The last thing Earth gives you is a flash of white light, and Drazhen has his hand on the door before the platform is up.
Then metal.
A vast chamber. Curved walls. Blue stars burning past a window that shouldn’t exist.
Three horned males stand around the platform holding you, and he is the one standing between it and the door.
The blond one, Lysian, leans in first, amber eyes bright.
“Sha’veri tal en, Torvane.”
He murmurs something musical and strange, then gently lifts a strand of your hair between two fingers, examining it with open fascination.
Drazhen catches his wrist.
“Draal vek. Sa’vara na tir.”
A sharp sentence follows.
Lysian grins.
Across the room, Torvane says one quiet word.
“Khah’ver.”
Both males immediately still.
The gray-haired commander crosses the deck, sets a folded blanket beside you, then adjusts the room’s temperature from a wall panel. Drazhen watches him do it and does not help.
Then he checks the locked door twice, and puts his back against it.
Lysian sets a dish of water within your reach.
“Sa’vara esh vael.”
They keep talking over you in a language you have no word for.
Three enormous aliens.
One newly acquired human.
And apparently, they’ve already begun preparing the cage.