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“We’ll never defeat them all,” Stari said. “And they won’t kill him. They want him for their show. Come with me.”
No. I had to help him.
“I lost him once,” I said. “I won’t lose him again.”
An arm wrapped around my neck, putting me in the sleeper hold. I would pass unconscious in seconds. Stari tightened her grip and hushed calmly in my ear.
My hands and knees went weak. I felt sick to my stomach.
I flailed with my arms, my legs, but Stari was too strong.
I heard the meaty slap of fists on flesh on the other side of the cloud of dust. I wasn’t sure who was winning and who was losing between Chax and the Iron Hoof.
Chax was outnumbered. The chances were, he was the one receiving them.
I felt every blow he received.
All to save me.
My eyes fluttered closed as darkness finally took me.
I veered in and out of consciousness as the soldiers carried my aching body across a vast sea of sand, tinted red by the passing moon.
It took me a moment to recognize where I was—not that I knew exactly where that was. The soldiers were taking me to their “emergency base” where we would develop a plan to counter the Changelings’ earlier attack.
It seemed an impossible mission.
We no longer had access to the tools and machines the Yayora had before. And still, the Changelings had come and defeated them.
It was easy to forget that not so long ago I was on Earth and had no idea about the existence of alien species. Never mind an alien TV show that wanted to use me for their own entertainment, with the end result decided long before I unknowingly stepped in front of their cameras.
And Chax.
Like every Earthling female, I dreamed of getting married one day. I even had a practice marriage to my childhood sweetheart Jamie McAllister at the tender age of eight and a half on the school playground.
Who would have thought my one true love couldn’t be found on Earth but far in the outer reaches of the galaxy?
I spied the starry night sky and was reminded of the time I spent in that fragile attic space of the dilapidated barn. Chax and I made love—real love this time and not the angry aggressive act of our first encounter—and lay on our backs, sated and satisfied. We peered up at the same sky through a hole in the ceiling and held hands, wondering if this was the start of a new beginning for the both of us.
Instead, it signaled the end of that happy time of lovemaking and looking to the future.
He’d been taken prisoner by the Changelings.
And I let it happen.
He never should have thrown himself at Iron Hoof like that. They wanted me, not him.
I felt angry that he threw away his freedom, his own life for mine. I know he did it from a place of love but I still hated him for it.
But the hate couldn’t last. I loved him too much for that.
I needed to help him, to spring him free from whatever new prison they kept him in.
I knew where they would take him. I knew because I used the Changeling’s technology against them.
I knew where their Control Room was.
I knew where they ran their twisted little gameshow from.
