Choosing Theo: The Clecanian Series Book 1 Read online

  Choosing Theo

  Victoria Aveline

  Copyright © 2020 Victoria Aveline

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, incidents, and events are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Mayhem Cover Creations

  Editing by Rhonda Merwarth

  Proofreading by Tina Gallagher

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Two a.m.,” Jade groaned. She had to be up for work in six hours. “Why do I do this to myself?” she muttered.

  It had never been easy for Jade to sleep. She envied people who were able to lay down and drift away to dreamland in a matter of minutes. Whenever she tried to sleep, her fatigued body was at odds with her active mind.

  As a landscape designer, Jade could get away with both sleeping and working at odd hours. Her home office was a perfectly cultivated creative area, and the majority of her designs were produced there, rather than in a stifling office. It was not often that she was required to leave her home and venture into the world, and she preferred it that way.

  Tomorrow she was scheduled to meet with a particularly wealthy client who wanted the yard of his lakefront home to resemble an authentic Japanese garden. Finding plants that resembled those found in the temperate climate of Japan, but could survive the humid subtropical climate of South Carolina, would be an interesting design challenge to say the least.

  Looking at the mountain of half-finished sketches and cold mugs of coffee on her desk, she frowned.

  She clicked off the T.V. and walked the few steps it took to get to her small kitchen. As she rinsed out her wine glass, she saw a flash of light through the window above her sink.

  Odd. It wasn’t raining. She waited for the thunder, but none came.

  Lightning storms weren’t uncommon in South Carolina. The flash she’d seen had been close though. Close enough that she should’ve been able to hear thunder.

  She shrugged, setting her glass aside and made her way to her bedroom.

  BANG!

  Jade’s body tensed midstep.

  BANG! BANG!

  The initial panic at hearing the loud sound was replaced by annoyance. “Damn door,” she grumbled.

  For weeks, the latch on her screen door had been broken. If she didn’t make sure to pull it closed in exactly the right way, it would end up opening and banging against its frame with the wind.

  More than once this week she’d been jolted awake by the repetitive thud.

  As she yanked the screen door closed, she looked toward the tree line at the edge of her property. No other flashes of light illuminated the sky, yet the night air was warm and humid. Maybe there was a storm on the way.

  From the corner of her eye she saw movement in the darkness. A low rustling sounded from outside. She strained her ears. An animal of some kind, probably.

  Reaching to her left, she flipped on the porch light, intending to scare away the furry intruder.

  A human-sized reptilian creature stood in her yard instead.

  Jade shrieked in horror and slammed the door closed. She bolted the lock and then hastily backed away. Her heel caught on the entry rug, and she toppled backward, arms windmilling.

  A hideous, scaly face appeared in her porch window. The creature’s blood-red eyes scanned the room before focusing on her. Jade found herself paralyzed by fear, as she watched the face vanished from the window.

  Regaining control of her limbs, she bolted toward her cell phone on the living room couch. A loud crash sounded behind her just before something large and heavy collided with her back. She laid face down on the floor, trapped under what she now realized was her own door.

  Jade clawed at the floor, attempting to crawl out from beneath the door. In an instant, the weight of the door was gone and three enormous icy cold fingers were clutching at her shoulder, trying to turn her over.

  Jade began kicking in the direction of the creature. Her knee connected with something hard, and she cried out in pain. The last thing she remembered before everything went black was an ear-splitting hiss and a fine mist being sprayed in her face.

  Chapter 2

  It had been about four days since Jade was abducted. All in all, she had to say, abduction was boring.

  Initially she’d been terrified, shrieking in her cell until the reptilian monsters had knocked her out with the sleeping spray they kept strapped to their belts. When she’d calmed down enough to survey her surroundings, she’d deduced where she was.

  Blinking lights and soft humming emanated from a silver slab near where the monsters sat. They both reclined facing a large glass screen on which strange symbols kept appearing and disappearing. Jade had watched enough sci-fi to know this had to be a spaceship. Nothing on Earth could possibly look like this unless NASA had decided to build an uber-realistic alien abduction escape room.

  The moment Jade accepted she’d been abducted by aliens and not Earth monsters and was on a spaceship, not in some reptilian lair on Earth, her screaming and mindless panic had resumed.

  Thinking back, Jade figured two days on this ship had been spent having a complete mental breakdown and then recovering from said breakdown. The next two days were spent sitting in a cell and occasionally receiving food she refused to eat.

  Her “cell” looked more like a sparsely furnished room with one wall missing. There was a toilet and sink in one corner and a small cot in the opposite corner. The three dark-gray metal walls were cold and bare. The last side of the room appeared empty, but Jade had learned there was actually a transparent impenetrable force field barring her exit.

