Page 1 of The Alien Warrior's Mate

One

Sara

Darkness pulsed around her,dragging her body like an oily monster with its claws wrapped around her ankles. Sara plunged deep into the shadows, her mouth clipped shut in fear. She shoved branches out of the way, and they shoved back, their sharp nails digging into her elbows and scraping her dark skin like paper.

Blood oozed from cuts on her arms and legs. Flailing limbs exposed in her tank top and sleeping shorts. Sara didn’t pay the injuries any attention. If she didn’t keep running, if she stopped for a second, she’d have a whole lot more to worry about than a few, faint lines on her body.

Heavy boots crunched the foliage behind her. She heard her pursuers getting closer and panic filled her mind, thrumming with the harshness of a trumpet blowing in her ears. Her breath hit the air in a scattered crescendo.

Sara had no idea what was coming after her.

She just knew that it… it wasn’t human.

Twigs cracked beneath her sneakers. It rang like a gunshot in her ears. Like the beginning of a horror movie.

I’m the opening sequence.

She would have laughed if terror wasn’t cutting her tongue at the tip. What a vast and apt description of her life. The ordinary character. The disposable black girl who got killed by the murdering psycho less than two minutes in.

Determination bloomed in Sara and she kept on running. The wind blew her frizzy, curly hair into her face. She’d lost her bonnet at the very beginning of the chase. The scrap of orange satin with the elastic black band was hanging forlornly from a tree branch near the entrance of her aunt’s property.

Is he gaining on me?

Sara resisted the urge to turn around and check. The…thingthat had woken her out of her bed a few minutes ago had looked like something out of a nightmare. Translucent skin. Big, frightening eyes that glowed behind a mask that breathed some sort of smoke. Jelly-like limbs.Eightof them.

The moment she saw it, she thought she’d been dreaming.

Then it touched her.

And Sara’s eyes had bulged out of her face. She’d scrambled up and started running. Straight out of her bedroom. Out of the house. Out into the forest surrounding her aunt’s lonely property on the edge of nowhere.

The creature was gaining fast. She could smell its putrid scent. Death. It wafted to her nose, colliding with the hint of dew and hibiscus. The taste of her own fear lingered in the back of her throat, bitter like iron and blood.

Wait. That was iron and blood.

She’d bitten down on her tongue so hard she’d caused herself to bleed. Tears burned in the back of her eyes. Adrenaline petered out and tingles of fear clamored down her spine. Sara knew she should have spent more time on those YouTube exercise videos.

Now she was going to pay for it.

Her pursuer was gaining ground. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t let him catch her. With the last bout of energy left, she pushed herself to go faster, pumping her scrawny arms at her sides and praying she didn’t trip and fall.

The girls running from monsters in the movies always fell. Always so stupid. Couldn’t the director think of new and original ways to—?

In an ironic twist of fate, her ankle caught on a loose rock hidden beneath the shrubbery. Gravity grabbed her by the scruff of the neck like a bully on a playground.Oh? You think you can get away from me?

Sara slammed to the ground. Her nose ricocheted off dirt and stone like a kid bouncing on a trampoline. Pain exploded in her face, pounding to the beat of some crazed EDM rhythm that would probably sell like gangbusters if she ever recorded it.

Not that she would have a chance to. Somehow, Sara doubted this alien creature standing over her wanted to turn her into an intergalactic DJ.

Pain travelled from her face down to her neck.

I think I broke something.

The jelly creature used its tentacles to grab her by the hair. She screamed and the high, piercing sound echoed over the treetops and came back to her empty.

No one was coming to save her.

She was alone.

---