by Jade Waltz
Copyright © 2021 Jade Waltz
Project: Adapt - Failure is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
All rights reserved.
Published by: Jade Waltz
First Edition: January 2021
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-952420-00-9
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-952420-10-8
Cover Artist:
Kim Cunningham
PreMade Book Covers by Atlantis Book Design
https://www.atlantisbookdesign.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ABDpremades/
Formatting services provided by Purple Fall Publishing
Dedication:
To my sister,
May you continue to dance amongst the stars…
I love you,
Jade
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Prologue
Selena
An intense burning bubbled within me, traveling through my veins and expanding into every part of my very being.
Or what I thought was my being.
Stretching my consciousness, I couldn’t tell where I began or ended, only that I somehow existed, floating amongst the stars.
Was this death?
I aimlessly traveled past planets and stars, my very existence intangible, lost between space and time.
Why was I here?
The fading pain was my only evidence that I wasn’t dreaming.
Somehow, deep down in my heart, I knew this was real—at least, as real as it could be.
Was this a dreamscape?
Glancing around me, I couldn’t find any evidence of my void chamber.
Zirene wasn’t around to control it, nor did I sense an invasion from my teal Xenak stalker. The faded crack and my nestmates’ thread doors along the walls were both missing, too. Everything was seamless, the endless blackness of space expanding for eternity.
Extending my dimming consciousness, I searched for any sense of familiarity but found nothing. Slowly, my quest became a chore, and I felt my energy dwindling with each passing moment.
The heavenly bodies that passed by seemed to dim to my eyes. Everything blurred into a smear of colored lights painted against the vast void of space.
Time slowed as a sense of peacefulness washed over me, silencing my doubts and worries.
When I closed my eyes, a numbing warmth embraced me, welcoming me to my new home. Giving up my resistance and awareness of my surroundings, I accepted the will of the Fates and let the Stars guide me to where I belonged.
Chapter One
Selena
“You must wake, Selena.”
I know, I know. But I don’t want to.
“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 not living, 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.
Kaede.
My assigned bodyguard had always watched my every move and stayed by my side when I needed him.
Thinking back, it was all a blur.
Somehow, deep inside, I knew that he had come for me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget how his neon-slitted eyes bore into mine. His face was the last thing I had seen before I lost my grip on the present.
Did that mean he had rescued me already?
Slowly, I opened my eyes, wincing at the sore movement. Even this simple task was hard to do. Instinctively, I rubbed the crusty eye boogers away, shocked to find that my arms were no longer bound.
This wasn’t a drug-induced dream, after all.
My limbs felt stiff and sluggish, as if I hadn’t moved in a long time. I couldn’t believe how heavy and barely responsive they felt with each slight movement I made.
How long had I been unconscious?
My blurred vision made it difficult to see in the thick darkness, but I was determined to figure out what had happened to me while the world went on without me.
Carefully and quietly, I reached out my hands. Instantly, my fingertips found cool scales.
Scales?
How had I ended up in bed with my nestmates? Why was my memory still so foggy? I felt worse than the time I had been drugged during my girl’s night with the Fab Five. Only this time, instead of waking up alone in Kaede’s bed, I lay between my mates in my nestbed.
Not only was my memory hazy, I felt like someone had thrown me off the top of Destima’s highest mountain.
Gasping softly, I ran my hand down my chest. My fingertips discovered a slightly raised line of scar tissue along my sternum. Painful memories flashed through my mind as I recalled the fiery burning that had exploded through me. My captors’ laughter flooded my ears. They had tortured me for their gain.
Gingerly, I turned over, trying not to make any sharp movements in fear that I would wake those around me and alert them that I was conscious. By the pitch-black room, I surmised it must be late. Cloudy, too, judging by the lack of light reflecting off of Lunkai, which usually shone through my room’s domed skylight.
Sleep was an amazing prospect. Knowing that I was safe, I could finally relax, surrounded by those who loved me. Maybe it had all been a bad nightmare, after all. A trick from Xenak, who had mentally attacked me before.
Shaking my head, I refused to allow myself to fall for sleep’s allure. Something wasn’t right here, though I couldn’t pinpoint what. Something bad had happened to me; my memories were all too real. I couldn’t explain away my scar, proof that someone had attacked me during my drugged nightmare.
I was concerned that Xenak was the culprit. Oeta had assured me that she recognized his mental signature and would make sure he never trespassed on this side of the galaxy. She had threatened to share it with her father Mwe, the CEG’s Assembly Head Chairmen, who could destroy Xenak if he got too close.
However, Xenak might have found a way around their mental search, perhaps by creating a diversion so he could attack me one more time.
Reaching for my chest, I traced my scar once more to confirm it was still there, disappointed that it was.
Sucking in a deep breath, I reached for my nestmate’s body and leaned into him. Pressing my head against his side, I tried to will the sudden chills away as doubts filled my murky mind.
If I had truly been kidnapped and injured, how had I gotten back to the safety that only my clan could provide?
