two purple clad Khonsu were wrestling on the ground. I gasped at the scene, shocked as one of them pulled out a razor-sharp knife the color of black obsidian. He raised the knife high above the Khonsu he had forced to the ground, a Khonsu who had the remnants of a broken rope in his hand, and he slashed the knife down. I watched in horror as the other warrior's flesh was split open, his blood seeping into the ground below him.

Only at that point did I get the wits about me to begin to run again. As much as I didn't want to be caught by the first one, this other Khonsu seemed like he would be even worse judging by the delighted look on his face as he had stabbed his fellow warrior.

Just as that Khonsu was about to get up from the ground, another Khonsu warrior tackled him to the ground. This time I didn't stop to watch what happened.

I just ran.

A fierce grunt came from behind me, and then the gurgle of blood as one of them killed the other.

I continued to run.

I was almost captured at least five more times. Each time I thought that it was the end until another Khonsu warrior would erupt from the woods to stop my current assailant and try to claim me.

There was a trail of Khonsu corpses littered behind me on the path that I was traveling.

I was exhausted, but still I kept running.

Chapter 5

Excitement roared through the crowd of Khonsu behind me, while terror choked me. I panted for air, legs and arms pumping as I ran up the mountain. Sharp twigs and rocks tore at my skin and embedded themselves in my feet. I was sure I was leaving a trail of blood behind me making it easy for them to track me.

A shadow fell over me. I glanced back swiftly, and a whimper spilled from my lips. A Khonsu, in his purple tunic, rushed up after me so fast, my knees wobbled with fear. He might as well have been as big as a bear! Huge arms, a broad chest, and he carried such savageness in his eyes. Determination on his face screamed he was ready to take me, and nothing would stand in his way.

I burst onward with sheer adrenaline.

Another woman screamed somewhere on the mountain, while a man howled like a monster, probably claiming her.

I searched the land for a weapon, for anything to beat them back. A branch or rock? Both would work.

The beast pounded the ground with rapid steps, his breaths on my neck, coming for me… to claim me. To rape me. This wasn’t okay, and I hated everything about these aliens. From the tests to being hunted down, I was put through hell and back only to still be in mortal danger. I wasn’t okay with any of this at all.

My heart ached. I was going to die on this planet, never to see Earth again.

An iron-grip hand grasped my shoulder, the other my hair, drawing me backward.

I let out a terrifying shriek and pivoted on the balls of my feet, swiveling around, hurling my fist, connecting it with the monster’s face.

He emitted a piercing guttural sound that had my skin shivering. Was it a battle cry, a sound these things made before they took a female?

He grabbed both my shoulders and wrenched me sideways, while my feet tangled and barely touched the ground.

“Let me go,” I chided and slammed my balled hands into his gut with everything I had, but he didn’t so much as flinch. “I don’t want you. I’ll hate you for eternity and never stop trying to escape.”

A sudden gust of air battered into us, tossing his messy black hair over his shoulders, bringing with it a delicious musky scent. Except, that was wrong… I’d never admire a single thing of these brutes. He had the kind of look I imagined on a barbarian. All strong and muscular, his face square and brutish, and when he’d speak, he’d made just incomprehensible sounds.

He growled, wrenching me into a cluster of trees. He was picking a location to rape me.

I screamed and hit and kicked. I’d die before I let him do anything to me.

Blue eyes pierced through me, but I fought and bucked against him.

“Silence, kitten.”

His words wove through my mind, but my brain cogs weren’t working today. Kitten. Why would a Khonsu call me that?

The answer smacked me in the face when the savage hauled me against him, our bodies pressed close, his lips mashed to mine. I gritted my teeth and winced, hands splayed against his chest, pushing him away. But I might as well try to move a mountain.

Kitten!

I glanced up into those now deep blue eyes. “Thane?”

His smirk lit up his gaze, and even if he didn’t look like my Thane, I saw him in his eyes.

“Surprised to see me?” he whispered.

“Oh, shit.” I threw myself into his arms, and tears of joy spilled down my cheeks before I pulled back. “You terrified the hell out of me. You could have given me a clue or something it was you. I almost had a heart attack out there.” I cupped the side of his face, his skin feeling so real. “What kind of mask are you wearing? You look like the real deal.”

He took my hand and pressed my fingers to the back of his ear. “It’s a disguise, a glamor to everyone else. An effect Corran designed.”

“Like magic?”

He tilted his head to the side like he didn’t quite comprehend the word, magic.

A sudden loud exhaling sound of someone running up the mountain nearby had us both frozen and turning toward the open mountain to my left. The trees around us provided a small, temporary cover.

“Hush.” His hand was on my mouth as he glanced out to a woman sprinting up the hill, two men charging after her.

She tripped over a tree root, and both men leapt into a fight over who’d claim her. “Get up,” I mumbled. “Run.” And she did.

I turned to Thane. “I hate this hunt. We need to get out of here.”

But Thane’s hands clasped my hips and hauled me against him, his lips on my neck. “We’re being watched.” His words were but a ghostly whisper in my ear. “We need to go through with the claiming ceremony.”

My stomach dropped, and I was fully aware of what that meant, and if anyone found Thane disguised, they’d kill him. So drawing as little attention to ourselves as possible was the goal.

He lifted me off my feet so fast, I lost my breath. “Fight me,” he murmured.

His earlier smile faded, replaced with a hunger I knew had nothing to do with play-acting, but everything to do with his attraction toward me.

I shoved my hands against him. “Put me down,” I yelled, wriggling out of his grasp.

The Khonsu wanted a show.

They expected Thane to mount me, to claim me like a savage.

I stumbled backward across the foliage covered floor.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he growled, his voice menacing, drowning in desire and hunger.

His mouth was on my neck, teeth raking over flesh, causing me to cry out in shock.

In an instant, he snatched the hospital gown I still wore and ripped it off me so fast, I stumbled on my feet from the motion.

Standing completely naked, I lashed my arms over my body, my mouth dropping open. I wanted to scream at him, but he just grinned at me.

Asshole. He was enjoying this show and tell a bit too much.

His gaze trailed up and down on my body, showing me his pleasure in his parted mouth, in the hardness in his pants.

He reached out for me, but I pulled away and spun from him.

The Khonsu in the audience wanted to be entertained, enjoy this show of dominance, of women taken against their will.

Bastards. The whole lot of them.

Greedy hands clasped me by the waist, stopping me in my tracks, his touch sending my body into a devilish buzz. I spun to strike him, hating that I was naked out in public and he still wore his clothes. But his grip tightened, and he forced his chest flush against my back. His hand clasped my chin and turned my head to face him.

Lips on mine, he kissed me hard, his tongue slid inside my mouth, making me taste his sweetness. My body responded to his touch and lips instantaneously, heat coiling deep in my gut. Nipples hardened, and my body betrayed me when it came to my three Vepar.

Except, this wasn’t about falling, but resisting him. I ripped out of his grasp and swung around with a fist aimed at his face.

He caught my wrist. “Not so fast, kitten.”

I kicked him in the shin, and he winced. I smirked and wrenched to leave and grab my hospital gown off the ground. But he held onto me and squeezed my forearm so hard, a sharpness shot up my arm. “Ow.”

“I’m in charge here, not you. You’re mine, and now I’m going to fuck that sweet cunt of yours.”

Raising my head, I was startled by this response, heat already burning through me to hear him talk so dirty. But it was all an act, right?

“Don’t touch me.” I chewed on my lower lip, while liquid fire burned between my thighs.

“I can smell your arousal.” One step closer, and he towered over me. His hand pressed to my back, holding me in place while he nuzzled my neck. “I missed you,” he breathed heavily, and when he looked at me, primal desire darkened his gaze.

He licked his lips, staring at me with such heat. I felt trapped right then… caught between the inferno inside me demanding I throw myself at him, but I couldn’t.

His hands grabbed my shoulders and he spun me around, then pressed a hand to my back, forcing me to bend over.

I placed my hands on the tree in front of me, quivering as my ass stuck into the air. His hand slid down my back, feather soft, and over my cheeks. I released a noise of protest, but his hand connected the flesh of my ass with a smack. Crying out, I pushed upright, but he shoved me back down.

Somehow, I was caught between this strange exhilaration that already soaked my thighs, and a searing pain that stung but quickly faded and left me eager for more.

He pushed his hand to the apex between my thighs, running his thumb gently along the sensitive skin of my seam, and my nipples pebbled in response. His other hand wove into my hair before fisting it, holding me.

“You’re mine,” he growled.

Something about his possessiveness sent a shiver of delight through my body. It shouldn’t have, but it did. Another slap to my ass, and I cried out with pleasure. Was it possible to orgasm so quickly?

“Spread your legs,” he demanded, and humiliation spiraled through.

But someone watched us, someone perverted, and our lives were on the line.

I shuffled my legs wider, when his hand slapped between my legs. A moan slipped from my lips, and I arched my back. He just slapped my pussy. Was that even a thing?

I loved it even if it left me feeling a bit dirty. I needed him like never before.

“You’re so wet for me.” A finger plunged into me.

I took a sharp breath, pushing myself backward to take more of him, needing so much more. And he understood, fingering me rapidly, pumping. But it wasn’t enough.

Pushing two fingers into me, in and out, I rode him, groaning, so close to the edge already. He pulled out, and I whined in protest, looking over my shoulder at him.

He unzipped his pants, his hard cock bopped out, and I reached over to touch him, but he nudged me back around. “I didn’t say you could move.”

My mouth opened with a protest, when the tip of his cock lined up with my entrance. Desire stirred inside me, and I breathed hard, waiting, needing him. The rest of the world fell away in those moments. Just us two existed.

He thrust deep into me so fast and sudden, I gasped, not from pain but from that slick, hot cock filling me, hitting just the right spot. I grasped onto the tree, holding tight, Thane pumping into me.

My moans intensified, and the storm inside me rose quickly. And just then Thane withdrew from me, leaving me boiling hot and so wet.

I lifted myself up and turned to argue, but he grabbed my waist and lifted me off my feet against him. Automatically, I grasped his shoulders and wrapped my legs around him. The tip of his cock found me as if we were made for one another, and he lowered me onto him, stretching me, and I gasped for breath.

The edge of pleasure drew closer. His hands cupped my ass and his mouth latched onto my neck as he rode me. I closed my eyes, my groans intensifying.

A sharpness pierced into the side of my neck, and shock froze over me when I realized he had bit me and was feeding off me.

I welcomed the familiar feel of him as he began to drink down my blood. All of a sudden, he pushed himself away from me, clenching his throat. He let out a garbled roar as he tore at his neck. It was almost as if his throat was being burned from the inside.

I was aware of the confused stares of the Khonsu that were watching us just past the trees around us.

Thane began to spit out the blood he had just taken from me. He took a few frenzied breaths after spitting out more of my blood before looking at me.

“What did those bastards do to you?" he roared.

"What's wrong?" I whispered, not understanding what had just happened. Thane seemed to become aware of the many eyes that were watching us.

“We'll talk about it later," he said through clenched teeth. Thane stared at the blood on my neck and collarbone from his bite, an infuriated look on his face.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his gaze darkening, and I caught him taking a sharp side glance at movement from farther up the mountain. A Khonsu with no partner watched us, and I shivered. He was looking to see if he could claim me as his own.

Thane snatched my arm and kicked my legs out from under me with such force, I cried out. Strong hands caught me before I hit the ground and laid me gently on my back. But to an onlooker, it would seem like he had just readied me for the taking.

Hands on my knees, he pried my legs open, his attention falling between my thighs. He grinned.

“So fucking sexy.” Kneeling in front of me, hands gripping my hips and wrenched them up to meet him. As if on cue, the tip of his hardness found my entrance with such ease like he was practiced in finding the right spot in a heartbeat.

His hands slid up my legs and grasped my ankles, placing them over his shoulders before he slid into me, stretching me. I moaned so loud, despite the twigs digging into my back, all I could focus on was our point of contact. Him sliding in and out of me, picking up pace, his friction igniting a blaze inside me.

Despite the confusion about his bite, the terror of being watched, Thane managed to push ahead and make love to me like it was just the two of us in this world.

Going faster, I writhed, needing him so desperately, so much, I cried out in pure bliss.

In a sudden movement, he spread my legs on either side of him and collected me into his arms while he remained imbedded inside me. I now straddled him while he kneeled on the ground, and I wrapped myself around him, staring into his eyes. They belonged to my Thane, not the disguise he wore.

Hands on my hips, he moved me up and down with haste over his cock, the sound and smells delicious. I gripped his shoulders, riding him, my body shuddering as he thrust over and over. When I couldn’t take it any longer, euphoria snapped within me and tore through my body. I convulsed against Thane, and as if sensing my own climax, he grunted and stilled, his cock pulsing inside me with his orgasm.

Pressing me tight against his body, he held me, his mouth on my ear. “I meant what I said earlier. You’re mine and I’ll never let you go.”

I wanted to stay in his arms like this forever, to never face reality, to not be running for our lives constantly. But when the siren went off somewhere in the distance, the horror of where we were punched me in the gut.

He lifted me to my feet as he climbed up, and hot liquid dampened the inside of my thighs. What I wouldn’t give for a bathroom break right now.

The savages were now headed down the mountain, their women over a shoulder, and I grimaced. Before Thane grabbed me and did the same, I hurriedly snatched the hospital gown and slid it over my head.

“Let’s go,” he snarled as he did up his pants. He then swept me off my feet and threw me over his shoulder. His hand sat perfectly positioned over my ass so I wouldn’t flash the whole world. Thank goodness for small gestures.

I jostled over his shoulder, the world upside down, my stomach churning with sickness at being shaken about.

By the time he slid me down to my feet, my world spun, and it took me several moments to find my bearings.

Thane walked over to a table strewn with pieces of clothing and came back with a midnight blue dress. He pushed it into my hands. “Put that on.”

I glanced around to the other couples in the small field, the spectators watching us from farther away. The other females were naked and were just pulling on their new garments, so I quickly took off my hospital gown that was splattered in blood from my neck, dirt, and bits of leaves.

I quickly dragged the blue dress over my head and down my body. It hung like a sack over me, falling to my knees, sleeves loose to my wrists. I looked like some cult mistress but at least every other woman was dressed the same way.

Thane grabbed my hand and hauled me after him and the rest of the couples. We walked quickly over the grounds and headed for an oversized building up ahead. Black as the night, the one-story building had a flat roof with windows peppered all along the walls.

What in the world now?

By the time we stepped inside, my heart was pounding. I wasn’t sure how many more surprises I could take. Being taken by Thane in public was pushing me to my limits. We needed to escape and get as far from the Khonsu as freaking possible.

Behind others, we headed inside hand in hand to find an enormous hall set up with rows and rows of wooden tables layered with platters of food and drinks. Down the middle of each long table was a roasted animal. I didn’t recognize any of the species. The walls were lined with large wooden wine barrels and taps on each one, surprising me they looked so human like. On the far-right hand side, an enormous fireplace roared and crackled, warming up the room. Yellow lanterns dangled from the ceiling, giving the place a magical kind of feel, which was so wrong. This was a celebrational feast for savages who had just hunted down and raped their new wives.

Everyone moved with haste to a table, and Thane took me to one closest to the door. He pulled out the long bench that was lined with fur pelts and I sat down. In front of each place setting stood a hollowed-out horn sitting inside a metal bracket that was evidently meant to be used to hold the wine according to Thane.

Thane collected both our horns and headed to the barrels on the wall. He filled them up and then returned. He handed me the horn and I sniffed it. It certainly smelled like wine, and a quick taste confirmed it. I needed to drink a whole barrel to forget what I went through today.

In front of me, I stared at the flowing cuts of meats, fruits and strange vegetables. There were also piles of nuts and breads strewn around the table.

“Eat,” Thane commanded. “Fit in.”

A quick look around to the rest of the room showed that the women were smiling and eating, while the Khonsu drank and laughed with their friends. This was a wedding festival I realized. It was amazing to me that the women seemed to have recovered so quickly.

I piled my plate with roasted root vegetables and something that resembled grilled fish.

Two Khonsu came and sat at our table on my free side, one of them so close that I gave him a death glare to try and get him to move. Two beefy looking brutes, both with short hair, one cleanly shaven, the other with a scruffy beard. They stared at me like I might be their meal.

I trembled and shuffled closer to Thane who wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

When the newcomer’s hand reached for my thigh, I slapped him away. “I’m taken.”

Please don’t let there be another rule about mate sharing.

“You don’t need to be scared of me,” he said, and I recognized that voice in an instant. “Derrial?” I gasped.

He gave a small nod and smirked, then I glanced over at the bearded one. “Corran?”

“Holy shit, what are you doing here?”

Corran leaned forward, his disguise had a scar running down the side of his face, and it pained me to look at the scab. Then again, it matched the rest of the ferocious Neanderthals in this room.

A sudden stomping of feet had me lifting my gaze to several Khonsu who walked into the room wearing crimson robes that fell to their ankles and hoods over their heads. They held chains that were tied to several women behind them. Beautifully stunning women, some were Vepar by their horns, wearing corset type blood-red dresses that flowed to their feet. Furs warmed their shoulders, while the chains around their throats reminded them, they were nothing but eye candy. A possession. A slave.

My insides tightened to see women treated this way.

There was no sign of Bruda though. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

With the females’ arrival, a band started playing music on a string instrument, not too different from a violin, the music building up to a crescendo. Everyone broke into chatter and dug into their foods. Thane nudged me as he got up to fill his horn and mine, even though I hadn’t drunk any yet.

Derrial and Corran reached for the food, and I picked at my plate, not sure I could stomach too much right now. “So, what’s the plan?” I whispered to Derrial.

“We eat and wait for everyone to have their fill of what you call pumpkin wine.”

My eyes widened. “We don’t have pumpkin wine.”

“Those grape things. Just the Khonsu use pumpkin. It’s probably the best thing to come from these vermin invading our planet.” His words were barely a whisper, and I looked up to see the elite were sitting on the table next to us with their new women. I was surprised the women were allowed to even sit at the table with them.

Thane returned, already drinking from one of the horns.

“Take it easy with the pumpkin wine,” I murmured, but he didn’t hear me as he flopped back down next to me and set to eating. Food was probably good, so he didn’t get drunk. Though could you get drunk on fermented pumpkin juice?

A conversation at the next table caught my attention. One of them mentioned the word "humans." All of my attention immediately gravitated towards the two Khonsu speaking. They were both dressed in crimson robes I’d seen the elite wear, so I assumed that whatever they were talking about was probably important.

"Why have the other humans showed no signs of possessing the same traits as this one," one of them said, gesturing over to where I was sitting. The other one looked over at me and I immediately averted my eyes, trying my best to pretend like I wasn't listening.

I elbowed Derrial, who was paying attention to another conversation between another group of crimson robed Khonsu.

"Just a minute," he said as he tried to listen. I elbowed him again.

He looked over at me impatiently. "What is it?" he asked. I blanched for a moment at how fierce he looked in his Khonsu form. It was only his eyes that looked anything like my Derrial.

"They're talking about other humans. Do you think that it's possible that there's other humans that were taken to this planet?" I asked, my voice a mixture of eagerness and concern.

A look passed over his face, one that I couldn't read very well.

"They’re talking about other humans on Veon?" he asked, sounding concerned.

"Yes," I responded, this time more eagerly as I continued to listen to the conversation taking place between the Khonsu’s. I was only faintly aware of the looks being exchanged between Derrial, Thane, and Corran.

"You have to do more testing, especially after those numbers that she displayed," one of them said. The other one nodded, a look of pure excitement all over his features.

I shivered at the thought of what tests they had in mind. I'm sure they were even worse than the ones used by the Vepar during their fertility treatments.

"We have to find out where they are keeping them," I said urgently, pulling on the side of Derrial’s tunic.

I immediately dropped my hand and adopted a demure expression when I saw a few of the other Khonsu at the banquet table watching me suspiciously. I knew in their culture that the women were extremely subservient to the males, so it probably looked bad how I was behaving towards Derrial.

Corran reached out and touched me gently. "Of course we will do everything we can if there are other humans on this planet," he said. Thane nodded beside him. "Anything we can," Thane repeated.

I was surprised that they were being so agreeable about this. I'd expected them to say something about how my safety was more important than any other humans or other crap like that, but they seemed to agree with me.

Maybe our short separation had gotten through their thick skulls that the rest of the human race wasn't completely worthless.

I doubted that was actually the case, but I took the victory where I could.

At that moment the two Khonsu that I had been listening to got up from the table and began to walk away together.

I looked at Derrial frantically. “They didn't say where they're keeping them. How are we going to find them?" I asked urgently.

Derrial had a determined look on his face as he looked after them. A quick look at Thane and Corran’s faces showed that they were on the same wavelength as him. What were they going to do?

Derrial and Thane got up from the table, and Thane took one last drink of his wine before leaving Corran with me, I supposed as my guard. I watched as they followed the two Khonsu, keeping their distance from them so that they wouldn't suspect that they were being followed.

I thought I remembered them saying it was rare for a human to be on their planet, yet these Khonsu spoke about them as if it was common practice. How many of us had these savages kidnapped and brought back here?

I prodded Corran in the arm. “Hey, did you know the Khonsu were bringing humans on this planet?”

He looked at me for a long pause and gave me a small shake of his head, and kept eating, so I did the same.

Several servants came to our table to collect empty plates, while others delivered more food, and when I looked up at the young man with short blond hair, he smiled. “Thank you,” I said.

He leaned over to pick up an empty platter and murmured, “Did you just arrive on this planet?”

His question threw me off at first, and I tried to make sense of it. “I’ve been here a bit, but I really wanna go home.”

“Me too,” he sighed, and something shifted behind his eyes, something that had my heart clenching. I knew the look… it was someone who had been ripped from their home.

“I miss pepperoni pizza so much,” he said. “You’d think I would miss my family, and I do, but it’s normal food I crave.”

