by Maia Starr
“Human, come here.”
I scrambled to my feet at the sound of Zod’s voice, and although I was reluctant to go toward him willingly, I was more afraid of what would happen to me if I didn’t.
“Good. Would you like to join me for an event tonight?” Zod asked, his cold metallic eyes boring into mine. My heart dropped in my stomach, but I had to stay strong.
“What kind of an event?” I asked coyly. “I don’t have anything to wear but what I have on right now.”
I glanced down at my top, which was stained with dried blood.
“Well don’t you worry about that,” Zod said with a bright smile. I recoiled but managed to compose myself before he looked back into my eyes. “I’ve got just the thing.”
“Thank you, my lord,” I said, choking the words out. It was the way he had instructed I greet him, and I figured I’d better oblige if I didn’t want another beating.
“I think you’re going to be just the prettiest little thing in this dress,” Zod said, turning around to rummage in a bag I hadn’t noticed he had sat down behind himself. He pulled out a beautiful gown, rippling with colors I had never before seen on Earth. It was breathtaking. “Why don’t you try it on?”
“Yes, my lord,” I said, avoiding his eyes as he offered the dress to me. “Thank you.”
I could feel his gaze burning into my back as I disappeared into his washing room to put on the gown. How could things possibly get any more bizarre?
***
Zod was quiet as he drove his hovercraft through the air, and I took the chance to take in my surroundings. Nothing could possibly look fun and magical now, not after my horrible experience at the mercy of Zod. Still, the planet Jenal’k was rife with beauty, and the gown Zod had given me protected me from the suffocating heat of the planet’s three overbearing suns. Zod’s voice suddenly broke into my thoughts.
“You will need to be on your best behavior when attending the event tonight. There are going to be some very important people there. Many of them don’t have a human of their own yet, so you’d better behave yourself. When I ask you a question, you better answer me without any hesitation. When I ask you to do something, you had better do it. Is that understood?”
“Yes, my lord,” I said, trying to keep the sigh out of my voice. How the hell had I gotten into a situation like this? I was an independent woman. I had worked hard my whole life to excel at my career and become one of the most prominent investigative journalists of our time. Everybody knew my work, even if they didn’t know my name.
I had spoken time and again about the dangers of negative attitudes toward women and the men who treated them as servile objects. How had I found myself right in the middle of such a situation? What had I done to deserve this?
***
“Welcome, Captain Zod. And…”
“This is my human,” Zod said quickly. He hadn’t bothered to ask my name, or anything else about me. All that seemed to matter to him was that I was his.
“Welcome, human. We sincerely hope you enjoy the festivities of the night.”
The man who greeted us stared at me, his rust-colored eyes flashing with curiosity. It was almost as if he had never seen a woman before. Well, maybe he hadn’t. At least not a woman from Earth.
An unfamiliar voice suddenly spoke from behind me in Thressl’n, and my translation device worked lazily to translate for me.
“Greetings, Zod! Welcome!”
“Supreme Leader Aloitus! What an honor. Everything looks amazing!”
It was true. We had walked into the entrance of a lush garden covered by a marquee. The lighting under the tents was ethereal and golden, giving everybody a glow that almost made the race of strange extraterrestrials look beautiful. Tables and tables filled to the brim with delicious smelling foods lined the walls, and my stomach grumbled involuntarily.
“Don’t you feed that thing, Zod?” Supreme Leader Aloitus joked.
Zod glared down at me, but laughed a little too hard at the Supreme Leader’s joke.
“Of course. But it’s been a few hours between meals. You know how busy my schedule has been. And humans couldn’t find their way around a Thressl’n kitchen if Yulso’n Vetch himself were there!”
Supreme Leader Aloitus laughed boisterously, and I glowered, feeling a bit insulted on behalf of my people. But if it meant I would get to taste one of the foods emitting such a delicious aroma, I would stay quiet.
“I placed you and your guest closest to the stage,” Supreme Leader Aloitus said, holding his arm out to usher us to the table. “I hope you enjoy the evening.”
“Of course!” Zod exclaimed. “It’s an honor to be here, sir.”
“Yes, it is an honor to have you and your female,” Supreme Leader Aloitus said, bowing graciously.
Zod bowed deeply, and nudged me hard in the side when I didn’t bow as well. I dropped my head forward, gritting my teeth in a mixture of pain and frustration. How was I going to live with this man? Would I even survive it?
“Sit, human! Have you no manners?”
Zod barked the command at me in English, and I sat down heavily in my seat. We were a few feet away from a platform with a podium and a microphone on it, and before long, a plate of food was placed in front of me.
I looked up, hoping to thank whoever had given it to me, but they had already disappeared into the crowd.
“Well, eat!” Zod exclaimed, casting a sidelong glance at Supreme Leader Aloitus, who was making his rounds and greeting people in the crowd.
My gaze settled suddenly on the kind man from the ship. What was he doing there? Beside him was a human woman, though the Thressl’n man’s broad chest was blocking my view of her. When he bowed to Aloitus, my heart panged. Samantha.
It took all I had not to get up and run to her.
“Alexa?” Sam mouthed, catching my eye briefly before she was led away by the man from the ship.
