Prologue
Jolene
Huddled between two stacks of empty stasis pods, I tried to take deep, slow breaths and ease my breathing. This was not good, not good at all. It was chaos around me: shouting, screaming, the hiss of shocksticks against flesh, whimpers, and crying. I also heard the rough, vicious voices of the aliens who had pulled me out of one of those stasis pods not that long ago. It was a relief I couldn’t see them right now; they were freaking ugly and utterly terrifying.
Just keep breathing, I told myself. I can get through this. I tried to make sense of the situation, but I was still missing a few too many pieces of the puzzle. What was going on? Where was I? Those strange aliens made me think I was not on Earth any longer. The metal walls and the stacks of stasis pods made me think this might be the cargo hold of a spaceship. The floor was a tiny bit slanted, as if it hadn’tlanded on a level surface—something I’d never heard of before—and it gave me a very bad feeling in my stomach.
They were waking people from the pods by the dozen and screaming at the confused, scared, and often stasis-sick pod occupants. I didn’t think any of us could understand their language, but their meaning became clear enough. Against the wall, they were separating men from women. From my hiding spot, I could see that the crowd of men was definitely growing the largest, and these strange aliens were going past them and slapping them into crude chains. Most of that group was human, but I saw some Talac faces—here or there a Terafin, too, and even a handful of Dragnell. One in particular was very big, one of the higher castes, then, because each caste was genetically distinct.
The women were definitely mostly human’; I saw only teary faces and scared eyes in that group. The aliens didn’t seem to care much about what they were doing, maybe they didn’t need us for whatever they had planned. That’s how I’d managed to slip into a hiding spot to calm my pounding heart and observe. So I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone whispered from nearby, “Hi, are you okay?”
With a fist pressed to my sternum, I slowly turned and peered into the darkness beneath the crates. A woman had crawled into the spot behind me, dark hair and dark eyes peering at me from a pale face with a streak of dirt across a soft, round cheek. She had a very distinct lock of neon pink hair, though, which caught my eye before anything else did.
“I’m okay,” I whispered back. “You?” She nodded, then slipped a little closer to huddle right next to me. Her arms wrapped around her body, clad only in a gray shirt and pants identical to mine—stasis clothing. I’d worked with stasis pods all the time; they were tools used in the ER when no operating room or doctor was available. We could stabilize a person just enough for them to last until someonewasavailable. As for the clothing, I’d carried around stacks ofthem, brought them to laundry, dressed patients in them. I’d never worn a set myself, though.
“I’m Jolene,” I forced myself to say, shoving away thoughts of my work at the hospital and the reason I was in this mess in the first place. “I’d say ‘nice to meet you,’ but we both know we’d rather we didn’t. Right?” She offered me a wan smile, her eyes matching my sentiment, then shivered as we both turned to look back at what was going on inside the hold.
The aliens were hard to make out now that they were far outnumbered by a group of large men. The men were marching them out of the hold with sharp commands and the hiss of their shock sticks as warnings. Every single person wore the gray stasis clothing, and I knew exactly what that meant: we were all convicts.
I glanced back at the girl with the pink hair, and she shifted closer again. “I’m Jasmine,” she said. “Is it me, or is it freaking cold in here?” We didn’t know each other at all, but she was right—it was cold—so I reached out an arm and hugged her to my side. She tucked herself closer, and we both resumed staring at the proceedings in the hold.
“If they don’t need us, just the men, why did they wake so many women?” I asked, the worrisome thought lingering as I stared at the huddled, sobbing group of women left behind now that the aliens had escorted the men outside. I had a very bad feeling about what the future held for us. Even if the aliens didn’t want anything to do with us, those men were still convicts like us.
I knew better than anyone how incredibly unjust and unfair the system was back on Earth—probably throughout the entire UAR. Still, leading a rough life—being poor—meant making bad choices, and often those choices became morally gray or even black. I had no doubt that having access to a couple dozen women would make at least some of those men decide to take what they wanted. It was going to bedangerous, terrifying mayhem, whether the aliens tried to take us or the human men themselves.
“I don’t much feel like being a victim, do you?” I asked Jasmine. She nodded grimly, and then she began whispering to me, outlining a plan for an improvised weapon. Yeah, that could work, but we’d need numbers, as well as the sting and bite of a sling, to hold them off. I eyed the huddled, crying women, and though I’d never considered myself a leader, I knew what I had to do. “Come on,” I whispered to my new friend. “Let’s whip this group into shape before they come back.”