I bristled in my seat. “You’re human? How long have you been here?”

“I think five years. I lost track, but there are others who’ve been here longer.”

“More drinks,” a male Khonsu yelled nearby, and the servant stiffened and rushed away, leaving me drowning in his admittance.

I looked over at Corran who hadn’t even paid attention as he leaned away, listening to another conversation from other Khonsu. I got it, this was time to gain intelligence on the enemy, but these monsters built their empire by stealing humans and who knows what other aliens as their slaves.

“Corran,” I mumbled, poking him in the arm, and he turned toward me with concern behind his eyes.

“Is everything okay?”

“There are humans at this party. They’re working as slaves, taken from home. We need to save them.”

He swallowed loudly and lifted his gaze as if searching for the other two. “Let’s wait for Derrial.”

My knees were bouncing under the table and all I could do to distract myself was stare at the others in the huge room. Drinking, laughing, groping women. I could have sworn I stepped into an ancient world of barbarians, and I wanted to get out of here… get off this planet if possible.

By the time the other two returned, I was jumping out of my skin.

“Derrial, there are humans here, kept as prisoners.”

He stared at me just as Corran had.

“I want to free them, please. This world is terrifying, and they’ve been here for years.” I reached out, my fingers curling over his arms, my whole body trembling with fury. I couldn’t stand how they treated females and other species and wished there was so much more I could do to help those in need.

“Once the dance starts, we go and scour the place, then leave. Alright?”

I turned to Thane, who looked a bit pale around the face. “Are you feeling okay?”

It wasn’t long before the music changed to something upbeat, and most of the Khonsu got to their feet, heading for the open floor near the fireplace. Thane climbed to his feet, and I joined him. His hand clasped around my forearm in a possessive manner, and I followed him around the tables, keeping my gaze low.

Thane wobbled into a table, sending the whole thing, food and plates, into a tremendous wobble. My heart soared with fear.

Luckily its occupants were dancing, and I grabbed his arm, trying to hold him up. “You’re drunk,” I whispered, and we hurried out a back door into a hallway. I assumed this was used by the servants.

Thane erupted into laughter, and his face seemed to grow fuzzy, almost like static on TV. Was this disguise playing up?

“Shit,” Corran blurted. “How much did he have to drink?”

I shrugged. “Three, maybe four horns. Maybe more. What’s going on with him?”

“Pumpkin wine has an enzyme in it that interferes with our technology. It’s my fault. I should have told him, and I didn’t even notice him drinking.”

“Don’t worry about that now. We need to leave,” Derrial snapped.

“No.” I dug my heels into the stone floor. “I want to free the humans, then we can go. Please.”

They stared at me for so long, and all I could do was give them my best pleading look. They had to understand how I felt about being taken against my will, how it hurt me to see others who had lost their families and lives also stuck here.

“Fine,” Derrial answered. “We do a quick look around and help those who are willing to leave. Then we leave.” He exhaled loudly and spun around. We all followed him down the narrow corridor, where the waft of food was strong. At the end lay an open door and we rushed outside, coming out at the back of the building where I assumed they had landed their ship and covered it with invisibility.

Derrial took my hand and we ran, Corran aiding Thane who stumbled about, his eyes glazed over. How had that wine hit him so fast?

Farther on the property stood several sheds, and I hoped we had stumbled upon one of their holding facilities. “Let’s check there.” I pointed to the sheds.

“Good, as our ship is just behind them,” Derrial snarled.

Clearly, he wasn’t happy with my idea, but I didn’t care. We moved quickly, but luckily no one was around, probably partying too much.

In the first shed, Derrial stepped toward the door and looked inside. “Empty,” he called over his shoulder. I had already moved with Corran to the next one.

Up on tippy toes, I peered in through the glass window in the door but found only wooden crates.

“Shit.” I looked back to the main building. “Maybe there are none being held captive since they’re all being forced to work. I want to free them as well.”

Corran took my hand in his. “You can’t risk your own life. Not like this. We’ll come back when we’re ready and with ammunition.”

“Let’s go,” Derrial whispered loudly. “There’s nothing here.”

My stomach churned and my blood ran cold at the idea of leaving them behind.

“Hey,” Thane slurred. “There are little humans in here.”

We all snapped around, and I burst toward him into another small metal shack that had been hidden behind the others.

I pushed past him and ripped open the door to find a huge cage inside. A dozen males sat there, wearing torn clothes, dirt on their faces and arms. They looked human to me. No horns or strange horns or eyes. I closed the distance and reached for the lock, then throttled the door. All three Vepar stepped alongside me.

The men in the cage stared at us with terror behind their eyes, a couple standing up, backing away. It killed me to see their fear, recognizing it all too well. “We’re going to get you out,” I said, my words coming out croaky.

“What are you doing here?” A raspy male’s voice came from behind, and I flinched around.

A bear of a guard hovered in the doorway, heaving breaths like a grunting beast. Before I could respond, Derrial and Thane lunged at the Khonsu, throwing him off his feet. An explosion of groans, fists and punches burst out into the night. I turned to Thane.

“Get them out, now!”

He grabbed the lock and yanked, but the metal held tight. He rushed outside, and my heart pounded against my ribcage.

“Ella,” a soft male’s voice came from within the cage, and I looked up to find who belonged to it.

A man with graying, messy hair stepped forward.

I didn’t trust what I was seeing. There was no way it could be him…

“Ella,” he said again, in that same soft voice he had always used with me growing up.

I walked towards him as if in a trance, my hand outstretched. His hand reached through the bars of the cage, trying to reach me.

I tentatively touched his hand. He wasn’t a mirage. It really was him.

It was my father.

A siren blared, and I flinched. Shouts and voices rang from outside, but I couldn’t move.

“Dad.” My voice squeaked, but heavy footfalls rushed in behind me.

“We’ve been found!” Derrial barked. Strong hands wrapped around my waist and ripped me from my dad, our hands slipped apart.

“No,” I cried. “Put me down. Dad.” I bucked and fought.

“Silence,” Corran snarled in my ear. He spun me around and we were out of the room. My heart splintered and tears drenched my eyes as he forced me away.

“My dad was in there; we have to get him out.”

But no one listened to me. Corran ran through the woods, holding me tight against his side, and in seconds his black space cruiser shimmered into sight. The door slid open and we rushed inside. I glanced back to see Derrial and Thane running toward us with a horde of Khonsu charging after them like a pack of animals.

Fear shackled through me when Corran hauled me deeper into the ship and pushed me into a tiny room before the door slid shut.

I burst forward and slammed my fists into the door. “Let me out. We can’t leave my dad behind. Can you hear me? Please, Corran. My dad.”

Tears fell and I slid to my knees. When the tiny vibrations beneath me started, I knew it was too late. We were taking off and we’d left my father behind.

I wanted to die knowing we’d left him behind with those savages.

Chapter 6

I had never been so angry. Not when they stalked me, not when they kidnapped me from Earth, not anything else they had done had left me feeling this level of rage.

We had actually left him. My father who I had thought was dead. The man who I had mourned for, who I had missed with every breath in my body.

They had left him there.

I had left him there, and my heart felt broken.

How could I get over this?

They had locked me in a room on the spaceship again. I had learned this was their way of dealing with me when they weren’t sure what to do, just lock me out of sight where I couldn’t cause trouble.

I guess at least they hadn’t knocked me out this time. Although I’m sure they were regretting that since I had spent the last hour screaming and crying against the door, trying to convince them to turn the ship around so that we could go and save him.

As usual, my cries fell on deaf ears.

Corran had tried to reason with me. He tried to tell me it was too dangerous and that we could go back when it was safe. He tried to tell me that my life was too important for them to risk it by trying to save those humans, by trying to save my father.

My resentment grew with every word that he spoke. What had happened to them that they held such little compassion inside of them? How could we have just left them all there? How did they even live with themselves right now?

I had screamed that question at them through the door and Thane had yelled back that he was feeling great about himself in the moment seeing as how he had just “saved my ass” from the Khonsu hunt.

When my voice grew too hoarse to function, I sank to the ground and sobbed. I was so done with feeling like I had no control over my life. When was that going to change? How could I change that?

How could this even count as any semblance of a relationship when they were the ones who made all the decisions. I had no voice in anything. They always did what they thought was best.

I’ll admit that at times I had found their bossy ways to be attractive. But this...leaving my father...it was on a whole other level.

I didn’t know how I could forgive them for this.

I felt exhausted, more exhausted than I could remember ever feeling. Right then it was too much. Finding my father after all these years. Being hunted by an alien race whose end goal was to rape me. Thinking that I was about to be raped before Thane revealed himself, and then having to have sex in front of the Khonsu.

It was too much.

Before I had met Derrial, Thane, and Corran, I had just been a regular girl, a nobody. Sure I was poor and basically a doormat for everyone around me, but at least I knew what to expect out of life.

Now everything was up in the air. It seemed that just when I found the answer to one thing, another problem would pop right up, more often than not worse than the problem before it.

And I hadn’t even let myself think about the fact that I could be pregnant right now, scientifically knocked up with an alien baby. I mean how was this my life?

The image of Bruda passed through my mind at that moment. I thought about the fact that she had literally been a sex slave for the Vepar Council for years, yet she still somehow managed to keep her spirit alive.

Just thinking about everything she had been through made me feel guilty at my current freak out. Despite the fact that I had been through a lot, I hadn’t been through that.

I resolved right then and there that I was going to find a way to go back to my father. I wasn’t going to leave him with the Khonsu. I could be a hero in my own story for once.

And what if my mother was still alive? I hadn’t seen her in the cell, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. I hadn’t seen any females in that cell so maybe she was being held somewhere else.

Just the thought of feeling my parents’ arms around me again gave me a strength that I didn’t know that I still possessed.

I dragged myself off the ground and walked into the bathroom. Washing my face, I stared at myself in the mirror.

I had scratches and cuts all over my body from the Hunt. Corran hadn’t had a chance to use his little machine to fix me up yet. I almost didn’t want him to heal me. I wanted to make sure that I never forgot what had happened, that I never forgot this sense of resolve that I had.

Faint voices caught my attention. Looking around the room for where they were coming from, I walked over to the wall where I saw a small speaker. The guys’ voices were coming through it. Evidently, they had forgotten to turn it off with the craziness of what had happened. There was no way that they would have intentionally left it on. They did their best to keep me out of everything.

I guess they weren’t going to get what they wanted this time.

Corran was talking frantically to the other two. "What if she finds out we knew?" he asked, his voice soft like it pained him.

What if I find out they knew what?

Thane answered him sternly, "She’s never going to find out. There would be no coming back from that," he explained.

"It would be better for us to be upfront about it,” argued Corran. "We should just explain our reasoning, how we've changed since then," he continued. "I'm sure she would understand if we just explain."

Derrial laughed. "When has she ever been reasonable?" he asked sarcastically.

I bristled at his tone. I felt like I'd been very reasonable about everything considering the circumstances. They were the ones that were completely unreasonable about everything.

Now I was even more suspicious about what they were talking about.

"It's not like we knew for sure that her parents had been taken, at least not at first," Derrial continued.

I sank to my knees. My heart felt like it was being squeezed to death. Were they talking about what I thought they were talking about? Had they known this entire time where my parents were?

And they had done nothing.

Just let them go through who knows what with the Khonsu?

Thane was right, there really was no coming back from this.

"That's the least of our concerns right now," Thane finally said after a lengthy pause when all of them seemed to be thinking.

“You’re worried that the procedure was successful?" Derrial asked.

They were talking about me getting pregnant in the lab, and my heart shuddered.

“You’re not?” Thane barked.

"Corran, what do you think the chances are that they were able to get it figured out? Is there a way to tell,” Derrial asked, ignoring Thane’s question.

"Not this early," Corran replied. “It will take at least two weeks for the hCG to be strong enough to be detected," he explained.

"Do you really think that they were able to work it out, how to do the implementation successfully without you?" Thane pressed.

"My team was very capable, and they had all of my work. So they should have been able to do it."

He sighed.

"I had hoped that it would have dissuaded them when they found out that I had taken the compound before I left. But now I'm not sure that any of them would even have cared."

This was so much to deal with. Not only could I be pregnant, but I also apparently could still die because of said pregnancy. And my parents had been captured by the Khonsu and had been here the entire time. Once again, how was this my life?

"We need to give her the compound just in case," said Derrial sternly.

“The compound had to be administered at the time of the implementation," Corran added. “It would be too late for that. But she should be fine with our blood sustaining her. That acts the same as the compound because we’re her mates."

“Then we have a fucking problem since our blood is no longer compatible with hers,” roared Thane. He was so loud that the walls shook.

“What the hell do you mean?” said Derrial. “How is that possible?”

“Up on the mountain, when I was saving her…”

“You mean when you were fucking her brains out in front of the Khonsu?” interrupted Derrial dryly, making me blush at the memory because it was a pretty apt description.

“Fuck you,” Thane snapped, annoyed. “This is serious. I bit her while we were having sex...and it made me really sick.”

“What do you mean it made you sick?” asked Corran, I’m sure his brain already thinking of a million scientific reasons why that would have happened.

“I mean it made my throat burn, like it was eating my insides. I had to cough it up before I could even continue.”

As furious as I was at the guys, it felt like I had lost something important knowing that our blood bond had been severed.

“Corran, how does that happen?” asked Derrial. “I’ve never heard of that occurring.”

“Kella,” Corran answered, scornfully.

“What does Kella have to do with anything?” asked Thane.

“Kella was heading up another team. The Council said that he was working on different farm techniques when I asked. I didn’t bother to inquire further because I was busy with my own stuff and I’ve never been particularly impressed with anything Kella has ever done. But this had to be something he was working on…” Corran explained, the end of his sentence trailing off.

“Blood transfer is an integral part of the Vepar’s life," said Derrial. “Why would he be working on something that disrupts that?"

“What's that phrase that Ella always uses, oh yes, that's the million-dollar question," Corran said.

"How long do we have to give her our blood before she starts suffering?” Thane asked, sounding a little bit frantic.

There was a silence, and then a roar and bang as one of them smashed something against a wall. Evidently the answer wasn't good.

I noted that they hadn't talked about what they would do with the baby if I was pregnant, and they hadn't talked about any preventative pills. Maybe they didn't have that in the Vepar culture because of their fertility issues. I had a sense that even bringing something like that up would cause issues that I didn't want to get into at the moment.

I did need to know the differences between caring for a Vepar fetus and a human fetus though. I couldn't help but think of what happened to poor Bella in those Twilight books when she got pregnant with a vampire baby. What if this Vepar baby implanted its little horns into my uterus or something, or maybe it required blood to grow. I didn’t even know if Vepar fetuses required a shorter or longer pregnancy than human babies.

Corran hadn't said anything about any of it in our discussions.

I didn't know if I was pregnant, or if the doctor had a change of heart in the end. I needed to stop worrying for now though. I guess I would cross all of those bridges when I came to them, if I survived to that point that is.

"If they've created something that breaks the blood bond, surely they have something to fix it,” Derrial muttered. I was sure his mind already came up with possible solutions. They took turns being the leader, but I had noticed that Derrial took the lead more often than not.

"I wonder…" said Corran.

"Wonder what?" Thane snarled, obviously annoyed with Corran’s analytical mind at the moment.

"I wonder if Kella’s experiments have anything to do with the rumors that we've heard," Corran expounded slowly.

"The rumors that an unusual amount of our people have seemed to be going crazy lately?" Derrial asked.

"Yes. We've never really studied everything that the blood bond provides our people. I wonder if the blood bond experiments and the fertility issues are somehow connected."

"I don't care about any of that. I'm only concerned about the fact that our mate might die because of it. Do you think you can come up with something that fixes it?" Thane asked. "If she is pregnant, there's no way for us to reverse it. You know this."

Despite how furious I was, I felt a twinge of sympathy for how upset Thane seemed to be.

"I'm sure I can figure it out, but again, I would assume that they have an antidote for the blood bond issues already created. We just need to get to Kella’s lab."

"We’re heading to his lab then," Derrial said. “Thane, come with me. We’ll need to look at what routes we need to avoid to the capital city. Corran, go check on Ella and see if you can calm her.”

I couldn’t hear anything after that, signaling the end of their conversation.

I sat there, unable to really move with everything I just learned. Vepar pregnancies weren’t reversible. The guys had possibly known that my parents had been here all along. If I was pregnant, I was definitely going to die without the blood bond being fixed. Some of the Vepar were going crazy.

There was so much that they kept from me. I hated this feeling that we were always unequal in our power.

We were now heading to the capital city, where I assumed the lab was. That meant it would be who knows how long until we would have a chance to save my father. I couldn't let that happen. If I did die, then no one would ever save him. It was the least I could do to take care of him. And I still needed to find my Mom.

I wandered back into the bedroom and sat on the bed, thinking of a plan as I did so. I had no idea how to fly a ship, but I was pretty sure that there were smaller emergency cruisers located on all of Corran’s spaceships, if we were on one of Corran’s spaceships to begin with.

I would assume that they would have coordinates already plugged in for places they had been, like the Khonsu settlement. Zeni had offered me a spaceship to return to Earth. That meant that Vepar ships could basically fly themselves since she would have known I had no experience.

I would just have to watch them as we flew to see if I could figure it out.

Just then footsteps sounded outside the door. A second later, a door opened up in the wall and Corran walked inside.

He looked a bit hesitant. "How are you feeling?" he asked gently.

I had to make this look real, that I wasn't actually that mad at them. But I couldn't be too calm, or they would get suspicious.

"I guess I did need this time to think," I told Corran. "I'm still upset, but I somewhat understand. I wouldn't hesitate to save one of you if it were between your life and someone else's."

Corran’s face visibly brightened. It was as if I had taken a huge weight off his shoulders. He came to sit next to me on the bed. "That's exactly it! We can’t stand for anything else to happen to you, Ella." He reached out and softly stroked the side of my face. A tinge of pleasure flashed down my spine. He leaned in to kiss me, and it took everything I had to let him. The fury I felt against them was so hot that I could practically taste it on my tongue. The last thing I wanted to do was kiss him.

He must've sensed my hesitance, because he softly brushed his lips across my mouth before pulling away. "It would kill me if anything happened to you," he said softly.

I ignored the look in his eyes. I knew he meant every word. But what they all needed to understand was that true love didn't come with stipulations. From the beginning, everything had been based on what they wanted and that was the only way the relationship worked. That wasn’t love.

My stomach chose that moment to growl. Corran looked excited at the fact that I had a problem he could fix. "Let's go get you some food," he said eagerly.

I nodded, allowing him to take my hand as he led me out of the room and down to the mess hall. He grabbed a tray from a cabinet, pressed a few buttons on his admittedly useful invention that allowed for basically whatever food you wanted to appear, and then loaded up the tray.

He led me out to the hallway again, and my heart leaped. Was he taking me to the Bridge?

It was just my luck that Thane and Derrial were busy planning the best route to avoid the Council’s army that was on the lookout for us and get to the Capital...because that meant that Corran needed to watch over the ship’s controls.

We walked into the Bridge, and I was relieved to see that it looked similar to the past ships that I had been on with them. This had to be one of Corran’s fleet.

I watched him as he fiddled with the controls, absentmindedly putting food in my mouth just because I knew I would need energy for what lay ahead.

"You're having to press a lot of buttons over there," I told him. "I was under the impression that these things practically flew themselves," I continued disingenuously.

Corran laughed, a rosy hue appearing on his cheeks. I had caught him doing something. "They can fly by themselves, but there's something about the thrill of doing it myself. I only put it on what you humans call “cruise control” when I'm out of the room."

"So how does that work? I've been in Earth’s planes’ cockpits before, but this looks nothing like that,” I asked him.

I felt a little bad. I was praying on Corran’s love for all things tech. Corran had from the beginning loved to show me how his creations worked. Evidently, showing me how to fly the ship wasn't any different.

He began to show me exactly how everything worked. If I managed to get away, I know he would be kicking himself. I put my emotions to the side. I would think about my complicated relationship with all of them later.

Corran had just finished explaining how to input in the coordinates when the entrance to the Bridge opened and Thane and Derrial walked in.

They looked as nervous as Corran had looked when he had first come to talk to me.

"On a scale of 1 to 100 how mad are you right now, pet?" asked Derrial, peering at me intently.

Try a billion, I thought to myself.

"I'm still angry, but I understand more why you felt the need to get me out of there as fast as possible," I said, shooting Corran a look. "I would have a problem with all of you being in danger as well," I explained.

And it was the truth.

A part of me understood their need to keep me safe. The problem I had with them was their inability to consult with me about anything and all the secrets that they continually hid from me. They had known how devastating it was for me to think all these years that I had lost my parents. Now to know that they had been here all along, and that the guys had potentially known that they were with the Khonsu...It just was incomprehensible that they would have kept that from me. Maybe in the beginning before there were any real feelings between us, I could see them keeping it quiet. But they claimed I was supposed to be their mate now.

How could they have continued to keep my parents’ existence from me?

"Ella?" asked Thane suspiciously.

Shit. Going off into lala land wasn't how I needed to be acting right now. I smiled weakly. "Sorry, it's just all been a lot. I can't believe that my parents are alive," I said, the threat of emotion tickling my throat.

Corran moved over to me and softly touched my back, trying to comfort me. "We promise as soon as we get settled, and can come up with a plan, we will go back for your father," he said meaningfully.

It was funny, but I didn't believe a single word that was coming out of his mouth, even though I think he meant them. Something would always inevitably come up that would make them feel the need to try to keep me safe rather than do what I wanted.

Continuing with my plan, I kissed Corran softly on the cheek. "Thank you. That means so much to me," I told him.

"What's the plan?" I asked. "Where are we going to right now?" I said pretending that I was unaware of anything.

I watched as the guys exchanged wary glances. "We haven't talked very much about what happened back in the lab," Corran began.

