Authors: Julia Sexton
Chapter 3
Mariah explored. Isaiah had wandered off and clearly had no plans on taking her home, so getting familiar with the lab seemed like the best thing to do to keep herself distracted.
She searched the room she had woken up in first, to see if she could find her phone, but it was nowhere to be found. So, there was no chance of calling for help and letting anyone know that she had been whisked off into some mountains
somewhere
by a complete and probably crazy stranger.
She did at least find her purse and the pad of sticky notes that she carried around with her, and she made use of it as she explored, sticking the neon squares of paper to each door she investigated, considering the hallways were all featureless and the doors were all identical.
Many of the doors refused to open. A few of them led to rooms similar to the one she had woken up in. She found two other balconies, though they were as mountainous as the first one, and so not much to look at.
There were a few rooms of interest, though. Such as a library that extended downwards for several stories, the different levels connected by ladders and catwalks.
Mariah made a mental note to come back to it when all of the gleaming whiteness made her less dizzy and there was less of a chance of her falling off of the ladders, and she slapped a second sticky note to the door.
She found another room filled with cushions and couches, and the walls were covered in screens of various sizes and shapes. She thought maybe it was a recreational room of some sort, but she didn’t stick around to find out.
There was a room that looked to be a bathroom, though the shower filled a good three-quarters of the room. She slapped three sticky notes onto that one to keep track of it. She didn’t relish the idea of not being able to shower, after all.
The strangest rooms were the ones filled with foreign equipment, with writing she had never seen before.
Sharp, jagged equipment, massive monitors, cages, and utensils that looked like something out of a doctor’s office. The rooms gave Mariah the heebie-jeebies, and she abandoned them quickly.
The strangest part, however, was the complete lack of windows. There were none, in any of the rooms or hallways she found. No windows, no sky lights, nothing. It left the entire lab feeling sort of claustrophobic, not helped at all by how shiningly pristine everything was, or the fact that Mariah couldn’t find a light switch, either.
Then again, she supposed there wouldn’t be much sunlight in the mountains, and the view wasn’t much to look at, either. If she needed fresh air that badly, she could just go out onto one of the balconies, though she supposed Isaiah wasn’t wrong that it was too cold for her to be out there.
Speaking of Isaiah, where
was
he?
He had decided they would be mates and strolled off, and he had disappeared. Was that his strategy to not have to explain it to her?
Was that how he planned to avoid having Mariah demand he bring her home?
Was he just going to vanish until she gave up looking for him?
The next door opened, and Mariah blinked at the set of narrow, twining stairs. Cautiously, she stepped through the door and began heading down the stairs. At the bottom, she went through the door and found not another hallway like she had been expecting, but a large, open room that resembled an abnormally large, sprawling studio apartment.
Mariah could hear something like music playing, though it was no music she had ever heard. More importantly, however, she found Isaiah, sitting on a couch in the center portion of the sprawling room and reading off of a tablet screen.
He didn’t react as Mariah slunk over to him, nor when she peered over his shoulder. Not that it mattered; she couldn’t read anything on the tablet.
“Have you enjoyed exploring?” Isaiah asked as he lowered the tablet.
Rather than answer, Mariah asked, “When can I go home?”
Slightly less placid, Isaiah finally sounded mildly annoyed as he said, “I have already explained that you are to be my mate. This is your home now. How many times must I explain it?”
“Until it makes sense!” Mariah shouted, coming around the couch to stand in front of him, her hands on her hips.
“I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t just tell me I’m supposed to be your mate and expect me to accept it! I don’t even fucking
know you
!”
Isaiah’s orange eyes narrowed, and his voice came out sharp and intense when he said, “Why does it matter? It is destined.”
“I don’t base my life around cheap voodoo and nonsense like destiny!” she spat.
“Now tell me what’s going on!”
Isaiah opened his mouth to reply, but he paused and then closed his mouth once more with an audible click of teeth. He drew in a breath and let it out slowly as he composed himself.
“I am not of Earth,” he stated simply.
“My species is one that has spread far and wide across the galaxy. I was born on a space station orbiting the star that your people call Arcturus.”
Mariah stared at him blankly, her mouth hanging open. An alien.
An alien had rescued her from a pack of drunken assholes and was convinced she was going to be his mate.
What the hell sort of mess had she found herself in?
“Among my people,” he continued, “mates are destined. The souls touch, and it is permanent. I am aware that humans have different ways of finding their partners, but that does not change the fact that your soul has touched mine.”
Mariah continued to stare at him for a few seconds, until finally she swallowed and managed,
“So…that’s it? Some alien soul-touching shit that I have nothing to do with happened, and I get no say in the outcome? I don’t get to go home?”
Isaiah shrugged minutely, as if it was just a small inconvenience.
Mariah’s jaw worked silently for a moment as she tried to come up with something to say, but the situation was just
so absurd
. The words wouldn’t come, and with a loud, blustering huff, she dropped down onto a slump on the couch, her arms crossed.
She sat there in a sulk for a few minutes, until finally she asked, “So am I supposed to be happy about being held captive? Because I can’t see that happening.”
“You are
not my captive
!” Isaiah burst out, all but exploding as he said it.
“You shall be my
mate
. Our souls have touched and I love you. In time, you shall feel as I do.”
Mariah gaped at him. What was she supposed to say to that?
