Chapter 1
It was the closest I had come to any of the three Aurelians who had arrived six months ago.
They had landed their Reaver upon the wild, untamed lands deserted for as long as anyone could remember.
The warship had never risen again, even as they patrolled their lands daily on foot, never following the same route twice.
They could have piloted that angel of death overhead and watched every inch of the estate from above. That’s all it would have taken to catch me, and yet instead they stalk the grounds, especially the huge one, wider than I’m tall.
I could have left when they came. Maybe I was stubborn. Maybe it was because the land within these walls was the only place that was my own.
I had not heard him walking. Aurelians could be so silent despite their enormous size. But I heard the crack of his axe against wood and froze.
Slowly, I lowered myself into a crouch behind the bushes and looked through the leaves.
His huge muscles flexed beneath his marble skin as he drove the axe into the tree again and again, as if it had personally wronged him.
He was the brute of the triad. That’s normal for the way these aliens form their war-triads. There was often one with more brawn than sense, but he was a particularly beastly specimen, even for an Aurelian.
He looked to be in his early forties, which meant he could be more than five hundred years old.
Most Aurelians I had seen were lean and hewn.
His muscle was thicker, layered heavily across his enormous frame, as though he could wrap his hands around the trunk and rip it from the earth if he wanted to.
The wind blew from him towards me. I stayed perfectly still, knowing even the crack of a twig beneath my foot could send him chasing after me.
This one wanted to catch me.
I knew what one of those beasts would do if he got his hands on me. One hand. One finger might be enough to pin me down.
If the wind changed, I would have to sprint and hope I could disappear before my scent carried to him.
He swung the axe harder. The blade buried itself in the pale, furrowed trunk, exposing the dark heartwood beneath.
The muscles across his back rippled with the blow.
He stopped only long enough to shove his brown hair, touched with auburn in the morning light, away from his hard face. A beard covered an anvil of a jaw.
He was stripped to the waist, wearing dark work trousers tucked into his boots.
The cool morning air carried the deep, masculine musk of the alien towards me. The scent of his sweat reached me with every breath as I tried to keep myself invisible.
I watched him, the axe slamming into the tree again and again, until I could tell it was about to fall. I timed my escape to the crash and fled.
Now my bare feet fall softly against the ground as I stalk through the forest, the evening light filtering through leaves turned red, and all I can think of is the hunger in my belly and what that beast is doing with the wood he felled.
They’ve been hard at work since they arrived, taming and pacifying the wild lands, and each day, there is less for me to live in, fewer tangled vines that my sure feet avoid, less space for me to lie and look at the sun and simply be.
I’ve been chased out, spending my nights in a nook in the hills nearby, but within these walls is the most abundant source of food because all others feared to scale them and be in Aurelian land, even when it was abandoned.
So I brave them every day.
Years of living without shoes have hardened my soles.
Not even the sharp rocks that line the river hurt anymore.
I like bare feet, though I’ll have to switch to my moccasins soon as winter approaches.
Bare toes can cling to a tree more easily when you climb.
Two days ago I robbed a nest of eggs, and though my belly rumbled and burned, I only took two eggs and left the rest.
My ears are pricked and listening for any snap of a branch under a huge alien bulk. They might be light on their feet, but physics is physics. Then I find the blackberry bush marking where I set my trap.
It’s gone.
The snare was dismantled with barely a trace.
The other one of the triad. Not the leader.
He’s got a hard face, and I’ve never seen a flicker of emotion cross his face.
The big one’s always angry. This one... he scares me more, enough that I start to think of leaving this place and never coming back.
The other two seem like men.
He is truly alien.
My belly rumbles, and I grit my teeth in annoyance, picking some blackberries.
Few calories in those. You could stand for hours picking them, getting frustrated until you stop trying to move your fingers around the thorns and take the pricks to soothe the ache in your stomach.
I’ve got food back in my little nook outside the wall, smoked fish and strips of dried meat, but not enough.
Winter will come soon and I need to stock up.
