No. None that she knew of.
I’m safe. Just relax.
Her mother’s hum came from behind the opened refrigerator door.
Esme let out a soft sigh and with it any remaining anxiety. Safe.
The refrigerator door closed and there her mom stood. She was much shorter than Esme, standing at five foot even. An array of dark curly hair framed a round face with soft features. She set down the items she’d held in her hands on the counter. Then turned to smile at Esme.
“Mija, are you ready for dinner?”
“Yes,” Esme replied without hesitation. She curled her hands around her mug, letting the warmth from the coffee inside ease the cold in her hands.
She frowned. Why are my hands so cold?
“You had a little setback, but you’ll be fine.” Her mom nodded at the coffee. “Go ahead and drink up. You need to warm yourself.”
Had she said she was cold out loud?
“Drink up,” her mother said again.
Esme pushed the thought from her mind and took a sip. It burned her throat. Esme shuddered and set the mug down. She would wait a few more minutes before taking another sip. It had been forever since she had coffee, but she didn’t want to burn herself in the process.
Hm. Why hadn’t she had coffee in a while? She usually had it every morning. It was a habit she’d started her first year in college. She’d wanted desperately to fit in with the older crowd and wanted them to see her as a peer and not as an eleven-year-old girl.
“No, no, mija. You must drink it all.”
“It’s too hot. I’ll wait for it to cool down.” Esme kept her hands wrapped around the mug. It may have been too hot to swallow, but it was just the right temperature to warm her chilled hands.
Why am I so cold?
The coldness was unlike anything she’d felt before. The chill was so deep that it penetrated her bones. Esme shivered, and her teeth chattered.
Her mom stopped chopping the onion she had on the counter and turned to give her a chastising look. “Esme, do you want to die here?”
Esme frowned. Where had she heard that before?
“Esme,” her mother said, this time with authority in her voice. “Do you want to die here?”
Esme shook her head. “Of…of course not.”
“Then drink.”
Esme, feeling like a child who needed to listen to her mother again, took another sip. The coffee was just as hot before, if not hotter. Esme coughed and set the cup down again.
“Drink!”
“I-I can’t. It burns.”
“It’s helping to keep you alive, mija. Drink.”
Esme shook her head again. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
The kitchen flickered then changed. She wasn’t in her parent’s house anymore but her first college classroom. The knife her mom had used to cut the onion was replaced by a laser pointer that she shined on a whiteboard in front of the class. In bold letters was the word DRINK.
“Do you remember how scared I was when I dropped you off at the airport for your first trip to America?” her mother asked.
Esme glanced around. She was in the front row seats of the large lecture hall. “Wh-what am I doing here?”
“Esme! Pay attention.”
Esme snapped her eyes to the front of the room to where her mother stood. “You were afraid.”
“I was. I thought those American college kids would eat you alive and take away your confidence. I thought you would change into something you weren’t. I was so afraid that being thrust into the college world and being in America all alone would break your spirit.”
“I remember.”
“And what did you tell me before you got out of the car?”
“I told you that I would be fine. That I was stronger than I looked.”
She pointed to the board again. The words were different now.
SURVIVE
“Yes, mija. You are strong. You are one of the strongest people I know. Everyone takes your strength for granted. They take one look at you and write you off as a naïve brainiac, but you’re so much more than that. You’re a survivor.”
“I’m a survivor,” Esme repeated.
“You will survive.”
“I will survive.”
“You will beat The Hunt.”
“I will…” The Hunt?
No. She wasn’t anywhere but…but…
Esme awoke, greeted with a loud hum, a foggy brain, and blurry vision. But even with a film of blurriness over her eyes, she could make out the dark figure looming over her.
Xrez.
She tried to lift her hand to run her fingers across the hairs on his face. She’d missed him so much. But her arm felt weighted down. Heavy. Thick. Dead.
“Xrez?” Her mouth felt like it’d been stuffed full of cotton. Her tongue was wrong. Her teeth were like rocks protruding from her gums. “What? What happened?” She tried to rise but the world spun, and bile rose to the back of her throat.
Xrez helped her to sit up. He was so gentle, treating her like a fragile doll. His hands were warm on her arms. Somehow they’d beaten back the chill on her skin. She could feel his claws through the snowsuit. These were the same claws that had left marks down her back and butt. God, she’d missed him.
The familiar tingling sensation began to build in her stomach. She wasn’t cold anymore. Had she ever been cold or had that been a dream?
“Be careful. The effects of the drugs are wearing off.”
“Drugs?” She opened and closed her mouth, stretching it out. She blinked away the last of the blurriness and glanced around. She was in a room. Chrome and sterile. A hospital room? Surgical suite?
The air was heavy with some kind of antiseptic.
But she couldn’t be in a hospital, could she?
“You’re in the infirmary. We had to purge the water from your lungs and give you drugs to stimulate your breathing, heart rate and regulate your temperature. We were unsure about the method of delivery and how your system would react, so it was very much by trial and error. Sorry, but we had to force you to drink some of it. You didn’t like it at all, but your body responded well. We had no choice but to continue.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
His hands rubbed up and down her arms. “You had an accident. Do you remember?”
