Page 27 of Taken By the Aurelian Warriors

I scream.

…and then his heavy boots clunk onto the deck of the Aurelian spacecraft that had been hovering silently outside my window, with its side door open and gaping.

As the Aurelian leapt, carrying me effortlessly through the air, I’d glanced down and seen Gerard.

He was lying motionless on the ground below – his body still and lifeless.

Oh, Gods! He’d died trying to protect me!

Grief washes over me – a raw grief more powerful than even the terror that’s gripping my heart. I stiffen in the arms of the Aurelian as he hauls me into the waiting spacecraft. The doors slide closed behind us, cutting me off from my old life.

“Go!”

The leader of the Aurelians barks out the command, and the ship lurches upward with silent speed. The velocity makes my stomach lurch and my ears pop from our surging altitude.

The huge alien holds me tightly against his powerful body.

I can feel his hard muscles. I’m minuscule against his powerful body. I’ve never felt so small and helpless before in my life.

The Aurelian’s hand covers my mouth, and it’s so big that it nearly covers my nose as well, making it tough to even breathe. I bite the marble-white flesh again, and this time the Aurelian growls menacingly in my ear.

“You do that again, and you’ll regret it.”

I give up, tears flooding my eyes. At my surrender, the Aurelian loosens the pressure of his hand slightly, letting me whoop in breaths through my nostrils.

My stomach lurches as we soar over the walls of my home and up into the unknown.

I’d always longed to see the other side of those walls, without a group of Sentinels escorting and protecting me.

Now, I see the other side more clearly than I’d like to.

Thisis the dark side my father tried to keep me safe from. The threat of kidnapping, violence and abduction was real all along.

The guilt wells up in me. Because of me, Gerard is now dead. His instincts told him to wait outside tonight and protect us – but while his instincts were right, they cost him his life.

All those years – all that money my father had spent on Sentinels, and surveillance, and all other manner of protective devices and systems.

They were all useless.

Tonight, that alien got past dozens of Sentinels without a single shot being fired.

He crashed into my bedroom as easily as if we’d left the looming, stone gates open.

The veneer of safety my father had hidden me behind – I see how it trulywasjust a veneer now; an illusion, meant to salve his guilty conscience at endangering me.

I glance over the Aurelian’s huge shoulder, through the plexiglass window on the door of the ship.

Beneath us, I can see the city rushing past. As the Aurelian’s spacecraft banks left, I can see the dull glimmer of the streetlights and windows – glittering like flecks of diamond buried in piles of coal dust.

We’re traveling at an incredible speed.

I know why, too. All that I’d learned fromOn Aurelianscomes rushing back to me.

This spacecraft isn’t justanycraft. It’s an Aurelian Reaver.

This Reaver is how the Aurelians were able to get so close to my home without a noise – I know from all my studies into them.

The lightest of the Aurelian attack ships, a Reaver-class vessel is powered by a small Orb – just like the ones my father found huge deposits of in his new mine.

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