The outdoors. The real outdoors.

Intense yearning rushes through me, and I charge after Vaza. It's so close.

I don't even care that the wind whistling into the s.h.i.+p is bitterly cold. I'm just desperately hungry for that daylight, that air. I want to breathe it in and feel human for a short time again. To feel free.

Vaza's down the steps before he realizes I'm coming after him. He turns, frowning, as I reach the top of the steps.

The moment I cross the portal, I'm blasted with arctic, icy air. It's so cold that my lungs hurt. My bare feet, warmer than the metal underneath them, stick to it, and intense pain shoots up my legs. I have so much momentum that I don't realize that the skin on my feet is tearing off until the pain rips through me. I stumble, even as Vaza cries out a warning, and fall off the side of the stairs.

I land a short distance below in a cloud of snow.

Snow.

I sit up, dazed, and scramble to my feet. I can't think properly, but all I know is that I have to get away. There's snow everywhere, though, and my feet are throbbing with pain and the cold. I pant like a wild animal, gasping for breath, and crawl forward. Must get away. Must- Dear G.o.d, is this place nothing but snow? I can't see far for all the flurries in the air, but what I do see is nothing but white and mountains. There's rock, and there's snow...and that's it.

It looks like we've been dropped on this planet's version of Antarctica. Even now, my limbs feel numb and the blood on my feet has crusted over.

I'm going to die. And it's not going to take them catching me and beating me to death. I'm going to die of the elements within minutes. I don't have anything on my body except a thin paper gown. My fingers are numb, and I don't want to breathe anymore because it hurts too much.

But...I can see the sun. No, wait, two suns.

It's so beautiful. I crawl forward, toward those gorgeous suns, and I feel my eyes filling with tears. At least I get to see the sun again before I die.

A strong arm grips my waist, and then I'm plucked off my feet by an impossibly warm body that seems to be a mixture of soft skin and hard bony ridges. "What are you doing?" a harsh voice growls in my ear. "You are going to hurt yourself, fool."

I struggle against his arm, but he's holding me tight. I can't breathe, and I imagine this big arm hitting me, punis.h.i.+ng me for escaping. It only makes me fight harder. I'm barely in control of myself as I flail, kicking and scratching. I don't want to be taken back in. I don't want to be put in a cage again.

I don't want to be a slave.

"Stop it," he snarls. "You will hurt yourself. You-"

The shock collar lights up, and then the world disappears in a blast of pain, my brain sheeting white. The last thing I see are the suns, fading out under the agony.

BEK.

The female-foolish, foolish female-goes limp in my arms. I scowl down at her, not understanding. Why is she running away? Vaza and I have done nothing unkind. I haul her small body against me, s.h.i.+elding her from the worst of the cold with my body heat. Is there something wrong with her that she would wish to leave so badly? I eye the blood in the snow and her small, filthy feet-now crusted with iced-over blood. She has torn the soles right off of them with her haste.

This one is a fighter. I feel grudging respect for her, even if she is unsuitable as a mate. Far better to have fighters in the group of new humans than the weepers. I hate it when they cry. Claire cried all the time when she was sharing my furs, and it made me feel awful. Like I was being cruel to her simply for disagreeing. I give this female an unhappy shake. "Why do you run away?" I ask. "You are not dressed for this-you will die."

She doesn't answer. Her head lolls in my arms, and for the first time since grabbing her, I realize how still she has gone, so very suddenly. Is she...dead? I am filled with a stark pang of loss that surprises me. I gently grab her delicate chin with my fingers and tilt her face toward mine. Her eyes are rolled back, a line of drool freezing over her cheek even as I watch. But she breathes. Something is wrong, then.

I cradle her against my chest and race back toward the s.h.i.+p. "We need your healer!" I bellow to Trakan's cave-s.h.i.+p, hoping it will let him know. "Hurry!"

Vaza and Trakan both meet me in the entry hall of the cave-s.h.i.+p, and Trakan quickly shuts the door behind me. The other humans huddle against the wall with their thin blankets, looking terrified and upset. The pink one is crying again.

"What is it?" Trakan asks. "What happened?"

