Page 75 of Stay with Me

Cedra

I awoke with a start, senses heightened and on high alert. There was a scuffle in the field outside, the sound of a heavy boot thudding into the soft earth.

Twyla still slept by my side, snoring lightly in her sleep. Her face was tucked into the crook of my arm—her favorite place to curl up. I always joked that the smell wouldn’t be so pleasant when the weather got warmer.

But now, I tried to extract myself without waking her, silently grabbing the undershirt that hung on the bedpost. I slipped it over my sleep trousers and kept to the dark corner of the room as I made way towards the large bay windows.

But the scuffling noise had ceased. In fact, everything was utterly still out there. Unnervingly so. Usually, if I focused hard enough, I could hear a field mouse or two scavenging in the night, their little feet scurrying noisily in the soil in search of scraps of food.

But not tonight; tonight, everything was still.

The windows were shut tight, and I bemoaned closing them before going to bed. The power outage left me at a disadvantage—while my night vision was good, it wasn’t perfect. And I couldn’t see past a certain distance. I wanted to get a deep breath of the night air to sense if anyone was nearby. But if I cracked a window open, would it alert whoever lingered in the fields?

I crouched low, peering into the darkness. My cheek was pressed to the edge of the glass, my breath shallow as I narrowed in on the spot where the scuffle had come from.

There was no movement, no sound.

My breath fogged the edge of the window and my thighs began to cramp in that position on the floor. Still, something told me to stay put. It wasn’t safe. It didn’t feel safe.

The explosion propelled me backwards and I hit the wall, shoulder-first. Shards of glass, reflecting the moonlight, sprayed in every direction. And when I opened my eyes, a being stood in my bedroom, covered head to toe in black combat gear. Weapons like I’d never seen hung from her belt, the uses of which I could only guess at. From the slight frame, I could tell it was female. And its eyes were focused solely on Twyla’s shocked form on the bed.

Neither of them saw me crouched in the corner.

“Finally,” the intruder said, her voice higher than expected. “Twyla Oboid, we are under oath with your father, Tage Oboid, to bring you back to your residence in Sector A on Royal One. You have two standard minutes to pack up anything of importance.”

Twyla stood, her eyes defiant, even as I watched her shoulders tremble. Glass shards clattered off the bed and onto the floor. “I am not leaving. You won’t make me.”

I am not a violent person. As a rancher, I’d been raised to show kindness and compassion, and learned to treat people and animals the same way from an early age. I say this because what I did to the intruder doesn’t reflect how I was brought up.

The only part of the intruder that was exposed was the gap between the back of her helmet and suit—a small expanse of neck. My fist collided with that space so hard, I heard a crack run up the helmet. Blinding pain exploded in my hand as I watched the intruder’s knees buckle and hit the floor like dead weight.

I felt a trickle run down my knuckles and knew I was bleeding. There was no time for that now. We needed to get somewhere safe before this person woke up.

“No! Cedra, watch out—”

It was the last thing I heard as a paralyzing pain erupted from the back of my skull.

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