CHAPTER ONE

 

Madison lay back, closing her eyes lazily. People had raved about the beaches in the Caribbean. They were right. White sand. Vibrant blue water. The sun felt amazing on her skin, and the sea breeze felt even better.

A shadow fell over her, momentarily blocking the light. Madison squinted upward, expecting to see another woman in a bikini. Instead, she saw a black cloth bag hovering in the air, as though the person holding it was invisible.

Madison got up, deciding she had better get out of the sun before the heatstroke she was clearly having got any worse.

The bag moved, coming for her. Madison skipped back, but hands caught her. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel them on her. The bag went over her head.

She shrieked and struggled. There were so many hands. It was definitely more than one person who had her, but why couldn’t she see them? She kicked out, but more hands caught her legs.

Madison struggled to control her rapidly rising panic as she fought captors who outnumbered her and were a lot stronger than she was. She screamed louder. The beach was so crowded it was difficult to find a spot. Surely, someone noticed she was being carried away against her will?

If they did, no one challenged the men carrying her. She tried to calm herself. They were no doubt kidnapping her for ransom. If they’d wanted to kill her, they could have done it on the beach. She hadn’t been close with her parents for years, but she knew they’d pay whatever it took to ensure her safety.

The feeling of the sun was cut, and the bag was removed. Madison blinked, staring around in disbelief. She was on a movie set. At least, it had better be a movie set, because there was no way she could really be on a spaceship surrounded by aliens.

It looked just like the ships she’d seen on television. The aliens, however, did not. They had fat, ovular bodies, with at least a dozen thin arms. Their skin was a sick sort of yellow. There were six other women, also in bikinis, indicating they’d also been taken from the beach.

Shouting in words she didn’t understand, the aliens shoved them roughly toward cages. Madison wasn’t the only one who fought.

“What the hell is going on here? On what grounds have you taken us?” The woman who was shouting struggled so forcefully that one of the aliens hit her hard across the face. She fell to the ground and didn’t get up. Madison could the woman was still breathing, but her heart went out to her. She wanted to hit that alien in the face with a shovel.

There were windows in the ship. The floor rattled, and the ship started rising off the ground. Madison had never been so afraid in her life. This wasn’t a movie set. This was a real spaceship with real aliens. It was impossible, but somehow, it was true.

Please, please let this be a dream. An overheated, sun-induced dream. She’d wake up in hospital, being treated for heatstroke.

The aliens pushed and shoved. Despite her best efforts, those spindly arms were surprisingly strong, and Madison found herself forced into a small cage. It wasn’t even tall enough for her to stand in. Other women were screaming hysterically. Madison was panting, her eyes wide in terror as she stared at the scene around her.

Opposite her, there was another alien in a cage. Its skin was a bright orange, almost red. It had four arms and a tail. Madison was glad that one was caged; it looked even more vicious than their captors. The captors themselves had left the room, presumably to fly the ship.

The ship shuddered slightly, and the scenes outside the windows changed. They were in space.

No, no, no. Heatstroke. She’d even take a mental breakdown. Better to be locked in an asylum than here. At least the doctors in an asylum would be trying to help her. She didn’t know what these aliens wanted, but “help” didn’t seem on their agenda.

Even as she tried to make up increasingly wild scenarios, Madison realized she was fooling herself. She could see the freckles on the woman next to her through the cage bars. Her fingers ached from clutching the bars of the cage. The screams were hurting her ears.

This was real. As much as she didn’t want it to be, it was.

She shook the bars, desperate to get out. She found she was screaming along with the others. What did these aliens want with them?

Madison sat back, trying to think. Panicking wasn’t going to do her any good. She needed to think. The bars of the cage were too strong for her to break. She craned her neck in the small space available to her, trying to see any structural weakness that could be exploited. They looked well made, with no cracks or wiggly joints.

The woman next to her leaned close. “Any ideas?”

Madison shook her head.

“I’m Ava. Sophi, my friends call me Sophi. This is really happening, isn’t it?”

Madison wished she could deny it. “I’m afraid so. This wasn’t the way I’d choose to find out aliens existed.”

One of the yellow oval aliens came back. At once, Madison called out. “What do you want? My parents have money! Forget parents, our governments will pay for us back. We can work something out.”

The alien replied with more words in its strange language. It mostly sounded like hisses and grunts. It approached with a long, thick needle. Everyone shrank back in their cages.

It started with the closest cage, which, as luck would have it, was Madison’s. She tried to fight him off with her hands, painfully aware that all she had on was a skimpy bikini.

The alien overpowered her easily, using five of its arms to hold down her hands, feet, and head. With another, it brought the needle up to her skull, close to her ear.

The world went white with a shock of pain. When Madison was aware again, the alien was gone, moving to the other women, giving them the same injection.

“Stop struggling, idiot slaves, you’ll just make things worse for yourself.”

Madison froze. She could still hear the grunting and hissing, but somehow, she understood the words. She’d read enough sci-fi to guess that the thing she’d been injected with was a translator chip. At once, she resumed her efforts to talk to the alien, promising him everything from money to sexual favors (yes, she was desperate) in return for being taken back to Earth.

He ignored her so thoroughly she began to question if he could really understand her. Once all the women and the strange alien had been chipped, he left. Madison slumped against her cage, unable to stop tears from coming forth. How had everything gone so wrong, so fast?

The ship’s flight was smooth now. They must be in hyperspace or something like that, taking them far, far away from Earth.

“What do you think they want with us?” Sophi’s voice shook slightly.

Madison carefully checked the room to make sure none of the aliens had returned. “I can only think they want us as slaves.”

