The Encounter

The next morning something woke Riya up and she looked around in confusion and turned to the door just in time to see the lock on the door turn, she jumped off the bed and walked towards the door and experimentally turned the handle and to her surprise the door opened. She turned arounds and glanced at the horrified look on Isolde as she shook her head at Riya trying to dissuade her from doing what she was considering.

Riya put a finger to her lips motioning for her roommate to keep quiet. Riya decided that it was better for her to die than live in a world where they were selling women and where they could just casually break peoples wrists which would heal right back.

She needed a world that she was familiar with and for the first time ever she missed studying for tests and deadlines for assignments. She recognized that there was the possiblity that this might not end well but she could not bear the thought of not trying and just being resigned to her fate.

“Riya don’t, they will get you.” A panic stricken Isolde whispered from her bed.

Riya shook her head and opened the door wider and looked out into the hallway and saw that there was nobody. She decided that this was the chance that she needed to get out of here and she was not going to waste it. So she crept out of the room and inched her way down the hallway. she realized that she did not know the way out and for all she knew she could be heading deeper into this prison but how else would she be able to figure it out if she did not try.

As she went past doors on either side of her she saw a huge man walking towards her, he looked like one of the men who had stopped her from leaving her room the previous night. he suddenly stopped when he saw her standing there stricken and staring at him and his confusion turned to annoyance. Riya gulped in fear when she remembered how her wrist was broken.

“Hey! Why are you out of your room? What are you doing?” he asked in a terrifiyingly loud voice.

“Wrong way! Wrong way!” Riya thought to herself as she turned around and immediately started running as fast as she could.

She got to the end of the hall and found a stairwell. Without waiting to see why the huge man had not yet caught up with her she ran down the stairs, surprising herself with how easily she jumped over multiple stairs at the same time and landed easily on her feet.

As she ran out of the door into an open field she almost got caught by an outstretched arm and she ducked just in time and the arm swipped over empty air, Riya almost stumbled as she pivoted and ran the other way. In the distance she could see the maze she had seen from the window in her room and she ran towards it and entered the entrance in the hopes that somehow her pursuers would get lost in the maze and she would be able to escape them.

Riya realized how ridiculous that plan was, how was she supposed to somehow successfully find a way through a maze that was unfamiliar to her while being chased by people whose job it was to guard the place and most likely knew the layout fairly well. She started regretting her rash decision but it was too late to turn back and she was not going to simply give up.

She heard feet pounding behind her and as she turned to see if someone was gaining on her while she kept running she crashed into what felt like a solid wall of flesh and fell to the ground. She quickly stood up and looked up into the startled blue eyes of a man who towered over her and looked surprised to see her there as if she had magically appeared from nowhere.

Even though he was tall and muscular he did not look anything like any of the men who had been pursuing her, he had on large straw hat and held huge kitchen shears. Somehow Riya did not feel threatened by him and in fact was a little startled by his good looks and unassuming presence, did they just hire gorgeous men as gardeners in this place?

Shaking off the immediate attraction she felt for the stranger she blushed and glanced around and turned back to him with pleading eyes and desperation.

“Please help me, help me get out of here i beg you, i don't belong here and i need to get back home.” She begged in desperation.

He looked at her and around their environment and was stomped by her appearance, he had heard the uproar and had been fearful for the worst possibility when this girl came running out of nowhere and barreled into him.

"She was a pretty little thing and something about her appealed to something in him, she strirred a feeling inside him and he wanted to reach out and stroke her dark glossy hair, he could not help his thoughts as they began to wander at the sight of this slender woman in silk and he almost smiled at how ridiculous it was that she was planning to escape wearing silk, how impractical.

He could guess what had happened, she had escaped her room and was trying to get away from the grounds, that surprised him because the girls that came here were generally happy to be here, being here afforded them a lot of choices that they would otherwise not have access to.

He was impressed by her, he eyed her slender and fragile looking body and wondered how she had been able to outrun the guards, she must be a very fast runner. He wished that he could help her escape but there was a much worse fate outside of these gates than being chosen by a Lycan as his mistress, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to keep her here with him.

He mindlinked the guards and told them that the escaped girl was with him, when the girl realized that the man was probably not going to be of any help a wariness touched her eyes and she started to take a step backward but he quickly grabbed her fist in a vicelike grip and effectively stopped her from running away.

Before he could buckle under the weight of his guilt and the betrayal in her eyes and let her go a couple of the guards came and bowed to him before they took her off his hands, the girl fixed him with a piercing glare that would have whithered a weaker man and he flinched inwardly.  He realized that she must be the troublesome maiden that was spoken of, it seemed that this reaping was going to be a very interesting one and he was looking forward to it.