“You mean the fact that I'm possibly pregnant with an unknown Vepar embryo?" I asked sarcastically.

He nodded somberly. "As a safeguard, to protect my experiments, I had taken one of the key compounds with me whenever I left the lab. The compound was integral to the success of the viability of both the embryo and the host."

I interrupted him. “Can’t I just start taking it once I find out if I’m even pregnant," I said.

Corran shook his head. “It's too late already. It had to be administered at the time of implantation,” Corran explained seriously.

I let the fear that I'd been trying to block from my mind briefly show through on my face.

Thane stepped forward. "But it will be okay," he said quickly. "Because we've all blood bonded with you, if we just continue to share blood with you, everything will be alright," he said, trying to comfort me.

"I'm sensing a but...," I told him, annoyed at how long it was taking them to get the information out that I already knew.

The guys exchanged another glance. They had been around each other for so long that they could have whole conversations without even saying anything. Or maybe there was a telekinetic aspect to it all that they hadn't bothered telling me about. I wouldn't put it past them.

"Something's wrong with our blood bond," Thane answered reluctantly. "We're on our way to another of the Council’s labs to try and see if they have the fix for it."

“And if they don't have the fix?" I said, trying to calm the hysteria I felt every time I thought about it.

"Then I'll figure it out," Corran said resolutely.

“Right,” I said with a nod knowing how important it was to Corran that I believed him. “I think I'm going to go lay down," I told them. "How long until we get to our destination?" I asked.

Corran looked at some of his controls. "Another three hours I believe," he said.

Veon was a lot bigger than Earth, I thought to myself. It had seemed like we were able to travel extremely long distances within just a few minutes on Earth. I would have to ask Corran how all of that worked. Just not right now.

"You want one of us to go with you?" Derrial asked, even though I could tell that he was itching to get back to his planning.

"I'll be fine," I said with a smile that hopefully looked convincing. Everything depended on me being alone obviously. They all nodded, and I forced myself to kiss them on the cheek before leaving the room.

My next stop was the medical room. I needed to find whatever Corran had used to knock me out the last time we were on one of his ships. I would need at least a little bit of a head start to get out of here, and that would depend on all three of them being out for the count.

I walked along the corridor of the ship as calmly as possible. I knew that there were various cameras all over the ship, I just didn't know where they were located. Hopefully they wouldn't be paying attention to my whereabouts since they had so much to do. I kept myself at a steady pace just in case they were. If they saw me walking naturally, maybe they would think I was just going to grab a headache tablet or more food or something since I wasn't in my bedroom yet.

I got to the medical room and walked in. I felt a wave of desperation as I looked at the rows of silver cabinets. There was no way I was going to be able to tell which of the medicines here worked to knock you out. What if I picked the wrong one and I accidentally killed them?

Something shiny on the counter to my left caught my attention. There were two syringes full of shimmery liquid laid out on a tray. I knew the medicine that Corran had used on me had looked like that. I’d gotten a good look right before he knocked me out. Had they pulled the syringes out just in case they needed me to "cooperate" again.

Just the thought made me even more furious. They were willing to do anything required to get me to do what they wanted; I knew this already.

It wasn’t a far stretch to think that these syringes had most likely been meant for me.

But I still felt like I needed some way to confirm. I wasn't comfortable giving them something when I wasn't positive what it was.

Maybe I could just hit them over the top of the head with a pan, I thought to myself, beginning to giggle a little crazily. Just then voices sounded in the hallway. It was Thane and Derrial, apparently walking to wherever they were monitoring the position of the Council’s forces.

"At least we didn’t have to knock her out again," said Derrial mildly. Thane laughed. The sound of it made me want to kick him in the nuts.

"Corran had the syringes ready just in case," said Derrial casually, like he was talking about the weather rather than drugging his mate.

That comment made up my mind for me. I didn't care if these were the right syringes, I was so upset that maybe I didn't care at that moment if the syringes were filled with something dangerous.

No, I didn't mean that.

But what they had just said cleared the way for me to use this medicine on them. As far as I was concerned, if it wasn't the right one, it was their fault.

I carefully emptied both syringes into a cup and took them back to the room where I had first been held.

My next order of business was figuring out if there were, in fact, the smaller safety ships on this ship. If not, I was going to have to knock them all out and take the ship back to the Khonsu’s city.

I made my way down the various corridors of the ship. It was a lot larger than it appeared from the outside and I wondered if that was another invention of Corran. After 30 minutes of searching, I was starting to get nervous. What if I didn't find where they were kept in time and we traveled all the way back to the Capitol?

I guess I could hijack the ship after they got off to find the fix for the blood bond. I didn't want to wait that long though. That meant I would be traveling the entire distance back to the Khonsu city by myself. I wasn't sure I was ready for that. Somehow it didn't seem so bad to only have to retrace our steps halfway.

I finally got to an entrance that looked more industrial than the others. I felt around the outside, trying to figure out how Corran operated the entrance. When he walked through, they seemed to just appear, but other times when Thane and Derrial passed through the entrances, it had opened like a regular door.

I waved my hand in front of the door just in case it had a motion sensor, probably looking like a lunatic. When that didn't work, I then started to feel around the edge of the door, hoping there was some kind of invisible button or something I had to press that would open it. I had gotten all the way around the other side of the door when it suddenly opened.

Lo and behold, two, small, one-to-two person-sized ships were sitting there.

Perfect, I whispered to myself.

I retraced my steps back to the mess hall. I had Corran’s machine create a small meal for all of us. I included some of the guys’ favorites. Then I incorporated the liquid from the syringes, hoping that they were tasteless and that they worked when taken orally.

Taking the tray, I walked to the Bridge, butterflies filling my stomach. I couldn't believe I was about to do this. I almost talked myself out of it several times. It was only the memory of Thane and Derrial talking so casually about knocking me out that kept my feet moving forward.

I walked into the Bridge. Thane and Derrial hadn’t come back yet. Corran looked at me in surprise as I walked in, his face flushed with pleasure as he saw my loaded tray.

"What's all of this?" he asked, walking towards me and taking the tray from me so that he could set it down on the table.

"I just wanted to do something nice for you. You guys are always taking care of me," I responded, the words feeling dirty as they left my mouth.

Corran brushed another of his gentle kisses across my lips. "Thank you," he said.

He put his hand to his ear, speaking into the communicator that they all seemed to have. "Come eat," he said, his voice definitely not as sweet as when he was talking to me.

A few minutes later, Thane and Derrial walked into the room. Their faces held the same pleasure as Corran’s had as they saw the food spread out. "Did you do this?” Thane asked.

"Just wanted to say thank you," I repeated, forcing a smile on my face. I wasn’t sure why this was making them so happy. Maybe I hadn’t done as many nice things for them as I should have.

Our lives were always so up in the air, that I couldn’t remember a time since our stay together on Earth where I had actually had time to do something like bring them dinner.

If we ever got back together after this, I was probably going to have to make a lot of dinners to make up for what I was about to do. But then again, I wasn't sure if there was anything they could do to make up for what they had done to me.

I nibbled on my food, trying not to stare at them too closely as I waited for the medicine to kick in. It happened to Corran first, I assumed because he was the smallest of the three. He began to look drowsy, his eyes opening and closing slowly as he tried to fight it. He looked over at me questioningly, but before he could say anything he passed out.

Thane was next, following Corran into slumber just a couple of seconds later.

Derrial was the last one. He stood up in his chair to walk towards me, a look of betrayal written across his face. I got up as well and started to back away from him. He only lasted a couple of steps until he sank to his knees and passed out.

It was time to go.

I was sure I didn't have a lot of time. I sprinted down the corridor, running as fast as I could until I got to the room where the ships were kept. I jumped into the closest one. Looking around at the controls, I tried to figure out where everything was located. Despite its size, it still had most of the same controls that Corran had showed me earlier.

I went through in my head what Corran had shown me and then started pressing buttons. Once I got the ship turned on and it seemed like I had inputted for the ship to return to the last destination inputted, I turned my attention to opening up the main door of the spacecraft to let my smaller ship out.

I looked around in a panic, trying to see which button looked correct. I just knew that they would wake up at any time now and run in to stop me.

Finally, I saw a green button on the left side of the ship that wasn't a part of any of the controls that Corran had shown me earlier.

Taking a deep breath and sending a silent prayer that it wasn’t a blaster or something, I pressed it.

A few seconds later the doors of the main ship opened. Pressing the control I knew moved the ship forward, I flew out away from Corran’s spacecraft.

I never in a million years dreamed that I would be flying in an alien spacecraft on an alien planet.

It was as terrifying as it was invigorating.

Chapter 7

(Thane)

My head was still groggy from being drugged, and my blood boiled that she had knocked us out. I scrubbed a hand down my face, remembering us all waking up on the floor, and it didn’t take long to work out what she’d done.

Ella’s flight path had been easy to follow as well since all our ships shared the same database. With a few taps to select her coordinates, her journey flicked up on my screen. But I didn’t need it to know exactly where she’d gone. To understand why she’d stooped so fucking low.

My heart had shattered at hearing her cries, and I felt like the worst person in the universe when we tore her away from her dad. It broke me, but her running from us like we were monsters wanting to hurt her, fucking hurt me.

Taking a deep breath, I recentered myself. I clenched my jawline but reminded myself why she did it.

Desperation to get her dad.

Instead of talking to us, she did the unthinkable.

Guilt chewed on my insides because I should have guessed she’d do something stupid.

“How in the hell’s galaxies does she know how to fly a ship?” Derrial hissed, his words clipped and sharp. He flopped in the front passenger seat near me.

“Give her credit. She’s been watching everything we do, teaching herself, learning. And desperation does funny things to people. Thing is...” Corran said from the back where he attempted to make contact with her ship, apparently, not only had she learned to fly a space cruiser, but she had also learned how to switch off the comms. “The ship practically flies itself if she selects the last destination we flew to. I told her so myself when she suddenly seemed interested in how to fly the ship. I should have suspected something then.”

“Yeah well, hurry up and get us there already,” Derrial growled my way. Fuck, he had a temper on him, but we were all just as tense.

The faint vibration of the ship thrummed under us, and we lifted off. I wasted no time and hurled us forward.

“Well, I can’t get ahold of her,” Corran hissed. “I’ve initiated the comms destabilizer. Better no one detects us since we have everyone after us.”

Derrial ran a hand down his face and huffed loudly, his knees bouncing.

All I could do was focus on flying, avoid heavily populated air space, and pray to the universe Ella hadn’t been captured by the Council or the Khonsu.

Flashes of Ella filled my mind, her bending over in the forest, me ravishing her, seeing her naked out in public had me burning up. I wanted so much more time to really show her pleasure, and how I could make her scream with arousal. The memories in my mind were uncontrollable, repeating over and over until they drove me insane.

Her scent still clung in my nose, and her moans echoed in my ears as I thrust into her over and over.

Life taught me to never get too close to anyone, to not believe in deep relationships that lasted. My past partners never worked out. We ended up in arguments, with differences, and it was easier to walk away. Always easier to walk away. But this was different with Ella. She’d somehow crawled under my skin and now I’d lost myself with a human woman when so many odds were stacked against us. I refused to let myself think of the future when we’d be lucky to survive today.

Focus on the here and now.

Save her.

Get to a safe place for all of us.

Everything else could wait for later.

“What if she’s captured?” Corran asked, his voice pensive.

“Then we go and rescue her, we do whatever the fuck we need to until she’s with us and safe. That’s what we’ll do.” Derrial didn’t move but kept his attention out the front window as he spoke.

“How far are we from reaching her?” Derrial barked.

“Five minutes tops.”

“Make it two.”

Silence suffocated us, and we cut through the sky, the reflective shields up, masking us, meaning to anyone looking toward us, they’d only see the sky, the charcoal clouds promising a storm.

As we finally cruised over the landscape of the Khonsu’s territory, I spotted our other black cruiser down amid the woods, finding no sign of Ella.

To our right sat the compound and sheds, while on the far left, the mountain sat where Ella had run up.

I commenced our descent in a small clearing not far from hers. The surrounding trees would cover us hopefully from detection. At least until we rescued her stubborn ass and ran.

Derrial cleared his throat, while my gut clenched with dread. Was she okay?

With a small lurch, we landed. Unbuckling myself, I shot to my feet and raced into the main cabin. I dragged open the weapon compartment latch and my mouth dropped. “Why the fuck is this container empty?”

“We haven’t really had the chance to load weapons,” Corran growled.

“Fine. We do this the old-fashioned way. Corran, you check the other ship for any weapons.”

I shook my head and did a double check of our surroundings through the heat sensor monitor. Once I saw that it revealed no one in near proximity, I hit the door button and it slid open.

We rushed outside, my muscles tense, my senses alert.

I ran through the woods toward her ship. Please don’t be dead. Derrial and I surveyed the perimeter, keeping watch while Corran entered the cruiser.

Moments later, he emerged. “She’s not here. No sign of struggle.”

Good. That meant she may not have been found yet.

Stalking the grounds, we pressed on, targeting the shed where Ella had found her dad, knowing it was exactly where she would have gone.

“You know the protocol,” Derrial muttered. “Get Ella out of here the moment you see her. Leave without the rest of us if needed, just evacuate her. Understood.”

Corran and I nodded.

I’d never leave without her.

A high-pitched scream came, violently ripping through the air.

Moving faster, we burst out from the treeline, emerging into an open field. Up ahead lay those three sheds.

Ella emerged from around the corner of a shed with a man I recognized from the cell, the man we’d torn her from...her father, and together they ran in our direction, their faces fear-stricken. Behind her, four Khonsu guards charged after her. Big sons of bitches, pounding the ground with long strides, moving with greater speed than I expected for someone their size.

My heart slammed into my throat.

She glanced toward us, her eyes widening with hope, silent words falling from her lips.

That’s right, keep running, kitten.

We ran toward them.

The monsters were almost upon Ella and her father. They were moving too fast.

I darted forward, a war cry bursting from my lungs. My fists curled, feeling nothing but raw adrenaline. A Khonsu with a shaved head and the reddest eyes I’d ever seen was within arms' reach of Ella.

I propelled myself forward and launched past Ella and up at him. My fist connected with the side of his head so hard, the crack shuttered up my arm. But he fell.

Stumbling to my feet, I ducked a swinging punch from another Khonsu and rolled out of reach. I shot to my feet and attacked the brute, my fist connecting perfectly with the roaring Khonsu’s face. He stumbled backward from my strike, and I threw a curved kick into his gut to help him along. His feet caught on a patch of grass, and he fell head over heels. Fuck yeah, that was what I liked seeing.

I spun around as the guards started to climb to their feet. Up ahead, Derrial lunged onto the back of another guard who had Corran pinned to the ground.

Ella and her dad kept running past them, and all I could think was that I had to get her out of here.

Priority.

A roar sounded behind me, and I jerked around to see a horde of savages pouring out of the main building. They were coming in our direction like a fetid wave of sewage. Some kept their humanoid form, others morphed into four-legged monsters with black leather hides. They were damn fast. Bastards.

I spun on my heels and ran. This wasn’t a fight we’d win. There was no shame in running away.

My feet punched the ground as I sprinted after Ella and sucked in air rapidly. Veon was becoming a dangerous and ugly planet, no longer feeling like my home. Things had changed so much in the last couple of decades, all because of the Khonsu invasion and our Council’s response to hide in the cities while these monsters slowly grew in numbers, kidnapping women from around the galaxy to breed with.

I burst into the woods, following her and her father. She was swinging left and right through the woods like she’d lost her way to the ship.

But I didn’t have time to chase down a lost girl. Our time was almost out.

Closing in on her, I swept an arm around her side and swooped her against me. “Faster,” I shouted toward her father noting that his clothes were ragged, his flesh bruised and covered in healed wounds. The Khonsu had tortured him for fun, for blood, for anything they needed. Fucking vile things.

“Run faster or we die,” I barked the order, needing to get them both to safety.

“Thane,” she cried with relief in her voice, her breath racing, eyes wide and terrified.

I dashed toward her ship as it sat closer. Slapping my palm over the sensor, the door slid open with a swooshing sound, and we rushed inside. A sudden surge of exhaustion rattled through me and I stumbled on my feet. I dropped Ella on her feet and darted to the controls as the door shut closed.

“Don’t hurt us,” the man’s shaky voice pleaded, his body so frail and thin.

“Dad.” She scrambled to her feet and threw herself into her father’s arms, crying uncontrollably. An ache settled under my heart to hear the sorrow in her whispers, to finally find her father after he’d gone missing so long. Once she settled down, she’d ask questions… so many questions about how her dad ended up here...like if we knew anything about it. I swallowed down the boulder in my throat and my head spun, but I couldn’t collapse now. Not fucking now. I refocused on getting us out of here.

The cruiser hummed beneath me, and we started to ascend.

“What are you doing?” Ella’s footsteps padded toward me in a rush. “What about Corran and Derrial? You can’t leave them.” Panic strangled her voice.

“They have the other ship.” I’d find out as soon as they escaped in their ship. We soared higher, and I glanced down to the ground.

Ella was crying and her sorrow sent a spear into my heart. “You can’t leave them behind. We just found out that my dad was alive and rescued him, we can’t now lose Derrial and Corran.”

“You should have thought of that before you drugged us. Now come here.” I leaned over and grabbed her arm, bringing her closer to the window. “Look down below. What do you see?”

She leaned over, staring at the field, at the army of Khonsu running toward the woods. “Where are Derrial and Corran?”

“Exactly, they got away. We’re trained warriors, kitten. You don’t need to worry about us, but you scared the hell out of us. What were you thinking running off like that?”

She faced me and fresh tears tracked down her cheeks, her chin quivering, and my heart melted.

“I’m sorry.”

“Kitten, please don’t cry. Take your father into the back room as he looks ready to pass out. We have food rations filled with vitamins his body will need and it will help him sleep.”

She didn’t move at first, but as if my suggestion took a second to sink into her thoughts, she rushed into the back to her father, and I focused on flying us out of here.

I rapidly punched in our coordinates and flicked on the masking shield over the space cruiser. A small green flash in the bottom of my screen told me the other ship was engaged and ascending. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I hated seeing Ella this broken, but what her actions taught me was that she was a danger to all of us because she was reckless. And that was something we needed to rein in if she intended to survive on Veon.

Already exhaustion swept through me, and the energy I used to fight had diluted my last reserves. There was only one way to address that… something I hated but I had no choice. Return to the Council lab for an antidote.

If I didn’t pass out first.

Chapter 8

(Ella)

“You sure you can fly this thing?” I asked, emerging from the back compartment where Dad had fallen asleep. My pulse was thudding too loudly for me to take stock of my emotions, but amid the darkness, happiness swept over me at finding my father. I never thought I would and had given up hope so many years ago. Even held my own farewell ceremony for him and mom… but I should have known he was kidnapped by the aliens on Earth along with so many others that went missing for years. So many had vanished, but where were they all now? I don’t think anyone on Earth knew that the Khonsu had invaded Earth along with the Vepar.

Through all these dangers and impossible foe, to have my father here with me, to know I wasn’t alone on this strange planet...it lifted the weight off my shoulders.

Thane was swaying in his seat. He shook his head and blinked to keep his eyes open. Except his gaze looked hazed over like he might pass out at any moment, and my stomach clenched.

I moved closer and stared outside through the front window to the acrid and dried land where we’d landed. Desert and dunes in every direction, the dual suns burning strong.

In front of us, the other ship with Corran and Derrial landed. Thane looked so close to passing out… he was really sick. He couldn’t take my blood and he was fading so fast, it terrified me.

I rushed to the door and hit the button. The door slid open just as Corran and Derrial emerged from their ship, walking like drunk friends leaving a bar. Their faces were pasty white, eyes half closed, and the same sickness consumed them.

“Hurry up,” I called out and shut the door once they stumbled into our ship. I threw myself into their arms for risking so much. Despite everything, I worried for them as well, and now as their arms wrapped around me, I was lost to the emotions they always stirred within me. It seemed we always ran from something or someone, but just having small pockets of time so close reminded me why I kept fighting and why I wasn’t alone in this huge mess I’d landed in. If we ever survived somehow, I wanted to live somewhere peaceful, where the only concern was what to wear that day and what the weather would be like. I’d had my share of danger and adventure to last a lifetime.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Derrial growled his threat in my ear, while Corran seemed to lose his balance and stumbled free from us before hitting the wall with his back.

I charged after him, a hand grabbing his. “Steady there.”

Looking over at Derrial, his brow furrowed in a dozen lines, and with his blood red horns, and the shadows under his eyes, he reminded me of the devil.

“I wouldn’t leave my father there. And now he’s back there sleeping, and as far as I’m concerned, it was worth it.”

“What you could have done was talk to us, not drug us,” Derrial spat. “You don’t go off on your own ever again, understand?” his voice boomed, his lips twisted with fury.

I gritted my teeth and held his stare. Anger pushed through me as he reprimanded me when I had never asked for any of this. The words flew past my lips before I could tame them.

“Your kind invaded Earth and drew us into this huge mess. All I ever wanted was to have my parents back and have a normal life.”

Nothing would ever be normal for me again. Never.

The three of them watched me, and my arms trembled by my side. Derrial’s mouth twitched, and I swallowed hard.

“You three can’t even stand, let alone fly us out of here. I’m taking the helm, so where are we going?”

“No,” Derrial chided. “Thane will take us to the Council, then we’ll get our blood connection corrected.” He stared at me with intensity, and I clenched my fists. I’d been through so much lately, I was moving on pure adrenaline, and patience wasn’t something I had right now.

“Does that even make logical sense to you?”

He ran the back of his hand over his mouth, pulling against the pouty flesh of his lips like he could barely control himself from drawing me to him, sinking his teeth into my veins.

