Page 2 of Revealed

The Kronock were here.

Explosions sounded in the distance, a chilling reminder of the battle was already raging, probably overhead. I touched the bulge of a blaster hidden under my jacket, the hard metal comforting. If I could not leave Earth, I needed to find shelter and help the Earthlings if the fight reached the surface.

I scanned the streets in search of a good place to hide, but my gaze snagged on a striking woman standing in the middle of a crosswalk. She was young—the age of most tributes—with brown hair pulled up high. Black covered her legs snugly—leggings, I think humans called them—and a white sleeveless shirt hung loose over them. There was nothing special about her attire, but there was something special about her, something that riveted my attention to her.

She held full fabric grocery bags in her hands as she glanced around as if trying to make sense of the wailing alarm. Maybe it was her confusion or the look of innocence as she swiveled in place, but before I could stop myself, I was moving quickly toward her.

I circled a hand around her waist and prodded her forward, away from the cars swerving around her and the pedestrians running. “We need to get you off the road.”

She nodded wordlessly.

“Do you have someplace safe to go?” I asked, once I’d steered her to the sidewalk.

“What’s happening?” She asked in reply.

There was no time to tell her that aliens were invading or that I was also an alien, but the good kind. So, I did what I’d always done when on Earth. I lied.

“I do not know, but you should take shelter.”

“It can’t be a hurricane,” she muttered, still in some state of shock. “It’s the wrong time of year.”

I hesitated for a moment, knowing that I should be focusing on my protocols. But something about this woman made me want to help her. Then my breath caught in my throat.

“You don’t work in a flower shop, do you?”

She seemed confused by my question but shook her head. “No. Why?”

Relief washed over me, although I couldn’t say why it was important that she wasn’t my target tribute. Then the ground trembled, and she let out a small yelp.

“Take shelter,” I said firmly as I glanced overhead, fully expecting to see one of the enemy’s gray-scaled ships descending.

She cocked her head at me. “What about you? You’re not from around here, are you? Where are you going to go?”

This stopped me. Where was I going to go?

“Come on,” she said, her voice just as insistent as mine had been. “I live right around the corner. You can shelter with me.”

When I hesitated, she sighed. “You saved me from being run over. I owe you one.”

I let her gaze bore into me, her pale blue eyes making it feel like time had slowed. Finally, I gave a single nod.

She jerked her head to the left and started to move. “This way.” Then she flicked her gaze up as shadows fell over us.

I did not look up as I grabbed her bags from her hands. I did not need to see to know what was coming for us. “Run!”

Chapter

Two

Allie

The handles of my shopping bags dug into my palms as I walked home from the grocery, sweat trailing down my back and threatening to slide past the waistband of my panties. I didn’t usually mind the walk from my apartment building to the small downtown of Azalea, South Carolina, but the sun was blazing, and I could have sworn the bag boy had switched out my groceries for lead bars.

How did I always go into the store for three things and come out with my bags packed to the brim? I laughed to myself as I remembered that I’d almost taken a single bag with me. What would I have done then? Try to shove the chips that had been impossible to ignore in the pockets of my shorts?

I shook my head. My eyes were always too big, but then I ended up forgetting everything I’d bought until it was on the verge of going bad. Then the traffic light changed, and I stepped into thecrosswalk, glancing at the bananas peeking from the top of one bag. “I promise you will not end up as banana bread.”

This was probably a safe promise since making banana bread required ingredients I did not keep in my sparsely populated pantry. A riskier promise would have been to pledge that they wouldn’t end up in the trash.