Nausea swept over me. All I wanted to do was talk to my sister.
“I said eat!” Zod said menacingly into my ear.
I gripped my utensil, something between a tongue depressor and a measuring spoon, and scooped the first bite of food into my mouth. It tasted better than I expected, and my mouth was suddenly alive with the flavors of Thressl’n cooking for the first time. It was delicious. But I could tell from the looks of the meal that my twin would probably have a much harder time choking it down. She preferred not to eat over eating things she decided looked “funky,” so I guessed that right about then, whether she had been offered food at the handsome Commander’s house or not, she was just as hungry as I was.
“Zod, welcome!” Zod soon became swept up in conversation, and I took the opportunity to scan the room. Samantha and the Commander were placed at the table to my far right, and Sam’s head was craned toward me, her serious eyes staring me down. She looked angry about something, but there was no way to find out what it was. Perhaps the Commander, despite his gentle voice, had actually been a tyrant at heart who was just as bad as Zod.
“Welcome Thressl’n and Earthlings!”
The stage in front of us suddenly had a man in long metallic robes standing behind the podium, and he smiled genially at the three tables in front of him, ignoring the countless other tables behind them. The truth was that it was a huge event, but it was obvious who the most important people there were.
“It has been ages since the last time we got to celebrate the success of a command fleet returning to Jenal’k. I can’t remember the last time we’ve traveled outside the C’loggh galaxy! But our prizes were worth the danger. Now, we can say beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Thressl’n will once again rise up and overcome the challenges that face us!”
The Thressl’n in the tent began to cheer uproariously, standing from their chairs and waving their hands in the air.
“I would like to bestow a special honor on one of the great men who made the success of this mission possible.”
The crowd fell silent, many of them with t
heir hands still dangling in the air.
“Captain Zod Thassle. Would you please come up to the stage?”
The crowd began roaring with applause again and I couldn’t help but be surprised. What could Zod have possibly done to earn such an honor? I had half expected the Commander to be summoned.
I glanced at Samantha again, who looked at me meaningfully. She wanted me to go to her. I looked nervously up at Zod, who had quickly climbed the stage and was beaming smugly out at the crowd. This might be my only chance to talk to her.
I got up quickly and snaked through the crowd of cheering Thressl’n, making my way to Sam’s table. I hid behind a group of bulky Thressl’n men and heard Samantha’s voice say, “Where’s the ladies’ room. You know. Where do I pee!?”
Then the familiar feeling of her impatient hand gripping my wrist and pulling me through the crowd almost made me cry. My twin and I were nothing alike, but I had missed her terribly, and even the most irritating of her habits was welcome.
“In here,” Sam said quickly. We ducked into an opening I had nearly overlooked and disappeared from the crowd.
***
“This is so unfair!” Sam exclaimed.
I was a little taken aback. I guess I had hoped that my sister would have embraced me or asked me if I was okay. But it was true. Being abducted was unfair.
“I know,” I said. “I—”
“What do you mean you know? I’m the one with the raw deal here. You get the handsome guy who’s getting awarded? I bet his house is like, way bigger than the one I’m stuck in. And it probably doesn’t smell any better, but at least the draft might make it a little less obvious.”
Samantha thought Zod was handsome? Now I had heard everything.
“Samantha, what are you—”
“Seriously, Alexa. Switch with me. I cannot stand another minute living with this guy! He’s such a freak!”
“You don’t want Zod, Sam, really. He—”
“This is just like you!” Samantha cried, her diva voice shining through. “You always get everything better than me and act like you’re the victim here. Well, I’m not going to take it, Alexa. Switch with me! Or I swear to god, I will never speak to you again.”
“Samantha, seriously, stop. You don’t want to switch with me. Just stay with the one you’ve got. Zod is not what you think. When I was there he—”
“Just shut up, Alexa. I should have known. You’d rather keep him for yourself than keep your sister in your life. I see how it is.”
“Fine!” I suddenly shouted, surprising both of us. “If you want Zod so badly, you can take him!” I stripped the gown off and threw it at Samantha, and she grinned, the self-satisfied look on her face nearly making me want to punch her in the face.
“I knew you’d come around. After all, what are sisters for, right?” Samantha said, shrugging her gown off and handing it daintily to me.
I put it on quickly and glared at Sam.
“Just don’t forget to call him, ‘my lord,’” I said darkly. “I wouldn’t want you to regret this or anything.”
A brief, puzzled expression flickered across Sam’s face, but she shrugged and beamed at me.
“I won’t,” she said. “My guy’s name is Chaz’z.”
I waited for any other information that might help make our transition into the other household a little easier, but none was forthcoming until Sam finally sighed.
“Oh, I forgot. I kind of accidentally told him that my name is your name,” Sam said with a giggle and a shrug. “That’s usually what I do when I’m scared I’ll get in trouble or something. Oops. But that should make it easier for you.”
“Seriously, Sam?!”
Samantha beamed at me.
“Come on, Alexa. We should get back before ‘my lord’ thinks that I ran off on him.”