“Pet, once we make a blood bond, our bodies change and rejects any other blood. So, we’re getting this corrected, and then...” He paused, staring into my soul it seemed. “Then, we’ll address this properly.”

The warning behind his words pressed in around me like an invisible vice around my chest.

Thump.

I flinched around to find Thane had fallen out of his driver’s seat and was on his knees, pulling himself up, groaning in pain.

“Yeah, he’s going to get us killed, flying this thing,” I blurted, meeting Derrial’s glare. “Tell me where we’re going and I’ll take us there, okay?” I wasn’t taking no for an answer. Technically the space ship was easier to fly than driving a car, so I had this in the bag.

“She has a point,” Corran added. “We reserve our energy for once we arrive at the Council quarters. We’ll need it.”

Derrial huffed, staring at me with uncertainty. He didn’t trust his life in my hands, I saw it in his shifting expression, but I’d prove him wrong.

“What have you got to lose?” I pivoted on the balls of my feet and headed to the front where Derrial stepped aside from the driver’s seat.

“Get buckled in and I’ll set the coordinates,” he said. “It should be pretty straightforward, but I’ll give you a crash course on flying on our planet and how to avoid detection.”

He strained to smile, and his voice was low and tired. He looked like death, his face so pasty and pale. But he was trying, and I knew time wasn't on their side.

“Okay, I’m ready.” I tried my best to focus while my brain synapses were snapping with panic, with the urgency to get moving already, with the terror of where the Khonsu had taken my mom. I couldn’t stop trembling, but each time Thane looked at me, I smiled and nodded.

Focus.

By the time we were in the air, I pushed us forward with such speed, we all lurched backward, and Corran cried out as he tumbled about back there.

“Oops,” I called out and slowed the ship with Derrial’s assistance.

“You’ll burn the engines if you use them at full power. You ease into it and slowly build up, all right?”

I nodded and concentrated on the empty space out in front of the ship.

“Look here.” Thane pointed to a screen with a green line shooting outward. “You want to keep the ship following this path. Fly too high or low, or change trajectory, and it will change to red. Always keep it green.”

“Okay, green it is.” One hand on what looked like a gear stick, I sat back in the captain’s seat and pushed everything else out of my mind. For those few moments, I let the smile pinching at the corners of my mouth spread, feeling like for once, I was doing something to help rather than just being protected.

“What’s so funny?” Thane asked from the seat next to me.

“I feel like I’m in Guardians Of The Galaxy.”

“What’s that?” Derrial asked from somewhere behind me. “I’m not aware of the Council appointing guardians.”

I laughed, surprising myself that I found anything funny right then. “They are a band of misfit aliens and a human guarding the galaxy you could say. And they have a sassy talking, adorable raccoon, but he hates being called that. They go on adventures in a way.”

Thane queried. “This band of warriors sound a bit like us.”

I laughed at his comment. “Guess I can see the similarities. Always getting in deep trouble and trying to find a way to escape.”

“Fantastic,” Thane announced loudly. “We’ll call ourselves, Guardians Of Veon, and you can be the cute raccoon. We’ll be the guardians.”

I cut him a stare. “Hold off on that. If we get out of this and somehow back to Earth, we are watching that movie.”

“Of course,” he continued, not listening to me. “I will be the strongest of the guardians of course,” Thane went on, and all I could picture was him as Drax the Destroyer from the movie. He always made me laugh. What I wouldn’t give to be home, on the couch with a bag of chips, and movie binging.

The thought brought with it a sinking feeling that somehow, I’d end up stuck on Veon forever, running for my life, and never able to watch another new movie again.

I glanced over to Thane who slouched in his seat, eyes closed, his breaths heavy. Refocused on the flight path, I made sure to get us safely to the Council’s compound.

An hour later, the city down below came into view, along with the familiar park in the distance--our destination. My senses went on full alert, danger shivering down my spine.

“Umm guys, we’re here.”

Only snores responded. I reached over and nudged him in the arm. Thane snapped awake, sitting upright in his seat, eyes glued to the front window. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, but we’re here.”

Scrubbing a hand down his face, he started hitting the buttons on the dashboard, then pointed to a tight open area behind a curtain of trees. “Can you land us in there?”

I nodded before really seeing what a tight spot it was, but I’d done this before. Hovering over the spot, I glanced out the side window and lowered the lever in slow motion, unlike the last time when I dropped so fast, I screamed and was surprised the ship didn’t fall apart around me.

We landed with a small shake, eliciting grumbles from the back.

“You did incredible,” Thane said. “Now, you stay in the ship while we go and find out how to reverse the blood incompatibility.”

I glared at him, but he already had risen from his seat, shoulders squared like he drew on his last reserves of strength.

Twisting around in my seat, I watched the three of them get to their feet, shaking off the sleep. Derrial looked my way. “When you see us returning, have the ship running and ready to take off. If guards or anyone spot you, leave. You can pick us up later.” He closed the distance between us, cupping my cheeks and staring at me like he wanted to say so much more but struggled.

I nodded and held onto his hand, leaning into his touch. “Part of me doesn’t want to let you go.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but he never smiled, just held onto his hard veneer. “I’ll see you soon.” Yep, he was still pissed.

He turned and Corran was standing behind him. He crouched near my seat and plucked free a strand of hair caught in my eyelashes. “You’re so brave, Ella, and I want nothing more than to keep you safe.” He wasn’t wearing his glasses much in Veon, and I missed them. He looked nerdy and kind of cute in them. Kissing the back of my hand, my insides melted, and he left my side as well.

Thane gave me his cheeky grin and leaned over, his lips grazing mine. His musky scent washed over me, and my body responded, nipples tightening.

“I’ll be back.”

Goosebumps pricked down my arms, and not even his sexy words could put at ease the unrest in my gut. All three guys stared at me, and I wanted to say so much more, tell them despite everything, they’d grown on me, gotten under my skin, crawled into my heart. I was terrified that something would happen to them and I’d lose them.

“We won’t be long,” Derrial promised, but how did he know that? He just said it to make me feel better, but my stomach churned. It ached at seeing them leave.

I watched them traveling through the woods like shadows before vanishing out of sight. Then I slouched in my seat and scanned the grounds while I waited.

And waited.

And waited…

The sun descended and over two hours passed. The food I gave my dad had knocked him out, and he slept like a baby. I worried for him, but I also knew that now that we were together, I’d do anything to help him get better.

I waited some more.

Still no sign of the men.

My knees bounced, and I jumped to my feet, tired of sitting back. I paced to the rear of the ship and back. What if they didn’t return? What then? I would sit in the ship until someone found me? I doubted this was a shuttle I could fly back to Earth, or even then, how could I leave without my mom and knowing if the three Vepar were alive?

Panic rose through me like an exploding volcano, and all I pictured were the three of them dead, bleeding out as I sat here waiting when I could have done something. Anything to help.

I searched the compartments in the ship for a weapon, for anything to defend myself because I had enough of sitting here.

Manuals and tools were all I found, so I collected a screwdriver, gripping it in my hand. If anyone got too close, I’d jam it into their throat. A glint caught my attention from deeper in the drawer and I pushed things aside to pull out a knife that looked a bit worn. It was probably used to cut cords, but it was perfect for me. I tucked it into the deep pocket of the dress and headed outside.

The wind had picked up and it buffeted into me, shaking trees with pink and orange and green leaves around me. For a world that looked so beautiful, everything here was deadly and wanted to kill me.

Steeling myself, I hurried forward, hiding in the shadows, until I emerged from the tree line and stared out at the familiar building. The same one I’d run away from after being used as a lab rat. My breath raced, and I trembled hard. I surveyed the open land between me and the compound. No one around… and no sign of my three Vepar. I had to cross the open ground and pray no one saw me. My heart squeezed painfully.

I had to do this.

Nothing but silence surrounded me, so I lowered my head and ran for my life across the yard. I targeted the rear of the building, figuring there was less chance of being seen. My pulse was thudding in my veins, and I kept expecting an alarm to sound.

Bursting to the back door, I stopped and pressed my back to the wall, gasping for air. When no one rushed out after me, I scrambled toward the door only to find it slightly ajar. I pressed a hand to the handle and pushed it open, my other hand falling to my pocket with the knife.

Inside, a guard lay sprawled on the ground, his nose bloody and lip busted. He wasn’t moving. Yep, the guys had definitely come this way, and they must have switched off any sensors since no one had detected this guy. This looked like a delivery and storage room, so I stepped around him and cut across the room filled with shelves and boxes. I grabbed a white coat hanging on the wall and pushed my arms into the sleeves, then pulled the coat tight around me, noting it said “janitor” in Vepar on the pocket. I pushed my long dark hair over the title, and figured I looked close enough to pass as a doctor if anyone took a quick glance my way.

With my heart running a marathon in my chest, I pushed past another door and entered a white hospital like corridor, the antiseptic smells strong. I looked left and right and headed to where the location looked familiar from when the doctors rushed me out of here. The men would have had to go this way too. Hardly anyone was around which left me unnerved.

A voice came out from up ahead, and panic strangled me. I rushed into the closest room and shut the door in silence. The room was empty with nothing but a metal frame for a bed and light pouring in from the window. My skin pricked, unable to shake that horror movie feeling.

Footsteps faded outside, and I crept back into the hall, finding a man in a similar white coat as me. He was marching to where I’d come from seconds earlier.

I slipped out and ran in the opposite direction, my breath ragged and rushed.

“Hey, stop!” A male’s voice yelled from behind me. My insides froze. I shot a glance over my shoulder, to see a guard, tall and broad, with a spiky black horn.

I burst into a sprint away from him, my hand diving into my pocket. I gripped the blade, my body shuddering.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I mumbled under my breath.

Up ahead, the path divided into three, and I knew this location by the bright green light overhead I’d seen, so I swung to the left and ran like the devil himself chased me.

I passed only a few doors, but I followed the curved path and slipped into a passage and waited. Listening for anyone to follow me.

Sweat trickled down my back, and my heart was beating so hard, it rang in my ears.

When no sounds came, I peered out only to see Zeni emerge backward from a room several feet away, pointing a silver laser gun at someone back in the room. But I couldn’t see who it was.

Hot lashes of hatred whipped through at seeing her, remembering the vengefulness in her voice when she had ordered the doctors to start the procedure on me. How she’d wanted nothing more than to ensure I was dead.

Frozen in place, I watched.

“I tried so hard to do the right thing,” she blabbered. “All I wanted was for you to accept me, take me as your mate. And then you disappeared. Leaving me without even an explanation.” The ache in her voice did nothing to garner sympathy from me.

“Zeni, look at what you’ve become,” Derrial snarled. “You don’t want to do this. Let us pass and… and we’ll come to some arrangement.”

She snorted a laugh. “An arrangement? Like killing the filthy human and admitting publicly you made a mistake, then pledging your loyalty to me. All three of you. Then… only then will I maybe convince my father to speak to the Council about dropping the warrants out on all of you.”

“You know we did nothing wrong,” Thane snapped. “Put down the gun and give me your hand. Let’s talk about this properly.”

She was shaking her head. “No! We are doing things my way. You’ve done everything wrong,” she yelled. “Get on your knees. I’ve had enough of looking at you three, reminded of your betrayal. I just wanted to be with you, be happy. That’s all I asked for.”

Her threat rang loud in my ears. She was going to kill them. My chin began to tremble, and I held back the cries, the terror choking me.

“Zeni, please,” Corran began, but the bitch fired her gun.

I shuddered and died on the inside.

Then everything happened so fast. I didn’t remember moving, but I was lunging at her, blade raised just as a guard rounded the corner.

My heart hurt so bad, it felt like I’d shatter into a million pieces. Anger fueled my actions, and all I wanted was to make her pay.

Her head turned in my direction, eyes wide, but it was too late. I sunk the blade into her back, the slurpy sound disgusting and blood spurting from the wound like syrup.

I stumbled backward, releasing my grip on the knife, barely able to breath.

Zeni fell to her knees.

I stumbled backward, releasing my grip on the knife, barely able to breathe.

A whimper fell from her lips, an expelled breath, and I clasped my chest.

What had I done?

Derrial emerged from the room, along with the other two, all three turning on the guard roaring down the hall. Grunts and punches sounded, while I stumbled into a wall, staring down at Zeni who fell onto her side, shuddering.

So much red blood poured from her wound, spreading outward around her. I must have hit a major artery or something for her to bleed so heavily.

I wasn't a killer, and tears pooled in my eyes. I'd done this to her, stabbed her.

Someone took my arm, and I flinched backward, their face blurry from my tears, my heart aching.

"Ella." Corran said softly while fear threaded behind his voice. "We need to leave."

But I couldn't pull my gaze from Zeni who'd fallen silent and stopped twitching. She lay on the floor, still bleeding.

"I-I killed her." The words burst from my lips along with my cries. I shouldn't feel anything, but I did. Killing someone wasn't who I was. This wasn't me. I didn't do this.

Corran seized my hand in his, fingers tight around mine, and we were running in the opposite direction. I glanced back to find the guard also on the ground. Derrial and Thane ran after us. Derrial’s sleeve was blackened from where Zeni must have missed her shot, and their faces were white with terror.

All I could do was push one leg in front of the other, drive myself to keep moving, to not think about what I'd done.

Since coming to Veon, I had become many things, experienced more situations than I'd ever wanted to, and even tracked down my father. But never in a million years did I expect to become a murderer.

Chapter 9

"What are you doing here?" Derrial tossed the angry words toward us as we ran down the white stark hall.

"I was worried, and--" The rest of my words were stolen by the alarm bell that boomed overhead. An explosion of voices and footfalls suddenly engulfed the building that was silent moments earlier.

Corran's hand squeezed tighter as he hauled me with speed into the rear storage room I'd entered from, and we flew to the exit. The unconscious guard was no longer there.

My head was a cyclone of emotions, of terror, or remorse. I never should have left the ship. Should have just stayed there.

Running across the open field, the four of us never stopped. I breathed hard, pushing on pure adrenaline.

The sirens blared from the building behind us, they rang through the air.

Panic tightened around my chest. We were going to get caught. And this time they'd kill us, no sympathy whatsoever. I couldn't stop trembling. I didn’t want to die, couldn’t let my dad die after we’d just found him.

The black ship came into view amid the trees as we darted into the forest and didn't stop until we all scrambled onto the ship.

Derrial shut the door, and I heaved for breath. I sprinted into the back room to check on my dad, who still slept unaware of what had just happened. Thank goodness he was okay.

Back in the main area of the ship, Thane lunged into the driver's seat getting us lifted off the ground. Derrial marched back and forth, while Corran headed into the back room where my dad slept.

I glanced outside to the throbbing lights from approaching authorities already flying toward the building. My pulse spiked, and panic squeezed my chest. We rose higher and turned away before flying in the opposite direction.

Unmoving, we all stood in silence, and I prayed no one followed us, that Corran's invisibility cloak device actually made us virtually undetectable.

When no one followed, I collapsed down on a seat against the wall of the ship, my mind whirring.

I looked up at Derrial who now stared out through the front window, and he looked different.

Tall, full of strength, and breathing hard. His face was no longer gaunt. Same with Thane and Corran's. They looked healthy and full of energy like they’d fed.

"You found a cure to the blood connection?" I asked, my fingers interlaced in my lap.

No one responded, and Derrial kept his back to me. Corran answered, "My science team had actually created an antidote, but I just had to combine the ingredients to activate it. It's in our system now, giving us a temporary boost of energy. For the bond between us to stick however, we need a blood exchange."

I nodded. "Okay, let's do it now."

Corran was shaking his head. "It's not that simple. We needed another ingredient for you to take before the exchange, but I couldn't find it in the lab. I was sure it was somewhere in that building, but then we got caught before we could look further."

Zeni had been going to kill my Vepar, and I loathed her for trying to ruin everything. That wouldn’t be a problem any longer, and I pushed away the guilt. She would have murdered the men if I didn’t stop her.

Derrial turned to face me, shadows darkening under his eyes, lips tight. He was furious. "You disobeyed me."

I bristled at his words, stiffening in my seat. "You were gone for two hours, and I was terrified something happened to you. Sorry for worrying."

He closed the distance between us in three long strides, his hand lashing out, grabbing my chin. Pushing my head back, he stared down at me. "You could have died. Jeopardized our mission."

I bit down hard on my lower lip and spat out the words. "I saved you. Zeni could have shot again and struck you in the heart if I didn't stop her, but you're welcome."

His grip tightened on my chin, and he stared down at me, fury burning behind those green eyes.

He released me and whipped around, walking away.

I didn't know what to expect but holding onto any kind of composure and schooling my emotions was impossible in that moment.

"That's not the point," he snapped. "It's that I can't trust you. You drugged us then stole one of our ships and endangered yourself. Then I asked you to stay in the ship, so we all knew where you are at all times. So, we didn't compromise the mission and worry that you'd run off again. But you didn’t listen."

"Run off? I went to save my dad before." I pointed to the room in the back. "If I didn't go, he wouldn't be here, he would be who knows where."

"Then you talk to one of us. Tell us and we'll work as a team."

I huffed, clenching my fists. "You wouldn't have gone back with me; you would have made me wait. And I'd return for my dad again in a heartbeat if given the chance. He'd been tortured, did you see how he looked?" My words quivered, and I held my chin up, hating Derrial for looking at me like I was the monster in this scenario.

I didn't know what he expected. That I'd sit obediently while those I cared for faced danger. Hell no!

"We just want you safe," Corran added.

I blink.

“Then why bring me to this psychotic planet?” I snapped, and I regretted the words as they fell from my lips.

I tore my gaze from him and Derrial and swallowed the thick ball of dread sitting in my throat. Tears rolled down my cheeks, my insides tearing apart because everything was too much, and I wasn't sure how much more I could take. Anger raged inside me, but it was tapered by the fear I had for me, my men, my parents.

This was the version of Derrial from back on Earth, when he was dominating and in control, when his words were blades piercing my heart. I'd fallen for him since arriving on Veon, given myself to him, believed he wanted the same. Now all I could remember were his kisses that tasted like the best chocolate cake in the world, the strength of his arms around me, and yet fury bubbled under my skin that I’d made a mistake.

His disappointment made me feel like utter crap.

I shot to my feet and crossed the room before heading into the back room where I shut the door. There, the tears flowed like an untamable rapid. With my spine pressed to the wall, I slid to my ass and cupped my face as I cried quietly.

I cried for killing someone who deserved it. For rescuing my father and still not knowing where my mom was. For Derrial being such a dick. For the frustration surging through me. Since arriving here I'd been pushed and pulled in every direction, and I'd had enough.

I didn’t remember how long I stayed in the room, but it was my father’s groaning that had me stirring and climbing to my feet.

His eyes were wide open, and he pushed himself to sit up, panic in his gaze.

“Dad.” I rushed over to the side of the bed and hugged him. I closed my eyes tight and couldn’t stop crying. My stomach tightened.

“I thought you were dead.” His voice was strangled, and I held him tighter. I’d found my dad, after he’d gone missing, after I buried an empty coffin. I found him.

His arms were strong around me despite his fragile state, and he needed this embrace as much as me, to remember we somehow survived this far.

“I thought I’d lost you forever.” He pulled back and wiped my tears. “I can’t believe you found me. I was resigned to dying in this barbaric planet with these aliens.” Sleep clung to his eyes, but there was hatred on his face.

But when he looked at me, the fury faded, replaced with a genuine smile filled with devotion and utter love. I was transported back to my younger days when our lives didn’t include aliens and invasions. When all I worried about was convincing my parents to take us back to the beach on sunny days because my friends were all there.

“Where’s Mom?” I finally asked and pulled back.

He was shaking his head, the agony on his face shattering my heart. “We were separated years ago. Women were taken to be sorted for training to become servants or for mating.” His ache deepened his frown and he lowered his gaze, my insides shattering like shards of glass.

“Mom’s strong,” I added. “She’ll fight against that; you know she would.”

“You take after her.” His voice broke, and my whole body wracked with despair, but I blinked hard and swallowed back the hurricane of sorrow pushing forward to engulf me.

“Tell me how you got here, who those Vepar with you are?”

I held onto his hand, feeling like I was a kid again, except this time, I was the strong one. I explained what happened on Earth after him and mom vanished, how the Vepar instilled new rules, stepped into the seats of power, tried to make us healthy. Dad laughed at that part.

Then how I ended up on Veon and a summarized version of what I’d been through. But I didn’t mention my feelings for the men or the blood connection. Did Dad even know such a thing existed...and how would he react? I’d tell him soon, but I wasn’t ready yet.

“You like these three Vepar?” he asked.

My mouth dropped open. “I never… wait, where did that come from?”

“It’s not the words you used, but how you say them when you spoke about the men. Your eyes lit up like they used to do when I snuck you a chocolate cookie when your mom wasn’t looking.”

I was lost for words because after all these years, Dad didn’t miss a beat. “They are arrogant, rude, and super bossy, but…” I combed a hand through my hair. “But I do like them. Maybe more than like. All three in fact.” I raised my eyes to his. “Is that wrong?”

He laughed like everything would be okay in the world, and twice in as few minutes he surprised me.

When he stood, his legs gave out and he stumbled back onto the bed.

I reached for him. “Dad.”

He pushed to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. “I’ll be alright. Just need food and rest I think.”

A knock came at the door before it swished open. Corran entered and approached us.

“Nice to meet you, son,” my father said, his hand jutting out for a shake, but Corran went straight for a hug, taking Dad back for a moment. But he went with the flow. They hugged each other, patted each other’s back, and if it felt awkward to me, it looked double awkward to Dad who stared at me over Corran’s shoulder.

“In Vepar tradition,” he began. “You always greet a family member of anyone close to you with a strong hug.”

Dad’s smile brought me endless joy. Here I thought I’d lost him, and that he’d never get a chance to be part of my future, but not anymore.

