Chapter 1
Beeeeeeep….
It felt like someone was trying to drill a hole through my head. Something tugged on my arm and pain sliced down my skin.
My eyes grew heavy like they had been glued shut.
What happened? I tried to retrace my steps. I had won the competition. The guys were mine. We were going to go somewhere…and then?
Fuck.
I tore my eyes open when I suddenly remembered what had happened. I say tore because that’s what it actually felt like. Maybe those psycho scientists had glued my eyes shut. I wouldn’t put it past them.
The room was white and sterile and there were beeps coming from everywhere. I wanted to go back to sleep just so I didn’t have to hear their screeching anymore. It was hard to move like my body had been paralyzed. I started to take stock of all my body parts one by one.
I wiggled my toes first, giving a huge sigh of relief when they moved. I wouldn’t put it past the Vepar to decide that baby incubators didn’t need to have use of their limbs. I tried to move my legs next but all I could do was twitch them briefly. They must have given me some heavy meds because it felt like the hardest thing I had ever done to move my legs an inch. Giving up on my legs for a moment, I moved to my arms. I wiggled my fingers first and gave another sigh of relief when they moved. As soon as I tried to move my arms though, piercing pain shot through me. Glancing down, a scream gurgled from my throat.
There were at least ten wires or IVs or something sticking out of my arms. Panic curled in my chest, a scream building in my lungs. I pulled at them even though the movement made me want to throw up from the pain. I was faintly aware of an alarm sounding, mixing in with all the other beeps in the room, creating a cacophony of torture for my ears.
I heard frantic footsteps, and then I was surrounded by what seemed like twenty Vepar in white coats. They were yelling and gesturing and grabbing at me, but my mind was in such a state of panic that it was hard to comprehend what they were trying to say. Finally, one of them pulled out a sharp-looking needle and stabbed it into my upper arm.
I was so sick of being knocked out.
* * *
When I woke next,I saw the same scene. Except this time when I tried to move, I realized that I had been bound to the table underneath me with thick fabric around my hands and with leg cuffs. Before I could scream, a gorgeous Vepar with ebony hair pulled back severely from her face stepped into my field of vision. She wore a stark white lab coat and carried a calm expression on her face as if it was perfectly normal to chain humans to a lab table and stick things in them without their permission. Maybe it was on their planet, but back on Earth, it was called kidnapping. Veon needed to get with the times.
“How are you feeling today, Ella?” she asked kindly.
I stared at her shocked that she could even ask that with a straight face. “Let me out of here and I’ll let you know,” I ordered, struggling with my restraints.
“Now, Ella,” she began, while typing in notes on her tablet as she observed me. “We really need you to calm down. It’s very important your body is stress-free right now.”
Was this Vepar for real?
“Are you having any cramps? Do you feel bloated?” she asked.
Why was she asking that?
She must have seen the confusion on my face because she smiled and patted my shoulder. I flinched, but she pretended not to notice. “We’ve been giving you a steady dose of fertility drugs and they often cause cramping and bloating. We just want to make sure that you’re comfortable,” she explained.
Sick dread spread all over my body. It was happening. My worst fear was being realized.
Where were the guys?
I started gagging as I tried to trace back my steps. What if the Trials had been a trick to get me to lower my guard? What if the guys were behind this?
I took a breath, trying to calm myself down. They wouldn’t do this. Not after everything that had just happened. It would be like playing with your food before you ate it... making me do the Trials while they intended to use me as a baby-making machine the whole time.
Someone else was behind this… because they wouldn’t do this, would they?
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice sounding scratchy from disuse. How long had I been out, and what had they done to my body?
She laughed self-deprecatingly. “Forgive me for being so rude. My name is Dr. Cryon. I’m one of the head researchers in this lab.”
When I didn’t respond to her introduction, she turned her attention to her tablet and started scrolling through something on it.
“Looks like it’s time for your Bromocriptine,” she remarked, setting her tablet down and grabbing an angry-looking syringe from off a stainless-steel table next to her.