  When she’d first gained consciousness, she’d tried to leave through that opening. Instead of walking into the hallway beyond, an invisible solid barrier had greeted her.

  Whenever the aliens decided to give her what she assumed was food, they’d press some button on their belt and slide a tray through the seemingly empty air.

  Jade had tried to get through the barrier every time they gave her food, but it seemed you could only penetrate it from the outside.

  During the first few days aboard, Jade had refused to eat. At fir st, she’d been so petrified of what they’d do to her that in between bouts of sobbing and hysterically muttering to herself, she’d retched bile into her small, sleek toilet.

  After deciding that dissolving into a weeping mess wouldn’t help her, she’d attempted to try and not think about her current situation and focus only on what she could achieve minute to minute.

  Every time she felt the urge to truly take in her circumstances, she shut down her brain by bellowing any annoying repetitive song she could think of.

  At present, she sat crossed-legged on the ground, staring absently at her tray of food and water that the aliens had shoved toward her earlier.

  She smiled down at the pile of green slop on the tray. One of her only friends, Annie, a strict vegan, had once attempted to make her eat something that looked similar to this. She’d raved about the algae-based superfood relentlessly, but Jade, being the stubborn ass she was, had refused to try it.

  Jade closed her eyes when they began to sting from unshed tears. She would never see Annie again.

  Don’t think about that! Don’t think about that! Jade’s eyes flashed open and she began singing the chorus to an annoying 80’s power ballad.

  One of the reptilian aliens walked in front of her cell and hissed at her aggressively. She backed into the corner of her small room and stopped singing aloud. Instead, she hummed the tune and glared at the creature.

  Neither of the shiny green aliens had enjoyed her attempts to smother her feelings. Whenever she began singing, they’d rush over and hold her stare with their slitted eyes until she stopped.

  She knew avoiding reality wasn’t the smartest or most mature idea in the long run. She knew that facing things head on was a much healthier approach, but Jade felt sure she was one thread away from snapping. She also knew, from experience, that pretending to be fearless and unaffected would help to keep her sane.

  The creature made another low hiss over its shoulder, and the second creature came to join the first. One of the aliens used a long, pointed claw to motion to her full tray of green goo.

  The more time she spent doing nothing but observing these aliens, the more she felt she could read their moods. When they were frustrated or possibly angry, as they were now, she’d noticed that their hissing became short, and spit flew off their tongues with each alien word.

  Whenever they retrieved her full food tray, they’d use that harsh hiss, and their long, broad tails would flick back and forth.

  It seems like they’re getting frustrated with my hunger strike, she thought as she watched them hiss back and forth while gesturing to her tray.

  The slightly smaller of the two walked away. When it returned to her cell a moment later and she saw what it had retrieved, she felt the blood drain from her face. The creature was pointing to her food with one claw-tipped hand and held a long clear tube in the other. It raised the tube a little higher, and she understood the creature’s meaning. She could either eat on her own, or she could be force-fed.

  The two lizard beings waited silently at her cell. The thought of being held down and force-fed through a tube made a jolt of fear run through her. Begrudgingly, she decided that keeping the aliens at bay was more important to her than possible food poisoning.

  Tentatively she moved toward her tray and used her forefinger to scoop up a small amount of goo. Shutting her eyes, she took a bite. A cold sweat broke out over her skin, and she tried to keep her breathing even as she waited for some reaction. When her throat didn’t swell, she began to relax.

  She let out a relieved exhalation when she saw the two aliens had left, apparently satisfied with her small bite of food.

  Her stomach gave a pained rumble, and she polished off the rest of the goo. Although awful to look at, it didn’t taste too bad. It was sweet and surprisingly filling. The water, however, was stale and tasted metallic on her tongue.

  Jade leaned back on her small scratchy cot and wondered for the thousandth time why she had been taken.

  Apart from feeding her and occasionally walking by her cell to check on her, the aliens had left her alone.

  What is the point of this? Jade thought again. Since she’d been conscious, they hadn’t touched her or experimented on her, but instead kept her fed and healthy. There must’ve been a reason for her abduction.

  The possible reasons to abduct someone that kept running through her mind were terrifying. She knew one thing for sure, whatever they planned on doing to or with her would happen when they reached their destination.

  How far could we have gone in a few days?

  She snorted. Who was she kidding? Jade spent her life drawing gardens and shutting herself away from the world. Why the hell did she think she could logic out how far a spaceship might travel in a few days?

