When I woke up, I didn’t wake up on my bed. I didn’t even wake up on my couch. Nope, I woke up that morning, groggy and confused as shit, sitting on one of the wooden seats of a canoe, in the middle of a crystal clear lake, with absolutely no idea how the hell I got there or what the hell was happening.

My head throbbed. I blinked my eyes open again, trying to remember anything. The only thoughts that came to me were the immediate ones about my surroundings. The canoe was made from dark wood, smoothed over until it gleamed, and someone’s call brought me to the present. They were commanding the others on the canoe to row. Their oars splashed into the water in a rhythm, like a living, breathing heartbeat. Far across the water, dense forests were at every turn.

I tried to swallow. It wasn’t easy, especially with the taste of cotton in my mouth. “What the fuck…?”

A face peered around from in front of me. Wide, amber eyes rimmed met mine. “You can’t say anything,” she whispered, her tone soft and solemn. “I’m so sorry about your friend.”

My friend?

Bits of memory came back to me. I could remember swinging my lanyard, ready to clock out from the warehouse shift. It’d been a last-minute favor for an old boss of mine, before I’d landed my data analyst job. His company was relocating, and he just needed someone to watch the merchandise during the night. But the memory fell apart right at the end, like somebody cut the roll of film. Did I go to a bar? Maybe I slammed back one too many.

That didn’t explain everything. Or the ache in my shoulders, right below my neck, that left my muscles coiled and tense.

“Do not try to pretend you do not understand. All of you have been given the vuco,” a grizzled voice announced.

At the farthest end of the canoe, where it swooped up in a curl, a skinny man gazed over us, a hard glint to his eyes. The tusks took my attention though. They protruded from his mouth like the tusks of a warthog. He glowered at us.

“If you don’t obey orders,” he spat to the water, “I’ll have no problem slitting your throats.”

That was enough to snap me out of the haze.

I leaned forward to the person in front of me. Spun gold hair draped over her back. She was smaller than me. The way she sat hunched over proved that she’d been through the wringer before I woke up. I shifted to the side, careful to keep my voice quiet. “Who are these guys?”

“The slavers.”

To me, this was still a hallucination. A slow one at that, but nothing more than my brain spitting out random images. If I wanted this over and done with, I needed to play against my brain and force myself back to reality.

First things first. My wrists were bound together with rope, just like everybody else on the canoe. Wringing out my hands to test the material out, I shifted closer. “What friend were you talking about?”

“The pretty girl.” She swallowed. “With the war paint. Both of you fell out of the sky.”

Weird enough, the idea of me falling out of the sky made sense. Even if the muscles below the back of my neck hurt the worst, it wasn’t like the rest of my body felt fantastic.

“Quiet, you,” another voice snarled behind me and I took a good look to see another tusked man, staring at me from four places back, beyond three other prisoners. The other prisoners didn’t meet my eyes. Their hands were bound too but they worked the oars, plunging them into the waters. No one was willing to speak up and no one was willing to try to change whatever was happening

The man waved a dagger in my direction. You think I would’ve been focused on the threat but all my attention went to the blade itself. It was gorgeous. Silver steel with markings that I couldn’t make out gleamed in the sun. If this was real, I wanted that dagger.

I shifted to look forward again. I had enough of things happening beyond my control. It was time to throw a wrench in the slavers’ plans.

“Hey?” I grabbed the side of the canoe and lowered my voice to the woman with golden hair. “How good are you at improvising?”

“What?”

For my plan to work, I needed an active participant. Somebody else to give me the edge I needed above two dudes with weapons that didn’t have their hands tied together. I kept my voice to a low mutter. “Improvising? Can you scream?”

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“What—?”

“When I get him close, you scream,” I muttered.

All was quiet beyond the oars plunging in, until I thrust both hands in the air, Suddenly, there were low mumbles. A few of the slaves even craned their necks back, making the canoe creak as they glanced to get a good look at me.

I didn’t want their attention though. I wanted the slavers’.

“Hey, buddy,” I called over my shoulder. “Is your boss this fucking ugly every day or is this a special occasion?”

