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Chapter 1
Phalon
My gut rumbles loudly, followed by the tight pain I have come to expect immediately afterwards. Crossing my arms in front of my gut, my knees naturally curl up to join them. My claws dig into my skin to distract myself, and my fangs almost snap off as my jaw clenches tightly and moves from side-to-side as I try to push through the pain.
I know what’s happening. My body is eating itself from the inside out. It’s the only way it can stave off hunger, and all this happens when I’m 1000 feet off the ground. My wings flap furiously, but the energy it takes to hover like this is too much for me, and I don’t know how long I can sustain this action because it’s quickly depleting me of the little strength I have left. I just pray I can hold on for a few more seconds until I can soar on the winds once more. If not, I’ll lose consciousness way up here above the clouds and plummet to my death.
It's daytime. Necessity has made me go against my natural nocturnal instincts to stay one step ahead ofthem—to stay alive. But hunting by day is a thankless task. This will be the fifth day without food and I’m further away from any signs of life than I have ever been since crashing on this planet. It’s the only way to avoid them, but being so far away from the nearest habitation has significantly reduced the number of prey to hunt. I’m literally starving to death and at my weakest.
My eyes go in and out of focus and they strain to search the large gaps in between the trees of the forest below as I hunt, hoping they’ll catch a glimpse of a lone Vysarian. I’m even at the stage where I’ll attempt to eat some of this planet’s wildlife, though the thought of eating something so insignificantas wildlife when I should be sinking my fangs into a nice fat Vysarian male makes me sick to the stomach. I’m practically salivating thinking of a fleshy lone merchant’s abdomen, one who has gotten fat on the very creatures I think are beneath me. I need to push away the thoughts from my mind and concentrate on the task at hand. I barely have enough saliva to keep my mouth and throat from drying out right now.
A black shadow catches my eye and I blink and shake my head to clear my vision. Was that something? Or have I gone so far into starvation mode I’m beginning to hallucinate? I dare to fly lower, taking me through a cloud which instantly drenches me, the moisture from it adding weight to my weak body, and slowing the beating of my wings.
I curse my stupidity, but when driven to the brink of madness by starvation, all cohesive thoughts become a jumbled mess.
I'm below the cloud and its daytime. If the shadow is a male and not a creature of Planet Vysaria, he need only look to the sky once and I’m as good as dead if he has a weapon, I’ve no strength to duck and weave. Yet, the tightness of my shrinking stomach dares me to stay true to my new flight path.
There’s another flash of black against the colourful detritus of the forest, and although my eyesight is not even fifty percent what it normally is when I’m in good health, there’s no denying the body I see below runs on two legs and not four or six.
Confirmation it’s a Vysarian male and not a forest creature makes me fly lower still. My muscles tense with anticipation. I lift my head and I look ahead in the direction the male is travelling, and my heart soars when I see the gap up ahead in the forest dotted with singular trees.
The quickest way for the Vysarian to stay true on his journey’s path would be to cross the forest space in a straight line, running from tree to tree which are spaced out across the opening, keeping in the cover of the shadows and close to thetree trunks if he’s tying to stay hidden from the predators who roam the forest. If he chooses this path, there will be large stretches of open ground between each tree that the male must cross, and I’ll finally have a chance to hunt for food.
He nears the open clearing, but my heart all but stops when he doesn’t re-emerge. Frustration makes my hands curl into tight fists, my claws digging into the palms of my hands drawing blood, but I barely notice. Has the Vysarian changed his mind after reevaluating how exposed he’ll be in the clearing? My pulse is strong in my ear as my heart accelerates with an adrenaline rush.
Then I spy him again. He takes cautious steps at first as he leaves the bulk of the forest behind him, almost as if he’s timid to be exposed out in the open, but then his speed picks up as he runs to the first tree on his path in the clearing. I lose sight of him when the tree’s lush canopy conceals him, and I find myself holding my breath, anticipating which tree he’ll run to next. I get it wrong and a frustrated growl vibrates in my throat. I’ll get just one chance to make my move, so as weak as I am, I have to hover on the spot a little longer and take time to predict which tree he’ll run to next, and then the next, to see if there’s a pattern.