“Back on Earth, we do strong manly handshakes.” Dad said, offering his hand to Corran who accepted and wasn’t sure what to do. So, Dad shook it up and down, leaving Corran to over exaggerate his attempt.

I laughed at them, wishing this was our life. Dealing with simple cultural differences not that I might be pregnant from who knows what alien.

“How are you feeling?” Corran asked, staring into Dad’s eyes as if trying to see into his soul. “Still dehydrated I see, and your body needs a lot of rest.”

“Feeling tired and keep having dizzy spells.”

“Your blood sugar is most likely very low. Let me grab something and then stay lying down and you’ll just need a few weeks rest.”

“A few weeks?” I exclaimed. “We can’t even return to your homes.”

“We have it sorted. I need to get a hold of the herb that will help with the blood connection, and we may have a solution for where your dad could heal.”

“Blood connection?” Dad asked.

I cringed on the inside, not ready to tell him anything about my tie to the three Vepar, how without us feeding on each other’s blood, we could get really sick. Yep, he might really freak out and right now I needed him to just get better.

“I’ll explain later.” I reached for Dad’s hand and turned to Corran. “What’s the solution?”

“We are going to Derrial’s parents’ home. They’re expecting us.”

The last time we went there, his parents accepted me, and I adored them, so going back there came with an excited anticipation as if I might be going back home to visit my family.

* * *

“Derrial!” Koria, his mom opened the door with the widest smile, and she embraced her son, holding him so tightly, I knew she was worried for him.

Her blonde hair sat off her face with several hair pins, her floral print dress cascading to her feet. She turned to me and hugged me without a second thought like meeting me once was enough to make me officially part of the family.

“Ella, dear,” she gasped. “I’ve been so worried about all of you. Your faces have been all over the broadcasted news.”

“Thank you. It’s been an ordeal all right.”

She pulled back, staring at me with sympathy and so much agony behind her eyes. “Quickly, in the house. All of you.”

We moved indoors to the house that reminded me of a gorgeous botanical garden. Flowery wallpaper lined the walls, flowers in thin metal vases filled every corner, and it smelled like a bouquet in here.

“Koria, this is my dad.” I held onto his arm close to me. “I thought I’d lost him, but he’d been taken by the Khonsu.” Just saying the words flooded me with so many emotions and already my eyes teared up.

“It’s wonderful to meet you,” Dad said. “It’s a miracle Ella somehow found me and was able to get me out of that slave camp. I wasn’t expecting to ever be rescued in all honesty.” There was a deflated tone to his voice, and I squeezed his arm tight by my side.

“That’s in the past,” I added. “We’ve got each other now.” I wanted to say more about finding Mom, but the words wouldn’t form. They wouldn’t come when fear shuddered through me. It locked me up to acknowledge that we may not find her. Now that I had Dad, the possibility of hope dangled over my head, and I clung onto it for dear life.

“Come sit down,” Koria added. “My husband is at work right now, but Derrial has already told me everything. We would love to have you stay with us for as long as needed.” She stared at my dad.

“Thank you.”

I hugged Koria again because Veon needed more beautiful people like her who loved and not hated.

Corran stepped into the room and shut the door behind them. “Do you mind if I raid your garden? I have a few things I need to prepare downstairs in Derrial’s old lab.”

“Of course.” She was nodding and waving him away as she would do her own child, and I loved how comfortable everyone was here. Taking Dad’s arm, she guided him down the hallway. “Come, let me show you your room.”

I stared at them, seeing the lighter step in Dad’s walk like his determination to fight resurfaced, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like for him in the prisons under the Khonsu’s ruthlessness.

I shook off the shivers, refusing to let myself go there or I’d drown in sorrow.

Thane hugged me from behind while Corran left the room and Derrial called out from the kitchen, “Take a seat, while I help Corran.”

I softened against Thane’s embrace. So much had happened lately, and I knew the guys were still upset with me. But to have Dad here with me was everything to me, so they’d just have to understand and accept my decisions.

“You think everything will work out?” I asked, holding onto Thane’s arms looped around me.

He kissed the top of my head. “Our enemies could set this world on fire, kitten, but I’d never allow a single flame to touch you.”

My heart gave a skip at his words and I looked up at him, at the sincerity behind those ocean blue eyes. My heart started racing at his intensity, at the captivation in his gaze. He wanted me as much as I desired him. And I let myself fall… let myself believe that maybe in this insane world of war and hatred, in a place that wouldn’t accept us easily, I could find a way to have a future with these men. Maybe I was being foolish…

“Any chance of having a quick shower?” I asked, and Thane walked me to the bathroom. Inside I noticed the plastic large tube that stretched from floor to ceiling in the corner of the room. Just like the cylinder clothes changer wardrobe I’d used in the house during the trials. My heart soared at the sight because I needed one of these in my home badly.

“Want me to join you?” Thane teased, and as much as I’d love to get all soapy with him, I couldn’t do it with my dad in the house.

I pushed a palm against his chest and drove him backward and out into the corridor. “Not here, but you can picture me running my hands all over my body.” I winked, and the sexual glaze lashing over his gaze came so instantly, I knew he would do exactly that.

“See you soon.” I shut the door and couldn’t wait to wash myself and feel semi-normal.

Half an hour later, I stood in front of the mirror dressed in a teal skirt that tumbled to my knees and a body-fitting, white buttoned-up shirt with three-quarter sleeves. I straightened the collar and the top sat open around my throat, showing just a smidgen of cleavage. Running my fingers through my towel-dried hair, I pushed the dark strands off my face and stared at how much thinner I looked since first arriving here. There was a glow in my cheeks, a wildness in my eyes, and despite running around, I couldn’t help but feel like this was the prettiest I’d ever looked and felt. Maybe running for my life constantly was good for my health in a weird ironic way.

I returned to the main room where everyone but Corran sat around chatting. They glanced up at my arrival, everyone smiling, and I gaited over to sit between my men, feeling lighter after that wash.

“You look delicious by the way,” Thane whispered in my ear.

Just then, Corran returned, carrying a glass of a deep purple juice like this was the world’s salvation. The rest of us were sitting around the main room talking about donuts. Trying to explain to Derrial’s mom what they were and her insistence she’d attempt to make them.

“Drink this.” Corran handed me the glass that was surprisingly warm to the touch. “It needs to be in your system warm, then we need to go.”

“Go?” I looked up at him.

Derrial was already on his feet as was Thane, standing tall like sentinels.

“This will awaken your immune system to a state that will allow our blood connection to merge once again. But it’ll only stay active in your system for a short time. Maybe an hour or two.”

“Hell, then let’s bottle it and I’ll take it a bit later when we’re ready.” My cheeks blushed at trying to hint the need for exchanging blood with each other came in the form of sexual contact. And I was not going to sneak into one of the bedrooms here with all three guys while our parents were out here. I died a little on the inside at the thought.

“Drink it while it’s warm and fresh or it won’t work,” Corran said.

Steeling myself, I pressed the glass to my lips and gulped it all back, the concoction tasting gritty and sour with a hint of lemon.

Corran collected the glass which he placed on the coffee table, while Derrial drew me to my feet by my arms, and I kept licking grit on my teeth, feeling like I’d just drank a glass of muddy water. “That didn’t taste great.”

“We gotta go,” he explained to his mom. “I’ll be in contact soon.”

I turned to my father and rushed over to him as he climbed out of his seat with care. Without a word, I embraced him. “I’m going to miss you, but you’ll be safe here. And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“You won’t get hurt with this blood connection, will you?”

I was shaking my head, but not really knowing the answer to that but I hoped and prayed and trusted the men knew what they were doing. “We need this, so we don’t get sick. I promise to explain so much once I return. Love you.”

He hugged me tighter. “Love you too, Ella. Thank you for finding me.”

“We need to go,” Derrial added.

I broke from my dad, feeling an urgency flooding my veins like I didn’t know anything about what I’d just drank, and I needed to know what I’d gotten myself into. “We’ll be back when we can. You’ll be safe here.”

I turned and left my dad behind just as a strange tingling wormed through the pit of my stomach.

Thane took my hand in his, and we rushed outside and toward the ship in the large back yard, hidden from sight with the reflective shields.

That earlier tingling spread through me faster and warmed me up so fast, I was breathing faster. “I feel strange.”

Looking over at Derrial, at the corded muscles of his arms, the strength in his body, I was suddenly engulfed with heat, my nipples puckering, and all I could think about was his mouth on me… on all of me.

I shook my head. “What was in that drink?”

“The herb we used can have some side effects when used fresh, which is why in the lab we always used the dried version,” Corran explained.

“What sort of side effects?” I demanded.

Derrial’s fingers holding my wrist twitched, and that slight movement sent my body into a shudder so deep and arousing, a moan slipped past my lips, and I squeezed my thighs so tight, I was convinced I was about to orgasm from a simple touch.

All three men stared at me with desire flaring in their eyes, and I couldn’t help but love the way they looked at me right then. Even if my body felt like it might self-combust.

“What’s happening to me?”

“The herb can heighten your arousal significantly.”

“Significantly?” That idea terrified me. “How long will this last? Oh my god, you gave me Viagra!”

“Get inside the ship,” Derrial commanded and dragged me through the open door, my feet stumbling after me.

“What’s Viagra?” Corran studied me intently.

I leaned against the cool inside wall of the shuttle, needing to stop burning up. “A tablet taken by men usually to help them stay… erect for longer.” I rolled my back across the wall. “Can someone die from being so horny they might explode?”

Thane laughed, and the sound was so damn sexy, my skin pricked with excitement. All I could think about was taking off his clothes.

He strode to the driver’s seat, and I chewed on my lower lip as I stared at his tight ass in those black pants.

“Why’s it so hot in here? Switch the air con on to max.”

Derrial stared at me like he had no clue what I was talking about, but I was already pulling at the buttons of my shirt, tugging the collar away, needing to cool down.

The small vibrations of the ship started, and we ascended into the air.

“Come, take a seat.” Corran’s hand slid to my lower back, and his touch ignited a spark of shivers jolting through me. I turned on him so fast, I scared myself. But just having his hands on me felt incredible. Pinpricks coated my bare skin with anticipation. That drink had my body reacting so quickly, it spun my head.

I looked over at him as he sat, and I did the same. His eyes hazed over like he saw nothing else but me. He leaned in closer, his lips capturing mine, and I softened against him, thrumming like a leaf in a storm.

“I need you,” I breathed desperately into his mouth.

His lips left a trail of kisses down my cheek and found the tender spot right between my neck and collarbone. I moaned louder, and the apex between my thighs pulsed wildly.

I was on fire.

Fingers pulled at my shirt ferociously, buttons ripped free, popping around us, but I didn’t care. Not when Corran’s hand claimed my shoulder and dragged the strap of my bra down my arm, not when I pushed myself up and over to straddle Corran’s lap.

My breast slipped free, gaining Corran’s attention and eliciting a smirk.

Large palms clasped my ass, hauling me against him, and he drew my hardened nipple into his mouth. I kissed him with the fever that took me, rubbing myself against the hard cock in his pants.

I needed this.

I needed him.

I needed all of them.

My fingers flexed against his shoulders. His teeth dragged over the flesh of my breast, leaving me trembling.

He suddenly jolted himself to his feet, taking me with him still wrapped around him. Strong arms held my thighs, and I kissed him endlessly, grasping his shoulders, holding on.

Turning us around, he pinned me to the cool wall, grinding the hard bulge in his pants against my fire. He worked against me, and my hips bucked to meet his thrust, only thin layers of fabric between us kept us completely apart.

He was strong and his moans were filled with desperation, frustration of needing to get to me.

His mouth nipped at my flesh of my breast, his hand pushing up and under my skirt.

I looked up to see Derrial standing feet away, his shirt off and his hand on his thick cock, the tip already glistening with his excitement.

“I need you all,” I murmured.

Thane already leapt over his seat and joined us, pulling his shirt up and over his head, revealing spectacular ripped abs. My fingers tingled with an urgency to touch him.

Derrial pushed his shirt off and removed his shoes as he dragged his pants off. He stepped closer completely naked, breathing heavily. His red horns seemed to almost vibrate, and his long devilish tail curled forward, reaching for me. He was so beautiful, so handsome, I could orgasm from just staring at him naked.

As if sensing him, Corran lifted his head from my breasts, his canines seeming longer as if they’d extended. He turned me around and Derrial’s greedy hands pulled my shirt off my back in one fast move before unclasping the bra at my back. He tossed the clothes aside and left me topless. Rugged hands pushed aside my long hair and his mouth found my neck, hands sliding around my body, clasping both breasts, pinching my nipples to the point of pain… delicious pain and I moaned loudly. He drew me backward, lowering my back against his chest, my head cradled against his shoulder. Thane was there now too, his large palms sliding under my lower back, holding me as Corran wrenched my skirt off, still holding me in their arms, like I was a feast they were about to devour. And I welcomed it.

Thane’s hand slid to the waistband of my thong, his fingers curling around it before he snapped it off me so aggressively my whole body shook. Fingers reached down and trailed down my heat, a guttural sound rolling from his chest at finding me already so wet. So ready. And I pushed my hips toward him, needing more, but his fingers slid down my inner thighs, teasing me.

“Please, no teasing. I can’t take it,” I begged.

In unison, they set me down on the floor where a thick blanket waited, and I had no idea when they’d laid it down.

The whisper of a zipper sounded as Corran undressed himself before dropping to his knees and with rough hands on my knees, spread my legs. He glanced down at me, smiling wickedly.

Derrial’s hands sailed over my breasts, pulling at my nipples and I writhed, driven closer and closer to the edge.

Thane knelt next to me, his mouth on my stomach, licking me as he went lower.

Corran spread me wider for Thane who licked over my small mound, then slid deeper, his tongue aggressively lashing over my clit.

An explosive groan rolled through my chest as I arched my back.

The slurping sounds he made were intoxicating with his mouth clamped over me, and I floated away on the heady desire carrying me away.

I was gushing with euphoria, moaning, unable to work out here I started and ended. “Yes, yes, right there.”

“Fuck, you smell so delicious,” he growled and pulled back, while I groaned in protest for more.

Just then, Corran pushed a finger into me, and I met his stare, those brilliant caramel eyes enthralling me. He pushed another finger inside me, and I raised my hips to meet him as he fingered me so fast, I exploded into a scream.

My thighs fell wider, and he leaned down, his mouth on my inner thigh, taking small mock bites of flesh. I felt his teeth, and he nicked skin, rough and painful… just what I wanted. When his fingers slid out of me, I was left needy and starved.

Thane’s attention shifted to a breast, his mouth opening wide and sucking me hard.

Derrial lifted my shoulders against him as he kneeled behind me, his tongue on my neck.

All three kissed and nibbled on me, hands all over my body, reaching, touching every part of me. And I gave myself to them, needing them endlessly. My body felt heavy with arousal yet light enough that I could be floating. I couldn’t explain it, but the desire intensified.

“Fuck,” I yelled out.

“That’s nothing compared to what you’re about to feel,” Corran stated, his breath on my flesh burning me up, his mouth dragging lower over my bikini line, driving me insane with his teasing.

Lust and buzzing seared through my veins, and I was so close to coming.

Corran’s mouth slid over me, taking me, his tongue sinking into me, his nose pressed to my clit.

I screamed as the orgasm tore over me.

Sharp fangs pierced my neck.

My breasts.

The inside of my thigh.

I convulsed, seizing Thane’s shoulder with one hand, Derrial’s hair fisted in another and my thighs clenched around Corran’s head. My body rocked with lust, liquid hot fire, and I was so wet, dripping. All three men drank from me in that exquisite moment of lust.

The sensation stretched out, the men drinking my blood, taking and taking while I burned with a desire I’d never experienced before.

Thane released his hold first, blood dripping from his lush lips, and he bit down onto his wrist before pressing it to my mouth.

“Drink, my kitten.”

I clasped his arm, taking his life force. The metallic taste smeared my lips and tongue, sliding out the corners of my mouth, and I gulped the coppery blood down….it tasted so sweet.

Corran’s head moved from my thigh, and his face was suddenly buried against my pussy again, licking and tasting me feverishly.

I moaned and sucked on Thane’s blood while the men devoured me. Thane plucked his hand from me, and I lurched after him, needing more, licking my lips with hunger, but it was Derrial who drew me to him next, giving me his forearm, the gash bubbling with fresh blood.

I ran a tongue over the cut and latched my mouth to him, starved for the taste that was now a part of me.

Already, my body responded, awakened, stronger and I craved so much more.

“That’s enough,” Derrial ordered, also taking his arm from me, and I winced.

The men pulled back from me, sitting on their heels, their mouths and chins and chests coated in blood, their horns vibrating, and I’d never seen anyone this sexy in my life. I wanted us smothered in our bloods, rolling in it, fucking in it.

“On your knees,” Derrial ordered. “And turn to face Corran.”

My aroused induced brain kicked in and I rolled over onto my stomach before sticking my ass into the air and pushing myself to hands and knees. Like a prowling cat, I turned around in slow motion on hands and knees, blood dripping from my wounds, the men staring at me like predators about to strike.

Derrial’s large hands grabbed my hips and hauled me against him so hard and fast, I cried out.

Thane lay on his back and shuffled in underneath me, taking a breast into his mouth, his sharp teeth marking me, bleeding me, while Corran walked on his knees closer. With a sharp fingernail, he sliced himself just above his groin. I pressed my lips to him, licking and tasting him, taking him into me.

The tip of Derrial’s cock pressed against my entrance, and he nudged my thighs wider with a hand. Then he pushed into me without ceremony, inch by inch he pressed deeper, slowly and gently, making room for himself inside me. He was so big. And he kept pushing, filling me further even when I was full.

With a slap to my ass, he pulled out and thrust back in, harder, faster.

Then he fucked me hard. Rode me, never letting up. Burst of arousal engulfed me, and I wanted more and more and more. I gasped for air, sweat and blood coated me, and I drank from my lovers.

All the while, Derrial dominated me, and wanted me to know it. Wanted me to remember my place.

And there was no doubt in my mind who I belonged to.

To three intoxicating Vepars.

Three men who owned me, body, soul, and mind.

Chapter 10

As we laid there in the bloody paradise of our own making, I saw that Thane looked pensive and a little bit worried. Not exactly the look I thought he would have after what we had just shared.

"What's wrong?" I asked, stroking his arm softly as I spoke, his skin slippery under my touch because of the blood that coated his flesh.

"I think it's time you met my mother," he said. I saw the guys exchange looks with each other. I rolled my eyes; they were never going to stop.

"I'm sure I know at least some of your secrets at this point, but you should probably just tell me why you want to go visit your mom now, while we are fugitives from the Vepar government," I said in what I hoped sounded like a fierce voice.

Derrial laughed at my attempt. "Okay pet, tell us what secrets you think we’re trying to keep from you," he asked in a patronizing voice.

"What about the fact that you think that the Council's experiments are making the Vepars lose control and go crazy. That wouldn't be why you wanted to visit your mother now, would it?" I asked Thane in a heated voice.

All of the guys’ jaws dropped.

“I heard you on the spaceship. I'm not telling you how, just in case I need to listen again, but I know a lot more than you think I do now."

Thane got up, took a towel out of a cabinet nearby and started to wipe himself down. I was pretty sure that wasn't going to even come close to wiping off all the blood coating him. We probably needed to shower several times and maybe just destroy this room; I didn't think it could get clean.

Before anyone began to answer any of my questions, Corran walked over to the far wall, and opened up a drawer next to the bed. I admired the way his taut muscles moved under his skin. He pulled out a small rectangular device that looked similar to a cigarette lighter. He opened up the top and pressed a button.

I watched in amazement as beads of blood started to rise up in the air from where they had been plastered all over the sheets, floor, our bodies, and the walls. The blood droplets gathered and zoomed towards the machine, disappearing into it somehow even though it was way too small to hold all the carnage of the room. After just a few minutes, the room, our clothes, and everything else was perfectly clean, like I had just imagined the mess we had just made.

"Better close your mouth, kitten. You wouldn't want a Daygar to get in," advised Corran with a laugh.

"What the hell is a Daygar?" I asked. "We say flies usually when we’re talking about closing your mouth, is a Daygar similar to that,” I asked, confused.

The guys were all openly laughing at me at this point. "The Daygars are monsters that eat your tongue while you are sleeping. They're not real, but we tell children that in order to get them to behave,” answered Derrial.

I thought about Bruda’s similar tale about parents telling the children about the Khonsu to keep them in line. Clearly these people had a different idea of appropriate stories to tell their children than humans did.

"I'm going to be closely monitoring any stories we tell our children," I announced to all of them.

Immediately there was a soft look in all of their eyes, you would've thought that I had just given them one million dollars or something like that. "What?" I asked suspiciously.

"That's just the first time you've really talked about actually having children with us," said Corran softly.

I stared at him. "I thought that was a foregone conclusion considering I could possibly be pregnant already. Although, I guess there's no chance the child would be one of yours though, is there?” I asked, a wave of sadness and frustration welling over me.

It was bad enough to be forced to be pregnant. But then to not even know who the father was? What if he was a monster? What if I was growing a monster's baby? What would we do then?

"We can't worry about that right now. And there's always the chance that it could be one of ours. Our sperm was used in the experiments since I was in charge of them," Corran explained.

He must've seen the confused look on my face, because he answered before I could voice my question. "That whole God complex that us scientists have. If we were going to create new life, I wanted that life to be because of me," he said, not sounding a little bit embarrassed about it.

A thin tendril of hope rose up in me, even though I knew that I should tamp it down.

"But I'm sure everything was labeled. There’s no way that the Council would've allowed one of your sperm to be used in an experiment with me after everything that's happened," I said, my hopes dashing into pieces at those thoughts.

"That's probably true," said Corran. "But there's still a chance that it could be one of ours if you are even pregnant.”

I nodded. If I believed that enough, maybe it would come true...right?

