“Erin!” she called out, hysteria making her voice climb higher.
“I’m here,” the brunette panted. Her voice was farther away than it’d been before and Crystal worried that they would lose one another in the darkness. If Crystal had never feared darkness before, she probably would after this.
Because at that moment, nothing frightened her more than being alone in a place like this, lost, miles and miles away from the strange city that had been her temporary home. Alone in the wilds of Luxiria, an alien planet she knew next to nothing about.
The forest was suddenly echoing with more voices. Male voices.
There weremore?
Dark thoughts rose. Dark fears rose, old memories with them. Her chest seized and she struggled to get enough breath down her throat, into her lungs.
Nothing but determined fear raced through her then. She pushed her body faster, though her hands were still bound tightly. It slowed her down, making her movements clumsy. She heard the crack of vines, heard the heavy footfalls behind her.
They were gaining on her.
With a cry, she tripped over a raised branch, sticking up from the moss, and she went tumbling hard onto the floor of the forest. Pain sizzled over her forehead when she cut her skin on something sharp, but she paid it no mind, not even when blood began to drip into her vision.
A roar sounded behind her and panic spurred her to fight to her knees, to push up from the mossy bed she’d sunk into, though her legs trembled.
But a sound close to her made her blood freeze. Erin yelled, several yards away, and she heard the rumbling voice of their captor as he captured her yet again.
“Erin!”
She hesitated, just like before in the desert of Luxiria, when Erin had yelled at her to run. Crystal couldn’t leave her behind!
And that moment of hesitation cost her.
Hecame racing towards her. The male with piercing blue eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness. He was there. Right there.
Her breath lodged in her throat and she turned to bolt. She made it a few steps before a hard impact hit her from behind, like a boulder. The airwhooshedfrom her lungs, caught up in his strong arms. He’d tackled her from behind, but turned at the last moment, absorbing the impact from the ground, cradling her to his chest.
Panic made her thrash once her breath returned. The male’s eyes flashed and in an instant, she was underneath him, her arms pinned.
“Let go of me!” she screamed in his face, trying to scratch and claw at him.
“Neverrun from me again, female. Not from me,” he growled. “Never from me.”
“Let go of me!” she screamed again, adrenaline pumping.
This male was even more insane than the last.
Not far, she heard Erin struggling against her own captor. It only made Crystal fight harder, but it was no use. Luxirians were strong. And this male seemed like the strongest of them all. He was unmoving, unflinching.
And she was underneath him.
That strength…he could easily overpower her.
She felt the length of his body against her, felt the hard press of his muscles. And the hard press of something else…
“No,” she breathed, useless tears filling her eyes. “No! Let me go! Don’t touch me!”
“Female,” he rasped, his brows drawing tight. “Cease. You are injured.”
She was? She didn’t remember. She didn’t care. All that mattered was getting away from him. All that mattered was finding Erin.
The strange, new voices grew louder in the forest, echoing around the strange white trees. The male hovering above her snapped his head to look over his shoulder and he cursed. He looked in the direction where Erin’s cries had come from and he cursed again.
“Jaxor’an!” the male roared. “Stop!”
