Page 1 of Chosen
Chapter
One
JAMIE
Ithink I’m going to be sick.
Not the kind of sick where it starts with a little itch in the back of your throat. And then escalates to a cough, runny nose, achy body, fever and chills. Nope. This is the kind of sick that comes on suddenly and makes you so nauseous you want to throw up the entire contents of your stomach.
It’s the kind of sick that makes you hyperventilate and causes your chest to burn to the point you can’t breathe and you think you’re going to die.
I wrap my arms around my body in a full hug to hold myself as I grow unsteady on my feet. My ears refuse to register the words of comfort and sympathy issued by my parents and sister. I’m sure they’re trying their best to find something to say to calm me down, but they’re too late. Panic has already set in.
I take several steps away from them as they reach out to me. I shake my head vehemently.
“No! Don’t touch me!”
I think if I allow myself to be embraced, I’ll really fall apart, especially when I’ve fought so hard these last few months to hold my sanity intact.
After all I’ve been through, I find myself close to cracking again. There’s only been two times in my life when I’ve felt this helpless. The first time was when the Enforcers raided the commune my family and I had lived on peacefully. No place is perfect, but we had been happy, away from the unjust laws of thesuperious.
Us homo sapiens made our own rules, some good and some bad, but at least we didn’t live in conditions that basically made us slaves to a system with no real way out.
Oh, the powers that be, believe we’re treated just fine because they pay us wages for the jobs we’re assigned, but said compensation is barely enough for most of us to scrape by.
My parents had taken the risk of fleeing to an off grid commune with me and my sister in hopes for a better life. And for the most part it was. I had been young when we’d fled so I barely remember what life had been like before then. But I’d been told how bad things were from the older residents and my parents. My sister Noah, who is only a couple years older than me, recalled bits and pieces and what she’d told me wasn’t great.
So when the Enforcers came to break up the idyllic life we had and threw us in cages like animals, the sick was strong. When my sister was taken away, I’d given into it and vomited all over the cramped prison I’d been kept in. The worst part was sitting in it before the smell got so bad the Enforcers had hosed the cage down. Despite that, the scent had still lingered.
And now, for the second time, that feeling has returned. Yet this time, it’s much worse because there’s no chance of rescue. I’d sensed, something was wrong the second my family asked to speak with me privately.
My mom’s eyes were red and her nose swollen as if she had been rubbing it excessively. My father had that stoic tight-lipped look he adapts when he’s worried about something. As for my sister, she couldn’t quite meet my eyes.
So now for the second time, I have this sick feeling.
As the silence grips the room in a vice, I take several calming breaths to ease the tension in my body.
No one in the room seems to know what to say so I finally manage to croak out the first words that come to mind. “How long?”
There’s no immediate response so I raise my head and direct my tear-filled gaze toward my sister. For some reason, seeing Noah holding her rounded belly protectively, causes the panic within me to rise.
I clutch my chest and fall to my knees. “How long!” I demand again when the room remains silent.
Noah walks over to me and places her hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we should talk about this when you’ve calmed down.”
I smack her hand away. “For fucks sake, would you answer the damn question? How long do I have before I have to go with that monster?” As the words spill from my lips, so do the tears. They run down my cheeks unheeded and I can’t stop.
“He’ll be here in five days,” Noah finally answers.
That gives me practically no time to get used to my new situation. In the last few months, my life has been nothing but one upheaval after another. Being assigned as a companion had been bad enough. Actually, way worse than I could have possibly imagined.
I’d been forced to do things that makes me so ashamed, I dare not tell anyone about it. I don’t think my family would understand. I thought no assignment could be worse than companion. But I was wrong. I’ve now been assigned the worst possible position there could be.
Breeder.
But not just any breeder. I’ve been matched with the one calledThe Beast. Others call him the Savage Sector Leader. Sector 10 is one of the coldest regions, where the work isgrueling and apparently people are experimented on. Since forcefully being taken from the compound, I’d heard ‘at least we’re not on sector 10’.
Sector 2 is bad enough in my opinion after what I’d endured but to know there are worse sectors makes my stomach plummet to my feet. How will I survive so brutal a man?