"She is unwell!" I hold the fragile, smelly female out to him. "She does not move. We must take her to your healer so she can be cured."

Trakan looks at the female in my arms, and then at me, clearly confused. "I turned her collar on so she couldn't escape."

His words make no sense to me. "Why would a collar stop her from escaping?"

Trakan steps forward. I hold the female out to him, but he does not take her from my arms, simply points at the small band of silvery metal around her neck. "This one's a troublemaker, so they gave her this to stop her from causing problems."

I feel a sick twist in my gut. "What does it do?"

"Well, it sends enough electricity through her body that it stops her in her tracks. I'm guessing she's small enough that it knocked her out."

I do not know what ee-leck-tris-tee is, but the female does not look well. "It is...bad?"

"I guess? I've never worn a collar." He does not look as if he cares, either. "I can imagine it hurts, and it's not my favorite method to discipline, but you use the tools you've got."

Wait...hurts?

He has hurt this female? This small, helpless female who does not weigh even a third of what he does? I growl low in my throat. "You hurt her?"

Trakan looks surprised at my anger. "It's a shock collar. It's not designed to feel good."

I...do not understand this. I do not understand at all. I bare my teeth. Females are precious and meant to be protected, not abused. I look over to Vaza, a warning in my eyes. "Take her."

He steps forward and pulls the female from my arms, cradling her against his chest.

I waste no time; I grab Trakan by the front of his leathers and haul him into the air. I pull him close so I can snarl my words into his face. "You will turn the collar off, now."

"Whoa, Bek, calm down, buddy-"

"Now," I say in a deadly voice. I am shaking with rage. He has hurt a female. Hurt her. All because she was afraid and tried to run. Did he truly think she would go far? I think of the slack look on her small, dirty face, the cold feeling of her thin arms. The blood crusted on her feet.

And this foolish one thought she was such a threat that he hurt her enough that her mind turned off. My own mind is about to go numb with fury. It takes everything I have to control myself.

I am sick that I considered this one a friend.

Trakan babbles on and on about how the collar was not his idea, but I am barely listening. I shake him. "Get it off her. Now."

"You have to put me down first," he cries.

I drop him and look over at the other females, who are cl.u.s.tered in a corner, cringing. "Who else wears a collar?"

"Just Elly," the one called Chail tells me. "We're okay."

I grunt. This is starting to feel very 'not okay' to me. I cross my arms and wait, watching as Trakan moves to the small female's side and pulls the collar off of her. He puts it in his pocket, but I hold my hand out for it.

Like a guilty child, he hunches his shoulders and hands it over to me. I had seen it on the female and thought it was nothing but decoration. Now I know better. I examine it and the delicate parts on the other side. I crush the entire thing in my hand, pleased when it makes a crunching sound, and I drop it to the ground. "Are there other things like this collar?" I ask Trakan coldly. "Tell me now."

"Nothing else."

I look over. "Chail?"

"Nothing else. He's right." There's a bit more confidence in her voice. "Is Elly okay?"

"She needs the healer," I say, and because Trakan is not moving, I glare at him. "Well?"

"Niri?" he asks, tugging on the front of his leathers. "Why?"

"To fix her feet." I gesture at them. "She hurt them stepping outside."

"That's because she stepped on metal in a sub-zero temperature. Her skin froze to it." Trakan shakes his head. "I doubt that-"

"I do not care what you doubt," I tell him. "I want the healer to look at them."

He sighs and rubs a hand down his face. "Kef it. Fine. You're being psycho. I just want you to know that."

I do not know what that is, and I do not care. All I know is that I asked for these females to be brought here, and I will do everything in my power to ensure they are safe.

ELLY.

When I wake up, I'm staring back at the ceiling of the medical bay. Oh c.r.a.p. Not again.

I didn't get away. I close my eyes, steeling myself. My new masters are not going to be pleased. I'm going to be punished.

It was worth it, though. I got to see the sun again. I got to feel fresh air-however cold-on my face. I'd do it again. I'd endure daily beatings if it meant I could go outside on a regular basis. Funny how something so small can become something so important. I never liked to go outside as a kid. Then again, as a kid, I never thought I'd be stolen away by aliens and forced to live in cages for ten years.