  Suddenly Jade felt exhausted and beaten. She sat back on her bed against her cell wall. Eventually, the soft humming and vibration of the ship lulled her to sleep.

  ***

  A sharp pain deep in her ear made Jade bolt awake. Just as her vision cleared, she noticed one reptilian alien backing out through the force field. She scrambled toward it, hoping that whatever allowed it access was still working.

  Bam! She ran headlong into the wall and bounced back, toppling onto her bed. Rubbing her ear, she yelled at the alien, who was still staring at her from outside the cell. “What did you do to my ear, you scaly son of a bitch?!”

  Instead of answering, the alien hissed low and lumbered away.

  ***

  Jade had been on this stupid ship for more than a week at least. Apart from the painful ear wakeup call she’d gotten a few days ago, not much had changed.

  From her cell, she could study the console where the two aliens sat. It must be where they drive this thing.

  While watching them man the controls in shifts the past few days, she’d learned some things. One, she was pretty sure she was being sold. One of the aliens, whom she’d started calling Thing 1, had come back and flashed a device at her. Later, she was able to make out a picture of herself being pulled up on the console screen and heard them speaking with someone not currently on the ship.

  Her heart hammered in her chest when she guessed at what someone buying her would do to her. Why would they want her? Was she some kind of alien delicacy? Would they display her like a lobster and then boil her alive? Jade had spent a good half hour rocking herself in the corner after that particular thought had occurred.

  The second thing she’d figured out was that they were getting close to their destination. Alien number two, aka Thing 2, had thrown a large dress that resembled a sack with arm holes in her cell today.

  Looking for any reason to defy her abductors, she’d refused to change into the dress. The gray fabric of the dress was thick and reminded her of wetsuit material. One glaringly obvious pro to wearing the dress was that it was clean. Taking a sniff of her unwashed clothes made her question whether this was a stupid battle to fight.

  After finally accepting the water they’d provided with her food, Jade had been disappointed to learn that the small sink in the corner dispensed some kind of cleansing foam, rather than water. The foam dissolved the dirt on her hands, and she’d used it to clean herself as best she could, but the pajama set she wore hadn’t received the same attention, and the smell was starting to get to her. Her battle to remain in her dirty clothes had been short-lived, however.

  Thing 2 had hissed at her and lowered the temperature in her cell incrementally. Before long, she was forced to wear the dress to keep from freezing to death.

  The final, and most troubling thing she’d learned, was that she was pretty sure she wasn’t the only captive on this ship. She’d noticed Thing 1 holding more than one gray dress when he’d thrown hers at her. She’d also noticed they’d carry more than one food tray when delivering her food.

  She’d thought the other tray was for them. Even lizards have to eat, right? That idea was put to bed when she caught one of them walking by while swallowing a small, squealing, two-headed animal whole. After watching that, it was hard to imagine they’d also eat the green goo they’d been feeding her.

  Rapid beeping sounded from the console, drawing Jade’s attention. Thing 1 and 2 stood up and walked to her cell. Before she could figure out what they were doing, they’d deactivated the force field and dragged her out kicking and screaming.

  They each gripped one of her arms as they half escorted, half carried her down the hall. Their hands were rough and scaly but also somehow cold and moist, making Jade cringe.

  At long last she was outside of her cell, and all she wanted to do at this moment was return. The air in the ship was sweltering and smelled vaguely sweet, like rotting fruit. Jade began to sweat. The heated metal of the floor made each step burn against her bare feet.

  “Where are you guys from, the sun?” She panted, trying to slip out of their slimy hands.

  At the end of the hallway stood a group of three large egg-shaped structures. When they neared, a rounded panel opened up on one of the eggs, revealing a small compartment with a single seat. As soon as she understood what they meant to do with her, she started to struggle frantically.

  “No way are you putting me in that thing by myself. I can’t fly a freaking spaceship— space pod— space egg— whatever that thing is!”

  Ignoring her protests, Thing 1 lifted her over his shoulder and carried her the rest of the way to the pod, shoving her inside and knocking the wind from her. Inch by inch the door of the pod closed until it was sealed.

  She watched through the small window in horror as the lizards typed something into a control panel on the wall that she hadn’t noticed before.

  The pod started moving backward, away from the two reptilian aliens. She could guess what that meant.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” In desperation, she scanned every square inch of the pod for an escape but the interior was bare, save for the solitary seat. She was about to get shot out into space and then to who knew where. “Well.” She sighed, looking down into her hand at the small bottle of sleep spray she’d grabbed during the struggle. “Let’s hope this spray works on everything.”