Zohra Series Book 1: Karshok
Author
Nooz Aster
Reads
1.6M
Chapters
49
After years of enslavement under alien rule, I’ve forgotten what kindness feels like. That is, until I meet Karshok—a towering, horned alien who is nothing like my past captors. Fierce yet protective, distant yet impossibly gentle, he is a contradiction I can’t resist. I should fear him, and part of me still wants to resist, but in his presence, I find the warmth and care I thought I lost forever. Despite everything, Karshok might be the salvation I never thought I’d find. But what will that salvation cost me?
Chapter 1
A woman crumples beside me, collapsing to her knees.
Our eyes meet, and I recognize her immediately. She’s one of many I’ve turned away and abandoned to their fate. But unlike the others, I left her only last night while scavenging in the forest and trying to avoid our alien captors.
And she’s alive.
Her dull blue eyes find mine, suddenly widening before her body takes over. Limbs slam against the ground in jerking, unnatural rhythms.
Mind-prodding.
I know what they’re doing to her. The Fhaen—elves, as humans call them—don’t just dig through memories; they sharpen them into weapons. They find the worst moment of your life, twist it into something uglier, and force you to live it again. I’ve endured it many times myself. Whatever she’s seeing isn’t real, but her body doesn’t know the difference.
A shadow falls over us.
One of the elves steps forward, silver eyes bright with something that looks disturbingly close to delight. I don’t think. I drop to my knees, press my forehead into the dirt, and stretch my palms out in submission.
Beside me, the woman continues to convulse, her heels drumming against the ground.
The elf brings their foot down on my hand.
Pain splinters through my fingers. I grit my teeth and stay silent while they whistle their laugh—high and gleeful, like a child who has found a new toy.
Then the woman makes a sound I know I’ll never forget. A strangled, guttural scream that has no business coming from a human throat.
Then her screaming just—stops.
One of the elves, syringe in hand, circles behind the line of human women. A sharp sting bites into my ass cheek.
S’shap.
A drug for the chosen.
Not me.
I was never supposed to be among them. I spent years making sure of that, hoarding nuts until I was too fat for their tastes and too unpopular for anyone to care what happened to me.
The elf nudges the twitching woman beside me with their toes, drives another syringe into her, then loses interest. Moments later they drift away, delicate white feet squelching through mud before disappearing onto the grass.
I stay pressed to the dirt until the last sound fades.
None of the chosen move until they’re gone.
Then, slowly, I rise.
Chosen?
Me?
The woman is still writhing in the dirt, her mind lost in the nightmare of mind-prodding. No one helps her. No one dares.
There is nothing left to do.
I turn away, refusing to meet the horrified gazes of the others. My body moves on instinct, step after step, back to my shack.
The riverbed reaches me first—that familiar damp smell of rotting wood and wet earth. The door still hangs crooked on its hinges.
I’ve slept here for almost ten years. But it’s not a home. It’s a cage. Yet another cage.
I was always careful.
The moment I step through the doorway, my legs give out. I collapse face-first into the mud and don’t even try to catch myself.
How did this happen?
I did everything right.
Dread spreads through me in slow waves. Despite the humid heat, I feel cold. Even the air seems to ice my skin.
I’ve seen what the drug does. I’ve watched people lose themselves to it.
I close my eyes.
Once, I wanted things.
Love. Adventure. Someone who would look at me and see more than what I was. I used to lie awake imagining a future worth waiting for. What a foolish girl I was.
I’ve spent years surviving, watching every scrap of hope get stripped away.
For what?
“Ava the boar.” The voice cuts through the haze.
I jerk awake.
I’m still lying on the floor, but the light outside has faded.
I grit my teeth, pull myself up, and go to the door. Three gaunt, hollow-eyed human men stand outside—faceless and interchangeable, like NPCs in a broken game.
“What are you eating?” one demands.
“Where do we find food?” Man C steps forward, jabbing a finger at me. “Stop hoarding. You should share.”
I stare at their sunken stomachs, jutting ribs, and hollow cheeks. They still have the will to live, for reasons I can no longer remember. Why fight so hard for this?
“You’re going to die soon enough,” Man B says, his voice flat. “The least you can do is help someone else survive.”
I suppose I clung to the same thing. Hope. I glance down at my own arms, thicker than theirs. Well-fed.
