Selena
“You must wake, Selena.”
I know, I know. But I don’twantto.
“If you don’t, how will you ever see those who matter to you?”
Scrunching my eyelids tightly closed, I refused to open them. Drifting eternally in space felt more welcoming than whatever unknown situation I would face. I just knew it. Something about discovering what awaited me when I opened my eyes sent a chilling spike of fear through me.
Praying to the Stars, I tried to will myself back to where I was.
Had I returned to another world of torture? Had my escape from my masters become meaningless after all this time?
Were the Fates so cruel?
Had they allowed me to have a taste of freedom—to be surrounded by the love of my clan and friends—only to take it all away right before my eyes?
“How can you know what surrounds you when you refuse to see?”
Because I am afraid…
It wasn’t just opening my eyes that I feared—I was afraid to move. Every time I had tried moving before, it only brought more pain. It was a sickening reminder that I was indeed still alive but notliving,just injured and trapped within my bindings.
“You are better than this, Selena. You need to conquer your fears, learn from your past experiences, and adapt to your circumstances. Lying here won’t help you. You might as well just give up and die if you are going to refuse to move. Denial won’t help you, and those who are connected to you will share similarly dire fates.”
Those words echoing within me sounded familiar… and yet, distant.
Were they mine? Had I spiraled so far into insanity that I had resorted to talking to myself? Holding my breath, I waited for a reply, only to be disappointed by silence. Sighing softly, I concluded that I had fabricated it all.
The drugs that my captors had injected me with must have played with my mind, twisting my reality.
I had witnessed unexplainable things through my blurred vision—things that couldn’t be real. The first thing that came to me was an infirmary. Perhaps it was my desperation to be rescued that created the illusion that Q was here. He appeared how I had always remembered him, except… plucked of his feathers? Had his tortured screams awoken me from my drugged slumber?
Then I saw Kaede.
Was he really there?
Or was that an illusion, too?
One moment, I was strapped naked to a medical table. When I came to again, he was leaning over me with the same furious protectiveness that I had grown to love. He said something that I couldn’t make out over the throbbing heartbeat ringing in my ears.
The only thing I could remember as I fell unconscious from the numbing pain was something soft pressing firmly against my lips.
The next thing I knew, I was floating ethereally in space, lost in the beauty that surrounded me for an immeasurable amount of time. I would’ve stayed in that world if not for that voice of reason.
Now that my awareness was starting to strengthen, I realized that the mysterious voice was right. It was one thing to surrender alone, but now my life was connected to my clan, ingrained in our private mental network. If something happened to me, they would suffer.
My children.
If I gave up now, they would grow up without their mother in their lives to watch them grow and shape their futures. It was already bad enough that I couldn’t teach them to become normal Aldawi cubs. I couldn’t leave them behind to be raised by others, especially since their father would succumb to my fate soon after I died.
No, I refused to allow our cubs to grow up without their parents because I was afraid of facing reality. I needed to pull myself together and assess my surroundings, so I could figure out how to survive until they came for me.
Xylo. Odelm. Z’fir. V’dim. Zirene.
All their lives were intertwined with mine, bonded in a way that I could never explain.
Until Kaede had put it into words.
