Chapter 1
She still remembers this day like it was yesterday.
Her long, blonde hair flew in the wind as she drove her roofless Audi, hoping to find a brighter future. She had her favourite ray bans on and sang to the loud pop music as she finally felt free from a home full of stress and her parents’ arguments. It almost felt like she was finally growing wings on her back and was able to fly away.
Elianna found it a bit amusing how she found herself in Nevada on route 50 highway – the loneliest road in America. She felt like she fitted right in and was the loneliest woman on the planet.
‘This is a new start’, she told herself, ‘I’m changing the direction of my life and will finally be happy’. So that was her goal: to get away from every bad experience and find true happiness that she deserved. She didn’t want anymore fake friends or guys who would only flirt with her because of her looks. She was looking for so much more. For love that could give her butterflies in her stomach, be with her through the good and bad and appreciate her for who she was.
But things didn’t go as smooth as she wanted.
The car was suddenly slowing down, confusing Elianna as she tried to stomp her foot harder on the pedal out of frustration.
″No, don’t do this to me now. Not now, please.″ She whispered to the car that completely stopped in the middle of the road. Elianna panicked. She wasn’t the best at behaving calm in bad situations. Especially this bad.
There was nothing around. All she could see in the horizon was the road and the empty fields. She switched off the music, stepped out of the car and started pacing around it. There was no way she could go back on foot or even walk to any town. She knew there were too many miles to beat and it would take her days to get there.
″I’m so stupid. Why do things like this always happen to me?″ she asked herself, unsure what to do. In fact, she could have planned it better. It was obvious that her car wasn’t in perfect condition, but she couldn’t stand living in Manhattan a second longer.
Being nineteen, meaning underage had its downsides. She was sure if she tried calling anywhere for help they would have to contact her parents, which was the last thing she wanted. They were probably already searching for her. Elianna took a deep breath and hoped she would see a car pass by, which was a slim chance, but thought perhaps she deserved to be lucky at least this once.
After a couple of minutes of staring and thinking, she finally noticed something far away on the field. That something was strange and weird, but she couldn’t make out what it was even when she squinted her eyes. She hoped someone rich decided to build a modern-looking house in the middle of nowhere and would kindly help without the need to contact her family. That would be too perfect, but what’s a girl got to lose?
There was this weird feeling that was pulling her towards it, so she walked. As she got closer, she started rubbing her eyes, not believing what she was seeing.
″What the hell...is this″ she whispered in awe.
What she saw couldn’t be described as anything else than things in books or movies. She was now standing above a 2-metre drop, with a huge area of collapsed ground that was probably created from the impact of this weird thing falling onto it. It reminded Elianna of spaceships that she once saw in the Star Wars movie. It’s probably what this thing was. Except it was broken in half and smoke and electricity was coming out of it.
When she was younger, she normally imagined she would have run away if this had ever happened to her. Though she couldn’t. It was so fascinating and scary at the same time to see something out of this world, something she thought only existed in human imagination.
Looking closely, she saw a body sitting on the ground with its back leaning onto the spaceship. She gasped and quickly slid down to the lower ground, running towards the person. She probably should have been more careful, but she always valued someone else’s life more than hers.
No thinking twice.
When she was close enough, she heard the guy breathing hard and saw a line of blood going from his forehead all the way down to his neck. He was gripping his shoulder and had his eyes tightly shut, probably suffering from pain. When he heard Elianna’s footsteps, his eyes snapped open and he looked at her.
He was beautiful.
He had dark chocolate hair with a couple of strands sitting on his forehead. Sky blue piercing eyes that reminded her of beautiful planets as he gazed at her quizzically. He had plump lips that were pressed into a thin line and pale, yet glowing skin. Sweat was trickling down his body making his muscles appear larger and he was wearing clothes made out of a weird material that Elia hasn’t seen before.
″What are you looking at, human?″ his raspy voice made her look up into his eyes again. She fiddled with her fingers nervously and creased her forehead. Elianna wondered why he called her human. It’s not like he wasn’t human, right?
But then she looked at the damaged spaceship and at him again, she looked at the collapsed ground and then thought of the fact that this guy was still alive near this wreck, which was humanly impossible. Well, it wasn’t even possible to own something like that in this world.
She gasped as realisation hit her and took a couple of steps back. He narrowed his eyes at her and his irises turned bright red.
″Oh my...″ she whispered and put her hand on her mouth, before quickly turning around and running away as fast as possible. She couldn’t hear any footsteps behind her and when she looked around he wasn’t chasing her. Elianna was about to sigh from relief, but she ran into something hard, which made her fall to the ground from the impact.
″Ouch.″ She held her arm that was now scraped.
In front of her stood the guy with his fists closed, looking down at her. Elianna started panicking and felt extremely scared. Did that guy just teleport? How was it possible for him to be in front of her so fast? Elianna couldn’t understand. All she could think about was what he was going to do next.
″Please don’t kill me!″ she hid her face in her knees and was so frightened that she started shaking.
He kneeled in front of her and examined her for a moment.
She had, as he described it: pure sun-kissed hair and porcelain, human skin. He wanted to touch Elianna’s hair to see if it really felt like silk just as it looked but decided against it and snatched his hand away. She looked so fragile in front of him already frightened just by his presence, so he didn’t want to scare her even more.
He was at a very close distance, still kneeling in front of her.
Knowing he didn’t do anything, Elianna slowly looked up at him holding her knees with her hands. It was just enough for him to be able to see her grass green irises.
″I’m Axel. Have you got a name?″ He decided to ask.
