Defiance (2 page)

They practiced through the evening
until
Jordan
’s
muscles protested and her stomach growled. She was dripping sweat and her
knuckles hurt from him cracking them all the time, but it was a pain that made
her feel strong.

“That’s it, Mr. Meier,” she said,
panting a little.

“Make sure you work on keeping
those arms up.”

“I will. Why don’t you come with me
to dinner? I’m sure Momma will have enough.”

Mr. Meier gave her a small smile. “I’m
fine. Save your food for your own bellies.
Gute
Nacht
,
Jordan
.”

“
Gute
Nacht
, Mr. Meier. I’ll see you next
week.”

She waved at him and headed back to
the small cabin she shared with her mother and about thirty other people.
Jordan
hurried
home, keeping to the shadows between buildings, mindful to avoid people. Night
was dangerous, no matter if she was male or female. The so-called military guards
stationed to protect the innocent men and women inside the fenced walls recruited
the more desperate men of the camp that needed provisions. These gangs of men
roamed through the night in the name of safety, but they blatantly stole what
they wanted. Most of the time it was girls, which the military guards then had
a little fun with, and then threatened with even more violence if they told.

It was something her mother had recognized
from the start, which had prompted her to turn
Jordan
into a boy. Knowing her
mother must be worried sick made Jordan hightail her ass as fast as possible
back to her unit.

As she slipped between two of the
shanty buildings, she saw two men dressed all in black holding an unconscious
woman. Rage blanketed her as she realized this must be two of the gang-men come
to take and rape a girl. Well,
Jordan
wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Pulling out her club, she cleared her
mind and quickly thought out how to bring down the two assholes.

Could she do this?

Of course she could. Her mother had
always taught her to act, despite her fear.

She hurried forward, brought her
baton up, and struck the first assailant in the back of the knee. When he went
down with a small gasp of pain,
Jordan
twirled and struck out to hit the second man in the front of his knee. Both men
let go of their victim, causing the woman’s body to crumple onto the ground.

“You assholes,” she muttered,
mindful to keep her voice down. The last thing she wanted to do was bring
attention to more of their friends. “You’re nothing but snakes in the grass,
and I can’t believe you’re the
guards
of
this fine establishment.”

As she bent to check the woman, the
first man got to his feet.
Jordan
jumped back and crouched as she brought up her baton. The man brought down his
hood, and the first thing that alerted her that she was in serious trouble was the
alien features staring back at her.

“Y-you’re not the guard,” she
whispered, eyeing his clawed hands.

Quicker than she could blink, the
alien rushed at her and flipped her onto her back. Air left her lungs in a
whoosh as she struggled to catch her breath, and the alien didn’t help when he
grabbed her collar and yanked her face up, constricting her throat.

A forked tongue came out to flick
over her skin, and instinct had her knee coming up to strike him between the
legs. The alien let go of her with a groan and half fell to the side.
Jordan
used the
opportunity to suck in a much needed lung full of air. She coughed and tried to
scramble backward, but the other one, the one who still had his hood up,
grabbed her around her arms and hauled her up unceremoniously. He said
something in his own language to the first alien, who was still recovering from
being hit in his nuts.

Thank God he
had
nuts.

She struggled, trying to get away,
but the alien just tightened his grip, making escape impossible.

“Quit moving, girl,” the alien muttered
in her ear, but the creature sounded human. It was so surprising not only to
hear that he spoke German to her, but that he also called her girl, that she
immediately stopped fighting and looked over her shoulder at him. Well, as best
as she could. Much to her surprise, the second alien
was
actually a human. Then he sprayed something in her face, and
darkness instantly descended.

****

“Are you sure that creature is a
female?”
Laith
asked through clenched teeth as he
ripped off his claw arm gauntlets. He’d always hated the things.

David shifted the unconscious woman
until she draped over his shoulder. “Yes. We’ll take her with us.”

“What about the other one? The
other one I know definitely is a female.”

“Trust me,
Laith
.”

“I did trust you,”
Laith
grumbled. “I got kicked in my
flutas
for my trust.”

“That’s why she’s the right choice,”
David replied, trying to stifle his grin. “Someone feisty will bring you
notoriety in the market. She’ll be the one to set our plans in motion.”

Laith
grunted
and brought his hood back up. “Come. I want to get back to our ship.”

David followed him to the front
gate where the human guard who had let them in stood waiting for their exit.
Anxiously, if the stench of his sweat was anything to go by.
David may not have a sensitive nose like
Laith
, but
there was no mistaking body odor.

“Who’d you get?” the human asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.
Where’s
the jewels you promised me?”

Laith
held out a bag, and the human guard snatched it up. He looked inside and was
obviously happy with what he saw because he smiled and stuffed the bag in his
pocket. Then he glanced at the woman.

“I thought you wanted a girl. That
dude you have is a pain in the ass.”

“Like you said,” David replied as
he brushed past the officious male. “Does it matter?”

Laith
followed
him, and seconds later, the camp gate closed behind them.

Chapter Two

Jordan
stretched and sniffed,
trying to figure out what was being served for breakfast, but instead of the
underlining body odor fermenting the air, all she smelled was cleanliness and
disinfectant.

What
the hell?

She opened her eyes and immediately
realized she was not in her cot back in the overcrowded shack of a cabin. Her
clothes were gone, and she wore a see-through gown that left nothing to the
imagination. Her cap was gone, letting her short mop of red-gold curls flop in
her face.

The memory of the alien slammed
into her brain, and she hurried off the bed. The sheets flowed off her like
water, and goose-bumps rose on her arms. There had been rumors circulating in
the camp for years about aliens abducting women, but she hadn’t believed it.

