The last thing Earth gives you is a flash of white light.
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. Lysian is the one who cannot wait.
He is the blond one, 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 checks the locked door twice, and Lysian watches him do it the way he watches everything.
He 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, and he is the only one who slows down when he says it, in case you are listening.
Three enormous aliens.
One newly acquired human.
And apparently, they’ve already begun preparing the cage.