Page 2 of Riv's Sanctuary

Lauren sucked in air through her teeth and folded her lips. It was always the pervs.

She felt like a cam girl. Only she wasn’t paid in money.

Her only payment was the fact the zookeeper fed her…which she guessed she should be thankful for. She’d seen the alien in the terrarium across from her starve to death.

That had been hard to watch.

He’d just stopped moving one day and it had taken another week before they’d realized he was even dead.

Some of the other aliens she could see from her terrarium were only fed when the zookeeper remembered. That’s why she’d started rationing and saving the hard bricks they were given for food. She had several days’ worth hidden under her mattress now.

Leaning back against the slab behind her, she rested her arms on top of the straw roll that served as her mattress.

On the other side of the barrier, a shadow fell over the alien that had been tapping the shield and another alien stepped behind it. This one was a much larger version of the one that had been there first and Lauren realized immediately that the “perv” was a kid.

Raising her eyebrows, she watched as the parent linked hooves with its child and pulled it away to view another poor soul in one of the other terrariums.

The child sucked on its juice pouch, its eyes on her as it walked away.

“Byeee!” She waved, pasting a fake grin on her face.

The child’s weirdly large, dark eyes widened and the faint sound of its squeal came through the shield as it pulled against its parent, trying to return to her terrarium.

Lauren’s eyes widened slightly.

“No, no, keep going. Go with your mama, or papa…” Shit, she had trouble entertaining strange human kids much less strange alien ones. She didn’t need the attention.

“Go away little alien. GO AWAY. Nothing to see here.” She was whispering, speaking underneath her breath through gritted teeth, while mentally berating herself.

First rule of the terrarium: Never engage with the visitors.

They tended to not want to leave her shield and go somewhere else whenever she even so much as made eye contact with them.

She guessed that made this a shit zoo if that was all it took to get the visitors’ attention.

She guessed? She knew it was.

As far as she could see, she had gotten the luck of the draw with her terrarium and at least they fed her every day.

Maybe they thought she was frail and would die if they didn’t at least make an effort with her.

Lauren sighed, her shoulders sagging with relief as the parent pulled the little alien away.

At least the child had only been looking at her with interest.

There were some aliens who came by to look, species that she couldn’t have even imagined existed, and she could see the danger in their eyes.

Outside of the transparent shield wasn’t a safe place to be.

After she’d been taken, she’d woken up on a large alien ship. There had been slugs hovering on levitated rings and tall guards that looked like gators walking upright.

They’d planted a translator at the side of her head, behind her ear, performed a gender test on her to confirm she was female, then locked her in a cell.

Next thing she knew, the ship had gotten attacked and she’d hit her head against the cell. She must have lost consciousness because when she woke up she was being pulled into a market, thrown into a cage, and then bought by the zookeeper.

It’d been horrific in that market.

The stench had been unreal. But worse than that, the aliens walking by had been terrifying.