Page 4 of The Alien Warrior's Mate

The lion guard waved his paw in the air. An orange glow form like a box around her and she jumped back, hearing the hum it made as her prison walls materialized.

“What the…?” She observed the high-tech cage. Alien technology was not something she’d pretend to understand, but were they really this advanced? Had such intelligent life existed in the universe for all these years?

Suddenly, Sara felt very small and very insignificant.

The guard tossed the girl inside and she slammed on the ground, silent as a mouse.

Sara ran to her side and touched her shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”

The woman didn’t answer.

She leaned forward, lowering her voice so the lion guard didn’t hear. “Do… do you know where we are?”

The woman struggled to crawl to her feet. “We’re on the alien black market.”

The alien what?

The girl brushed her hair out of her face. There were bruises around her eyes and around her pink lips. She hugged one scrawny arm to her waist and dragged her body until she sat against the wall. Leaning her head back, she exhaled a heavy breath and peered at Sara. “You’re new, right?”

“Y-yes.” Sara nervously played with the hem of her tank top. “What kind of dream is this? Did we all take some kind of drug?”

The girl laughed darkly. “We all wish.” She gestured to the captive aliens. “This is the kind of nightmare you don’t wake up from. This is the kind of trip you can never leave.”

“What’s going on?”

“We’re about to be sold to the highest bidder. That’s what.” Her voice sounded hopeless. Jaded.

“No.” Sara rose desperately. Like a mime in the park, she reached out to find the wall of the cage. As soon as her hands touched something solid, a painful shock tripped up her spine.

The other girltsked. “If I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”

“What is that thing?”

“A forcefield. It’s set to low right now.” The woman glanced away. “They learned that lesson when girls kept dying after touching it.”

“There were others?”

A sharp nod. “A handful. What was left after...”

“After what?”

“Most of the others died on the trip here.”

“What?”

“They didn’t wake up.” Unshed tears filled the girl’s eyes. “They didn’t…”

“All those women?”

“Yeah.”

Sara licked her lips as her brain scrambled to make sense of it all. She didn’t want to believe that this was actually happening.

Aliens?

Spaceships?

Intergalactic human auctions?

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