She did now.

How long had she been unconscious? And
where was she? Her mother had to be frantic over her disappearance. Anger
surged through
Jordan
once more. How dare these asshole aliens come and take her from her home? Sure,
she hated the camp with every fiber of her being, but her mother was back
there. No way would she just abandon her.
Jordan
looked around the room,
really began to study it, and realized it was more of a holding cell. She went
exploring and figured out the two items beside the bed must be a toilet and a
sink. Okay, she had to give props to the aliens for having more than a hole in
the ground. And clean water.
Amazing.

It never occurred to her to be
scared. She’d been scared at seven, when soldiers had forced her from her home.
She’d been scared when she first laid eyes on the internment camp. She’d been
scared when her mother cut all her hair off. But she had no time for fear.

Further search revealed the door
was locked and beside it was some sort of panel, the same type of panel she’d
seen on the guard towers. She began pressing buttons until the face of the
alien popped up on the screen.

“Take me back,” she demanded. “After
you give me back my clothes. Then take me back.”

“Your clothes have been burned,”
the alien told her. “They stank.”

Outrage poured through her. “What? You
had no right, you bastard.”

He frowned. “I am not a bastard. My
parents were bonded.”

“Then I’ll go back to calling you
an asshole.”

“I think you are using that word as
derogatory name calling.”

She gave him a thumbs-up. “You’re
damn right I am. How dare you steal me? Are you those
Alphan
people I’ve heard rumors about?”

Outrage turned his face dark. Like,
it actually changed colors. It shocked her to see him flush deep violet. “Do
not insult me!
Alphans
are ugly creatures with black
horns and odd golden eyes. I am
Xyran
, and my race
has survived many campaigns against the—”

“Yeah, yeah,” she interrupted,
waving her hand dismissively. “Listen, I demand clothes, and if you don’t get
your alien ass down here with some decent non-transparent ones in five minutes
I’m going to start dismantling this so called cell.”

The alien just blinked at her, so
she said it again, slower so he could follow along.

“My clothes.
Now, asshole.”

The screen blinked out so she spared
a quick, satisfied grin before grabbing the smooth sheet off the bed to wrap
around her body like a big toga. Then she crossed her arms and tapped her foot
as she waited for them to show up.

It didn’t take long.

As soon as the door opened she
rushed out of the cell and didn’t give them a chance to say a word.
“First, decent clothes.
Second, you will turn this ship around
and take me back. Third, you will apologize to me because it’s beyond rude
undressing an unconscious woman, and if we have enough time, you’ll apologize
to my mother for making her worry over me. And finally, you will never, ever
again take human women for your own twisted perverted pleasure because I will
find a way to hurt you.”

“Silence, female!” shouted the
alien.

The human male crossed his arms and
regarded her with amusement as he walked around her to check out the panel in
her cell. He was tall, had black hair, and bright green eyes. She had no idea
what a human was doing with this alien.

“
Jordan
.”

“What?”

“My name is Jordan
Kuper
, not female. What are your names? Or should I call
you Thing One and Thing Two?”

The alien stared at her for a long
moment, clearly at a loss for words.

“I’m
Laith
,”
he finally said. “And this is my slave, David.”

“Slave?”
She
looked at David. “You’re really his slave?”

“I am what he says,” David replied.

She studied
Laith
with a critical eye, trying to humanize him, although it was difficult. He wore
black armor type clothes, as did David, but it was clear
Laith
was
not
human. He was too bold, too
big, too … alien, to ever be considered human, boiling down to the evolving
rainbow of emotions subtly changing his skin color. He seemed to be having a
hard time controlling his complexion. Currently he flushed a deep red.

“Does that happen a lot?” She pointed
to his face. “Or is that a medical condition I should know about?”

“
Xyrans
have a unique anatomy,”
Laith
replied stiffly. “Usually
we control our skin, but sometimes extreme emotions can alter our appearance.”

“You change into any color?”
Jordan
didn’t
want to admit that was a neat trick. She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes,
getting back to the real issue. “I’m glad to see you have regular hands. I
thought I was dealing with a demon or something. So where are the clothes I
demanded?”

“It seems to me you have found your
own clothing. Tell me, why were you pretending to be a boy?”

“None of your business, but you
need
to take me back right now.”

Laith
folded his arms, mimicking her, and stepped forward to crowd into her personal
space. Awareness flooded through her, as well as something else she couldn’t
identify. His dark eyes stared at her, slightly hungry, and her emotions went
on a roller-coaster. It scared her. She took a step back and bumped into David,
and suddenly her confidence fled.

“Now listen, female,”
Laith
murmured softly, and to her ears, dangerously. He
grabbed her arm and practically shoved her back into the cell. “We took you to
bring you to market.
To sell you.
If we sell you at
the right time and get noticed, we can join on a raider’s ship. So understand
this. You will never see your home again, and if you cause us any more problems
I will tie you up. If you want to keep your sheet for now, fine. But once we
get to market, you will wear the clothing we provided.”

As he talked, his skin color
shifted.
Subtly, nothing too overt, but enough to fascinate
her.
His words, however, were a slap in her face. Satisfaction gleamed
in his eyes. He turned and walked out of the cell. David brushed by her, making
her senses reel once more, before he followed behind his partner.

The cell door closed, leaving her
alone. She walked over to the cot and sat down, thinking.
Trembling.
This was all too real and something she couldn’t bluff her way out of. Mr.
Meier had trained her for years on how to defend herself, but how could she
possibly fight her way out of an environment she didn’t know?