Sophi cringed. Madison hoped she’d just been reading too much sci-fi, but why else would the aliens want them? If they’d wanted cooperation, they wouldn’t have snatched and cage struggling women. The fact that all the humans who were taken were women bothered her. Were they to be sex slaves? Sold on the intergalactic market?

“I was hoping you’d have another idea.”

Madison shook her head bleakly. One of the other women started crying. Sophi was bracing her feet against the cage bars and kicking as hard as she could. The only thing that accomplished was giving her a sprained ankle. She curled up, rubbing it and wiping tears away.

“What are we going to do?” Madison hoped Sophi had some better ideas than she did, because her ideas were still all along the lines of waking up back on Earth after a horrible nightmare.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we can escape from these cages. Maybe when they take us out.”

The cages looked to be part of the ship, which meant they’d have to be taken out of them eventually. The aliens were strong, but perhaps if all the humans tackled one at once, they could overpower it.

The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and exhaustion borne of prolonged terror started to overtake her. Madison knew that sleeping might be a very bad idea, that she should stay vigilant, but she couldn’t help it. Though she fought her heavy lids, she knew she wouldn’t win for long.

 

* * *

 

Xar was pulled from unconsciousness by a sharp pain in his hands. He growled and lashed out, intent on hitting the vile being that had taken him. He’d been hunting when the hollow rock had fallen from the sky.

He’d never seen beings like the ones that came out, and they hadn’t been interested in talking. They’d subdued him with sticks that sent a shock through his whole body and put him in a cage. He’d fought them so hard that they’d knocked him out again.

Now, something was different. There were others near him, also in cages. Xar blinked away the blurriness in his vision. These creatures, too, he had never seen before. They were small and soft-looking, and smelled sweet, unlike the stinking things that had caged him.

His attention was brought back to his hands. He stared at them in disbelief. They were elongating into vicious-looking claws. What trick was this? He knew what was happening, but it was impossible.

A man’s hands became claws when he found his true mate. The claws were stronger than any known substance and could protect her. All the females of his clan were gone, though, died out in a fire many years ago.

His eyes flicked up to the beings in front of him. It had to be them. There was no one else here. These strange things were female, and one of them was his mate.

He knew the moment he saw her. In the cage opposite his, she was curled up, asleep by the looks of it. At first, he was shocked that his mate was one so different from him, but the more he looked at her, the more he saw her delicate beauty. He couldn’t wait to lay her down and mate with her.

Her hair was a soft brown, close to the color of the home tree, and her eyes the same bright green as the summer leaves. Her skin was pale with little spots all over it. She was slender, so much that he worried he might hurt her when he held her. That would be a worry for another day.

First, he must see to her safety. She, too, was caged. He needed to get her out. He would take her to the home trees where they could be together.

Xar had tried to break the cage for hours. It wouldn’t be broken. That was before his claws appeared though. If anything could break through the cage, this would be it. The pain was receding now. He flexed the claws, discovering he could retract them.

His overwhelming instinct was to protect his mate. He knew that his kind became possessive and often irrational when first finding their mates, and it took time to learn to manage the instincts. He had a temporary reprieve from the full impact of the mating instincts because their eyes had not yet met. Once she was awake, that would change.

Though their situation was dire, Xar couldn’t help smiling. He had a mate. When he was taught all about Xenshi mating rituals, he’d scoffed with the others, knowing there was no point in passing the knowledge down with all the females dead.

He couldn’t see the creatures who kept them caged, but he knew they wouldn’t be far. They never were. He would have to kill them. They were strong, but not as strong as him. Nevertheless, the battle would be brutal and bloody, if short. His mate looked delicate and fragile. He couldn’t risk her getting hurt.

Xar silently debated. He wanted her out of that vile cage, but first, he needed to eliminate the threat. Perhaps it would be wise to wait until one of the creatures returned so that he could kill at least one of them without having to search for it, but he couldn’t wait that long.

Xar’s mating instincts might be dulled for now, but they were very much still there, and they were screaming for the immediate protection of his mate.

The hard bars of the cage made a shrieking noise of protest, but they were no match for his claws. They shattered and flew everywhere. Xar didn’t wait but sprung out of the cage.

The creatures made it easy for him, hurrying toward the source of the noise. They had their shock sticks, but he had a mate to fight for. He felt the strength in his body, the determination to keep her from harm.

Deftly, he dodged the stick and grabbed the creature who wielded it. His claws went right through its chest. Its blood was the same sickly color as its skin rather than a healthy orange. He hardly noticed it fall. Xar was focused only on the fight.

He was a good hunter and treated the creatures as his prey. They’d lost any right to life when they’d taken him and his mate. They shouted in words he somehow suddenly understood. It didn’t matter. They all had to die. Their begging only served to anger him even more. They’d taken his life, and now they begged for theirs?

As he’d expected, the fierce fight was over in seconds. The last of the shock sticks clattered to the ground. Their blood was everywhere, making the floor slippery. He took note of the cave-like structure they were in. it had multiple rooms, and he wondered how long it had taken to carve. The sides were so smooth. Getting them like that would have taken many turns of the sun.

He ran back to the room with the cages. The women were all sitting upright, some screaming, some crying. He had eyes only for his mate. Xar joyfully tore the front of the cage away. He snatched her out of it and held her to his chest. No one would ever cage her again.

His mate wasn’t relieved to be free. She struggled and slapped at him. She was weak, but she put all her efforts into it. Her efforts were negligible compared to his strength, but seeing she wanted to be released, Xar gently laid her on her feet.

“My mate, all is well. I will keep you safe.”

She staggered back until she was in a corner. She cowered away from him, giving off the stinking scent of terror.