"If you're done pretending to be asleep, everyone's waiting on you so they can leave. Us included." The sharp-tongued blue woman speaks somewhere off to my side.

I open my eyes and glance over at her, then sit up, testing things. My head throbs, but that's not unexpected. My feet don't, though, and I see they're wrapped in bandages. I can't feel them at all, and I suppress a bit of panic that they've been frostbitten. I reach down to touch one.

"Leave that alone," the woman snaps. "I gave it a dose of medication to stop infection, but it's going to make it numb for the next few hours. You should be thanking me instead of fiddling with it."

I just look at her blankly. Thanking her? She hasn't been nice to me at all. Her bedside manner definitely needs work.

When I don't respond, she sighs and turns on her wrist communicator. "She's awake. Tell your friends to come and get her out of my medbay."

I hold myself stiffly, remembering to hunch my shoulders so I look thinner and more delicate in case the big, mean one lashes out with his fists. I tilt my head forward, letting my nasty hair hang in my face, and pull my paper gown closer to my body. I wish I had kept my blanket.

The door opens, and the blue guy with tattoos steps inside. Behind him is the big angry one. I can feel myself flinching backward, and I try to scoot back on the table at the force of his displeasure. He storms into the room, heading for where I'm seated, and the urge to flee rushes through me again.

"She should stay off her feet for the next day or two," the woman says, as snappish to him as she is to me. "They're rather torn up."

"I will carry her," the big one says.

Oh no, no, no. I don't want to be carried. I try to get up, to prove that I can walk, but the big blue alien just growls in my direction. Growls. I freeze in place, and he scoops me up into his arms like I'm a damsel in distress instead of a slave.

He's very warm, I notice, even as I do my best not to touch his bare skin. Warm, and his skin feels downy, like suede. It's almost like he's fuzzy, which is double-strange given that he looks frightening as h.e.l.l.

"Stop moving," he growls at me. "I do not wish to drop you."

I...can't tell if that's a threat. But I know I shouldn't push him more than I've already pushed so far. If my feet are as bad as they sound, there's no running away until they're better. I'm stranded. So I go still, doing my best not to move and bother him.

The big blue alien marches out of the medical bay and down the corridor. He's silent as he walks, and I mentally cringe, waiting for his anger to explode on me. He moves down the halls of the s.h.i.+p, and then, ahead, I see the others waiting. My fellow human slaves are bundled head to toe in a ma.s.sive amount of furs, only their faces peeping out. The alien called Vaza stands next to them, spear in hand, and it looks strange to see him in a loincloth next to the furry human bundles.

He holds out a big fur blanket to the alien carrying me, and they both pause to wrap me up in the big one's arms. Their hands skate over my body as they do, and I slap their hands away when they get too close to my chest.

"Stop moving," the big one growls again.

I clench my hands. If one of them even so much as grazes a nipple...

But they don't. They only tuck the blankets around me and take care to make sure I'm bundled well. Then Vaza nods at my captor. "Ready when you are, Bek."

So the mean one is Bek. I file that information away, memorizing it. It even sounds unpleasant, just like him.

"We go out now," Vaza says to the others. "It is a short walk to our village. No more than a few hours. Stay close to us and you will not get hurt."

"You're going to beat us if we can't keep up?" someone cries.

Vaza looks shocked. "No, I meant you will not get hurt by wild animals."

"There are wild animals?" Someone else gives a half-scream, and they all cl.u.s.ter closer to Gail.

"Calm down," Gail tells them. "They wouldn't buy a bunch of human slaves just to feed us to bears or something. Like he said, just stay close." She ignores the look of sheer pleasure Vaza gives her and gestures at the others. "This is a lot of change for us. I'm sorry. We'll be quiet and obey now."

Vaza nods uncertainly and looks over at Bek.

"Let us leave this place," my sour captor says. "I do not wish to be here any longer."

Then the doors open, and the brutal wind rips inside again, stealing my breath away. The others squeal at the cold, but the one holding me ignores them. He steps forward and into the sunlight.

And I see the suns again. The sky is a beautiful pale blue, dotted with clouds, and the suns are small and distant, but they're there.

The sight of them makes me so happy.