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CHAPTERONE
Shae
* * *
The door slides open in front of me, just like something out of an old sci-fi movie. It even makes the futuristicwhooshsound.
“Thanks for the ride, guys. I can take it from here,” I tell the green orc-like creatures who flank me. I try to pat at them, but their meaty hands are wrapped around my upper arms, holding me in place between them.
The one to my right grunts just before he shoves me inside the room. And by shove, I don’t mean he gives me a gentle push over the threshold. My feet leave the ground, and I land several feet beyond the door. By the time I pick myself back up, the door has slid closed, and I’m once again trapped in my cell.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” Danielle snorts from across the small room. “In fact, that might’ve been a record.”
I glare over where she’s sitting on the single cot pushed against the wall. Her legs are folded under her in a lotus-type pose, with her hands resting palms up on her splayed knees. The sleeves of her oversized gray jumpsuit are pushed up to her elbows, and the legs are rolled up so they don’t drag on the ground.
“Fuckers were waiting for me,” I grumble, flipping over and leaning against the opposite wall. I pick at the rough fabric of my identical jumpsuit with a sigh. “They might be smarter than they look.”
“Girl always has to learn the hard way,” Danielle mutters to herself. Her eyes are closed, but I can see her lips twitching as she tries not to smile.
I roll my eyes, knowing what’s coming next.
“You are a taurus, through and through. Tough as nails and too stubborn for your own good,” she tells me as she relaxes her breathing once more, focusing on her—whatever she’s doing.
When I first met Danielle, I never would have pegged her to be into witchy shit.
We were locked in cages, along with four other women who were also abducted by the Xar’ads, praying mantis-looking aliens that make their living capturing and selling unsuspecting species throughout the universe. My first impression of her was that of a business-suit-wearing career woman. With her intricately braided hair that reached the small of her back and manicured nails painted blood red, it wasn’t hard to imagine her wearing Prada or Gucci and mile-high stilettos with red soles, striding down a packed New York street among a sea of people. But, nope, the sister is a straight-up new-age chick.
Closing my eyes, I let the back of my head thump against the wall.
Fuck.
I can’t stand being confined. Already, I’m feeling the walls creeping in on me. Reminding me that I’m trapped. That I can’t just get up and leave.Well… I can,but I never get very far before they bring me right back.
I’m so over this abduction bullshit, and I refuse to give into the damsel-in-distress shit anyway. There will be no white knight to slay the dragon because absolutely no one is coming for us, so it’s up to us to save ourselves. Which is why I refuse to sit and meditate like my roomie.
“I can hear what you’re thinking from here,” Danielle hums under her breath. “You should really try grounding yourself. Instead of running headlong straight into danger, maybe try manifesting some good karma.”
Choked laughter bubbles up before I can stop it.
Across the room, instead of taking offense, Danielle just grins. “You’d be surprised,” she tells me without opening her eyes.
Yeah. She’s not wrong there.
I wish I could believe in something so blindly. To feel so right about something that I knew deep down it was true. But I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt that way about anything.
I might tease Danielle, but, really, I’m a bit jealous. After everything we’ve been through—abductions, auctions, slavery, incarceration—she can still connect with her happy place and find peace.
I have both my feet firmly planted in the real world. A world with crappy jobs and shitty people. Where bad things happen to good people for no reason. It’s not the sign I was born under that makes me tough and stubborn, but because I am aware of how things really work.
Danielle, on the other hand, lives in a world of magic and psychedelic rainbows, where all you have to do ismanifestthe things you want. I love that about her, and I would never do anything to ruin that outlook she has, because we need more Danielles in this world. But that doesn’t change me notfeelingher reality the way she does. Not any more than she can feel mine.
Call me cynical. Blame it on the way I was raised, in a modern Mongolian American family. My parents were already highly educated professionals when they immigrated to the U.S., eager to embrace the American dream. You know, the one where nothing happens unless you go out and make it happen. As the youngest of four and the black sheep of the family, I’m the only one not successful in the traditional sense. My sisters and brother all have successful businesses or have climbed corporate ladders. Not me, though. I’ve had a long string of jobs I never stayed with long enough to make a career out of, and then got my ass abducted by aliens.
My head rolls to the side, and I narrow my eyes on the door. The first day we were thrown in here, I pried the cover off the little metal box at the top of the door and, after messing with the wires inside, managed to bypass the lock and get the door to open.
After high school, I decided I wanted to become an electrician, a job I thought would set me up financially for life—which is something that’s been drilled into me by my parents since I was old enough to know what jobs were. But a few months into the apprentice program, I was bored to tears and gave it up. But I did take something away from those classes.
“Why haven’t they come in and fixed the door so I can’t keep escaping?” I wonder out loud.
