The Arrival: A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Paranormal Romance by Ashley West Page B

been, she probably wasn't used to life on the outside, so he let her get acclimated. As long as they kept moving, it was fine with him.
    The people they passed were alarmed at the sight of him, that much was obvious and Sorrin tried to make himself seem smaller for a little while before giving that up as a bad job. There was no way he was going to look less intimidating, so he settled for looking competent. Maybe something in his bearing would show them that he was on their side and they didn't need to be afraid of him.
    Judging from the way people hurried on their way, that was going to have to be a work in progress.
    Abby led them to her building, which was surprisingly abandoned. She was quiet as she made her way up to the place where she had lived before all of this, seemingly surprised to see that all of her things were still there. She didn’t say anything other than a soft ‘we can stay here’, which Sorrin acknowledged with a nod and then he left her to her own devices while he settled in to think.

Chapter Six: Decide
    The first thing Abby did when she got back to her apartment, strange alien warrior in tow, was cry in her bathroom. It had been five months, and somehow everything was still there. Her power still worked, the water still ran, even her cable and internet hadn’t lapsed. She didn’t know how that had happened or why it was happening, but she wasn’t going to question it too hard. Not when it made her life easier.
    Everything was so familiar, even if nothing smelled the same anymore, and she had to take a minute to soak it all in. She was home.
    She was home, but she wasn’t free, and that would take some dwelling on later.
    The second thing she did was plug her phone into the charger. It had been months since she’d seen the screen light up or heard the welcome sound of the phone turning on, and it took a good ten minutes for her phone to process all the voicemails and text messages that had been sent over the course of her imprisonment.
    Unsurprisingly, most of them were from her parents and sister, begging her to call them back, to respond to their texts, hoping for some sign that she was okay.
    Abby stared down at the screen, unsure. Her first impulse was to call them, to make sure they were still okay after all this time, and to let them know that she was alright. But she hesitated. Was she alright?
    Honestly, it was so hard to know.
    She was home, but she wasn’t free, and the looming threat of the Camadors was just as present as it had been when she was in their clutches. Abby wasn’t foolish enough to believe that just because she was away from them, their expectations had changed. She’d been moved from the larger cell with everyone to the smaller one with just Sorrin for a reason, and she knew there was a reason that they hadn’t been stopped on their way out, too. This was what they wanted to happen. They wanted her to escape with Sorrin and to report back.
    This was all such a mess.
    For the most part, Sorrin was a considerate house guest. He spent the first evening staring at the wall with an intense expression on his face, and Abby let him get on with it. She didn’t know how much to trust him, yet, and she didn’t know what he would do when he found out the real reason they were stuck together. While her words to him in the cell had been genuine, she had wanted to get out of there more than anything, she couldn’t deny that she had played it up so he would help her. If he’d escaped without her, Abby didn’t want to think about what the Camadors would have done. To her, or to the planet. It was hard, knowing that the fate of the world basically rested on your shoulders.
    Exhausted, Abby fell into a deep sleep early that night, leaving Sorrin to his own devices.
    “To the Void with this thing!”
    Abby jolted awake at the yell, heart pounding. It took her several long seconds of looking around in confusion to put together where she was, and her heart leapt and then plummeted