My bed faintly moved as something hard and flat pressed against my back. Looking over my shoulder, I found the silhouette of a pair of familiar curved horns and a curtain of long hair leaning over me in the shadows. The light radiating from my spots dimly highlighted someone kneeling directly behind me.
“Kaede?”
A hand cupped my cheek as if I were the most fragile being in the universe. Closing my eyes, I leaned into his touch as he traced the side of my face with his thumb. A sense of relief flooded me.
I wasn’t imagining this. My bodyguard was here with me and he would never allow anything to happen to me. All was well.
Sobbing, I jerked around and wrapped my arms around him as I buried my head into his chest.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I breathed, gripping him tightly. I didn’t care that he didn’t like being hugged—I needed this. I needed him to tell me that I was safe, and everything was going to be okay, like he always did. “Please, tell me, Kaede. What happened?”
He gripped my waist wordlessly, pressing me harder against his chest as he placed his head on top of mine. We held each other in silence while I tried to absorb all the comfort he could offer, yet something didn’t seem right. Kaede wouldn’t willingly allow me so close for so long without jerking away.
Lifting my head, I released my hold on him. “Kaede?” Placing my hands flat against his firm chest, I pushed him away to stare up at him. His arms resisted the movement as if he were afraid I might escape him. “What’s wrong?”
Sighing, he slowly dropped his hands, releasing me.
“Ixxska isk Kaede,” a deep male voice sounded, the tone regretful. “Tssu ista zzxrta enax. Ixxaka zzisk tssu.”
Instinctively, I jerked away and stumbled backward, falling onto the bed. Confused, I crawled over to my nearest Ulax nestmate and shook him.
“Hey! Wake up!” Tears fell from my face from the terror that burned through me. “There is someone in our nestbed,” I shrieked. “Why won’t you wake up?”
Confusion struck me as I tried to reach for my mental threads. They were so faint I would have missed them if I didn’t know what I was looking for.
How had I forgotten to check my precious nestqueen threads all this time?
A bit of relief flooded me when I confirmed that I hadn’t lost my connections; the mental threads were still attached to my mental shield.
Xylo’s teal, Odelm’s pale green, V’dim’s turquoise, and Z’fir’s emerald—they were all accounted for.
Yet why was our clan’s network suddenly so fragile? If I pulled on the mental threads, could I accidentally sever my permanent bonds?
Nothing in this universe seemed to follow the familiar pattern, so I wasn’t going to test a theory in this fragile state. Not when I didn’t know where I was or who was with me.
Pushing away from the scaled body that wasn’t my nestmate, I stood and faced the male stranger. Slowly, I stepped backward, my legs wobbly from my long sleep. The soft mattress under my feet made my retreat unstable.
I banged my head and my back hit a lumpy wall.
“Wookezza eka,” commanded the male. His voice was too close for comfort. He must have stalked me as I tried to back away but failed to create any distance between us.
Instantly, the room’s darkness evaporated, burning my vision with brightness. Shielding my eyes, I shrieked, startled by the sudden change in lighting. Blinking hard, I tried to make sense of my surroundings, hoping my panic was all some aftereffect of the drug in my system.
The male had long, black hair framing curved, golden horns and pointy ears. His eeriest feature was his fiery, slitted eyes, which reminded me too much of Kaede. Face pleading, he raised his hands in surrender, perhaps hoping that I wouldn’t attempt to run away.
Nothing but his eyes resembled the faithful security guard I trusted. Below his chiseled chest was the beginning of an elongated, crimson-and-gold, legless body similar to Earth’s snakes or the seafolk I had seen in travel tanks on the CEG space station. Following the length of his body, I realized exactly who I had snuggled against when I had awoken.
S
pinning around, I gasped when I saw he had wrapped himself around me in a nest-like pile, using his coiled tail to trap me. The top of his long, crimson-scaled body was dotted with black diamonds framing a golden center that matched his underbelly.
Everything about him screamed danger, though he had done nothing threatening since I’d woken up.
I couldn’t remember seeing him while I had been drugged. My torturers had been Trr’kiki males, and I thought I’d caught glimpses of Q and perhaps Kaede.
Staring at his fanged mouth, I touched mine as I recalled the phantom feeling of someone kissing me. Eyeing the scaled male’s hair and horns, I tried to determine if it was him I had seen before I floated amongst the stars.
Was he my savior?
“Who are you?” I demanded, my voice cracking as I met his gaze. Even though he was much larger than me, I wouldn’t let this male think I was some pathetic prisoner whom he could treat however he wanted.
Never again.
It was obvious he hadn’t reported his findings to the Aldawi or attempted to return me to where I belonged. Everyone in the CEG knew who I was ever since I had won my rights as a citizen. If he was the reason I had been taken away from my clan in the first place, then I would make sure he regretted his actions. “What do you want from me?”
“Ixxaka zzisk tssu.” Slowly, he tilted his head to the side and pointed to his ear. “Eskt fwa qwatsstesstu.”
