“But… we’re in my room. I thought…”
She frowned in an attempt to remember something.
“The police station… Stealing the police cruiser… Finding your spaceship… None of that happened?”
“Actually, it all happened.”
“Then how are we back in my room? Is it over? Is that bad Shadow dude gone?”
“No. This isn’t your room. It’s a copy. I thought it would make you feel more comfortable on my ship.”
She gulped and the blood drained from her face.
“Your… ship?”
“Computer, open the door.”
The door hissed open, revealing the white surface of the ship’s curved walls on the other side of the hallway.
The door hissed shut and Emma’s eyes slid over to me.
She scanned my face.
There was a great deal of fear there, but more than that, more than a little courage.
The same as I had seen earlier when she took my hand.
She might be afraid but she wasn’t going to let that stop her.
“Where are you taking me?” she said in a painfully soft voice.
“To our fallback position. When we get there, I can keep you safe. Every M’rora has to go through this when they come of age and go looking for their fated mate.”
“Fated mate?”
I didn’t know if humans had a similar term in their language and culture, if she would even understand what I was telling her.
“It’s… when a pair come together,” I said carefully. “They’re destined to be together, to live out the rest of their lives as one.”
If any more blood drained from her face, she would pass out.
Again.
When she didn’t respond, I plowed on.
“The M’rora and Aror’m share a common ancestor. When we’re born, our spirit is split in two. Half emerges in this galaxy, the other half in the Shadow Realm, a mirror image of our galaxy, a world that exists in the shadows. We don’t fully understand why or even how it happens. Some say we were cursed.
“There’s an old M’rora tale about our ancestors being torn apart by their demons. They had to cut them free the moment we were born for fear of going mad. But doing so didn’t solve their problem. The creatures that emerged—the Shadow—still attempted to kill them. So, we blasted them into a lifeless universe to keep them separate. Things worked out fine until our Shadows appeared alongside us in our fight to claim our fated mates.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“You’re my fated mate,” I said plainly. “I scaled the Wailing Mountain to learn who you were and where I could find you.”
Emma peered at me a moment before she gnawed on her fingernails.
“I… think I felt you there.”
“You did?”
She nodded.
“I was laying in one morning and felt this icy cold wind over me. And I felt eyes on me… Someone watching me.”
I nodded.
Some species felt the bond stronger than others, some didn’t feel it at all.
“So, why didn’t Iav take me when he could?” Emma said. “He didn’t have to wait until we got to my room. He’d already drugged me and could have done what he wanted with me. I know I had no control over myself after that.”
“Because the bond is much stronger when a fated mate gives herself of her own volition—even if he does drug her to do it.”
“And what would have happened after that?”
I paused, unsure how much I should tell her.
“Nothing good.”
“What?”
That steely resolve had come over her again.
She was tougher than I thought.
“What would have happened to me?” she said. “If he caught me? He would have had sex with me?”
“Yes. And then he would take you back to the Shadow Realm.”
“The Shadow Realm? That doesn’t sound good…”
“It’s not. It’s like our universe but inverted. Darkness is light and light is darkness. And the darkness there is darker than anything we have in our galaxy. It’s a malleable thing that can be harnessed.
“After he mates with you, he will share you with the rest of his species in a mating ceremony. They will each take their turn, one after another. You will be impregnated and then forced to give birth. The moment you do, they will breed you again. And again. Until your body can take no more and you die. Maybe it will be from exhaustion or your heart will give out. Or you will take your own life and—”
“Okay, okay. I get the picture.”
She looked green about the gills.
It actually got a lot worse than that.
Long before they destroyed her body, they destroyed her spirit, and bit by bit, she fell apart, losing every part of herself until there was nothing left.
Still, they would mate with her, chipping away until she was nothing more than an empty husk of what she once was.
Then it was only a matter of time before her mind broke.
“If you’re an alien, how come I can understand what you’re saying?” Emma said.
“We developed a universal language translator and have it surgically implanted at birth.”
Emma folded her arms and turned her head to one side, refusing to look me in the eye.
Computer presented me with a list of her readouts that appeared on my visual console in my eyes.
“Your heart rate is elevated and you’re grinding your teeth,” I said. “According to the readouts, you’re stressed out about something.”
“You think?” Emma snapped. “I was quite happy until you and your ‘Shadow’ showed up!”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience we may have caused—”
“Inconvenience?” she spat. “Inconvenience? Getting cut up on the freeway is inconvenient. Having the neighbor’s dog shit on the sidewalk outside your front door is inconvenient. Having a couple of aliens show up and one drug you and try to mate with you is a damn disaster!”
“It is what it is,” I said.
“How do I escape this nightmare?”
“No matter where you go or what you do, Iav will find you. He will find you and do what I told you he would. There is no escape, no way out.”
“There must be a way to stop him,” Emma said. “There’s always something you can do to beat the bad guy. They always have an Achilles Heel.