Sam winked and trotted off through the crowd to take my place at the table. I hated the way she acted when she bullied me into getting her way. She acted almost buoyant, as if nothing could get her down when things were going the way she wanted them to, and I was left to suffer.
What she didn’t realize though was that never once in our lives had I wanted to see her suffer. In fact, as the older one by six minutes, I had always done everything I could to protect her. Not only from Zod, but from everything that might hurt her. I would have rather died than subject my sister to what Zod had done to me. But that infuriating whine of hers…
I couldn’t think any more about it. What was done was done, and Samantha had brought whatever happened to her from this point on, onto herself.
***
“That took a while,” Chaz’z said, his silver eyes resting on me. An involuntary jolt of fire coursed through me as I got lost in the flecks of gold and bronze in them. I opened and closed my mouth, looking for a response, and I tore myself away from his gaze and focused on the table in front of me. Unsurprisingly, Samantha hadn’t touched even a bite of food on her plate.
“It was a little hard to find the ladies room,” I lied, hoping not to have to look back up at Chaz’z.
“I understand,” he said, his voice low and kind. “These events always have been kind of crowded. All of the Thressl’n are invited to attend. Though most don’t make it past the partition. Only the honored receive tables.”
“The honored…” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the crowd of Thressl’n men and women who were still cheering for Zod. Chaz’z, however, remained glued to his plate with a deep-set frown on his face.
“Yes. Right now they are honoring Captain Zod. He seems to be favored by the Supreme Leader for some reason. I fear the worst…”
Chaz’z trailed off, and he took a deep drink of the sparkling liquid in his clear glass. I glanced at my own glass and saw that it was empty.
“Oh, would you like a drink?” Chaz’z asked, standing quickly to retrieve a bottle from the center of the table. I didn’t have to answer; he was already pouring me a glass of the bubbling pink liquid. It delighted me in a way; it was like the drinks I always imagined I would be having as an adult when I was a little kid.
“Thank you, my lord,” I said impulsively.
Chaz’z furrowed his eyebrows.
“Don’t call me that,” he said sternly, studying me closely. “Why do you seem so different? Did something happen to you on the way back from the washing room? Was somebody unkind?”
“No!” I said quickly. “I’m fine. It’s just…it’s a lot, you know. Coming to another planet and everything. It’s just a big adjustment…please don’t be angry.”
I couldn’t endure any more of the horrifying Thressl’n temper. But to my surprise, Chaz’z’s face broke out into a pleasant smile.
“Mad?” he asked. “Not at all. But I would feel a lot better if you ate something. I haven’t seen you touch a bite of food since you arrived.”
Yup, I could always stand firm in my knowledge of my twin. She would die before she put the colorful mush in her mouth.
I snuck a glance at her, worried what I’d find. But to my surprise, Zod and Sam were actually laughing together. I gasped out loud.
“What? What is it?” Chaz’z asked. I tore my gaze away before he could catch on to what had made me cry out like that, but he was too smart for me.
“I must be hallucinating,” Chaz’z said, his teal face lighting up. “Is Zod actually having a good time? What kind of human would actually enjoy his company?”
A mixture of agreement and resentment washed over me. On the one hand, of course only a person like Samantha could schmooze her way into Zod’s good graces. On the other, shouldn’t I be offended that a man who was responsible for abducting hundreds of women from Earth was questioning the moral character of my twin sister?
“Wow,” Chaz’z said suddenly. “She looks a lot like you.”
I paled, and turned frantic eyes to him. But before I could defend myself, he continued. “I guess I’m more racist than I thought. Please forgive my rude comments.”
And with t
hat, he continued eating.
Chapter 4
Chaz’z Wyl’es (Commander of the Fleet)
Alexa was very quiet on the way home from the event. I had been shocked by how much food she had managed to put away, even after the third course was finished. The bubbling elixir had brought out a cheerful, carefree side of her personality that I hadn’t known was there; especially after spending the night before tossing and turning as I contemplated ways to address the concerns she had with my home.
“This is beautiful,” Alexa breathed when we walked through the door. I was shocked.
“That isn’t what you were saying last night,” I said, raising a brow at her.
“It’s just…well, when humans are stressed, I guess everything looks terrible,” Alexa stammered, smiling nervously at me. “But after a while, we adapt, and things start to look a little bit brighter.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. Well, I hope you like your accommodations better tonight.”
“Better than the cellar?” Alexa said. Her cheeks reddened suddenly, and she looked into my eyes, a bright, beautiful smile on her face. Why hadn’t I noticed how beautiful her eyes were the day before?
“The cellar? Wait, that is a joke, right? Human humor. Very interesting.”
I laughed stiffly.
“I’m sure whatever you give me will do,” Alexa said.
“What changed in you tonight?” I exclaimed. “All you did last night was complain, and now you are saying you will accept whatever I give you. Maybe I should give the elixir to you every day.”
Alexa grinned, and my hearts thudded involuntarily in my chest. She was stunning.
“Well, I will try not to be so hard on you from now on, all right?” Alexa said.
“All right…”
I walked to the kitchen, and Alexa stayed in the place where I left her. I glanced back at her and raised a brow. “Is something on your mind?”
“I just…no, nothing.”
