She had never run that fast in her life.

There was something incredibly dream-like about Jackie's fleeing. It certainly felt like a dream, stumbling blindly, falling, trying to find the absolute fastest way to safety because there was a monster behind her.

And Nayanors qualified with flying colors.

I'm going to set some sort of a sprinting record, she thought maniacally. No one to see, though. Except for those raider bastards.

Jackie had never been so grateful for the fact that the resort was at the bottom of another valley. All her way was down and it helped along as gravity often did. She ran for her life, focusing all her efforts and thoughts on the shelter.

After the Nayanor raids became way too common for comfort on Terra, people started building shelters from them, designed specifically to keep them out. The corridors were made to be too narrow for their big bodies and massive swords, the walls were reinforced to withstand a blast from plasma weapons. There were traps and alarms everywhere, but Jackie was so very far from the safety it promised.

She had no idea if it would actually save her. The shelters had failed before, because like every other intelligent species in the galaxy, Nayanors had adapted. They simply cut their path through the roofs or found another way to breach and kidnap the females they'd come after.

"Where is the army?" Jackie whispered to herself, glancing behind her, nearly falling.

She recovered and resumed storming along the path, thinking of Terran military. Palians – the wisest and most benevolent of all the species in the Galactic Union – had devised a method to track the wormholes Nayanors used to travel. Terra, one of the most common targets for the raids, had been certainly provided with early warning systems, but for some reason there hadn't been a whiff of a siren.

The first shrill, sharp call of an alarm sounded after Jackie had been running for five minutes.

"Gods," she murmured, dashing between the trees when the fighters sped overhead to avoid being seen. "At this point, the person who sounded the alarm had to have had visual confirmation."

It's like we've gone back in time thousands of years.

The absolute only comfort Jackie had was that she was dressed for running. If she'd been just taking a walk, she wouldn't have even had that. With her tight black knee-length pants and a matching running shirt with a gray hoodie thrown on top, Jackie was free to move as fast as her body allowed.

Despite her illness, she was in good shape. The diagnosis had been fairly recent, after all.

The Ellora Resort was up ahead, less than a mile away, but of course she couldn't outrun fighters. They were hovering above the resort now and Jackie could hear screaming down below. She stopped, frozen on the path, looking at what should have been her one chance to escape the fate Nayanors promised.

Jackie panted, considering her options.

She felt bad for the other women in the resort. Her life was almost at an end. Jackie didn't exactly fancy spending the last months of her life on some alien world being a fucktoy for some Nayanor warrior. But she had nothing on Terra either.

All her goodbyes were said. Most of her money was donated to charity, except for the part she kept to buy herself things to amuse herself during her slow demise.

It was terribly ironic that it took a Nayanor attack to make Jackie realize how much she wanted to live. She wasn't prepared to give up on anything like Tom worried.

No capitulation for me. Not to the illness. And not to Nayanors.

A fighter flew over her so closely Jackie ducked instinctively, thinking it actually brushed against her, but of course it was far off the ground. Way too close for comfort, though.

There was no choice. Ellora was gone. Her only hope was to hide in the sparse forests by the mountainside and pray she wasn't found. Nayanors were famous for not leaving anyone behind – men were killed and women were taken – and Jackie didn't think she'd suddenly developed a faith in miracles.

The only good odds could have come from finding a crevice in the hill or a small cave that could hide her heat signature from the raiders' scanners.

The fighter landed a little away from her. Jackie knew she should have run already, but something kept her in place. She moved away from the path, peeking from behind a tree she knew wouldn't hide her.

I just want to see one of them.

The hatch of the fighter opened and a warrior stepped out, casting his gaze over the edge of the forest.

It was he who nailed Jackie's feet to the ground like they were glued there. For some time between a second and an eternity, she just stood and stared.

Sure, like every other Terran woman, she'd been warned that for all their brutishness and cruelty, Nayanors weren't unpleasant to the eyes, but nothing could have prepared Jackie for the truth.

The warrior – a warlord actually, considering how he dealt out orders to the men following him in a deep, powerful voice – was the single most gorgeous man Jackie had ever seen.

It wasn't mere lust that filled her, although there was a fair share of that, courtesy of living like a nun ever since she heard her diagnosis. She stared at the man observing the forest with a knowing, easy smirk on his lips. It was obvious to Jackie that she'd somehow ended up twenty feet from a Nayanor harbinger, one of the most dangerous and merciless creatures in the galaxy.

All the while standing there like an idiot with a heartbeat so loud the warlord had to hear her. Jackie tried to concentrate on running, hiding, escaping. But all she could focus on was how merely looking at that man made her feel.

From head to toe, the harbinger was surrounded by an aura of power. Even in the midst of powerfully-built Nayanors, he stood out, more than seven feet tall, with a body like a titan, short hair the color of dirty silver and eyes like deep, dark pools that drew her in like gravity.

The look on his face told Jackie very clearly that it was a man who was used to getting what he wanted and making the world bend when it didn't pay up.

I need to go. Gods, what am I still doing here?

At that moment, the second Jackie's resolve finally ripped itself free from the mesmerizing power of the harbinger, the warlord turned her way.

There was no doubt in her heart. He'd seen her.

A wild, predatory grin spread on the harbinger's lips. The look of a born hunter.

Jackie didn't think she made for much of a prey, but she wasn't a cowering rabbit either. She turned on her heels and once more, ran.

It was the hardest thing in her life not to look back to see if she was being followed, how far the warlord was. Nayanors wore sturdy, massive spiked armors, dark like the night. It wasn't exactly a sprinting outfit, but on the other hand they were warriors. Not soldiers like on Terra. Men who'd been bred and born for battle.