A wave of the memory hit her at once. The arrancar had tracked her the entire day, always close enough to hear its paws crunching through the snow, but far away that she couldn’t dare throw one of the weapons at it without fear of missing. She’d spent the day trying her best to shake it from her tail. Whenever she’d thought she’d lost it and could return to her cave, it had shown up again.
It had caught her of course. That winter place was its home, and she was a visitor. “I fell off a cliff.”
She’d gone down. The fall seemed to last forever. She’d tried to scream, but nothing came from her throat. All she could do was clutch the limp arrancar in her arms. She’d finally killed it, and she thought she’d die with it.
She’d hit the water, going through what she believed was ice. The impact had crushed her back. The weight of the arrancar helped sink her into the icy depths. She’d been drowning. Dying.
Esme had struggled to twist from the arrancar. It was too cold. Her body wouldn’t comply. Her hands and legs were sluggish. When she was finally free from the arrancar, she’d tried to kick her way to the surface, but Xrez’s coat kept her waterlogged. Esme couldn’t move.
Then she was in a pod, water all around her. She’d wanted to slam her fists against the walls to break them down, but she couldn’t. She just floated and watched the tracks as she hurled through the underground tunnels. Then everything turned black.
Esme took in gulping breaths and pawed at her throat. It didn’t burn anymore but the memory of icy water where it shouldn’t have been was fresh in her mind.
Oh, god she was still wet.
Xrez hugged her tight to hi
s body. “I knew I should’ve taken my coat from you. I thought I’d lost you.”
“It smelled like you, and I was missing you. I’d only gone out to check my traps. I thought I would be okay.” She buried her face in his chest, feeling at home. She took in his familiar scent. It was calming. “I don’t understand how I survived.”
“Bradliix was able to save you in time.” Xrez indicated his head toward a far wall.
An alien she’d not known was there stood silent, watching her. He was a lot shorter and skinnier than Xrez. With dark brown leathery skin and short, dark blue hair. He wore too much shiny jewelry and had blunt teeth. Humanoid, like Xrez and also like Xrez he was far from passing as a human. Nothing about his features appeared right. Everything was all wrong. He was definitely alien. So very alien.
Esme stiffened and scrambled from Xrez. She pushed for the emergency pod. Nothing happened. Fine. She would fight her way out of this. She selected the icon for her weapons. Again, nothing happened. “I’m not going anywhere with him. I don’t care if he claimed me. I won’t.”
“You have nothing to fear, Esme. Bradliix is my assistant. He’s been monitoring you when I couldn’t, making sure you were safe and thank the Ancients for that.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t rescue you from the cliff,” Bradliix said. “But the pod was unable to penetrate the rock.”
She hardly heard a word he’d said. She was stuck on Xrez’s words. He’d thought to keep her safe? How could she ever be safe? She wasn’t home. Her mom hadn’t come to save her.
Wait. “What do you mean, he was monitoring me?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The alien stepped forward. “We monitor all the prey. There are cameras throughout the arenas. But while we’ve observed, we’ve never intervened.” His eyes were too round and wide set. He flicked his gaze to Xrez. “Until recently.”
Confusion made her pull her eyebrows together. “Cameras? You watched us…me?” The intimate moments where she’d thought she had privacy? Embarrassment rushed through her. She turned to Xrez. “You did too? I don’t understand what’s going on. I thought you tracked me with your hyper senses. I-I didn’t know I was being…” How many people has seen her relieve herself? Bathe? How many had seen her and Xrez? She lowered her head.
“Esme, we’ll talk about this later. You need to rest and complete your healing process.”
She frowned, nothing was making sense. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. The dots she should’ve been connecting were jumbled and not lining up.
“How are you feeling?”
Bradliix held something that looked like a slab of glass, but it had light blue fast moving characters on it. He poked and typed. Long slender fingers that had four knuckles instead of three moved at record speed.
Esme cradled her head with her hands. The headache growing was pounding against her skull.
“Do you remember your name and where you’re from? Humans aren’t able to abstain from oxygen for very long periods, but luckily the temperature of the water had helped freeze your vital organs before irreparable damage could be done. Our healing facilities are equal to the finest in this sector, but even we can’t bring back the dead.”
“I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s going on. Does this mean that I’m out of The Hunt? But no one claimed me.” Esme’s hands shook at the thought of going back.
“I’ve made the decision to take you out.”
Her head pounded more. “I don’t understand. You said the only way out was to get caught, die or win.” She couldn’t win if she’d never made it to Level Three. She wasn’t dead. That left only one outcome. She opened her eyes wide. “Was I captured?” Maybe the transport pod had popped her out in front of a hunter, and he’d captured her. She glanced around, fearing the praying mantis alien who’d followed her before was somewhere in the room. “Am I…is this the processing center?”
“I’m claiming you, Esme.”
She released the breath she’d been holding. If she was caught by anyone and claimed, she’d wanted it to be Xrez. She’d tried not to think about it before, hoping she could finish and return home. But being with Xrez and staying with him had occupied more of her mind than she should’ve allowed. With each thought of staying with him, there’d been a competing one about her family that’d filled her with guilt.