The canoe had been quiet, sure, but it was deadly silent until the slaver spoke.

“What did you say?”

Unbothered, I brought my arms down until they hung over the side of the canoe, about a foot over the water. The trap was set. I shrugged. “I want to know if your boss is this fucking stupid or if it’s a special treat for us.”

“We have no use for his tongue,” the grizzled man snarled. “Be quick about it.”

“With pleasure.” The other man laughed.

He stood up from his place and the canoe tilted to the right. Gasps sounded off from the prisoners. The lake water was too damn close - anybody with a brain could’ve seen that. Well, everybody except the goon with the dagger knew it. He was too focused on me. Lumbering over everybody, the canoe tipped dangerously again.

“Be careful,” the grizzled man snarled.

“I always am.”

“Careful now!”

The other man laughed. “This’ll be quick!”

It was quick. His dagger slashed in the air, silver against the blue sky, and I thrust up my arms to meet it. That beautiful dagger of his sank right between the ropes that tied my hands together, not sinking enough into the fibers to rip them completely but burying in without harming me.

For brief seconds, the man stared at me, dumbfounded.

Something clicked. Maybe it was the ropes digging into my skin, maybe it was the sharp breaths that tore out of me when the steel came dangerously close. Either way, I had the distinct feeling this wasn’t a dream. And, if that was true, if I didn’t tread carefully, I’d be fucked.

Right on cue, the girl in front of me belted into a high-pitched scream. The man’s neck cracked from how fast he jerked over to look at her. It gave me the perfect opportune moment. I twisted my wrists and yanked my hands down, taking the knife with me. It clattered to the floor.

The brief seconds of surprise ended and the tusked man dove for it, desperate. I couldn’t let him get that blade. Not if I wanted to avoid becoming a slave and not if I wanted to figure out what was going on. I had only one option in front of me. With every bit of strength I had, I shoved him as hard as I could.

The canoe was built for one thing and one thing only. Transporting slaves. It clearly wasn’t built to keep people on their feet. The laughing man with tusks wasn’t laughing anymore. He stumbled back and crashed into the water, disappearing from view. Everybody started yelling then. It wasn’t just the girl in front of me. All the prisoners and the slaver at the head of the canoe shouted and screamed at each other while the canoe rocked back and forth dangerously.

Another slave leaped into the water and someone else followed after him.

“No!” The grizzled man leaped to his feet, barely able to, with how we were tipping. “Stop!”

Oh, like that would stop things.

“Everybody, move!” I shouted and leaned to the right, scooping the dagger back up from its place on the floor. Half were already trying to figure a way out and half responded automatically, shifting with me. The canoe was upright for only a moment before we crashed into the water too, sending everybody overboard.

That was the exact moment I should’ve woken up.

The water was crisp and cold and the only real thing I could focus on was the dagger. I burst through the surface, coughing and sputtering, and barely able to push myself up with my hands bound. People popped up from the water, one after the other. I kicked off towards the closest one to me.

It was that crying girl.

“Can you grab the knife?” I urged her. “You cut mine, I’ll cut yours!”

“What?”

The woman in front of me wasn’t anything I could’ve dreamed of in this lifetime or the next one. Her thick, long hair was a deep gold that cascaded down her shoulders in drenched waves. Those amber eyes gazed at me in fright but they were so beautiful it almost hurt to look at them. The adorable face, the full lips, this girl was a knockout. Yet I couldn’t draw my eyes away from the cat ears, twitching in the cold.

Not just any cat ears. I knew the black tips at the top - those were a lynx’s ears.

But we had more pressing things to worry about.

“The knife!” I urged, awkwardly holding it out for her.

Her words came out in a cold chatter. “You—you pushed the—!”

“Start cutting!”

With shaking fingers, she tugged the knife away from me.

It wasn’t the usual skin-on-skin contact that I would’ve expected. Taking the knife from her was like taking it out of a freezer. Even the handle was cold to the touch, much colder than the water, much colder than the chill in the air.

Her amber eyes widened and she shook her head in fright. “Look out!”