The Breeding Prize - Aya Morningstar Page 0,10

am able to turn onto another road, one which allows for traffic in both directions.

“You really can’t drive,” she says.

I can tell from her voice that her heart rate is elevated even though she’s safe in the car with me. She must still be frightened from what happened in the library.

I approach a line of cars that is stopping for no discernible reason. A yellow light hangs above them, and it turns red as I approach. I maneuver around the stopped vehicles and drive even faster. We are very close to the portal now. I can sense its presence on the higher dimensions.

I drive right past the last stopped car, but then, from the corner of my eye, I spot movement.

A vehicle slams into us. It hits my door, and our frail vehicle buckles from the impact.

White powder explodes everywhere, and some kind of large pillows fill the vehicle. The pillows blinds my view through the glass.

The little human screams.

Our car spins around a few times, and then grinds to a halt.

I jam my fingers into the pillow and pop it. I pop Annabelle’s pillow, and I check her for injuries.

“Are you hurt?”

“I should be!” she shouts. “You went right through the red light. Fucking hell!”

“You’re not hurt?”

“No, I—”

I rip her safety harness off and pull her from the vehicle. The driver of the vehicle that hit us is out on the road and shouting at me. I don’t understand why he’s angry, he’s the one who drove into me.

I growl at him, and when he realizes I’m an alien, he screams and starts running.

Loud sirens are approaching from all directions, but the emergency vehicles are all moving toward the library rather than toward us. I know these are the local authorities, and they will be trying to figure out what happened back behind us rather than worrying about the idiot who drove his vehicle into me.

I go to throw Annabelle over my shoulder again, but she shakes her head. “I’ll follow you. You’re too hurt to keep carrying me.”

I’m tempted to show her how wrong she is, but it will be strategically better for me to have a free arm, so I let her have her way this time.

“Stay close to me, little human.”

I take her by the hand, too afraid that I’ll somehow lose her if I’m not physically touching her. This human city is full of hills, and the portal is beneath a bridge on a narrow little road. Between two steep hills.

I can see the crest of the hill in the distance, and I bring us toward it.

We find a small stairway with a metal railing that brings us down toward the portal. I recognize the stairway. It’s the same one I used to come back up after I opened the portal. We’re almost there, we’re—

I get a bad feeling, and risk losing time by looking behind me. I see him. The golden one. Philos.

He’s made his legs larger now, and he’s rushing toward us.

As a warrior, I’m trained to make life-or-death decisions in split seconds. In this moment, I decide we are close enough to the portal that it’s better to run. I’ve set the portal to collapse the moment I pass through it. All I have to do is jump in, and as long as I can reach it before Philos does, I’ll have bought us a large amount of time and safety.

If it were just me, and if I didn’t have to protect my little human, I’d stay and fight. I’d risk that I might lose. Maybe it would be to protect my pride or my honor as a warrior, but that is gone now. There is only Annabelle. She is what I live for now, and my pride and honor is nothing next to her safety.

I pluck her up despite her protests, and I rush down the stairs with her hoisted over my shoulder.

Just as I reach the bottom of the stairs, the metal railing creaks.

I look back and see the entire metal railing raising up into the air. Philos is holding it with a massive arm, and I duck just in time for the railing to miss us.

I bring my scythe up and cut through it as he swings again. The railing is over 100 feet long, but he’s swinging it like a club or a whip.

Still, I cut off the part that can reach us, and I throw Annabelle back over my shoulder. I rush toward the dark space beneath