My heart surges when my next three predictions are correct. This is it. Taking one last flap of my wings, I soar on an icy breeze, waiting for the opportune moment for the Vysarian to emerge from the tree he’s currently underneath. When he does, I dive, my head angled so I can keep my eyes focused on the exact tree canopy I know for certain he’ll be emerging from when I’m just feet above the ground.
The ground gets closer much faster than I thought it would, and for a fleeting moment, I doubt my hunting abilities. Have I become too weak to gauge the speed and timings of a dive-bomb? But a figure clothed in black suddenly emerges precisely where I predicted it would.
At the last second, just feet before I reach him, I pivot my upper body and angle my wings to stop my rapid descent. Bringing forth my feet and opening my talons wide, I silently beat my wings to hold me momentarily mid-air as I curl my talons over the male’s shoulders. Then, in less than a second, I beat my wings hard and lift the male’s feet off the ground before he has a chance to realise what’s happening.
My fangs clamp together hard, and I grimace at the effort to lift another being as well as my own body weight back into the air, my strength is all but depleted. I need to eat soon before I lose consciousness.
I flap my wigs hard to lift us, and every stroke is an effort, even though the Vysarian in my grip is motionless, unlike the many who have been in his place before him when they realise death is imminent. Normally when I’m hunting, I’ll take my prey up at least one thousand feet into the air, the longer the drop, the better the body gets mashed up when it hits the ground, making it so much easier to eat, but all I’m aiming for is two-thirds this height because it’s as though it’s just dawned on the Vysarian male he’s is in mortal danger, because he begins to wriggle, his legs kicking out.
The momentum of his kicks is doubling my efforts to fly higher, and at just over six hundred feet, I open my talons and look down to watch the efforts of my reward as it falls quickly, soon to be pulverised when it hits the ground.
I’m taken-aback when the male lets out a scream, as high pitched as a female, though I’ve only ever heard one female squeal in my lifetime. The strange high range of his voice excites me and makes me look pay more attention as I watch him fall. But when he turns his head to look up and see who has done this to him, I’m shocked to my core when I see feminine features staring back up at me.
Her eyes are bulging with terror, her plumb red lips pulled back over white blunt teeth as a scream escapes her open mouth. That’s when the covering falls back from her head and long hair as yellow as gold escapes and fans out like a sun’s beams around her head. Her arms and legs are splayed out as she flaps them about, trying to slow her fall.
My heart all but stops. What have I done?
I twist mid-air and go into another dive bomb, this time drawing my arms in tighter to my body, furling my wings back to an angle that’s so painful, it fills as if they are ripping away from my shoulders, but I gain speed.
The ground comes closer and faster this time, and my heart thunders in my chest. If I can’t save the female, I’ll die trying, this is after all, the reason why I’m out here alone.
Only fate can play a hand in getting me in line with her. I have four seconds if I’m lucky to stop her rapid descent before she hits the ground—two if I’m not. Lifting my arms, I reach out for her and my claws just graze her clothing, but then I’m able to grab onto it and pull her into me, wrapping my arms around her. I’ve slowed us as much as I can but there’s no avoiding it, we’re going to hit the ground. I make a last second decision and use the last ounce of strength to draw my wings around us both just before my back hits the ground hard, my body cushioning the fall for the female. All the air is instantly forced from my lungs past my gritted fangs and the back of my head slams down. Then everything instantly goes black.
Felicity
Opening my eyes, the first thing I see is blue and lilac coloured leaves. The door to the pod I escaped the spaceship in which was about to explode, has been pushed open by a thick tree branch which is just feet from my face. Any closer, and there’s no doubt in my mind I would have been speared by it.
How ironic would that have been to have escaped a spaceship on the brink of exploding just outside Planet Vysarian’s atmosphere, only to die in an escape pod, all because I didn’t have a clue how to double lock the pod door. Then why would I? I’m a stow away, and the little information I gleaned about the escape pod was from the snippets of conversation I caught between the five women who were travelling from Earth to meet their Vysariian mates the Earth council had matched them with.
Like billions of women, I’d also entered the lottery. But I was under no illusions I’d win a place to be matched to a Vysarian alien man. Not when my ticket was up against so many. That’s why I’d formulated a plan to stow away. I’d worked at the space station the entire time the spacecraft designed to take the winning women it was made for, to Planet Vysaria. My job was to help fit out the living quarters, so while I was there, I’d sneak around to find if there was a space behind the panelling where a stowaway might be able to sleep.