But wait. Per Xrez’s explanation of the rules, a hunter had to have possession of prey to make a claim.
“But you weren’t there when I fell. How could you’ve claimed me?”
“That was the rule.” Xrez cut his dark eyes at Bradliix. Then turned back to her. “But I changed it. Briefly.”
Bradliix had a pained expression on his face. “The original rule is back in place. But I fear it’ll be found out what we’ve done and our integrity will be called into question. The bureaucrats and hunters will want to know how many times we’ve bent the rules for other wardens.”
Bradliix seemed so frantic and worried that Esme almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But she had more pressing matters. “Xrez, how could you change the rules?”
“Let Bradliix call the medics in. I had them removed as you were waking up. I was afraid their appearance would further distress you.”
As the dots finally began to connect, anger built within her, simmering under her skin. “Who are you?” she said tightly.
“I’m Xrez, Esme.” He reached to run his claws through her hair, but she pulled out of his grasp. He looked stunned. “You know me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think that I do. You told me that you weren’t in the game to hunt. You were there to help me win. You even helped the others. Why, Xrez?”
He gave Bradliix a look. “Can you leave us?”
“This is unprecedented, Sir. I should stay to witness. Our integrity,” he cried.
“If what I’ve done gets out, nothing will save our reputation. Leave us.”
After a thought, Bradliix made his way to the sliding doors. The doors opened, revealing a number of aliens on the other side who immediately stood to attention. No humans among the lot. All different shapes and sizes and they all wore white uniforms. Bradliix shook his head. “Not yet, the warden wishes to speak with her alone.” The door closed on a whisper.
“Who are you?” she asked again, this time her voice higher and filled with strain. “Why does he call you ‘sir’ and ‘warden’ and why do you have an assistant?”
Xrez took a deep breath. He averted his eyes. His hands were folded in front of him. “My family founded The Hunt, and I’m the Game Warden.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her heart hurt in the most painful way. “You own The Hunt. Your family has done this. For what purpose, Xrez. What could possibly be the motivation for kidnapping people and ripping them from their homes?” She couldn’t hide the contempt from her voice.
“For-profit.”
She recoiled as if she’d been slapped. She’d asked the question but hadn’t expected the bluntness of his answer. It all made sense now. “You weren’t lying when you said that you wanted to help us.” She repeated his words back to him, “The longer you’re in the arena, the more expensive it will be to acquire you.”
“I…” he lowered his head. He had the nerve to look ashamed.
“Yes, you Xrez. You did this to us. To me.”
“No, I didn’t bring you or the others here. My father was the game warden until recently. There is…was another human in The Hunt. Hunters from all across the galaxy became intrigued with her…with humans. My father…”
There was a long pause. Bile burned in Esme’s stomach and the sting of it was at the back of her throat.
“My father thought that if we had more humans, the hunters would come from all over for an opportunity to hunt one. He gambled and decided this round would be devoted entirely to humans. It worked.”
Esme swallowed the lump rising to her mouth. But no matter how many times she did
she couldn’t get the trace of vomit to disappear. “You’ve taken us from our homes, our families, our jobs, our way of life for sport? For money?”
He took a step toward her, and she sneered. “I deserve that,” he said.
“You deserve so much more, asshole,” she ground out.
“Esme, you don’t understand. This business has been in my family for generations. I’m not the first game warden, and I won’t be the last. This has nothing to do with you or anyone else that we recruit to participate—”
She balled her fists and leered at him. “Steal. Kidnap. Assault. Use. Ruin. Those are more appropriate words to use than ‘recruit’, Xrez.”
“Don’t take this so personal, Esme. Nothing about this game is personal.”
She held up her finger. “Again, wrong choice of word. This isn’t a game. A game is when both parties are willing participants. What you have here is barbaric and unethical.”
“That may be true, but we also see it as a test of skill.”
“In which the odds are in favor of the hunter! Do you not see how lopsided and wrong this entire thing is?”
“I understand it from your point of view—”
“The prey’s point of view.” She waved a hand down her body. “Because that’s what I am. That’s what you’ve made me.” Her voice came out controlled although she was anything but.
If she had her weapons, she wouldn’t have hesitated to use any number of them on him. Miranda had been right, Xrez had an ulterior motive for wanting them to progress. Esme had just been too stupid, dumb, naïve and love-struck to have seen it.
“You’re not prey anymore. You’re mine now.”
“Yours?” She laughed. Actually laughed hysterically. Water falling from the sides of her eyes, belly laughter. “I’m not yours or anyone else’s.”
“Esme, I’m offering you a chance to exit The Hunt. I’m offering you your freedom.”
“Who else did you offer this deal to? Miranda? Yesinia? Ben? Payton? Danny? Min? I know you helped them too.”
“I didn’t help them like I helped you. You’re the only one that I can take out.”
The Game Warden's Mate: An Alien Abduction Romance (The Hunt Book 1) Page 22