"Now that Corran has managed to clean us all up, let's get out of here,” Thane commanded, breaking the suddenly heavy silence.

"To see your mother?" I asked.

Thane nodded. "I want you to meet her. But… I also want to check in on her. I usually visit her once a month when I'm on Veon. I know that they've taken a lot of the affected Vepar to her facility, so I want to check on the security precautions to make sure that she's safe."

My heart melted at how worried he sounded. All of them were so layered. It felt like I was always discovering new things about them. Thane’s concern over his mother's safety was just another layer. It had been a very long time since she had been any form of a parent to him, but I could tell that she still meant so much to him.

"Let's go," I said.

Thane and Derrial spent a few minutes mapping out a route to the facility. It was obviously a risk going there since it was a risk going anywhere public right now. They didn't think that the Council would put resources toward scoping out the facility, but you never knew. It was apparently common knowledge among the higher ups where Thane’s mom was kept.

We would have to don disguises when we went into the building though, just in case the staff had been alerted to our “most wanted” status.

Finally, we were off. Zipping through the Vepar sky, I watched the myriad of colors underneath us, I once again marveled at how I'd ended up on this crazy planet.

The trip was short. Only an hour passed before we were there. We stopped about a mile away so that the ship’s sensors could detect the area for any of the Council or its army. When none appeared, except one in one of the facilities’ buildings upstairs who had gone crazy, we flew in closer and landed in a patch of woods outside the facility.

Corran disguised me as a blonde with two Vepar horns the color of ebony coming out of my head. The guys disguised themselves as well and we left the ship. There was no way that anyone would recognize us in these getups.

I wasn't sure what to expect as we got closer to the building. We were about to walk into what basically amounted to a Vepar insane asylum. I wasn't sure what insanity looked like here considering I was pretty sure Zeni had been insane and she had still been allowed to roam free. Their standards for what counted as crazy must have been a little different from Earth’s.

From the outside the facility looked similar to other Vepar dwellings I had seen, except it was a lot larger. In fact, it was almost as large as the Khonsu arena had been. Except this was in the familiar dome-shape of most of the Vepar dwellings.

It was perfectly white on the outside, a light dusting of silver sparkles peeking out from the pristine whiteness. It was impossible to tell what the front of the building was and what was the back since there were no visible doors or windows.

I followed the guys to the building. We stood there in front of the blank wall, which I assumed had to be the front, and we waited. After what felt like ten minutes, I jumped back in surprise when a holographic image of a beautiful Vepar woman appeared in front of us.

"Please state your name," she said in a perfectly calm voice. The tone of her voice was so calm that it evoked images of meadows and rippling streams just by listening to it. It was the perfect voice for a place like this whose inhabitants were probably the opposite of calm.

"Aeryn," Thane said, not giving a last name. Corran had hacked into the facilities database when Thane’s mother had been first admitted and inputted several aliases for them all into the system. They now had several names with security clearances to be used with their different disguises. I guess the guys had always believed in being prepared.

“I'm here to see, Lania,” Thane continued, cutting off my thoughts. The hologram nodded.

"Please wait," she stated before disappearing.

Lania, that was a pretty name. I wondered if she and Thane looked alike.

I was nervous when a door appeared in the previously smooth wall and we walked in. Even though by the sound of it, Thane’s mother wouldn’t talk to me very much, I still had an innate need for her to like me.

The inside of the facility was the same stark white as the outside. Apparently the Vepar had come to the same decision as facilities on Earth, that the mentally ill needed the serenity of white rather than the chaos of the other colors.

We went down a long hallway with no windows or doors. There was no sign of anyone else although I thought I could hear faint yells and screams from beyond the walls. I started to feel claustrophobic. Corran must've sensed my distress because he grabbed my hand in his and squeezed it reassuringly.

After a time, we came to another wall and stopped in front of it. The hologram appeared again.

"Lania is having a good day today. Please be advised that she continues to suffer from intense hallucinations and is prone to outbursts of anger that can lead to physical violence. Today she has been allowed to freely move around her room. Please make sure that you are not carrying any sharp objects or other items that could be used as weapons," the hologram told us.

Thane’s body had stiffened at the robotic way that the hologram spit out his mother's medical information, like she wasn't a living being, just another statistic in a computer. I felt a rush of pity that I knew Thane wouldn't appreciate. What had his life been like, having a mother who suffered from issues like that?

It made me think of my own mother and the fact that she was still missing. Soft was what I thought of when I thought of my mother. Her voice, her mannerisms, the feeling of her skin. Everything about her had been soft and loving. I wondered if years of torture under the Khonsu had knocked that out of her. If she was alive, would she be joining Thane’s mother at a place like this?

I shivered just thinking about it. After Thane nodded his understanding and the rest of us all nodded as well, a door appeared in the wall. It slid open, and we walked into another white room. There was a white metal bed in one corner of the room. It looked like it had been wrapped in some kind of padding. I supposed so that she wouldn't be able to hurt herself on it. The room was empty of any furnishings besides a large screen that was embedded into one of the walls. On the screen played a slideshow of various images that I recognized as different places around Veon. Soft smooth music played from hidden speakers in the walls. And there, sitting on a white pillow on the floor in front of the screen, was who I assumed was Thane's mother.

She turned to look at us as we came in and her face lit up with a stunning smile. She was gorgeous, as were all the Vepar, but she had a certain look about her that was different from the other Vepar that I’d seen. There were deep lines around her eyes and her forehead unlike other Vepars. She also had a certain sadness in her stunning blue eyes, the same blue eyes that I stared into whenever I gazed at Thane’s face.

"Visitors," she said delightedly in a raspy voice that sounded more like it was a result of screaming than how her natural tone was. "I don't have visitors often," she said self-consciously, running a hand through her hair. "Don't mind the mess. I told Thane to pick up his toys, but you know how little boys are," she continued.

No one had mentioned to me that Thane’s mother was so far gone that she wouldn't recognize him. I watched the devastation flicker in Thane's eyes and saw how it turned into resignation. I suspected that he always held out hope that his visits would go differently than this and that she would actually recognize him.

"Little boys are mischievous," Thane told her softly. He approached her slowly, as if he were approaching a wild animal. He crouched down in front of her. She watched him; eyes wide. "How are you today, Lania. My name is Aeryn," he said in that same calm, gentle voice that sounded more like Corran than it did him.

"It's been an excellent day. I tended my flowers, I picked some food from the garden, Thane and I skipped rocks on the pond out back. My husband should be here soon. I'm sure you and him will get along wonderfully," she said.

Thane nodded. He continued to ask her questions, inquiring after her health and trying to get her to tell him how she was being treated at the facility. It was hard to do since she was stuck in an alternate reality. Not once did she ask him why he was visiting her. I wondered why that was.

After a while, she took her attention off of Thane and looked at us.

"And who have you brought with you?" she asked, giving me a big smile as she spoke. Thane stood up and walked over to my side. “Mot- I mean Lania, I'd like you to meet my mate, Ella," he said, wrapping his arm around my waist and walking me towards his mother. She stood up off her pillow and held out her hand. "It's so wonderful to meet you, Ella. My, you are a lovely girl. Just the kind of girl I could see my Thane marrying someday."

It took me a moment to remember that I looked nothing like myself, and a pang of sadness hit me that I may never get the chance to have Thane introduce me as myself.

I clasped her hand in both of mine. "Lania, it's a pleasure to meet you. Your Thane sounds like a lovely boy."

That must've been the right thing to say, because Lania launched into a million stories about Thane as a young boy. I listened in rapt fascination, hoping that they were real stories and I was getting more clues into my mysterious mate’s past. I knew he would never tell me these stories himself.

She was in the middle of a story about when Thane had tried to capture a Khonsu by himself at five years old, then she suddenly stopped talking. She began staring off into the distance as if she could see something else in the room other than us.

With a high-pitched scream, she began to thrash and moan. Her words were garbled and nonsensical, and she leapt at Thane with her hands outstretched like claws as if she was going to tear him apart with her bare hands.

"Lania," Thane said soothingly as he grabbed her, holding her hands to her sides as she thrashed and screamed in his arms. Tears streamed down my face as I watched Thane. His hands were trembling, and there was pure agony on his face as he held down his mother. The door behind us suddenly opened and a stream of Vepar clad in white doctor’s coats rushed into the room. One of the staff, a Vepar male close to the same size as Thane, with dirty blonde hair and two small, lime green horns on his head, pulled a syringe filled needle out of his pocket as he approached Lania.

"Is that necessary?" Thane asked brokenly.

"Her episodes have been getting worse as of late. The only way to calm her down is to knock her out," he answered stiffly.

I hated seeing them administer the injection. It reminded me of all the times that a syringe had been used on me.

The medicine worked instantly, and soon she went limp in Thane’s arms. He helped the staff move her back to bed and tenderly pulled the blankets up to her chin. The staff left as quickly as they had come in. Alone again, Thane patted his mother's shoulder gently, pressing a kiss to her forehead softly. "Sweet dreams, mama," he whispered, and his pain was so tangible it was like I could see his heart breaking.

I wanted to give Thane a hug, but I could tell it wouldn’t be welcome at the moment. Thane liked to grieve privately, and he probably hated that we were in the room to watch him right now.

“Should we go?” asked Derrial calmly, as if nothing had happened.

Thane nodded and stepped away from his mother, taking one last look back at her as we left the room. I finally couldn't help myself, and I grabbed his hand in both of mine. I brought them to my lips to give them a gentle kiss in an attempt to provide some comfort.

His sad eyes looked at me, and I watched as they briefly warmed at my touch.

We had just taken a few steps down the hall when a door to the left of us opened. A Vepar with a yellow stump on his salt-and-pepper flecked hair walked out of the room accompanied by a staff member. Looking closer at him, I realized that it looked like his horn had been sawed off.

When he saw us, immediate recognition lit across his features. I didn’t know how this was possible since we were disguised. From the stiffening shoulders of my mates, it was clear that they recognized him as well. Derrial suddenly grabbed me around the waist, as if we were going to have to run at any moment.

"Still using the same disguises, are we?" the Vepar sneered at us. I looked at him in shock. How would he have seen these disguises before? He didn't look at me, he only had eyes for the guys.

"Nice to see you all walking around free, while I’m stuck in this hellhole," he spat at us. We had all stopped in the hallway, facing each other. The staff member was looking back and forth between us confused.

The Vepar finally glanced at me. "And who do we have here? Is this the human bitch that you betrayed me for? It’s a nice Vepar mask she has on. I would love to see what she really looks like," he snarled.

My eyes widened and I rubbed a hand across my face, making sure that my disguise was still in place and you couldn’t see it pulling away from my skin or something.

Derrial started to pull me down the hallway, away from the altercation taking place.

"I did everything I was supposed to for you," he yelled angrily. "Did you find her and decide that you wanted to keep her from the Council? Is that why I’m stuck in here?" he asked.

I stopped and pulled away from Derrial, who had still been trying to urge me forward. What was this man talking about?

He saw my confusion and began to laugh, an eerily crazed laugh that fit in with this place perfectly.

"You must be something special." He leered at me. "The other girls we harvested for the Council didn't make any of these assholes so much as blink."

At that statement, the staff member gripped his arm firmly. "That's enough now," he barked, beginning to drag him away from all of us.

"Did you ever find out what the Council was doing with all those human women, or do you still not care?" he cackled. "Because I did," he said, beginning to laugh uproariously. The laugh echoed down the hallway until he was out of sight, leaving us alone.

I stood still for a moment, struggling to put together everything he had just said with what I had been told and learned before this. I finally looked at them. "Were you the ones that brought women like Bruda to the Council to be their slaves?" I asked, horror freezing my insides.

"I don't think we should talk about that here," Thane said warily. “There’s more to this than you can understand right now.”

Derrial tried to grab me again to lead me out of the facility, but my feet refused to move. It was like I had been encased in ice.

It was bad enough when I had thought that they had known about the existence of my parents and possibly other human beings on this planet. But to find out that they'd actually been the ones harvesting humans to bring them back to Veon for the Council’s use. And that the Council had then used the human women as sex slaves...

Everything just kept getting worse. It had been awful to think that I was the special human that they had brought back for the first time to try and solve the Vepar’s fertility issues. But I was just one person. The idea of them stealing human women on a mass scale...it was just incomprehensible.

They were monsters. There was no way around it.

I felt something break inside of me at that moment. It was like something snapped, and I was left with an emptiness in its wake that felt irreparable.

“Stop looking at us like that,” Derrial groaned, rubbing his heart like I had mortally wounded him.

“You make me sick,” I spat at them. “How can you even deign to call me your mate when I’m human. What made me different than all of those poor people that you sentenced to a life of unending torment?”

“Just let us…” started Corran.

“There’s nothing you can say to make this better,” I screeched, probably causing a scene to whoever was listening behind closed doors. I expected the facility’s security staff to arrive at any moment, but I didn’t care.

“We’ve changed, you have to admit that,” Thane answered desperately.

I began to back away from them, not sure where I was going to go. I knew I wasn’t safe to be away from them, but in this moment...I wasn’t sure how I could stay.

Just then an alarm started blaring, practically bursting my eardrums with how loud it rang. The guys looked around, immediately trying to analyze where the danger was coming from.

Derrial grabbed me, this time not letting me go as he began to drag me down the hallway. I didn’t fight him this time, I wasn’t a fool.

I noticed that Thane hadn’t moved from where he was standing. He looked torn.

“What are you doing? We need to go!” barked Derrial.

“My mother,” he said. And that was all he needed to say. Whatever this alarm was, it sounded serious.

“Fuck,” said Derrial. “Let’s go.” He turned around and started to move back in the direction we’d come from. He was walking so fast that I couldn’t keep up, so he had to hoist me into his arms as the guys started to run.

His touch made my skin crawl, but what could I do?

We had just reached the wall where I thought his mom’s room lay beyond, when a sudden trampling of hurried footsteps came from the left of us.

I looked up and immediately felt Derrial shudder with panic beneath me.

“Grab her,” he barked, but Thane was already blasting through the wall to escape. Evidently, we didn’t have enough time for him to try and activate the door.

Derrial must have decided he needed to get me out of there because he turned to run back outside.

But it was too late.

Vepar after Vepar came streaming towards us. But they weren’t regular Vepar. Something was wrong with them. The sounds coming out of their mouths didn’t resemble any language I had ever heard.

They lurched like they’d lost control of their functioning body and now it just moved like someone controlled them. Faces pale, clothes torn, limbs inflicted with wounds and bloody cuts. What happened to these people?

An unsuspecting nurse headed out of a nearby room when three of the Vepar lunged at her, dragging her to the ground. She screamed, and Thane charged. He hurled a fist into one man, then lunged for the two other attackers. He flipped one off the men in an incredible wrestling match to the ground. Shoving the last man off the nurse, he dragged the woman back to her feet by the back of her uniform, the poor thing crying, blood pouring from her bites and scratches. She darted back into the office.

I whimpered and recoiled into Derrial. My heart shuddered as I watched them scratch and bite her. They were like zombies.

Please don’t let it be zombies. I can’t handle that on top of everything else.

Derrial pushed me behind him. “Corran take the few at our rear,” he commanded, his voice tense and strained. “I’ll take the rest with Thane.”

“Pet,” he said to me without looking back. “Please stay low and hidden.”

Then he burst forward at the onslaught of Vepars.

Behind me, Corran had fought and knocked to the ground a man with a single punch, while two others lunged onto his back.

I cried out and trembled insanely. But instinct punched me in the gut, and I scanned the hallway, finding only a metal table on wheels for a weapon. I ran and grabbed the damn table and shoved it toward one of the demons, driving it right into the hip of a man about to pile on top of Corran as well.

He groaned with shock and stumbled over his own feet, hitting the ground hard.

Corran kicked a man in front of him, while I grabbed the arm of the woman clinging to his back like a monkey, her mouth gaping open, readying to bite him. Drool seeped from her mouth and I gagged, but I wrenched her backward.

“Get off him,” I cried.

Corran whipped around, his expression startled, but he flashed me a grin. “Thanks.” A fast kiss on my lips, and he threw himself back against the three encroaching Vepar. If I wasn’t so terrified, I might swoon.

Someone slapped a hand to my shoulder.

I flinched around, my heart racing, and shoved the hand off me.

A young man with stubby white horns and a square head snarled, lips peeled over sharp canines. His shirt had been half torn and hung off low on one shoulder. His flesh was dotted in bite marks.

My feet slipped backward.

My stomach clenched.

Hands raised; grubby fingers reached for me as he rushed forward.

I screamed, backing away.

Corran whirled toward me in an instant, grabbed the attacker by the throat, and hurled him into a wall.

I stared in awe, in complete and utter amazement at his strength.

More of the infected or whatever they were, staggered down the hallway, and I looked left and right, unsure where to go, where it’d be safe.

I reached for a nearby door, pushing on the handle, but it was locked. I snapped around, my heart in my throat. No other doors to try, so I slid down near the metal table, my back to the wall, and tucked my knees against my chest. I tried to curl myself tight, too scared to move. A scream bubbled on my throat. After everything, I didn’t want us to die here. Not like this.

The fights grew vicious, and I remained low, watching every blow... every bite and punch. I lost concept of time, but when I saw Derrial fall, I couldn’t help but run to him. I didn’t even register what was going on around me. All I could see was Derrial lying on the ground motionless, blood seeping from his body.

I sank to my knees beside him. My hands immediately went to his chest in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding. Not that that ever worked... even in the movies. But I still had to try.

"It's okay, it's okay," I said desperately. Derrial opened his eyes and took a deep, rattling breath. Even with my nonexistent medical knowledge, I knew that rattling wasn't a good thing.

I looked around desperately for Corran. Surely, he would have his device with him to help heal these injuries. He was in the middle of a fight with two rabid Vepar however, and it didn't look like he was winning. Looking around next for Thane, his situation was even more dire. He was on his knees, bloody slashes all over his body as he tried to fend off at least five of the crazed Vepar who were attacking him from all angles.

Looking down at a dying Derrial, I realized we weren't going to make it.

Derrial slid his trembling hand to mine and took it in a weak grasp. "I'm so sorry, Ella," he wheezed out.

I didn't know what he was saying sorry for, was it for kidnapping me in the first place or transporting humans to Veon for years… Did it really matter? At that moment, honestly, I didn't care.

Maybe that made me a terrible person that I could forgive all of that but seeing the being that I'd fallen irreversibly in love with dying in my arms...that made forgiveness a lot more possible.

"I'm so sorry for all of it,” he repeated, his eyes glistening. "At least now you will be free."

This wasn't happening. This wasn't real life. After everything we'd been through, this was really the end.

I heard a pained grunt and my eyes flashed over to Thane. Piles of Vepar surrounded him, but he was on his hands and knees on the floor, covered in blood. My eyes flashed over to Corran, still expecting somehow that one of them was going to be able to save the day. Corran was passed out on the ground, the two Vepar he had been battling on the ground alongside him.

I stood up and ran over to Corran’s body. He was still breathing, but barely. I started patting him down, looking for the device. I couldn't find it.

"Where is it?" I cried out in an anguished voice.

His eyes fluttered open. "I left it on the ship. I don't know why I did that. This is my fault," he rasped. "All my fault."

"Shhh," I soothingly told him, stroking his face and brushing his lips with a gentle kiss. The ship was too far away for me to make it there and back in time, if I could even find the device in the first place. We were out of time.

I was aware that there were still some crazed Vepar stumbling in the hallway around me, but at the moment, I didn't care if they killed me. What was my life going to be like anyway alone on this forsaken planet without these three men?

I wished at that moment it was possible for me to be in three places at once. I wanted to touch Thane one more time.

“I love you, kitten," I heard him call out softly. My crying intensified.

I was trying to be strong, but the tears were falling so rapidly that they were soaking Corran’s shirt.

Looking at his face, I realized that I wasn’t even going to get to look at them as they really were because they were still wearing their disguises. We were all going to die looking like other people.

I began to hear a loud buzzing sound.

It grew louder and louder until the whole building began to shake. What was that? Had the Council arrived to blow the building up?

The buzzing seemed to really affect the surviving crazed Vepar still milling around. They sank to the ground, screaming in agony with their hands over their ears.

I didn't understand what was going on. The buzzing was loud, but not loud enough to cause physical pain. They were acting like they were being tortured.

The buzzing finally stopped. There was an intense silence, it almost sounded louder than the buzzing had been. It was funny how that worked.

The wall down the hallway opened up and a group of male and female Vepar dressed in battle gear came running in from the outside. Was this the Council's army? I looked around for a weapon that I could use against them, but the group was upon us before I could grab anything.

I took a deep breath, prepared for whatever came next and the inevitability of my enslavement or death.

I was shocked when a familiar face made his way from the back of the group. It was Lanton, Thane’s father. I had never been so happy to see someone.

"Ella," he said, looking relieved. That relief immediately disappeared as soon as he saw the carnage around us and the fact that his son was one of the fallen. Pulling a device out of his pocket that looked achingly similar to Corran’s healing device, he ran over to Thane and started running it over him. Within a minute Thane’s cuts were sealing up, and his breathing was improving. Once Thane had opened his eyes, looking so much better than before, Lanton next ran to Derrial. "Shit," he muttered to himself. “It might be too late."

Thane’s father started running the device all over Derrial frantically. "Come on, son," he barked frantically.

I was distracted by Thane sitting up. A wave of relief so potent that it almost succeeded in knocking me to the ground rushed over me. I looked down at Corran. We didn't have much time left with him though. What if he and Derrial didn’t make it?

Thane walked over to me, and I had never been so intensely grateful for Corran's brilliant mind that had created such amazing technology. Thane looked almost completely healed.

Thane gathered me in his arms, burying his face into my neck. "I love you," he whispered fiercely. That emptiness that had built inside of me since the earlier revelations, and which had only gotten larger in the aftermath of seeing their broken bodies… it started to fill.

