"Xyrek, what happened? Did you have a bad dream?"
"Dream?" he nearly scoffed, shaking his head. "I wish."
"What happened?"
Shadows danced over his tortured expression from the sparse light in the room; it was still night. Agitated, he brushed a hand through his hair, then brought it back to my body as if he couldn't bear the thought of not touching me.
"Allisaahn," he repeated, sending more goosebumps up and down my spine and creating a very discomforting sensation in my stomach. Deep down in my bones, I felt I didn't want to hear whatever he had to say. That I wasn't ready for it. Would never be ready for it. Judging by the expression he regarded me with, Xyrek didn't seem to think I could handle the truth either. And that, more than anything, scared the crap out of me.
"It was just a dream." I tried to soothe him. "Sometimes they seem so real that it's hard to…" I trailed off because of his expression.
"I know the difference between a dream and reality, Alice.” Hearing him say my name made me feel cold inside, so much so that I had to rub my arms to keep the circulation going. "This wasn't a dream. I remember everything."
"What do you mean?"
"I know where I belong, I know what species I am, and I know what happened to us."
"You're scaring me."
His expression was grim, almost haunted. "You should be scared."
For a moment, weakness overcame me, and I wondered—what have I gotten myself into? I should have known better than to take a ride with a perfect stranger. Wasn't that what everyone always said? In my case, it was a spaceship, but I didn't feel like being technical at that moment. Was Xyrek insane? That's why they taught you not to get too close to anyone you didn't know well. The old timers had it right when they said to wait until after marriage to have sex or move in together. Even an arranged marriage didn't sound so bad right then. Anything but being in bed together with an obvious madman on our way to an unknown planet to meet more Space Guardians. For all I knew, he could have made that up, too.
You really did it this time, Al, I chastised myself.Forget getting in a car with strangers. You're out in space—inspace—with a man who could very well be a psychopath.Way to go!
But that moment only lasted a few seconds. The more my brain attacked me and my questionable choices, the more I became convinced that Xyrek wasn't a psychopath. It might have simply been a defense mechanism because I really, really liked him, but I didn't think so. This was deeper. Much deeper. I cared for him in ways I never had with anyone before. And if I was wrong, well, then fuck it. I was fully committed to going down with him. This wasn't about me any longer; this was about me trusting another person and wanting to be there for them. I gave up on my family, but I would be damned if I ever gave up on him. No matter where this journey would take us, I would be with him every step of the way. And if I were wrong, fine. Then I would burn for being wrong, but I would burn laughing.
I had a feeling that whatever he had to say would not only shake me to the core but also change anything and everything I had ever believed in. And suddenly, that was fine with me. I wasn't a supporting actor any longer; I was the heroine in this story, and heroines had to endure a lot before they got their happily ever after. And if that was what it took to be with him,bring it on!
XYREK
I was shakento the core. It had been like a tsunami taking me under and over, twisting and turning me however it pleased. It hadn’t been a dream, even though I had been asleep before it happened. But the moment I felt like someone had kicked me from inside my brain, I was wide awake. Unable to move under the onslaught of memories, my inner self writhed, torn between agony and the most incredible happiness. The only way I could explain this was to imagine a wall in my brain—a dam, holding back a sea of memories, crumbling from the water pressure on the other side. Little droplets had escaped here and there, feeding me impressions of my past. Over the last couple of years, more and more had broken through, until tonight, the dam fully broke, resulting in a tsunami of emotions that nearly drowned me.
My head was so full of impressions, memories, and things I nowknewthat I wasn’t sure where to start. It was like a forgotten basket of cords. Every time you picked at one, it turned out it was intermingled with others, even knotted in places, and before you knew it, you were working on the yellow cord instead of on the blue one where you started or the red one that had you distracted for a tick.
My emotions were all over the place; I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or laugh or kill someone. The nameAllisaahnechoed in my head and heart. She had been real; I knew that without a shadow of a doubt. I had loved her—I loved her still. She was this incredible female in my arms. Allisaahn-Alice. They sounded so much alike. That couldn't be a coincidence, could it? No, nothing seemed like a coincidence anymore; everything pointed to something. A higher power… something… was bringing us together, weaving the kind of magic I didn’t believe in. Alice looked nothing like Allisaahn, and yet the resemblance was there. Their stubbornness, their mannerism, the fire in their eyes.
Again, emotions got the better of me because the last time I saw Allisaahn, I was dying, and she was already dead in my arms. But now I was alive, and so was she—albeit in a different form—and I loved Alice just as much as I had loved Allisaahn. So, was I supposed to be happy to be here with her or heartbroken because she had died? Confusion rippled through me so much that I had no words to express it. It threatened to consume me if I didn’t ground myself.
I needed to think this through, so I asked Alice the first question that popped into my head: "How did you get your name?"
"Really?" She stared at me. "That's what you want to know right now?"
She was right, yet this might be another piece of the puzzle.
"Please," I pressed.
She rolled her eyes. "Because you said please," she huffed.
Her body stiffened, and I could tell she didn't want to discuss it.
"My mom was high like always when I was born," she said after a long pause.
"High?" I didn't want to interrupt her, but I didn't understand what she meant, and it sounded important.
"She was a drug user. She and the rest of my family," Alice explained, a detached pain edged into her features. And suddenly, her pain and story became more important to me than anything else. I realized I had never asked her about her past or her abduction by the Cryons. I really was an ass.
"I'm sorry."
