Page 12 of Guardian's Heart

Everybody in the universe knew that the Emperor had an extremely volatile temper, so his reaction to having his mate taken sounded like something I might do, if, and that was a big if, I would ever allow myself to get attached to a female like that.

I mulled it over until another of the emperor's motivations became clear to me. The Pandraxian Empire was as powerful as the Cryons. While nobody liked the Cryons, everyone traded with them because they consistently introduced new technologies and rare delicacies to the market—humans being among them. If Daryus overthrew the Cryons, the Pandraxians would become the most powerful species in the universe. However, the only way for him to usurp the Cryons was withthe GTU's blessing, which he could only secure by proving they were involved in highly illegal activities, such as exterminating a sentient, intelligent species. The more witnesses he brought forward, namely humans, the more the GTU would be willing to listen. I wasn't involved in universe politics, but I liked to keep up with them because on occasions, they did interfere with my mission.

"The reason why I commed you is a different matter." Possedion's image stepped out of the flames and hovered over the gnarly roots of the trees.

Here it comes, I thought, preparing myself to be chastised.

"You had orders not to harm Monrag and yet you terminated him."

"My orders were to collect the human prisoners and punish the ones holding them against their will. That's what I did." I stretched the truth, hiding the fact of how irrationally enraged I had been at Monrag for touching the female who ran away from me.

Possedion's expression didn't change, he didn't believe me and rightfully so. "I specifically told you not to harm Monrag."

"My bad. I must have misunderstood." I apologized, sure this wasn't going to be the last I heard about this.

"Get that female back and take those humans to Astrionis," Possedion snarked, ending the comm.

"Yes, sir," I pressed out, staring at the space where he had last hovered. How hard can it be to find a human female in an alien forest?

NOVA

I didn't sleep much that night. Too many thoughts ran through my head. None of which had anything to do with Earth. Part of me did miss my old life, the one after Daddy and Missy. The one where I had been so damn close to living the life of luxury I had only dreamed of. It had been snatched away by the Cryons like so many other things.

One would suppose that with my swamp survival skills, I would have been excellently preparednotto be taken by the aliens. Yeah, that might have been so had I not been in New-fucking-Orleans when shit hit the fan. And boy, did it hit.

The Cryons came without warning, attacked with impunity, and killed the military worldwide within a few days. I spent the first three days holed up in my hotel room, living off the snacks in the fridge—I doubted I would be charged for them—and when those were gone, I broke into the snack machine by the no longer working elevators. By then, nothing was working in New Orleans any longer. No electricity, no running water.

Thank God I didn't have family or friends to worry over; all thefriendsI had were online, and that contact broke… quickly. Not that Fadi in Saudi Arabia would have been able to help me, same for Serjei in Minsk or User312 in Edinburgh.

After day three, it became painfully clear that I couldn't stay in the city. Screams from other rooms and the sound of gunfire announced that the aliens were not the only ones I needed to worry about. Donning a pair of black leggings, my favorite shirt, and boots, I checked my S&W, M&P 9mm, grateful I never went anywhere without it. Some of the kinds of people I did business with were on the morally questionable side, and I had learned long ago that being prepared was the first step in surviving.

Without a backpack, I couldn't take any of the leftover Snickers and M&Ms, which I was sick of anyway by then.

I waited for the cover of night before I carefully opened the door to my room and listened out into the hallway. Deceptive quiet greeted me. With my ears on high alert for any sound and my back to the wall, I crept toward the only light left in the building. A green glowing exit sign. My first order of business upon entering the hotel had been to figure out where all the exits were. That ingrained caution paid off now.

I passed a few broken-down doors and noticed the body of a man on the ground in one room and a woman naked on a bed in another. It seemed whoever had ransacked the rooms had done so at a whim, and it had only been luck that stopped them from kicking in my door. Not that I hadn't been prepared, sitting on a chair, mulling my situation over and the 9mm in my hand.

I turned the knob to the staircase entrance, praying it wouldn’t set off an alarm, and made my way down. I had no idea what happened to the murderers, but luck was on my side for once, and I didn't run into any of them.

Unfortunately, it ran out the moment I stepped out of the stairway and was hit by the humid Louisiana night, runningstraight into four Cryons. I had no time to raise my gun before they stunned me. I didn't even have time to digest what they looked like. The power and phone service went down the first day, so other than a few grainy images and headlines about an alien attack, I didn't know what exactly I was dealing with.

When I came to, my hands were tied behind my back. I was facing a whitish wall with black dots. Several people were with me and also tied up. We stopped a few times to pick up more prisoners, and I quickly learned that the Cryons didn't like us talking to each other. They beat a man bloody when he did, and that was enough of a lesson for me. Not that I was the talkative, making friends kind of type anyway. But for the first time, I was able to study the new enemy who had so easily overpowered all of Earth's superpowers. They were tall but built on the slim side, not very muscular. As far as I could tell, they were all hairless, with a grayish skin covered by a white-silver uniform. What stuck out mostly was that they had only three fingers, no thumb. So there went the theory that you had to have a thumb in order to belong to an evolved species.

Werodearound for a few hours before we were unloaded aboard a large spaceship. I only knew that because anelevatortook us outside the spaceship, giving me a view of Earth and the moon.

We were kept in cells like animals, complete with water and food troughs, still with our hands bound behind our backs for I don't know how long. Until another set of aliens arrived to pick ten of us out. Five couples. We were brought to a cleansing unit and some of us received a translator before we were taken to yet another spaceship, where we ended up again in a cell similar to the one before.

The manassignedto me killed himself when we were taken to this planet by running headfirst into the spaceship's wall. Had he not been acting weird before, I might have taken his suicidemore personal but after spending a few days with him, I didn't think my lack of responding to his efforts to talk to me had anything to do with him offing himself.

And here I was.

I hardly slept because I was brooding through the night about what needed to be done the next morning. As soon as the first rays of light announced another day, I was up and ready. I drank my boiled water and grabbed my supplies—my rocks, the spear, and the fire-making tools—and told Mr. Mouse that he could have his house back.

Even though this place was as good as any, I wanted to get deeper into the forest, putting more distance between the silver alien and me in case he decided to hunt me down, after all.

I was a just-in-case kind of girl, so I laid a few false tracks to throw him off my trail. A fork in the water was perfect for another false trail, and I kept going until about early afternoon. I was tired, my head hurt from lack of food, and I had a ton of things that needed to be done.

I discovered a small underground cave by a set of large boulders, probably rinsed out when the water level had risen—something I needed to keep in mind, just in case. The ground around it and below was dry, so whatever flood had happened, it hadn't been recent and wasn't an everyday occurrence.

---