***
“It’s going to be okay,” I said to Eva for the third time, as the woman cried and huddled into my side. Four weeks had passed since we all woke up in this nasty hold on the crashed Long Hauler. Four weeks of cold nights and backbreaking workdays, but at least wehadmanaged to stick together and keep each other safe. Rallying into a group and using the slings en masse had worked to keep the grabby men off our backs, and the Krektar—the nasty aliens that woke us from stasis—had shown no interest in us.
Today, though, utter chaos had followed on the heels of a new girl who had been thrown into our group. A pregnant woman no less, who had been free before they caught her, free enough to know about the locals from this planet. To believe that freedom could be within our grasp at some point. We had all believed that, needed that kind of hope, and now it had been snatched right out from under us.
Nala—the womanhadbeen saved—some of the men had escaped, and others had been killed in the fight. I couldn’t find my bestie, Jasmine, anywhere, and now we were stuck in the hold with the remaining, still far-too-large group of angry men. Eva was hurt, as were some of the others, but they were holding it together better than she was. I didn’tknow if I could rally them enough with our slings to hold off the grabby bastards if they tried to make a move. They were so angry and riled that I didn’t think the sting of rocks would deter them; we might run out of ammo before that happened.
No, this wasn’t good at all. I didn’t blame Eva for crying in fear, struggling to stay hopeful when it all looked this bleak. I hadn’t even told them the worst news yet, though I was certain some had seen the same thing I had. The Krektar had sealed the ship, shutting the hatches to the purple-hued outside world as if they didn’t plan on venturing out ever again. We’d starve if that happened—their hunting parties had been the only thing that kept us fed.
There was no light in the hold, either, just what little filtered through a massive crack that ran along the ceiling. Even the small emergency lights that would sometimes glow over the door had been turned off. No, nothing good was in store for us.
So when the Krektar came, armed with swords and spears rather than shocksticks and laserguns, I was actually relieved to discover that they were putting people back in stasis. So that was their plan: hunker down, wait for the heat from the natives outside to pass. Stasis was better than starving, so when they turned to my pathetic, dispirited group, I urged them into pods myself. The Krektar didn’t even mind when I assisted in putting my girls under. I’d worked these exact pods before, possibly knew the controls better than they did themselves. For my own pod, I took a big risk, setting a three-month timer to wake me if the Krektar hadn’t by then.
I had hoped we’d still be on this planet, but that it would be spring, warmer than it was now. That I’d be able to slip under their radar then and help my girls escape. They didn’t see the timer as I tucked myself into the pod, just laughed and joked crudely in their language as the lid slid shut. Then the pod hissed and fogged up, and sleep pulled me under.
I hoped fervently, as dreams claimed me, that I’d wake to better times, better chances. Maybe there was a sexy dude with scales and a tail out there for me, too. Nala’s guy had come through for her, what would that be like? To have a guy go to such lengths for you? I was still chuckling about the idea as true slumber claimed me. Ridiculous. I was too independent, too headstrong, and too opinionated to ever appeal to a guy. Let alone let one ‘claim’ me as their mate. Nope, that was not me—fundamentally a loner in the romance department.
I dreamed of purple skies, and of purple and gray with a shimmer of blue scales; of a grim face and a laughing mouth full of fangs, the glitter of amethyst in the morning sun. Most of all, I dreamed of a warm embrace, of safety.
Chapter 1
Khawla
Moving back and forth in front of my home, I tried to ease the restlessness that had sunk deep into my bones. The winter had been fierce, hard, but not impossibly long. It felt like it had lasted forever, but that might have just felt that way after being cooped up indoors with three younglings for days on end.
Nisha did not handle the cold well, but she did not want to wear her coat or tail warmer. Daois and Rasho got into arguments and tussled every five minutes, begging me to go hunting with them in between bouts. I was ready for a break that lasted more than a few hours, when one of my brothers would watch the unruly lot.
“I heard the new Queen has a job for you, Scout,” Reshar said, coming around the side of my home on silent scales. There was still a thin layer of snow on the ground that had muffled his approach, but he also kept his scales oiled and smooth to avoid any hint of a whisper. Reshar might act thelazy former prince from time to time, but he was a ruler through and through. It did not sit well with him that a new Queen meant he’d lost all previous status. No longer was he a prince; now he was just another of the hunters.
I shrugged. She had not formally called for me yet, but the hunters at the campfires had all been whispering about it. It would not be long. While I had just been thinking of needing a long break from my noisy children, I did not actually want to leave—let alone scout the skyship wreck on the border of our territory, where it bordered on Sun Fang Clan land. Not that we had issues with our neighbors; the archer Clan kept to themselves and their hunting ground beyond their village.