Jackie ran as far as she could without collapsing. Finally, she had to stop or her heart would. She leaned against the small cliff she'd hidden behind, looking around, trying not to breathe too loudly but the panting made it hard.

There was no one in sight.

Jackie should have been glad, but instead every inch of her tensed up like a cat who senses danger.

Nayanors don't just give up on prey. And I'm not that fast.

Jackie's heart thundered in her chest as she peeked around the corner again. Her long strawberry blonde hair fell on her face, coming out of the ponytail with all her mad rushing. She pressed her body against the cliff to see further.

Someone tapped her shoulder.

Jackie screamed. She was standing in a second, turning around so fast it made her dizzy, only to find herself face to face with the harbinger.

The warlord had the same amused, hungry grin on his lips. His incredible dark eyes bore into her, making Jackie shiver from head to toe. She told herself firmly it was just fear, but up so close it was very hard to deny how gorgeous the man was.

"Gods above," she whispered. "Did you teleport behind me?"

It shouldn't have been even close to the top of her priorities, but somehow, insanely, it was. She was caught already. All the plans and tricks washed away like drawings in sand as Jackie only wanted to know how she'd been caught so easily. It was insulting.

The harbinger laughed. His deep voice echoed back from the mountains. Jackie felt goosebumps.

"No," the man said. "Why do you ask, female?"

"It's just not fair," Jackie said, resting against the cliff, feeling trapped between the rock and the harbinger's huge body. "No one should be able to sneak around in armor like that."

She was grasping at straws, making small talk like that. Jackie knew what was going to happen, after all. Everyone knew. Every woman on Terra knew that Nayanors came and took what they wanted and none of the women were ever seen again.

And there she was, trying her hardest not to imagine what a man that stunning looked like without his armor.

"Fair?" the harbinger asked, taking a step closer. "It's not supposed to be fair. In battle it's good to let the enemy hear you, to make them know you're not afraid of them. But I can move very quietly if I need to. And I wanted to look at you."

It didn't help with her pulse at all.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack," Jackie protested quietly.

"I could say the same," the harbinger growled and suddenly he was very, very close to her.

Black, bottomless eyes held her gaze as the warlord leaned down, lifting her chin up. Jackie was pinned between the cliff and the armor, unable to struggle free. She was left with no other option than to meet the man's eyes with her own. Her light greens searched his dark as the man closed the last of the distance between them, holding her tightly now.

"I always knew I'd find my female on Terra," the harbinger said. "I have to admit that despite that, I wasn't prepared. When I saw you before, it took me a long moment to follow you, hence your headstart."

Jackie wanted to be mad at the implied insult that she would have been caught in two seconds if the Nayanor hadn't been so stunned by her, but that wasn't the prevailing emotion.

That would have been "oh hell".

The grin was back on the harbinger's lips as he spoke firmly, his words making Jackie feel that by simply uttering them, he was making everything he said real.

"I am Kol-Eresh," the warlord said in his deep, sonorous voice. "And you are my fated. You will be mine from now on until the darkness comes and nothing in the galaxy could take you from me."

Jackie's mind was racing a thousand miles per hour, but the one thought that shouted the loudest in her head was:

Wanna bet?

Thoughts of her illness and the terrible fate that was in store for her were banished by Kol-Eresh's lips on hers. The harbinger pulled her in for a ravishing, wild kiss that left Jackie breathless for the second time in a few minutes.

She gasped when he claimed her lips, trying to push herself free, but she might as well have wrestled the cliff behind her. And after a moment, she found herself responding, unable to deny how the harbinger's kiss sent electric thrills down her spine. No one had done that to her in years, if ever.

Jackie told herself that it was a horrible idea to be that vulnerable, but it wasn't working. Her apparent fated kissed like he hunted, without mercy or possibility of resistance. Jackie was left reeling from it when Kol-Eresh finally drew back, a wide smirk on his lips.

"Your name?" he asked. "I want to know my fated's name."

"Jackie," she breathed, her legs shaking against her better judgment. "I'm Jackie."

The harbinger's eyes flashed like she'd somehow spoken a spell.

"Jackie," he repeated and for a second, she could have believed in name magic, that the warlord was actually tying her to himself by that. "Come with me."

The second the harbinger stepped away from her, Jackie bolted. She ran without care this time, knowing it was futile, but she had to try. Attraction was nothing, as was the fact she would never have a life with that man. There was no future where she would voluntarily spend her last days as a prisoner on some cruel, lost world.

She heard the warlord behind her.

"Jackie!" the voice called when she dashed between a small pathway too narrow for the harbinger to follow.

The tone of Kol-Eresh's voice was dark and... something else. Warning?

The path won her a few seconds, but judging by the sound of it, the harbinger was simply forcing his way through sheer rock to get to her.

For the first time, Jackie felt real fear.

He's going to get me. He's going to drag me away and take me to his home world and I'll never see anything or anyone I love ever again.

The bitter tears in her eyes weren't just for the alien world. The realization that she was going to die, more alone than she'd ever imagined she would be, finally hit her.

Perhaps it was the tears running down her face and clouding her vision. Perhaps it was the mad, dream-like running. Perhaps it was the fact that the endless, deadly chasm was very well hidden.

Jackie went through the motions of a cartoon she'd seen as a child. It seemed to her that against all logic, she took a few steps over the edge of the cliff before she realized there was nothing carrying her weight anymore.

No ground beneath her feet.

I don't want to –

Jackie fell.