Page 5 of Claimed by an Alien Warrior

“I will. Thank you, Mel.”

“Hugs! Of course. I know things suck right now and you’re in a bad place, but I’m happy! I can’t wait to see you.”

Zoey smiled despite everything. She knew what Melissa meant. “I can’t wait to see you, too.”

“Get some rest, okay? I’ll talk to some people to see if anyone’s hiring around here. And don’t let that douche bag back in.”

After they exchanged goodbyes, Zoey pressed the end button and slipped her phone into her purse. She looked around the apartment, at her eclectic decorations, at the massive TV Joshhadto get when they first moved in, the video games laying on the shelves below it, at the few pictures of her and Josh that she’d put up.

She couldn’t stomach another night here. He’d be back, and Zoey refused to be here when he showed up. There was plenty of daylight left, and she wasn’t going to get any closer to Des Moines by sitting on the couch. She could stop at the bank to deposit her check on the way out of town.

Returning to the bedroom, she pulled her suitcases down from the shelf in the closet and filled them with clothing, shoes, toiletries, and the small, timeworn photo album that held all the pictures she had of her dad. She hummed to herself, refusing to recall the scene she’d walked in on not long before.

She had her check, her tip money, and a few hundred bucks she’d stashed in her underwear drawer, knowing deep down inside that Josh would never think to look in there for anything. She could do this. This was easy.

Despite her self-reassurances, she cried as she packed. Everything important fit in two suitcases, supplemented by some toiletries and a box of romance novels she couldn’t bear to part with.

“One day at a time, right dad?” She brushed the backs of her hands over eyes. “Someday I’ll find someone who will see me forme.”

Chapter Two

Rendash’s existence had become an endless cycle of darkness and light following no discernable pattern — there was no star, whether familiar or foreign, to illuminate the days, no reflective moons to set the night aglow. If this planet had day and night, he hadn’t the faintest guess as to when either was occurring. Time had lost all meaning to him long ago — it had become a fluid, malleable force that evaded definition or measurement. He knew only that his captors seemed to hold no schedule.

They arrived at random and switched on near-blinding lights before speaking with him in their clumsy, overly-complicated language, trying to hide themselves in the glow. But he knew their faces — especially Charles Stantz, their leader, who was always present whether he participated or not. Sometimes, they experimented on Rendash, taking samples of his blood or tearing off his scales. On other occasions, they inflicted pain with little apparent reason, beating him with blunt weapons or slicing his scales with sharp instruments.

When they finished, they would inject him with chemicals he could not identify before turning off the lights, plunging him into total darkness again. They usually left food, which he’d locate by smell and touch and ate only out of necessity.

Today was the first time the humans had taken him out of his small holding cell in a long while. They’d forced him into a large, metal chair, restrained his arms and legs with heavy shackles that were bolted directly to the chair, preventing him from moving his limbs, and pulled a dark hood over his head. He’d felt numerous turns and inclines as they’d wheeled him through their facility. The shuffling boots of the human soldiers spoke of a great distance being traveled.

Finally, they’d brought him in here — they called it amobile containment unit. They’d secured his chair to the floor and sealed the entry, leaving him alone in the dark once again. The entire contraption moved afterward. Given the rumblings and jolts that shook the walls, Rendash could only assume he was in some sort of primitive transport.

Though the mobile containment unit was just as dark as his cell, and the steady hum of the unseen ventilation system was similar to the one he’d known in the facility, the tremors, clangs, and slams of the transport bouncing over an irregular surface were new, offering him a bit of hope when paired with the other key difference.

They’d neglected to inject him with the chemicals today.

For the first time since the humans had taken him, he could feel his nyros; healing his wounds after the crash had demanded so much of its energy that he’d been unable to call upon it when the human soldiers arrived and subdued him. Whether they’d known it or not — and he was hesitant to give them credit enough to presume they knew what they were doing — their injections had kept his connection to his nyros suppressed.

Another jolt; the transport bounced, and Rendash’s restrains bit into his scales. He clenched all four of his fists and squeezed his eyes shut. The mobile containment unit had been moving for quite a long while, though he couldn’t be sure how long or of how far they’d traveled. Stantz had mentioned something to his fellows about another facility with betterequipment.

This was the first opportunity Rendash had been presented. It was like to be the only one.

I cannot allow my Umen’rak to be forgotten casualties on this unknown planet.

Rendash inhaled deeply; the air inside the transport was warmer and drier than that in the facility and possessed a hint of freshness that suggested open skies and wind.

Drawing in another steadying breath, he focused on his nyros.

It crackled to life at his mental command, flowing through his blood with new warmth, lending much-needed strength to his muscles. But it fizzled as it coursed along his limbs; he increased his concentration, and the resulting heat was disproportionately small. He feared it wouldn’t be enough.

With this nyros, I give myself into the service of the aligarii, my people.

He’d taken the oath a lifetime ago. He recalled the words now to draw upon the pride he’d felt on that long-ago day, to taste the power that had blazed through him.

With this nyros, the strength of my people, I become the Blade of the Aligarii, to be wielded with honor and integrity in the defense of my people and all others in need of aid.

The flame sparked deep in his chest, but it was weak. His connection had been broken for too long. His strength had waned too much.

The humans had captured the rest of his surviving Umen’rak— the warriors he’d fought beside since his youth, his brothers and sisters in arms, who he’d been bound to by millennia of tradition and connected nyros — and dragged them into underground cells along with Rendash. Those few who’d survived the crash and the emergency ejection were gone now. And Rendash’s imprisonment prevented him from completing his Nes’rak, his final mission, and returning to his home world to commend the unerring honor of his brethren through to their ends.

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