Page 43 of Alien Jeopardy (Mated & Afraid #1)

CHAPTER

FORTY-ONE

Ellison

“Well, this fucking sucks,” I say, scratching at a new bug bite on my neck. I’ve been slogging through marshy terrain for the last hour at least.

Honestly, I have no idea how much time has actually passed because the damn comms tablet winked out of my grasp when my boy Ken beamed me out to wherever the hell I am now. My hand shields my eye from the glare, and I look up, trying to judge it. The sun is in a different position in the sky.

Revealing that time has, in fact, passed. Shocking, truly. I sigh, smacking at an overly large winged bug.

“Gross.” I stare at the thing, easily the size of a hummingbird, though it looks like a mosquito. That nasty critter would take a pint of my blood at once. A phlebotomist’s dream.

“I miss Ka-Rexsh.”

It’s not the first time I’ve said it, and it won’t be the last.

Mud sucks at my feet with each step I take, and insects buzz around my head at an absolutely infuriating pitch. It’s humid, too, like all the water that flooded the path yesterday has gone airborne.

“Walking in a summer-soupy maze,” I sing. A winter wonderland would be preferable, but my odds for surviving snow in my shortie pajamas would be decidedly lower.

I stop, wide-eyed, at that thought. No, not the snow thought, the other one.

A maze.

That’s what this is—a maze of some sort. I look around, craning my head so fast I almost pull a muscle in my neck.

Shit. Mazes in reality shows aren’t ever straightforward.

“Christ on a bike,” I mutter, groaning at my own unintentional pun.

If I’m right, and this is a maze—and considering that big tree to my right is looking pretty damn familiar, I’m pretty sure I’m right—this is basically going to be a multi-challenge bonanza.

And I don’t have my partner with me.

“Competitors, you have now been in the labyrinth for thirty minutes.” Ken’s voice booms out, and I wince. Even the giant mosquitoes seem offended. “Your difficulty level will scale up every thirty minutes. Once you find each other, or the middle of the maze, your challenge is completed.”

“Shit.” Every thirty minutes? I’m doomed.

Cubicle life and a steady of diet of Girl Scout cookies and chips has not prepared me well for this moment.

“The good news is I’ll be out fast. The bad news is, this is going to hurt.” The mosquitoes don’t seem to care about this announcement.

“You will each be provided a weapon with which to protect yourself.”

“Damn, Ken, you don’t have to sound so happy about it.” The fucker sounds positively gleeful at the idea of us having to be armed. Good grief.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reality show in which the contestants were armed for PROTECTION. I sigh, glaring at the nearest mosquito.

“I will shoot you,” I tell it pathetically.

The ground rumbles, and I hold back a yawn.

It’s a close call. I’m both tired physically and tired of Ken’s drama. Still, I have a feeling I don’t want the AI to think I’m bored. The last thing I want is more drama because I made a bad choice to pick at the sentient space station system software.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” I say primly.

The mosquitoes remain unimpressed.

I stand there for a little longer, wondering if Ken’s done giving his enthusiastic doom-and-gloom instructions, then tug at my leg in an attempt to get myself unstuck from the thick mud.

Finally, with a loud squelch, my foot comes free—but not before I’m splattered in the sticky, foul stuff.

The ground rumbles again, and I glance around because now I know that means Ken is changing something up here in alien reality TV hell. Sure enough, a thunderous noise fills my head, and I clap my hands over my ears reflexively.

Pumpkin shit pie, I need that weapon, and I need it now, because whatever is making that noise must be fucking huge.

And I sincerely doubt that noise is saying, “I want to be friends, come out and play!”

Well, maybe it is, but if that is what that noise means, it’s lying.

I do not like this, nope, I do not like this at all.

“Weapon, weapon, I need a weapon,” I chant, like that’s going to make one magically appear.

No sooner has that thought flitted in and out of my head than something rockets to the ground in front of me, sending more thick mud splattering all over me.

A clump slides down my face, and I approach the object cautiously because I wouldn’t put it past Ken to just drop a giant hungry ant right in front of me.

Today’s theme: killer bugs.

I regret thinking that immediately. I don’t think Ken can read my mind… but also… maybe he can. Who’s to say?

Certainly not I.

Trepidatious, I finally get close enough to see the object sinking into the disgusting muck.