I heard a sigh and my attention leaped back to where Lanton had been furiously working over Derrial’s broken body. To my relief, Derrial’s breathing had started to steady as well, the rattling sound disappearing, although he hadn't woken up yet. Lanton kept moving the machine over him for another minute before he stood up and made his way quickly to Corran.

Corran's eyes blinked open, but his gaze was hazy. "It's okay, son," Lanton said soothingly to him as he started to run the machine over Corran’s body.

At that moment I was so grateful for the men’s bond that had extended to their parents as well.

Corran recovered before Derrial even opened his eyes. We had been so close to losing him. It was going to be a long time before I would be able to let any of them out of my sight.

While Lanton had been saving my men's life, the rest of the Vepar that he had brought with him had disposed of the remaining infected Vepar. Derrial, Thane, and Corran had taken care of a lot of them, but the sheer number of them had made it impossible for warriors even of their caliber to win.

Everyone still standing looked around the hallway with a little bit of shock. The amount of infected Vepar they had been holding in this facility was almost unbelievable. It didn’t surprise any of us that they had been able to escape and get past the staff.

Thane put a hand on his father's shoulder and bowed his head in respect. "Thank you, father," he said, his voice choked with emotion. "That was almost the end for us."

Lanton seemed equally choked up. Coming so close to death definitely brought everything into perspective, even for two gruff and powerful men like Thane and his father.

"But how did you know to come here?" Thane asked after a moment, looking puzzled.

"I knew you would try to see your mother when I heard about all of the crazed Vepar that the Council had started to put into this facility. A large group of them tried to invade the Council building this morning," Lanton continued. "As soon as I heard that, and none of you had checked in with any of us, I knew I needed to make sure you were all right for myself."

He pulled Thane in for a tight hug. "I don't know what I would do if I lost you," he said, his voice swelling with emotion. “I’ve never recovered from what happened to your mother. But losing you would be my final breaking point.”

Thane looked up suddenly. “We need to check on her,” he said worriedly.

“I already sent in some of my men to make sure she was safe. She didn’t even know anything was happening.”

Thane nodded, looking relieved.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lanton said, looking around in disgust at the carnage around us.

“We need to bring her with us,” said Thane, moving to walk to his mother’s room.

“I’ll be taking her with me. You aren’t really in a position to be moving her around with you right now,” Lanton said.

That made sense to me, but by the look on Thane’s face, what Lanton had just said surprised him.

“You’re taking her with you?” he asked, sounding concerned. “Are you going to be alright seeing her every day?”

Lanton cleared his throat, resolve shining from his face.

"She’s still my wife," he said in a gravelly voice. "I can still picture her as she was, every memory that we shared runs on a loop in my head. I guess I’ve just been a coward since everything happened. It just felt too hard to see her as she is now when I can remember so clearly how it was in the past. But I still love her, I’ll love her until my dying breath. And maybe someday she'll come back to me."

He cleared his throat. "Until then I'll keep her safe." He clapped Thane on the shoulder and walked away. Thane looked like he was holding back tears. He had shown more emotion today than I had seen from him ever.

I suddenly felt exhausted. I knew it would probably take a very long time before the images from today left my own head. I just hoped that we would get the chance to replace them with the good memories that Lanton at least had of him and his wife.

A pair of arms encircled my waist, and I whirled around, knowing who they belonged to immediately. Derrial was up. He looked tired but healed. I wrapped my arms around his neck and began to sob. It seemed like all I did nowadays was cry.

“Shhh, it’s alright, pet,” he whispered in my ear. The sound of his voice only made me cry harder.

“You almost dieeeed,” I whimpered. “You all almost did.”

He didn’t say anything, just continued to hold me in his strong grip.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said after a few minutes. I pulled away, trying to wipe his shirt discreetly as I was sure there was a bucket of snot and tears covering his shoulder after the cryfest I had just engaged in.

Derrial surprised me by picking me up in his arms.

“Are you sure you’re strong enough to hold me?” I asked, trying to get out of his grasp.

He looked offended at my question. “I feel better than ever,” he said. I looked over his shoulder at Corran. “Have I told you how much I love your big, beautiful brain?” I asked him.

The guys threw back their heads and laughed at me. The sound of their laughter was a balm for my soul.

“What?” I asked, pretending to be affronted.

“You like my brain, do you?” Corran asked with a smirk that set off way more fireworks inside of me than was appropriate in this situation. “Are you sure there isn’t something else on my body you like better?”

"I happen to find your brain the sexiest part of you," I replied haughtily, my cheeks flushing under their teasing. The fact that they could tease me at all, however, had my soul soaring.

I pressed a firm kiss against Derrial’s cheek, and they laughed again.

"Looks like we need to have more near-death experiences so that kitten can retract her claws for a minute or two," joked Thane. I stuck my tongue out at him but squeezed Derrial tighter. I didn't want to experience anything like what we had experienced today ever again.

"Let them joke," Derrial whispered in my ear. “It's the only way that we’ll get past the fact that we almost lost you forever." I pulled back away from him.

"Haven't you heard that it's always the living that are left behind when someone dies?" I asked him, stroking his face gently. "You would've been rolling around in heaven while I was left behind to mourn you,"

“The Vepar don't believe in heaven. And even if we did, the three of us are never going to make it there. We’d be fighting our way out of hell to get back to you," he swore softly.

I didn't say anything to that. I had already come to the conclusion that they were monsters.

And maybe it was wrong to love a monster, but they were my monsters, and I was never going to feel guilty about that ever again.

We finally followed Lanton’s men outside of the facility, and I had never been more grateful to be in the fresh air as I was right now.

Derrial set me down long enough for me to give Lanton a huge hug, although he didn’t stray more than an arm’s length away from me. "I'm forever in your debt," I told Lanton, starting to cry again, which was getting really frustrating.

Lanton held my face between his hands and looked at me fondly. "I would do anything for my children," he said. "And now that includes you."

I didn't have any response to that, so I just threw my arms around him, I was sure, shocking the gruff Vepar. I would find some way to show my appreciation to him, even if it took the rest of my life.

After Thane, Corran, and Derrial all gave their thanks and said goodbye to Lanton, we walked back to Corran’s ship. As we stepped inside, I couldn't help but feel like I had lived an entire life between the last time I had been on the ship and now. And even though we had made it through, I didn't let my guard down until we were up in the air pulling away from the facility. I never wanted to see that place again.

If our lives kept up this way, there wouldn't be any place on Veon that wouldn't give me terrible memories when I visited it.

"So where do we go now?" I asked my mates as we sat in the Bridge, all exhaustively pondering what we had just been through.

Corran looked back at me as he fiddled with the controls. "Let's go home."

Chapter 11

Home happened to be another one of the guys’ safe houses. I had never been happier than I was as I walked into what I hoped would be our home for at least a while.

Considering this was a safe house, it actually was my favorite place that I'd seen on Veon. And that wasn't just because of the experience we had just had.

The house was located on the edge of Veon’s lavender ocean. There wasn't another soul around for miles. The colorful trees went all the way up to the shoreline, and the dwelling was situated in the midst of the trees, hidden from sight just in case a Council ship flew over. But the men weren’t too worried about that, this area was so remote that the Council had never paid attention very much to it in the past.

The outside of the dome structure was a soft brown color, and I was grateful that it wasn't white like the facility had been. The trees around us held a multitude of colors and combined with the lavender sea, I felt like I had fallen into a beautiful dream world.

Corran had designed the inside so that you could see through the walls, so it felt like you were living amidst the trees, even though no one could see in.

It was perfect.

Corran must've used the same technology as he had on his ship because the inside of the house seemed to stretch on forever despite the fact that it looked like a very humble dwelling from the outside. We each had separate rooms complete with our own bathrooms. There was a large living area, an office that resembled the inside of a computer it had so much technology in it, a gym, and a gourmet kitchen that contained the same machine as Corran’s ships, meaning that I could get ice cream whenever I wanted it.

I collapsed on my bed as soon as I walked in, immediately knowing which bedroom mine was since it had the largest closet. The closet was of course filled with more clothing than I could wear in a lifetime, but it made me feel normal to see it, like we were back in our house on Earth and we were just living a normal life.

I stared through the wall at the candy-colored trees as they blew gently in the breeze. Derrial had said it was safe to go out into the ocean, but for now, I was content to stay hidden in the house. It felt like for the first time in a long time, I didn't have to look over my shoulder.

Thane walked in with his hands behind his back. The guys had been hovering just outside my door for the last hour. I guess they felt as needy as I did at the moment.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said with a big grin.

I sat up. “What is it?” I asked, so sleepy it was hard to muster up any excitement.

Thane pulled a tiny purple piglet out from behind his back, and I immediately started squealing.

"Thane," I said excitedly, jumping off the bed to grab him. "I mean Thane Jr.," I amended laughingly, looking up at Thane’s annoyed face.

"But how did you get him here?" I asked, lovingly petting the tiny purple creature. I felt like a terrible alien pet parent considering I hadn’t really thought about him with everything that was going on. Although really do most people think about their pet piglets when they’re being forcibly impregnated, hunted by an evil alien race, or fighting for their mates’ lives?

I didn’t think so.

Thane Jr. snuggled into me, squeaking excitedly. I’d forgotten how cute the noises were that he made. Now, this really felt like home.

"We had left him with Corran’s parents before everything happened. My father actually brought him on his ship to meet up with us." Thane explained. “I think he was happy to hand him off,” he said with a laugh. “Evidently our little piggy caused a lot of messes.”

I was barely listening in my excitement at having my pet back. "Oh...you are so cute. Did you miss mommy?" I cooed at Thane Jr.

Thane’s arms went around me, and he snuggled into my neck, petting Thane Jr. as he held me. "I’d love for you to talk that sweetly to me," he said, licking the side of my neck. His touch sent delicious shivers down my whole body. I was exhausted, but he was making me think about how much energy I could muster up for some extracurricular activities.

I turned around and tried to kiss him. But Thane only let our lips touch for a second before he pulled away.

"What's wrong?" I asked, confused at his reaction.

Thane knelt down and put our foreheads together. "You need to rest, and then we need to talk about everything before I can have the privilege of being back in your bed,” he said softly.

Everything he had just said made sense. I might have decided that I loved them too much to leave them, but we still had a lot to talk about.

I looked back at my bed, holding Thane Jr. close. “How about if you get in my bed just to nap?" I asked as I yawned.

He gave me a little smile. "I think that's within my rules," he said.

"Oh good," I answered, already climbing back into my bed. "But Thane Jr. is joining us," I warned him.

Thane got in the bed with me, spooning me from behind. "I wouldn't expect anything less. Just as long as he doesn't cock block me later," he replied. I fell asleep before I could answer him.

* * *

I woke up screaming, rabid Vepar had chased me through my dreams, not stopping until I was standing in front of the corpses of my lovers.

“Ella,” Thane said frantically, shaking me. “Are you alright?”

My piglet was squealing in a panic on my other side.

"It's just stuck in my head. The attack, your bodies lying on the ground," I said with hiccupping breaths. "I don’t think I'm ever going to get those images out of my mind," I said, as tears started to streak down my face.

Thane lovingly caressed my cheek, his eyes speaking a multitude of words that his lips never would say. "Then I guess we'll need to make it our mission to build a life full of memories good enough to replace yesterday," he said tenderly.

I smiled at him through the tears. "I would like that."

"You need to sleep for a couple more hours," he said to me as he pulled me back into his arms. With Thane’s warm body sheltering me from behind and my piglet’s warm body in front of me, I drifted into a surprisingly dreamless sleep.

When I first woke up the next morning, my mind was blissfully clear. It took me a minute before the previous day's events floated over me. Thane’s presence behind me was gone, and I knew he had probably been up for several hours as the Vepar didn’t need to sleep nearly as long as humans.

Despite the fact that I had to have slept for at least twelve hours, my body felt sluggish and tired.

Thane Junior nuzzled my face as I laid there. "I guess I better get up," I told him as he snorted excitedly. I was not looking forward to the hard conversations that we had to have today.

After getting dressed in a simple purple sheath dress, I walked out of the room. I found the guys gathered around a table, pouring over tablets and other documents. "Is everything okay?" I asked, my voice rising a bit frantically at the thought that they were already having to plan evasive maneuvers to escape from the Council or the Vepar zombie hordes.

Derrial got up and walked over to me, "Everything's fine, pet," he reassured me, brushing a kiss firmly across my lips. I took a moment to lean into his chest, soaking up his warmth. He was here. They were all here. Everything was alright.

Corran came over with my favorite smoothie from his kitchen machine. I took a moment to savor the coconut-chocolate taste before I moved over to the table to sit down with everyone. They were all looking at me with concern and a little trepidation, I’m sure wondering how the conversation was going to go.

“Why don’t we start from the beginning,” I said softly, looking at all three of them while I spoke. “Explain what you did know, and what you didn’t know...and maybe that will help me to understand.” I took a deep breath. “Whatever you say though, it won’t change the fact that I’m irrevocably, forever in love with all of you. I just want the truth.”

My words seemed to soothe them because they settled back into their chairs. Or at least Corran and Thane did. Derrial scooped me up and sat me down in his lap. “I need to have you in my arms for this conversation,” he explained as he ran his hands nervously up and down my arms.

I settled back into his arms, and I waited.

“We told you the truth that we were originally sent to Earth to look for humans that would be compatible with the Vepar genes enough to carry a Vepar child. But we never told you that we had a whole team there,” began Corran. “And one of those team members was a member of the Council, Edipe. He’s dead now apparently, killed by another member of the Council quite a while ago over some kind of dispute. But he was a piece of work. He struck up a relationship with a human woman almost as soon as we got there. The first of our kind to do so. When he wanted to go back to Veon not long after, we didn’t think much of it. It only became an issue when he wanted to bring his human with him. But he was on the Council, so no one argued even though we had tested the girl and she was not compatible in the least bit for our fertility efforts.”

It was shocking to me that a member of the Council had been the first to form a relationship with a human woman. But maybe it shouldn't have been shocking considering all that we had found out about them having certain secret proclivities for human women all this time.

Corran continued. "We didn't think much of it when we didn't hear anything about the human woman causing a stir among her people, we were busy with our mission on Earth. But when the Council issued orders that we were to send one human female back to them once a year, we got a bit suspicious as we knew they weren't related to the fertility experiments..." Corran grimaced and stopped speaking.

Thane continued for him as it was evident Corran had trouble with the next part of the story. I braced myself for what I was going to hear next. Derrial’s arms were like a vice around me as if he was afraid that I was going to bolt at any minute.

“We were busy searching for someone like you, and we didn't want to be bothered with the Council trying to make things difficult for us. So we had members of our team periodically send women to the Council.”

I opened my mouth to respond to that, but Thane hurried on before I could speak. "In our defense, the women were all obsessed with everything Vepar. They had already started to participate in the clubs on Earth that facilitated sexual relationships between the Vepar and humans, and they were eager to get to Veon. None of us knew what the Council was doing with them. And honestly, we didn't ask," Thane said in a shamed voice.

There was silence for a moment as I thought about what he had just said. It made it a little bit better that the women wanted to go. But I'm sure if they knew they were going to be forced into sexual slavery for the alien Council, they probably wouldn't have volunteered.

"Continue," I said, not trusting myself to say anything soothing at the moment.

“The Council wasn’t satisfied with just one woman a year after a while though. They sent another team to Earth to start bringing them back at a more frequent rate. We were told they were performing other studies on humans and Earth for use in further population of the planet. And again...we didn’t look any further into it.”

“That all explains a lot, but it doesn’t explain about my parents,” I said in a terse angry voice. I was obviously a bad person because I could get over the women...but my parents’ imprisonment was another story.

“We didn’t bring your parents to Veon,” said Derrial, squeezing me even tighter. I flinched at how tightly he was holding me, and he immediately loosened up.

“Then who did?” I asked, feeling an immediate rush of relief that they weren’t directly responsible.

“Your mother was originally chosen to be taken by the Council’s other team. Your father fought so hard when they came to get her that they brought him with them, thinking that they would let the Khonsu take care of him since there was a mandate in place against the Vepar killing humans at the time.”

I snorted. “They were alright with taking humans as sex slaves but they drew the line at killing?”

“It was a line they didn’t follow for very long,” inserted Thane sarcastically.

“But you did know that they had taken my parents when you met me?” I asked sadly.

“When we met you, we did research on you until we knew everything there was to know about you. And we thought that your parents would just be another detriment to you accepting your place with us. If you were all alone, you were more likely to want to stay with us,” explained Corran softly.

There it was. The truth stood there tall and foreboding between us, threatening everything. I had promised them that nothing they would say could change how I felt about them. But was that the truth?

“You told me you had changed. Have you really? Or was that just something you told me to try and save us?” I asked them, staring at the table, too afraid to hear what their answer really would be.

Derrial gently took me off his lap and stood up. I watched as the other two stood up as well. They all towered over me, staring at me intently before they got down on their knees. My heart began to flutter at the sight.

“We’re sorry, Ella. So fucking sorry for how everything has happened. If you’ll give us a chance, we’ll show you that we’ve changed...even if it takes the rest of our lives,” said Derrial in a broken voice that was far from the confident Vepar that I was so familiar with.

I looked at all three of them, knowing that they were giving me a choice for the first time since they had kidnapped me. I could forgive them, and we could move on and hopefully have a chance at happiness, or I could choose to hate them and maybe still be forced to be with them regardless. But all of our lives would be terrible.

I knew looking at them, that it actually wasn’t a choice at all. I was theirs. There was no choice but to love them, to forgive them. Despite everything that had happened, they had saved me. Saved me from a life where I had been literally fading away.

Now looking at them, I could see how much they had changed, how much they had softened and melded to resemble a love that I had been looking for my whole life and just hadn’t known it.

Maybe they had saved me. But I had also saved them.

“I forgive you,” I told them, sinking to my own knees in front of them.

There were no sounds but the rustle of clothes being taken off, and the intake of soft breaths and groans as we lost ourselves in each other.

I would get my happily ever after one way or another.

Chapter 12

"Where did you get this?" I asked with shaking hands as I stared at the picture of my parents on their wedding day. It had been with my things at my old apartment in New York. I had figured that all that was long gone.

Derrial ran a hand over his face. “Nothing with you has gone as planned. We got all your things from your apartment when we took you. But everything was so messed up, and so many things happened, we kind of forgot to give it to you."

My hands trembled as I held the portrait in my hands. I knew my father had been changed forever, and even if we found my mother, it was unlikely that she would bear any resemblance to the way that she used to be. Looking at this picture reminded me of who they had been when I was a child, so full of life and in love.

I looked up at Derrial. He was staring at the picture with a funny look on his face. "What is it?" I asked.

"Why do humans get married?" he asked, not taking his eyes from the picture.

I pondered his question. “Isn’t that similar to what you do on Veon? I mean, isn't being someone's mate considered the same thing as being husband and wife?"

He thought about it for a second and then shook his head. "They are similar. But I'm wondering why they exchange such elaborate vows. Mates on Veon are for forever. But there's no exchanging of vows or any other sort of ceremony," he explained.

My heart sank a little bit after hearing that. I'd still kind of hoped there was some kind of ceremony we were going to have to solidify our bond. I dreamed about my wedding day for as long as I could remember. Guess that wasn't going to happen. "Well if mates last forever, that’s quite a bit different than with human marriages," I said with an annoyed laugh. "Humans exchange vows to each other, promising each other the world, but a lot of the times those promises get broken. But I guess as humans we want to try and start our lives together as best we can.” I traced the image of my mom’s ecstatic face in the picture. “A lot of people say that the day they get married is the happiest day of their lives. I guess they just forget how happy they were.”

Derrial touched my face softly, looking into my eyes as if I was the answer he had spent his whole life searching for. "I won't break my promises to you," he said quietly.

"I don't think we've made many promises to each other yet," I whispered back, unable to take my eyes from his.

"Then I guess we should do that," he responded. We stared at each other for a minute more before he moved away from me. I missed his touch as soon as it was gone.

He walked out of the room without another word, leaving me with a million unanswered questions.

A few boxes on the side of the room caught my attention though. Walking towards them I lifted up one of the flaps and gasped in delighted shock as I saw that Derrial had been telling the truth. These were boxes filled with my possessions. I forgot all about my strange interaction with Derrial as I spent the rest of the afternoon going through everything. It felt like another life when these things belonged to me.

And as I looked at the pictures and some of my photo albums, I couldn't help but feel like I was looking at a stranger.

* * *

“It’s been two weeks,” Corran said as he strode into the room.

My stomach dropped. I turned to look outside the window. It was dark out, and I could barely see anything beneath the faint touch of moonlight peeking through the dense trees, but it was better than facing what he was reminding me of.

“I-I d-don’t think it’s been enough time, we don’t want a false positive,” I stuttered.

Corran came up behind me and pulled his arms around me, holding me tight. “You can do this,” he told me reassuringly, even as I could feel the tension in his hold.

“What if it is positive?” I whispered; my head buried in his chest.

“Then we’ll have a child,” he said matter of factly.

“And what if it isn’t yours?” I asked, not daring to look at him.

“There was always a chance it wasn’t going to be mine to begin with. This just expanded the pool a bit,” he said wryly. “Even if it’s someone else’s, it’s still yours. And how could we not love something that had a part of you.”

I melted at his words. I could feel the truth behind him. I could feel the love he had for this child.

“How do we do this?” I asked, wondering if the Vepar also peed on a stick to find out if they were pregnant.

“Just a tiny drop of blood from your finger is all I need,” said Corran, releasing me and pulling a small white device out of his pocket no bigger than my pinky.

“I’m surprised you didn’t do this while I was sleeping,” I teased him, even as my hands shook at my sides.

“I guess you’ve changed me,” he said with a wink. I laughed weakly but held out my finger.

