Page 4 of Guardian's Heart

Gators, some said.

Ran away, others.

My favorite:got high and drowned.

Even now, standing in this cage with eight strangers, not knowing what happened to him bugged me. Had he run away? I liked to think that he wouldn't have left me with Daddy and Uncle Boone, but then again, he was eighteen and I twelve. I reckoned that spending eighteen years with those two would have been enough for him, no matter if little sis was all by herself. She never gave up… and never knew when to keep her trap shut. Tucker had taken quite a few beatins' because, in my place, men didn't hit no women, so any beatings I would have deserved were dished out to Tuck.

Yeah, I had been a brat. Sorry, Tuck.

In his place, I might have run away too.

My bare toes drummed to an unheard beat on the cold metal flooring of our cage. Two of the women whimpered, and asked where we were, what would happen, what they would do to us.

One of the men offered platitudes in English.It'll be alright. We'll be fine; his voice wavered slightly, even he didn't believe himself.

"What are we going to do?" a man wailed.

The group huddled closer, none of them caring that we were all naked as the day we were born.

After the Cryons took me to their spaceship, I had been thrown into a cell with many others, probably twenty or thirty, I never took the time to count. Our arms had been bound behind our backs, making everything from sleeping to peeing incredibly hard. Not to mention the pain when the numbness set in. You'd think numbness would eventually become actually numbness. Nope. It hurt like a motherf...

I recoiled slightly at thinking the word as if Missy was here with me, ready to whip me over the head with her ruler. Fifteen years of swamp mouth trained out of me in three. A dry chuckle moved up my throat, and I turned my head so the otherswouldn't see. I didn't feel like explaining why I would chuckle now, when we were at our worst… I rolled my eyes. Were we? Were we really at our worst? Sure, the Cryons had stripped us naked, but they had also washed us and even dried our hair. The oil on our bodies was weird, but they had fed us and unbound our arms, so I’d take that as a win. My arms had been numb for a while after they took off the restraints. I tried doing some pushups to get some feeling back into them and almost cried. It had been worth it, though, judging by how stiffly some of the others still moved their arms. At least I had been unbound long enough to get them working again.

It was hard to say what was worse. Sharing a cell with twenty or thirty other people or suddenly being groomed with eight strangers.

For me, escaping had seemed impossible from the cell and the spaceship. Now though… depending on where we were, I would give it the good old college try or die. Well, I'd rather not die, I liked being alive, even on an alien spaceship. The freaking out part aboutthere are aliens!had worn off pretty quickly. At least for me. Some still screamed or recoiled whenever a Cryon walked by our cells. But that might have been more because they were our captors than because they were aliens. I wasn't sure. I didn't ask.

I had never given aliens much thought before. I knew people liked to debate about it, like they liked to debate about almost everything, but where I came from, debates were reserved for how to get food on the table the next day. Maybe it was because I had almost died in a gator's den that I took the wholeHoly shit,aliens abducted us, thing more with a pissed-off attitude for having beenabducted,rather than the,holy shit, aliens! reaction.

"Madre Dios," a woman began to pray, clinging to a man.

Something changed. I couldn't have said what exactly, but the very atmosphere around us felt different: something was about to happen, and I sensed it in every single one of my bones. My body coiled, and I readied myself to jump. I would attack the first alien I saw, surprise him, and make a run for it.

The black walls of our cage changed and became translucent, revealing a large hall filled with aliens of all origins. That sight penetrated even my stoicism.Don't think about it, don't think about it, I repeated in my mind,they're just people. I took a deep breath. Seeing them asjust peoplemade it a bit easier, like when thinking of a bobcat as justbeing a cat, or of a gator as agiant lizard. I forced my gaze over the rows of aliens; took in the worst of them, like one scary dude with green skin filled with scars all over his naked torso. Or the alien next to him who seemed to have feathers.Just people, Nova, they're just people.

The woman who had started praying intensified her efforts; her words turned into louder sobs as she recited a rosary or whatever.

Ahead of me stood two men, aliens. One was large, his skin shimmered in purple colors, the other’s gray-silver. The gray-silver man was closer and stood before a sort of aisle that divided the aliens below and led to a door that had to be an exit. It had to be. I gambled everything that it was.

The silver-grey dude looked like a mountain. He had to be well over six foot tall, wearing some kind of dark auburn uniform and a cape. On any other man, it would have looked out of place, maybe even laughable, but there was nothing laughable about this dude. The uniform clung to him like a second skin, exposing a set of broad shoulders that would put any bodybuilder on Earth to shame. He was clenching at the butt of some weapon strapped to his slim hips, making his biceps bulge.

Short cropped, black hair made him look military, and so did his expression. He looked stern, disdainful, as if he didn't belonghere, as if whatever was happening here was far beneath him. Cold, black eyes regarded the other alien, and when I say black, I mean black, as in eyes like a shark. There was only black, no pupil, no sclera, no nothing. Just a black abyss, which made him appear even scarier than the green guy, who stood not too far away, glaring at the silver dude as if he wanted to kill him but didn't quite have the guts to do so.

There was something about this silver alien that seemed to have all the others… not cowed; they seemed too violent for that—but wary, as if his presence demanded a respect born of fear or ruthless authority.

Don't think, rush, I screamed at myself, realizing I was wasting precious seconds by staring at the silver alien like a love-struck teenager, and made a run for it. I had no official self-defense training, but growing up in the swamps taught me a thing or two—mostly that the element of surprise was always best. I rushed forward, stretching my arms to push the giant off-balance enough to get by him.Now, Nova, now! I shoved at him with everything I had, veering to the side, but he didn't even stagger when my palms made contact with his chest. His rock-hard chest that made my palms sting as if I had hit a brick wall. I knew I wouldn't make it, but still, I pivoted, ready to jump off this… Were we on a stage?Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, my brain cried,run!

I was about midair, jumping off the maybe five-foot raised stage, when an arm slung around my waist, stopping me mid-leap. My legs flailed, and I thought I would fall, but the arm pulled me back and crushed me against that same rock-hard chest I had tried to push against. My feet kicked uselessly into the air as I hung suspended, my back against him. I flung my head back as hard as I could, hitting something, his jaw? I saw stars but didn't give up; again and again, I moved my head backand forth, but after the first impact, he smartened up and held his head back, so all I accomplished was making myself dizzy.

I clawed at his arms, but whatever clothes covered them were impenetrable. I moved for his uncovered hand, got a hold of his pinky and pulled on it, moving it back. A satisfying crack announced that I had broken it or at least dislocated the joint. A sharp intake of breath from him was like music to my ears, and I began to work on the next finger.

"Starbane!" he cursed. "Stop! I'm trying to help you."

Hah, as if I would fall for that.

He rearranged me so that I was in his other arm. Turning my mouth, I found purchase on his upper arm and clamped down.

"Frygging darkfang!" He shook me, but my teeth held tight. Thankfully, I got good chompers from my momma's side.

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