Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
The woman merely shakes her head and turns to the equally stunning woman in the cage next to hers. They begin a conversation in a language I don’t understand, and I sit back. Even in my dreams I’m easy to ignore.
I take a deep breath and tell myself I’ll forget all of this when I wake up in my own bed, tangled in crappy scratchy sheets. This will be a blur in the early morning light, an echo of some dream life.
“Miss Meg, I need you to come with me. I know our ways seem strange to you, but one day you’ll see what a great honor all of this is.” The small woman who’d greeted me with pastries and claims she doesn’t know what coffee is stands at the door of the cage. She’s dressed like she’s participating in a Renaissance fair. And she’s seriously tiny. Like the smallest human I’ve ever seen who wasn’t a kid. She’s absolutely a full-ass adult with the body of a woman, but she’s maybe four feet tall. Maybe.
I stand, pulling the sheet around me because while the Swedish supermodels might be cool showing the world what their mommas gave them, I am not. I tuck the sheet under my shoulders, forming something of a dress. “I’m sure being put in a cage is a great honor.”
Cara—she’d called herself Cara—holds a circle of keys in her small hand. “You’ll be saving a life and maybe a whole kingdom if you are what we think you are. Please come with me. Miss, if you try to run, you should understand that there is nowhere to go.”
Cara enunciates each word carefully, as though she has to think about each one.
“Well, naturally there’s nowhere to go. I think that’s what this whole dream thing is about.” I move to the door of the cage as Cara opens it.
I don’t even think about running because all that will do is morph the dream into something terrible. All my anxieties will likely chase after me and honestly, the running is part of a nightmare, too.
I think back to all my psych classes. Shouldn’t I try to take control of the dream? Try to wake myself up? If I take charge, I’ll likely find my way out sooner.
My gut rolls as I see that thing again in my head, the one who wrapped spindly fingers around my wrist and pulled me close, and I swear I could smell sulphur on it. I shove the image down. It’s not memory. It’s got to be something else.
Had I been drinking? Or maybe someone spiked my drink.
Except I hadn’t been out partying. I’d been walking home from a movie.
Still, I step out, clutching my sheet like the queen I am determined to be in this dream space. I’m about to explain to Cara that I want coffee and a TV brought to my room because I’m going to clear off my watch list in this dream. Hey, it’s my weird fantasy.
I stop as I realize this fantasy just took a turn.
Two large men step out from the shadows, and before I can pull away, each has a wrist in his grasp. Men? I study them, not wanting to believe my eyes. I’m not sure these are men at all. They’re humanoid, but the skin covering their muscled bodies isn’t a color that comes from human DNA.
Green. It’s a brackish green, and their heads are covered with scraggly hair.
Fear snakes along my spine as they drag my hands up over my head and the sheet drops away, leaving me naked and so vulnerable. Cold metal presses against my palms, and suddenly I’m tethered to something above my head.
This is the part where the dream goes bad. So fucking bad.
I don’t want to be here. I want to be home. I know I complain about it often, how boring it is, how I don’t belong, how I have no one, but fear makes cowards of us all, and I want to be home in my bed.
A bright light sweeps through the tent, a tidal wave crashing over my overwrought senses. Someone’s coming. The green dudes step back. It seems like they’re not the ones who are going to gut me or rape me or wherever this is leading. I can’t see them. They’ve moved behind me, but Cara says something and she sounds further away.
A massive shadow blocks the sunlight that streams in from the hole in the roof of the tent, and I shrink back in fear. Well, I shrink back as far as the chains allow me to. Something is playing in the back of mind. Some instinct telling me this isn’t a dream and I’m in trouble.
That shadow is a man. He becomes clear as he steps inside the space they’d made private. The sun is behind him, so at first all I see is the outline of his body. Strong shoulders that seem to go on for days, big arms. He’s muscular and masculine, and I’m naked in front of him.