Choosing Theo: The Clecanian Series Book 1 by Victoria Aveline (i can read with my eyes shut txt) 📕

The large doors swung open when they neared and Xoris grinned at her from within the room. Jade dug her heels in when she saw a large reclining chair bolted into the floor next to him. It looked like a dentist’s chair except, to her horror, she noticed there were straps.

“Has she been fighting the whole time?” Xoris questioned in a bored tone.

“Nonstop.” Nedas grunted. Lifting her bodily and slamming her down into the chair, he held her arms down and Xoris strapped her in.

“What is this place?” She glanced around, straining to see behind her.

“Good work, Nedas. You may go now. I’ll call you back when I need you.” Nedas nodded and left through a door somewhere behind her.

Xoris gestured around at the room. “This is where we’ll save our race.” He smiled happily and then turned to rummage through a few drawers out of sight.

Jade’s voice shook when she asked, “What do you mean?”

“I see you’re more than happy to talk to me now.” He moved to stand in front of her, a thin cylindrical device in his hand.

The audacity of this motherfucker! Her rage washed her fear away. “I’d like to know what the fuck is happening before you kill me! Send me to my grave well informed!”

He chuckled and placed the base of the cylinder at her arm. “I’m not going to kill you, Jade. Just taking a sample.” She felt a painful jab on her arm as he removed the device.

“I’m very sorry we had to go through all of this to get you here. If those damned Cae had done their jobs well, you would’ve never knocked me out. I would’ve taken you directly here and saved you from weeks of debasement at the hands of that Traxian.”

“You kidnapped me?” she said wide-eyed, taking in his words.

“Yes and no,” he said, moving to place her “sample” in a softly humming machine. “I gave the Cae certain parameters for what kind of female to take, but they chose you ultimately, not me.”

Anger flared through her, but she tamped it down. Better to keep him talking to her then to make him angry.

He turned to her, clasping his hands behind his back. “As you know, our race has been going extinct for a long time now. Some Clecanians…” he scowled, “have taken to interbreeding with other species like Theo’s Traxian whore mother.”

Jade ground her teeth but again said nothing.

“A group of loyal Clecanians, who wanted to ensure the survival of our race, came together and formed this society.” He said this with such pride. “We do what needs to be done to find a cure for our population.”

“Even if it’s against the law?” Jade tried to keep her voice even.

Xoris’ face grew tight. “Our leaders are cowards who won’t examine every possibility. Those laws have kept us from finding a real cure.”

“I don’t understand what you want with me. You hate other species and that’s exactly what I am, another species.” Jade tugged quietly, testing her restraints. They were secure.

Xoris looked at her triumphantly. “But are you? Haven’t you ever wondered why we look so similar? How the features of an alien species could be so similar to yours? Do you think you’re the first human we’ve examined?”

Jade’s face paled.

“Facilities like this one were built decades ago by organization members all over our world.” Xoris began pacing in front of her like a deranged history professor gearing up for a lecture. “You see, not all Clecanians migrated here. The way they teach it now makes it seem like we decided to leave our old world in a mass exodus, but really, overpopulation and finite resources had pushed droves of Clecanians to leave their home world in search of somewhere new for hundreds of thousands of years before we finally abandoned the planet.”

“My clever forefathers set out to find those places where they’d settled. He posited that if our species survived and thrived on another planet, maybe they were the key to preventing our extinction. For centuries we’ve been bringing aliens with potential ties to Clecania here with no luck.”

Jade felt her stomach turn. This was a jail. A testing facility for sick men to experiment on abducted species. How many captives were being held in places like this even now? How many places like this were there?

Xoris placed his hand on her chair arms, hunching over her. “About fifty years ago, one of our members spotted a human on a slave cargo ship. He knew she had to be a descendant of Clecania. Her features were too similar to ours. He brought her here and found enough likenesses in our DNA to confirm his theory.”

Was he saying that humans were descendants of an old alien race? Jade glared into Xoris’ eyes, unable to keep her anger in check. “Fifty years ago? What happened to her? How many women have you taken from Earth since then?”

His eyes twinkled maliciously. “Hundreds. As for the female, she died long ago.”

“Why would you keep us here? If you already know we’re an offshoot of your species, then why not tell the world what you’ve found?”

“We haven’t found a cure yet. Human and Clecanian unions have yet to produce a viable pregnancy. If we exposed ourselves now, we’d be arrested as traitors, if we expose ourselves after finding a cure, they’d have to thank us.”

Xoris was the worst kind of evil. He thought what he was doing was right. In his mind, abducting humans and running tests on them until they died was somehow a moral imperative. If she ever wanted to see daylight again, she’d have to figure out a way to break out of here. Xoris would never let her go.

Assuming everything he’d said about this wackadoo organization was true, then she knew she’d never be found, either. They’d apparently operated in secrecy for centuries. In order to pull it off, there must be thousands of loyal organization members stationed everywhere.

What would happen to Theo?