Page 52 of Taken By the Aurelian Warriors

Right now, the way he looks – dripping in blood – I can’t even imagine surviving the enraged alien’s wrath; and I don’t want to find out whether I would or not.

I murmur a prayer to the Gods as I stagger through the rubble – pleading that some ship sent by my father spots me…

…but nothing remains above me. Nothing but an empty sky.

Then, he has me.

Brennan grabs me and scoops me up like I weigh nothing. He grunts as he tosses me effortlessly over his shoulder. Then, he sprints – racing deftly and sure-footedly across the rubble and debris with me clinging to the back of him.

Within seconds, we’re back to the hiding place. It takes him just seconds to cover the ground it took me agonizing minutes to escape from. As he runs, maintaining a breakneck pace, I see Otho appear from the shadows, too. He’s dragging a body.

It’s a thug – some common criminal, like the ones often found in the empty wastelands of the former industrial sector.

A thug whose arm is still clutching a long rifle.

Only, the arm isn’t attached to his body. I gasp, watching Otho drag the armless corpse away from our hiding spot. Brennan passes him as he rushes me down the stairs. I wince as he carries me. The pain in my leg is growing more intense – along with my fear.

Back in the basement, Brennan sets me down on his sleeping bag with surprising tenderness. I look up, expecting anger in his eyes – but they’re blank and unreadable; slate-grey like those of the marble statue he so resembles.

As I sit there, Brennan pushes my slip up, exposing my thigh.

I struggle to push him away, but he grabs my wrist with one huge hand and stares me down. I realize he’s not groping me – he’s trying to attend to my wound.

Gods! It hurts!

The long slice in my thigh is seeping blood. It’s much worse than I’d thought at the time, and the rusted metal that gouged me open was probably very far from sterile.

Could my injury be life-threatening? What will I die of first? Infection, or blood loss?

I glance at my wound, and when I get a good look at it, I instantly feel woozy.

“Don’t move,” Brennan’s voice is a hard command. He leaps up, rushing to the window and opening one of the two duffle bags I’d stacked on top of each other to escape.

He comes back with a small kit – squatting in front of me as he opens the black case and pulls out a gleaming, glass bottle of clear liquid.

“This is going to hurt like a bitch,” Brennan warns. “Can you handle pain?”

I nod, wincing. The cut hurts like mad already – and, besides, I can’t show my captors any weakness. I won’t give them the satisfaction of that.

Brennan breaks the seal of the glass vial and pours the contents out across my deep wound.

I cry out from a sharp, new pain – a fiery, cleansing agony.

To my shock, Brennan puts his left hand on my shoulder, gently squeezing to comfort me – as if he isn’t a violent criminal who snatched me from my home just hours earlier.

I grit my teeth and watch as the blood and dirt are washed from my cut – the liquid sterilizing and cleansing my injury. Then the glass vial is empty, he throws the bottle aside and pulls out a tiny, black gun from the kit.

My eyes widen. I know what that is.

It’s a sealant gun.

I prepare myself – because while I know that these sealant guns are miraculous, they also come at the cost of causing scorching pain – often worse than the injury itself.

Brennan presses the trigger and a black beam arcs to my leg.

I brace myself…

…but no pain comes. “It doesn’t hurt?”

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