“The blue sappy trees,” I rasp. They stiffen. “Peel back the bark. Eat the nuts underneath.” I get the words out, and as I do, Man C lunges.
Pain lances through my skull, and I crumple. I hit the mud hard, my breath knocked from my lungs. I don’t move.
They got what they wanted. Now, they’ll take the information and spread it to whoever they think deserves it. But not before making it clear how little they think of me. One by one, they spit and curse at me.
“I hope you suffer for a long time,” Man C sneers before turning away.
I stare at the three of them disappearing down the path, and wipe their spit from my sack, my fingers trembling with a rage I can’t afford. They hate me. I chose to live, and this is the price.
I try to stand, but liquid fire surges through my veins. My knees buckle, and I lurch back to my shack. My shoulder clips my pouch hanging from the wall, it falls, scattering nuts and cracked shells across the dirt with me.
A bitter laugh escapes me.
I struggle to sit up and lean on the wall, shaking with strain. I stare at the cursed nuts on the ground.
Only eight remain.
I pick one up and turn it between my fingers. For years these nuts kept me alive. Kept me fat. Safe. I press my fingers together, crushing the shell with a dull crack.
I have to leave. Now. Before the elves come.
But my legs don’t work.
I can’t tell if it’s fear, exhaustion, or the drugs slithering through my veins, but my body refuses to move.
Every second steals another chance to escape.
I don’t know how long I lie there, half-conscious, head throbbing, and my mind fogged.
Then—
“You’re summoned.” The voice is sharp.
Run.
My body rises before I can stop it, like a puppet jerked upright by strings buried deep in my muscles. My hands reach for the door.
No.
I need to run.
Instead, I obey.
Man C waits outside holding the robe of the chosen.
Like a machine, I strip off my garments and take it from him. My hands move with practiced certainty, fastening clasps and smoothing fabric while I watch in detached horror.
I want to scream. To stop. To tear the robe apart.
Instead, I walk.
Away from the river. Away from my shack.
Following the human toward the elves’ dwellings.
To the three figures waiting in the clearing.
Fhaen.
One of them raises their right hand, clenched into a fist. I can’t look away. The rules are ingrained in me. Their head tilts slightly, their lips curling with pure disgust.
They’ve never looked at me like this before.
A sickening thought grips me.
The nuts. The humans wouldn’t have told them… would they?
My knees buckle as another wave of heat burns through me, but I force myself to stay upright. My face is too hot, my body slick with sweat, but the fear sobers me—if only for a bit.
The Fhaen steps forward, hissing. When their lips part, a row of jagged, pointed teeth gleams against a dark blue mouth.
“This fat one found seeds of life and ate them,” the elf hisses.
My mouth runs dry.
“Does the fat one know what the seeds of life are?”
They know.
I shake my head, my throat locking up.
My eyes dart to the dirt. Man C’s sneer flashes in my mind.
I should have known. It was always going to be another human looking for a weapon. And I handed it to him.
The elf drops their fist, their hand going slack by their thigh.
Habits kick in, overriding everything else. I drop to my knees, slam my forehead against the dirt, and stretch out my shaking hands in surrender.
The first blow comes hard and fast.
“Seeds—” The elf’s heel crushes my palm, the sharp point stabbing deep into my skin.
“—of life—” She presses down harder, twisting. The pain goes deep, radiating up to my shoulder in a sick wave.
“—are what we need to have children.”
Children. The word barely registers over the grinding in my palm. All those years, hoarding nuts to stay alive, to stay undesirable. I wasn’t just eating food. I was eating their means of reproduction.
Stupid. Stupid to tell them anything. Stupid to think I had another minute.
The heel pierces my hand.
A scream rips out of me, raw and ugly, spilling past my lips before I can stop it.
“Fat one has been feeding on our children!” The elf’s voice rises in a screech, stiffening my spine.
The other Fhaen hiss in response, their eerie voices vibrating through the air. “Does the fat one think our lives are so insignificant?”
I whimper, my whole body trembling.
My thoughts scatter—the river, the dark forest, anywhere but here. There is no chance. Not anymore.
They are going to kill me.
The elf lifts their other leg.
No—!
I instinctively yank my hands back just as their heel slams down. I scramble back, panic exploding in my chest.
They lift their robes, revealing their heels.
All three of them.
Ready to impale me full of holes.