“How long will it take to find out,” I asked, my voice fading to a whisper as he brought the machine closer to my hand.

“It’s instant,” he said, right before I felt a small pinprick.

“What does it say?” I asked. But it was obvious as Corran’s eyes started to fill up with awestruck emotion what the test had shown.

I was having a baby.

Epilogue

(Corran)

I once believed monsters were born. But I was young and an idiot because after everything I’d seen in the past few years on Veon, there was no doubt in my mind that they were made. Formed by the ugliness around them, by society, by hatred. This wasn’t the kind of world I wanted to bring up our baby with Ella… so that meant change was needed. Massive change, starting from the top.

“I can hear your brain cogs working from over here.” Thane tossed a snapple at me from across the room, and I caught the purple fruit with one hand before biting into its sweet flesh. I wiped my mouth from the juices dripping down my chin.

Thane lounged on the sofa, reading from his monitor while picking at the bowl of fruit in his lap.

“Our Council is broken,” I stated.

“What’s new.”

“They need to go. Get replaced with fresh blood and no corruption.”

Thane snorted a laugh. “Fuck yeah they need to go, but corruption is close to impossible to eradicate. I vote for finding a new planet to live on.”

I ignored his suggestion. Leaving our families here wasn’t an option, and neither was running away. “We start at the top because everything has a trickle-down effect. Just need a plan to overturn the Council. End their corruption.”

“And then the next in line step in, who are just as corrupt.”

“No, that’s the thing. We show evidence to the public, let the civilians see the truth, and we push for a forcible removal of the Council.”

“That could lead to rebellions in the streets, which brings a lot of attention. We would need strong evidence.”

Right then, Derrial emerged from the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

“How’s she doing?” I asked.

“Tired. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Vepar pregnancies are usually half the length of human ones. She’s panicked enough as it is.”

“We’ll tell her later, and that once she hits two months, we should be able to test for the baby’s father.”

Thane groaned and placed the bowl on the table in front of him. “I really hope the baby’s one of ours.”

Neither of us replied. In truth, I wanted that too, we all did, but we’d have to deal with whatever happened.

“Ella and the babe are ours, regardless,” Derrial murmured, his shoulders rising and falling with each rapid breath. “What was this corruption you were talking about?”

“Corran plans on finding evidence to overthrow the Council finally.”

Derrial turned in my direction. “Do we have evidence?”

“We might, but it stays between us for now.”

Both of them stared at me strangely, like my words didn’t make sense. But they’d understand soon enough.

I headed to the side table near the window and pulled open the drawer. “When we were in the testing facility recently, I discovered some files and I took them.” I turned around, holding in my hand several papers folded up to easily fit into a pocket.

“And?” Derrial asked.

I unfolded the pages and handed them to Derrial. Thane was on his feet, walking over and reading them over Derrial’s shoulder.

“The Council are purchasing kidnapped females from the Khonsu to conduct fertility experiments on. Those papers are the receipts. Which is why they’ve turned a blind eye to the Khonsu living on our planet, building communities on our planet, hunting down Vepar females. They allowed this to happen.” My blood was boiling at all the lies we had been fed, all the Vepar slayed and forced to live in tight cities while the Khonsu took over our world.

“Fucking bastards,” Thane spat.

“But the document shows something else,” I continued, pointing to the papers in Derrial’s grip. “It shows that the Khonsu have a separate camp just for females.”

Thane’s gaze met mine, his response flying out. “Ella’s mom could be there.”

He stole my words right from my mouth, and I nodded. “We need to find out urgently.”

Derrial was pacing. “This changes everything. We need to let all the people know about the Council’s corruption.”

“Agreed,” I answered, ready to do whatever it would take.

A beep came from the main monitor sitting on the wall. A new incoming announcement.

Thane switched it on a tap on the remote, and the screen flicked to life. A message in big white letters ran across the black screen.

Virus outbreak.

Emergency declared.

Everyone must remain indoors.

Anyone bitten by an inflicted should be quarantined.

It is believed to have originated at a Council laboratory. Investigation underway.

To be continued in the final book of the Fallen World Series, Belong...coming soon.

School of Broken Souls

Have you discovered School of Broken Souls yet? Here’s a sneak peek at the first chapter…

Blurb

Adeline Jones is perfectly average. Or at least she thinks she is until she receives an invite to attend Raven Academy, complete with a full scholarship. Raven Academy is the mysterious school that only the elite of the elite go and despite Adeline's misgivings about giving up her whole life to attend, there's no way her parents are going to let her give up such an opportunity.

But things at Raven Academy aren't what they seem. Everyone is a little too perfect, a little too rich, and a little too powerful for any normal student population. Things only complicate further when Adeline catches the eyes of Raven Academy's group of elite boys.

Can Adeline figure out what secrets Raven Academy is hiding before it’s too late? Or will the price of admission to the elite academy be more than she can pay...like perhaps her soul.

Preface

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

-Edgar Allen Poe

Chapter 1

I grip the gun under my coat, and my hand shakes. All of me trembles.

What the hell am I doing here?

A drop of sweat slides down my back. It must be a hundred degrees in this store. Or maybe my nerves are just making me feel like I’m in the living embodiment of hell.

A sudden shriek has me jumping in my boots, and I flinch around to see a child stomping his feet when his mom takes away a bag of fruit snacks that’s he’s poached from one of the shelves. Listen to your mother, I want to say, but I can’t find my voice. Not now.

Not when I’m ready to run and hide.

But I have to see this through. People are counting on me. And I can’t let them down.

I won’t let them down.

I glance around at who else is in the store. There’s a teenage couple making eyes at each other in the row over, and a grizzly old man looking over the beer aisle, but other than that the store’s empty. I need everyone to leave before I do this though. This stupid, crazy, impossible thing.

I go through my plan again in my mind for the hundredth time. The gun is filled with water... a toy gun. But it will do the trick. Please God let it work.

The first time my friend Cody pointed it at me, I screamed. It sure as hell looks like a real handgun. The toy mirrors a Glock G43. I have no idea what the number means, but it’s black and looks real. That’s what matters.

Hopefully, the store clerk will think the same. And then when inevitably the police pick me up, maybe they will take it easier on me since it isn’t a real gun. At least that’s my hope, but I know I’m just fooling myself. I have to lie to myself, or I’ll never go through with this.

I need the money.

I need it despite the fact that I’ve always been a good girl, the type of girl who never walks outside the lines or does anything unexpected.

Until now.

Robbing a 7-11 is definitely going to yank that title from me fast. And if that is the worse it does, I’ll take it.

Sweat is rolling down my back now. It slides under the waistband of my jeans and beneath the elastic of my underwear. Why is it so hot in here?

I think again of the other night when I walked into the kitchen at midnight and found mom crying over a stack of bills. Dad withers away in their dark bedroom, too weak to come out, and too proud to ask for help from anyone.

There’s a surgery that can help him, a surgery that can fix my family. But we need money for it.

I hated the word.

Need.

Just as much as I loathe the cancer slowly taking my dad from me.

My throat chokes, and I struggle to breathe. I glance around, finding the sliding door as the young couple leave.

Escape.

It’s there for me. But it won’t help my family.

I work two jobs after school and save every penny. But $8.00 an hour doesn’t add up fast. I often talk to mom about maybe dropping out of school for a little bit, but she won’t listen to me and threatens to make me quit my other jobs if I even mention it again. My mother and I both work as much as possible, but it’s never going to be enough. Or at least it’s never going to be enough in time to actually save my dad.

Another review of the store reveals three people wandering around the aisles, and this will be the best I can hope for. I swallow past a dry throat, my finger twitching on the gun handle, and I meander toward the only working cash register. The guard is at lunch, and I see no cameras. This is the right time, but hesitation slows me.

Dad. I have to think of him. Losing him isn’t an option, and the doctors say with the right amount of money, he stands a damn good chance to heal.

I want that chance, so with squared shoulders, I march closer to the young girl picking at her nails behind the register. She’s wearing her blue hair in a high ponytail and she has a small piercing in her nose.

My thoughts tangle into a web while fear squeezes my chest. What if I get caught? Mom and Dad will be horrified.

Shaking my head, I push that thought out of my mind. I can’t let those thoughts creep in, or they’ll cripple me. It took me three weeks to work up the courage to finally take action.

So, I have to do this.

I need this.

Fuck.

I lick my dry lips and approach the young girl. She looks up at me, disinterested, and my attention falls to her name tag.

Mary Sue.

I almost laugh out loud at the simpleness of her name, the cliché of it, but she distracts me.

“What do you have?” She eyes me up and down, seeing no groceries in my hand.

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out, and I will my hand to move. To pull out that damn gun. Sweat rolls down my neck.

“If you’re gonna order cigarettes, I need to see an ID.” She folds her arms across her chest.

My free hand juts out and I grab a handful of gum from a rack of candy, then dump them on the counter. Six packets. She starts scanning them, and I inch the gun out from under my coat, the words of what I‘ll say roll through my mind.

Stick’em up.

Stupid. So stupid. She won’t take me seriously. What am I thinking?

I hold the gun low between me and the counter. I’m inches from showing her the weapon. I can do this; I keep repeating in my mind.

“Want a bag with these?” she barks, and I flinch so hard, I hit the gun’s trigger and it squirts water across the bottom section of the counter near my feet. A light hiss sounds.

Shit!

“Yes, yes,” I say, hoping she didn’t hear the noise.

She cocks an eyebrow. “Really? You want a whole bag for six packets of gum. What about saving the environment?”

I flick my gaze up. “Then why did you ask? And yes, I want the bag.”

She rolls her eyes and sighs as she leans over to grab one.

I lift the gun, placing it just over the counter, pointing it at Mary Sue, my body concealing the weapon should anyone behind me come to the register.

I can barely breathe when the front doorbell chimes. From the corner of my eye, I spot the navy uniform, the hulking form of the guard.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I shove the gun back into my coat and retreat from the counter, lowering my head.

“Hey, ma’am,” Mary Sue calls out. “You forgot your six gums in a bag?” she says sarcastically.

The guard stands in my way in front of the glass door, and I freeze, about to fall apart. When I glance up, he studies me.

“You okay, Miss?”

“Y...yeah, of course.” My voice trembles, and I sidestep him, sliding through the door. The bell gives another ring as I pass, startling me. The cool air does nothing to cool me down, not when my heart pounds inside me, and my mind screams the word run in my head.

A quick look behind me shows that the guard and girl are staring at me through the window. I’m sure they think I stole something. I turn away and walk fast down the sidewalk. The moment I take the corner, I run, still holding the gun under my coat. Over my shoulder, no one follows. I did nothing wrong, but still, I can’t stop sprinting past people meandering on the sidewalk. A man in a suit bumps into me, but I keep going without apology.

I berate myself as I run for chickening out, for failing. I won’t be able to return to that 7-11 again, they’ll remember me next time for sure because of my odd behavior.

I made a mess of everything today. I’ll have to start again, find another location with no guard. I can’t stop, not until I find a way to get money for Dad’s surgery.

Finally, I slip into a quiet alley and press my back to a brick wall, gasping for air.

“Idiot,” I mumble under my breath. If I moved faster, I’d now have a bag of cash. I rack my brain for the best store to steal from. Maybe I should have come up with a backup plan before this like in the movies. On those shows, they make it seem so easy, their plans go off without a hitch. In real life, I just suck and fail at everything.

I contemplate the locations I can try next, which ones would be potential hot spots. The bakery is quiet after the morning rush, except the owner stays in the back, so he might easily see me. The bookstore is always empty, there are rumors that it’s going out of business which means they won’t have a lot of cash on hand. I need one big hit, not small ones.

Then I remember the new pawn store. I shove the gun into the big pocket of my coat and take a deep inhale before stepping out of the alley.

Several blocks later, I stand outside the pawn store, studying the window filled with men’s wristwatches and used cell phones.

Someone walks into me, hitting me so hard that I fall against the window, and spin around. “Hey!”

“Watch out,” a young kid snipes at me as he rushes by.

“I was standing still,” I call out, annoyed.

I really must be invisible as this type of thing happens more often than not.

I head inside the store. The walls are full of merchandise, and it smells like worn socks. An L-shaped glass counter sits against the back wall, and there are three assistants present, but no registers. I observe a customer paying for her merchandise by handing over money to a sales clerk who heads out past a shut door. He uses a card around his neck to open the door. This is a lot more complicated than the register at the convenience store.

A sales guy strolls toward me with a smile. I turn and head outside, putting quick distance between me and the store. That place is not going to work, so I keep walking, not ready to return home and face my parents. Not that they’ll know what I’m doing but the hurt in their eyes, the hope to keep fighting will eat me up because I failed my mission.

It’s not long before I find myself in front of Nico’s Cafe, the local chain coffee shop, and the aroma of coffee draws me inside. I pluck out a freebie card from my wallet in my back pocket. They handed these out a few weeks ago.

I order myself a skim latte with vanilla syrup. With it in hand, I slide into a small booth and enjoy the small luxury of a hot brew in my hands and the tranquil sound of a soft song overhead.

A loud, sharp laugh shatters the peace, and I turn towards the sound.

I spot them and cringe. Two girls in miniskirts followed by three guys mock punching each other, strolling in my direction.

My stomach drops, and I slide in my seat, keeping my head low. Last time I bumped into Alexia, the blonde with legs for miles, she shoved me aside muttering about someone daring to be in her way.

I don’t need snobby shitheads like them making this day even worse.

Their laughter makes me groan on the inside.

“Alexia is such a bae. I love her,” Talia, the other girl says, and they both giggle, while I sip my coffee, wondering how I can slip past them without being seen. I’m so low in the social hierarchy at school, you would think they wouldn’t even notice me. Too bad that hasn’t stopped them from being assholes towards me when they get the chance.

Swallowing my last mouthful of sweet coffee, I grow tired of listening to their drivel.

“Did you see what that bitch, Olivia posted about you online?” Alexa asks, venom lining her voice. “We’ll make her regret it tomorrow.”

Talia snorts and the guys laugh in response. “She’s pissed because she didn’t get accepted into Raven Academy. They rejected her fat ass.” Talia breaks out in an unattractive, high pitched laugh, her friends joining her like baying hyenas, laughing at someone else’s misery.

Raven Academy.

That sounds like something familiar… maybe it’s a school for Edgar Allan Poe lovers? Or it could be a morgue. I type it into the search bar on my phone but find nothing. Was it a new term kind of like the “mile high club”?

“Heard the place’s a hole,” one of the guys says. “The school is run down and only weirdos go there. My Dad knows someone that sent his kid there.”

“I heard it’s a cult,” Alexia replies. “Pretty sure they pray to Satan or something else creepy like that.”

“No, they don’t,” Talia giggles. “Or it would be in the news for sure.”

“Unless they control the media,” she whispers, in a menacing voice. “Haven’t you seen those conspiracy shows I told you to watch about those organizations like the Illuminati? All kinds of shit is real.”

I roll my eyes but remain glued to their conversation. I ought to make my way out of the cafe, but I can’t. Something about the name “Raven Academy” intrigues me. Not much happens in our town, well unless you count Mr. Chamberlain’s death. He drank straight vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar for a new diet craze, and it burned his insides.

“Bet it’s just a snooty Academy for the rich. And Olivia wasn’t rich enough,” another guy adds.

That definitely sounds more realistic, and I suspect that’s why I haven’t heard of the school. Out of my league.

My phone pings with a message.

Your dad isn’t doing too well. You coming home soon? LOL

I type a response hastily to Mom.

Do you know what LOL means?

Two seconds later, her message flashes on my screen.

Love you lots.

I sigh and start typing when a shadow falls over me.

“Ghost girl.” Alexia snaps. “Stop eavesdropping. Don’t you have some other corner to lurk in?”

I jerk my head up, gritting my teeth, meeting her wry smirk. She glares down at me over the booth wall between us.

Breathing through my nostrils loudly, I grip my phone, refusing to engage, to give them fuel, to do anything with them.

Talia’s head pops up alongside Alexia, her tight short curls bouncing around her head, making her look like a doll with a head too big for her body.

“What are you typing?” she asks.

“Shopping list,” I lie and lower my head, unwilling to meet their eyes. Maybe they’ll leave me alone. I tuck my phone into my pocket, already shuffling out of the booth in the opposite direction.

Alexia climbs to her feet and rounds my booth, standing there with her hands on her hips, staring at me. She hates me. Detests me. It’s on her face. And I know why… three months ago one of her exes was stupid enough to ask me to the school dance. I put it down to him mocking me, and I turned him down. But that gave her enough ammunition to make me her enemy for life.

“He never liked you,” she snarls, her upper lip curling. Her words are wicked and vicious.

“Told you before. He’s not my type.”

I stand from the booth and start toward the exit, ready to escape. It’s what I’m good at, running, just like my failed robbery at the 7-11. The thought sinks through me, dampening my spirits even more. I brush my hands down my coat.

“What the hell are you wearing?” she curses at me, eyeing me up and down, scrunching her perfectly sculpted eyebrows as if my outfit offends her.

I lower my gaze and take a wide berth around her, but she snatches my arm, squeezing, her bony fingers feel like an iron grip.

“No one would ever be interested in a loser like you.” Her fingernails press into the fabric, into my flesh, but I don’t show the pain. I bite my lip so I can’t make a sound.

I’ve mastered masking agony from when I keep Mom company as she cries, when I sit by Dad’s bed when he’s too tired to speak, when Alexia and the other girls attack me for no reason other than I exist. But after my day today, a fiery rage surges through me, and I find my voice.

Meeting her gaze, I spit the words and wrench my arm free, “Haven’t you grown tired of this game yet? It’s starting to bore me.”

“Oh, so ghost girl has a backbone,” Talia laughs the words, drawing attention from a few bystanders in the café.

Alexia takes another step closer, her face reddening.

I stand my ground, no matter how much my mind screams to turn and run. To leave because nothing good can come of this. My time is better spent elsewhere, and Mom is waiting for me. Dad isn’t well.

Everyone’s silent. I turn away when she grabs my hair and yanks me backward. Ow! I wince and reach for my head while others in the store gasp.

Someone is marching toward us.

Alexia is in my ear. “Do you think someone like you can threaten me?” She shoves her hand into my shoulder, and I stumble, rubbing the soreness spreading across my scalp, my heart racing. I’m pretty sure she pulled out a chunk of my hair.

The store manager is there all of a sudden, shoulders squared, towering over us. “Take it outside before I call the police.”

I glare at Alexia, my cheeks on fire, tears in my eyes, and I fist my hands.

Nico, the owner appears next, stepping in front of me. “Go home, Adeline.” He knows me, knows my parents, knows we’re struggling. And I hate that because I don’t want pity now or ever.

“I’ll see you at school,” Alexia snarls before whirling around and rejoining her friends.

So many eyes are on me, and I feel the weight of their stares pinning me down. Their stares mix with the feeling of failure, the feeling of dread that is always with me.

I turn around and run out of the store. Only the sound of laughter follows me.

Read on at books2read.com/schoolofbrokensouls

About C.R. Jane

A Texas girl living in Utah now, I'm a wife, mother, lawyer, and now author. My stories have been floating around in my head for years, and it has been a relief to finally get them down on paper. I’m a huge Dallas Cowboys fan and I primarily listen to Beyonce and Taylor Swift…don’t lie and say you don’t too.

My love of reading started probably when I was three and with a faster than normal ability to read, I’ve devoured hundreds of thousands of books in my life. It only made sense that I would start to create my own worlds since I was always getting lost in others’. I like heroines who have to grow in order to become badasses, happy endings, and swoon-worthy, devoted, (and hot) male characters. If this sounds like you, I’m pretty sure we’ll be friends. I’m so glad to have you on my team…check out the links below for ways to hang out with me and more of my books you can read!

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Other Books by C.R. Jane

The Fated Wings Series

First Impressions

Forgotten Specters

The Fallen One (a Fated Wings Novella)

Forbidden Queens

Frightful Beginnings (a Fated Wings Short Story)

Faded Realms

Faithless Dreams

The Rock God (a Fated Wings Novella)

The Timeless Affection Series

Lamented Pasts

Lost Passions

The Pack Queen Series

Queen of the Thieves

Queen of the Alphas (2019)

The Rise Again Series

The Day After Nothing (2020)

The Sounds of Us Contemporary Series

Remember Us This Way

Remember You This Way

Remember Me This Way

Broken Hearts Academy Series

Heartbreak Prince

Academy of Souls Co-write with Mila Young

School of Broken Souls

School of Broken Hearts

School of Broken Dreams

Fallen World Series Co-write with Mila Young

Bound

Broken

Betrayed

Stupid Boys Series Co-write with Rebecca Royce

Stupid Boys

Dumb Girl

About Mila Young

Mila Young tackles everything with the zeal and bravado of the fairytale heroes she grew up reading about. She slays monsters, real and imaginary, like there's no tomorrow. By day she rocks a keyboard as a marketing extraordinaire. At night she battles with her might pen-sword, creating fairytale retellings, and sexy ever after tales. In her spare time, she loves pretending she's a mighty warrior, walks on the beach with her dogs, cuddling up with her cats, and devouring every fantasy tale she can get her pinkies on.

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Books by Mila Young

Gods and Monsters

Apollo Is Mine

Poseidon Is Mine

Ares Is Mine

Hades Is Mine

Winter’s Thorn

To Seduce A Fae

Haven Realm Series

Hunted (Little Red Riding Hood Retelling)

Cursed (Beauty and the Beast Retelling)

Entangled (Rapunzel Retelling)

Wicked Heat Series

Wicked Heat #1

Wicked Heat #2

Wicked Heat #3

Elemental Series

Taking Breath #1

Taking Breath #2

Fallen World Series Co-write with C.R. Jane

Bound

Broken

Betrayed

Broken Souls Series Co-write with C.R. Jane

School of Broken Souls

School of Broken Hearts