He was massive and apparently he had a temper. Trying to argue with him to make him see a point he was utterly refusing to see didn’t exactly seem like the safest prospect.
She levered herself to her feet, turned towards the stairwell she had come down earlier, and stalked off.
Chapter 4
Mariah sprawled on her back on a cushion in the room with all of the monitors. She couldn’t figure out how to make them work or what they were for, but drifting in and out of sleep on the cushions was at least better than nothing when it came to staving off boredom. She wasn’t sure how long she had been dozing when the door slid open to reveal Isaiah.
“You may join me for dinner, if you wish,” he told her evenly, and then he was gone just as quickly, the door sliding closed once more.
Mariah thought about ignoring the offer. Of just lying there out of spite. But then her stomach growled, and with an exasperated sigh, she rolled off of the cushion, stood up, and trekked back down the stairs. There was no sense in starving herself, after all.
Dinner was surprisingly normal. She had half expected the meal to have tentacles or something like that, but no. It was just pork.
At first, Mariah figured she would just stay quiet during the meal. He was making her stay there, but that didn’t mean she had to do it cheerfully. But that plan didn’t work out. There were too many questions to ask.
“Since when do aliens look like humans?” she asked out of nowhere, halfway through the meal.
“We are shape-shifters,” Isaiah replied.
“It is not a perfect mimicry, but given that I do not spend much time amongst humans, it suffices.”
“And the name?” Mariah wondered.
“That sounds pretty Earthly, too.”
“You would not be able to pronounce my name,” he answered simply.
“I went with an approximation.”
Mariah lapsed back into silence after that, picking at her food quietly. Eventually, quietly, she asked, “What are you even doing here?”
“I am studying,” he answered.
“My people have always been fascinated by the galaxy’s simpler organisms.”
Mariah’s eyebrows rose. “What, like our plants and animals?”
Isaiah nodded once. “And humans, as well.”
Her fork dropped out of her hand and clattered onto the plate. Isaiah glanced up curiously, and Mariah bit out, “How
magnanimous
of you, being so willing to mate with a
simple creature
like me.”
She shoved away from the table with enough force that the chair shrieked against the floor.
“Mariah—“
She didn’t give him the chance to say anything before she stalked back to the stairs.
There was no argument or discussion or confrontation that night. Mariah stormed off, and Isaiah was apparently content to let her. She stalked back to the room with the screens and cushions and made herself comfortable there for the night.
She awoke the next morning—or at least she assumed it was morning, but she didn’t even know what time zone they were in and there were no windows—and the first thing she noticed was that a flower had been left on the cushion next to her.
It wasn’t any sort of flower she had ever seen before, though. The petals were spikey, enough so that Mariah was surprised she didn’t cut herself when she ran her finger along the edges.
The petals were primarily a pale, pastel purple, bleeding to dark, speckled red around the edges. The stamen was long and prominent with red beads at the end, and the stem and leaves were such a dark green that they were nearly black.
It wasn’t the most beautiful flower Mariah had ever seen, even if it was unique. But then she brought it to her nose and sniffed, and it was like getting punched in the chest in the best way.
It smelled clean and fresh and sweet, and the scent seemed to wash over her like a refreshing rainstorm. The flower itself wasn’t the most beautiful one she had ever seen, but it smelled exquisite.
Mariah supposed it was an apology. Or at least the beginning of an apology. She wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.
She closed her eyes as she breathed in the flower’s scent again, and then she tucked it behind her ear and rolled off of the cushion so she could head back down the stairs. It was time to find some breakfast.
Isaiah walked in halfway through Mariah eating what she was fairly sure was some sort of oatmeal.
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither speaking. It was Isaiah who broke first, sighing out a slow breath and saying.
“I did not mean to call you and your people simple. It was a poor choice of words. I am well aware that humans show a great deal of potential, you foremost among them. They are simply a young species still.”
It took Mariah a moment to realize how warm her face was, and she had to clear her throat before she could say anything.
“Apology accepted,” she said after a second. “And thank you for the flower.”
Isaiah nodded once in acknowledgment and continued towards the kitchen portion of the room as Mariah finished her breakfast.
More things showed up after that.
The next morning, there was a potted flower waiting on the floor by the screen room’s door. It was the same flower as the day before, and its scent was even more potent when it was still planted, so it washed the entire room in its perfume.
The next time she went into the room she had first woken up in, there was a stack of clothing sitting on the cot. None of it had come from her closet—she was actually a bit grateful for that, since the idea of Isaiah being able to wander in and out of her apartment sort of creeped her out—but it all fit her, and she was grateful to finally be able to change her clothes.
She went downstairs and found a stack of a dozen books in various sizes. Some of them she had read, and all of them she had at least heard of, save for one. She started with that one, curled up on the couch in the apartment, and it took her a couple dozen pages to realize it was a story about Isaiah’s people, just translated into English.
When she went back to the screen room, she found a remote sitting on one of the cushions. When she hit the power button, she nearly gave herself a heart attack when one of the screens flickered to life to show a perfectly normal, Earthly television show.
Over the course of two days, she had most of what she needed to be comfortable and not die of boredom. All that was missing was someone to talk to. Television and books might keep her from sleeping every day away, but they wouldn’t do much to help once loneliness began to set in.
…Well, she supposed she did technically have someone to talk to, even if she was reluctant to do so.
She debated silently with herself, and heaved an explosive sigh before she skulked back down the stairs. Fine. She would go talk to him.