“Oooh,” I breathe, thrilled for a beat, at least until I remember that I’m going to have to actually use it, and accurately, at that.

It’s a bow and a quiver full of arrows.

Sure, I haven’t practiced archery since I was about thirteen, but I wasn’t the blue-ribbon winner that summer for nothing.

“Like riding a bike,” I murmur, then play tug-of-war with the mud for the bow and quiver until they finally jerk free.

Momentum sends me directly onto my ass into the slop, and I swear, sweat is rolling between my boobs.

I’m intensely aware of the fact I smell like an onion, but as that clicking sounds again, so loud I wince, I decide caring at all about the way I smell and look is stupid.

I need to get somewhere safe, and I need to find Rex as soon as possible.

I don’t want to think about what Ken considers a challenge as more thirty-minute increments stack up.

By the time I get out of the mud, I’m pretty much coated in it.

“Maybe I have to fight a giant man-eating worm that hunts on scent alone,” I say, then laugh, because that’s the plot of one of the most popular books on Earth.

I cringe. Damn.

I really hope I don’t have to fight a giant worm. “No thank you on the worms, Ken, I’ll pass.”

The quiver goes over my shoulder, the strap nestling between my breasts, and I hang the bow over a shoulder, too. I pull one of the arrows out, then tilt my head as I inspect it.

“Camp Ozarka never had any arrows like this.” It’s alien, that’s for sure. Instead of a pointed tip, or a suction cup, like what the littlest campers used, it’s got a heavy round end.

I have no idea how this thing is going to fly, and my original enthusiasm at being gifted a weapon I actually know how to use goes out the window.

It’s been well over a decade since I last used a bow and arrow, so the odds were already not great, but an arrow like this, with a cylinder on the end? I have no idea what to do with it.

Shrugging, I keep moving through the marsh, trying to avoid going in a circle.

Again.

Problem is, every step I take seems to take me closer to the loud crunching and clicking. Dread pools in my stomach, and I wish, for the hundredth time, that Ka-Rexsh was with me.

I hope he’s safe. I hope he’s having a better time than I am, because if anyone can survive this type of thing, it’s him. I’ve been lucky to have him in my corner this whole time, and when I get to see him again, I’m going to give him a million high fives.

And maybe a blow job.

Who could say?

I’m so involved in my little Ka-Rexsh reunion fantasy that I don’t realize the stalks in front of me aren’t cattails until I’m right up on them.

They’re not waving in the non-existent breeze, like my brain tried to tell me, but I was so wrapped up in imagining my alien mate’s hot bod that I didn’t notice there wasn’t a breeze at all.

Fuck. Me.

The ground shifts, mud oozing towards the stalks, which are waving frantically, and each at least the size of my arm.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” I moan, the mud sucking me towards the dancing stalks.

Not stalks, antennae.

“Oh, you wanted a fucking worm?” I yell at myself, slapping a bug on my bicep, then pulling the bow out.

One of the arrows follows, and I frown in chagrin at the weird-ass weapon.

Then I try to back the fuck up because whatever this thing is, it’s huge.

“Not a fucking worm,” I yell, the mud sucking at me, the animal in front of me drawing me deeper as it rises out of the muck.

The heinously loud clicking sounds again, and I look left as I scramble backwards.

It’s so enormously large that my brain doesn’t comprehend what it is at first. Red-brown chitinous pebbled exoskeleton rises higher, two elements clacking together.

A pincer.

“Not a fucking worm!” I yell again, throwing my hands in the air in absolute irritation. “Couldn’t be something squishy, nope.”

A crab? What the hell is it?

“Oh, you wanted a worm? Fuck you!” I mimic Ken, putting one hand on my hip.

Apparently, I’ve lost my mind.

My gaze darts right, only to see another enormous claw.

Then I look straight ahead, the clicking sounding somehow frustrated now. The mud is sucking at the huge animal, too, and it’s not happy about it.

Its eye is four times the size of my head. Well, at least that part of it is squishy. I scrabble backwards, losing my balance again and landing on my butt.

“Holy fucking shit,” I breathe as its legs appear, coated in muck. “Crawfish.”

It finishes freeing itself from the marsh, looming over me. It’s the size of my apartment building, or close to it. Not that I’m a great judge of size. I’m more of an eyeball it, close enough kind of girl.

“Crawfish intensifies,” I say weakly.

I don’t think I’m going to make it past the first challenge.