If I can avoid it, I don't want to have to visit the village to trade bundles of medicinal roots and dried herbs to load up on bread and salted fish.
It's been lean since they arrived. I haven't had the delights of coffee or the rare treat of fresh cinnamon rolls I used to face prying eyes for on occasion.
They don’t understand me. The villagers view me as someone turned feral.
I pick more berries, moving my purple-stained fingers deftly around the thorns, as I think of that place that was my home. I hate those eyes, always wondering the same thing, some envious, all judging.
Why don’t I just walk three days to the city, and sell the innocence between my legs? Why don’t I join a harem, and be fed and pampered, and all I have to do in return is sate the endless urges of those beasts?
I’ve been living this life since I was fifteen. My mother had to leave five years ago, and the first payment she was supposed to send never came. The landlord gave me a choice. I could leave the little room we rented, or we could make an... arrangement.
His eyes were so greedy.
I ran. I ran until I reached the walls of the old estate no one went near. I found a cracked section and pulled myself up and over. For twenty minutes, I stumbled through it. My legs ached, and then I found the abandoned vineyard and gorged myself on grapes until my stomach was swollen.
Plenty of birds and game flocked to those grapes and the overgrown orchards, creatures that had never faced a hunter’s snare or gun because I was the only person in that giant territory.
The manor at the centre of the estate lands itself sprawled, but I could never find a way in. I threw rocks that didn’t scrape the reinforced windows, tried to pull myself up the too-smooth walls, searched for any hint of weakness, but there was nothing but stone.
My stomach growls again, and I stalk away from the blackberry patch, towards the orchard. The sun is nearly set, and they usually stay inside at night.
Usually.
I’ve seen that warm fire glittering and glowing through the windows, sometimes sneaking close enough to see them in their beds when the wind was right and I knew I wouldn’t be seen. No sensors, nothing, as if these three eschew all the technology of their species. I’ll never understand why.
I make it to the orchard, one of many, part of the forest now.
The tree is laden with the autumn haul, and one particularly beautiful, round apple catches my eye.
Normally I try to take as little as possible, so they can never know which areas I am in, but with my traps being stolen away, I’m going to need to fill my bag and haul it over the walls, to dry the fruits before winter.
I step forward, my mouth watering, and suddenly, there’s nothing beneath my foot.
I snap my foot back, but the rope snakes around my ankle, and I’m pulled dizzyingly upwards, the world spinning as a loud bell rings an alert.
My hand rushes to my belt where my knife is, pressing against the fastening, shaking with the sudden rush of adrenaline.
My knee-length brown tunic has fallen towards my ribs, leaving my bare legs exposed, and I curl up, my stomach muscles tensing, while I search the forest around me for that deadly flash of marble that will be my only warning of them before they descend on me.
I fumble at the fastening, and the knife starts to fall. I snap my hand around it, gripping tight, panting, and then shut my eyes, taking an instant to breathe. I need to control my pounding heart. My shaking hands.
The only way to escape these beasts is to outsmart them.
If they’re close, it’s too late already. I won’t be able to outrun their long-legged stride. My only chance is that they are in their homes, and that I have enough of a head start that the only way I’ll be caught is if I’m still strung up here when they get to me.
We’re far from the capital. No one knows I’m here.
No one would hear me scream, or beg. Those three have never taken a woman, from what I’ve seen.
There have been no visitors to their estate, and they have six months of pent-up breeding rage.
The scent of my virginity would drive them over the edge.
I cut the rope slowly, wriggling and taking care not to slice my flesh, digging into it while heaving myself higher to reach it above my trapped foot.
Every cut makes me dizzier, and I fumble, falling back down, panting as my eyes go to the ground, where my climbing spike fell with the little packet of seeds I had collected to bring to my nook, now scattered in the dirt below.
I curl upwards again, the bell ringing with every movement, and with all my effort, heave myself high enough up to grip the rope above my foot, my other hand hacking.
The last fibres begin to split, and I grimace, preparing for the impact.
I slice, hard, and barely hold on as it breaks, then let myself drop down, panting.
I never once thought they could come close to catching me.