Page 22 of Charmed By the Alien Warrior

When he jabbed his claws deep into my thigh and drew blood, then pressed them against my throat as a silent promise, I stopped, ready to sit back and bide my time.

I’m not dumb, contrary to recent behavior. I may have already broken the first cardinal rule of surviving a kidnapping—never let your abductor take you to a second location—but one of the next rules is to stay calm. Act compliant and keep your eyes open for the chance to escape.

So, that’s what I’m doing. Waiting. Watching. And ignoring the panic clawing at my insides.

I keep telling myself the warriors will come after me. Sorrin will come. His overbearing grin and loud laugh might drive me up a wall, but he wouldn’t let me get dragged off like this. He’s too stubborn not to. He’ll come charging in, just to rub it in my face later that he was the one who rescued me.

If he survived.

But he had to, they all did. It’s hard to imagine anything besting the muscle-bound warriors and their sharp blades.

The battle flashes through my mind—all those Pugj, each bigger than the last, against only five warriors. My stomachchurns, and a sob burns in my throat. No. They survived.Hesurvived. He had to.

I try my best to stay calm. To slow down my racing heart and the panicked breath rushing in and out of my lungs. Each time Kaja bounds over another root, my entire body bounces hard, and my stomach is constantly being jolted inside me.

I’ll probably be covered in bruises by tomorrow. If I’m still alive tomorrow.

No.My mind shies away from those thoughts. Iwillsurvive this.

I’ve survived an alien abduction and a spaceship crash on a remote planet. Hell, I’ve survived fucking overgrown big birds attacking our ship. If I can survive all that, I can survive being taken by a wannabe Bigfoot.

Blood rushes to my head and between the rough, jostling ride and the overpowering stench rolling off the Pugj’s greasy fur combined with the acrid scent of the trees that surround us, the nausea I felt earlier returns with a vengeance. Saliva floods my mouth and my throat burns. I know exactly what’s about to happen, and I don’t fight it.

I puke up everything in my stomach. It’s awful, and my throat is raw afterwards. But a vicious grin stretches across my face because I turned my head at the right moment and vomited right onto my captor’s hairy leg, drenching his gray shaggy fur in barf.

But he must be used to foul smells following him around because he doesn’t seem to even notice. Not even a flinch. I suck in a deep breath, feeling a tiny bit better after vomiting, but then I sag as reality hits me again. What the fuck am I going to do now?

If only I had the shiv Crystal gave me, but I don’t. It’s tucked safely away in my satchel, which is still secured to the back of the saddle, just out of my reach.

Time seems to speed up and everything around me begins to blur. My head is still hanging over Kaja’s side and my gaze is fixed on the ground flying beneath her cloven hooves. Eventually I notice the change as we leave the Bitter Forest.

The terrain flattens with the twisted roots and dead needles cushioning the forest floor disappearing before my eyes, and Kaja picks up pace, racing faster and faster as the hairy beast digs his clawed feet into her sides. Before long, I notice a flash of bright green beneath us.

It’s the Vex Grasslands. And that gives me an idea.

It’s a terrible plan. But it’s all I’ve got.

When we transversed the grasslands yesterday, the guys told us it was safe to cross, but that we needed to be quiet just in case. So as not to trigger a stampede. What if... Can I scream or make a ruckus of some sort just enough to get the massive dicro herd to startle?

I glance up and notice that in the distance, I can see the beginnings of the dicro herd, with animals placidly grazing. Kaja instinctively veers to the right, keeping to the edge of the herd, but I hope it won’t matter.

Not with this big of a herd.

I close my eyes for a moment, trying to slow down my breathing and prepare myself. My heart is racing, but I know what I have to do. This might be my only chance to escape.

When I judge the moment to be perfect, I take a deep breath, filling my lungs up, then I scream. I scream so loud and so long it feels as if something tears in my throat.

Kaja nearly stumbles, and the wannabe Bigfoot jerks, his claws digging deeper into me. But I keep screaming until my throat feels like it’s on fire. Like it’s being shredded into pieces.

And it works. Sort of.

The stampede starts slowly at first with the nearest dicros raising their heads and staring at me with wide eyes like they can’t believe what the crazy human is doing. And just when I think it won’t work, they begin to panic and run.

And it’s like a line of dominoes falling as more of the animals startle, until a large group of them are running, desperate to get away. It’s not even a quarter of the herd, maybe only a couple hundred dicro.

But it’s enough to have a ripple effect.

The spindly-legged dicros surge, heading towards us, and Kaja, already fearful, races alongside the small stampede I’ve managed to trigger, her hooves barely touching the ground now. I can feel myself sliding across her back as the thick arm that was thrown over me loosens, and I close my eyes as the ground seems to rise up.

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