It had to be.
The outpost was just ahead. He could even see the native Mukkians patrolling the tall glass walls.
He was coming in fast and hard, the pressure mostly on one wing as he narrowed them and dove.
There was no way this would be a gentle landing, not with one wing that was almost out of commission.
He’d land hard but the person cradled to his chest wouldn’t be hurt.
He would make his body take the brunt of the damage.
As he fell toward the ground, the pain in his shoulder and wing like a pulsating heat, he closed his wings in front to protect her.
It wasn’t the proper way to land.
Every Vaen knew, even young a few orbits old, that landing on one’s wings was asking for pain, suffering, and broken wing blades.
With his wings closed, it meant he had nothing to slow his descent. It would be hard and painful. But with one of his wings already so injured, he didn’t have much of a choice anyway.
Tucking his head under the canopy to shield them both, he finally let his gaze wander to her face.
Dark hair….Dark eyes…Song.
She looked so serene...so beautiful...and images of when she’d been stuck in the escape pod came flooding back to him.
Once more, it was almost as if she was asleep.
As he made impact with the sandy surface he kept his gaze on her face as pain ricocheted through his entire being. But her image held him together.
Looking at her beautiful face, he could endure anything.
He’d crashed head-first into the sand, gravity having done its job, and the momentum caused him to skid to a painful stop not far from the gates, stripping several of his feathers straight from his wing blades as they grated against the coarse sand.
As the pain of the impact pulsated through him, he could feel his blood leak from the new wounds on his skin.
Ignoring the strain on his body, he looked down at her.
She was unaffected. The fall hadn’t caused any bruises as far as he could see.
Good.
That’s exactly what he’d intended.
Around him, he could already hear the chatter of the native Mukkians as they approached him. Undoubtedly, they’d seen him long before he’d started to fall.
They’d recognize him, he was sure. He’d spent many orbits on their planet with the rest of his brothers.
When he finally opened his wings, the movement was painfully slow and the chatter around him ceased immediately.
They were all looking at the human now...his Song…the precious treasure still cradled against him.
He just hoped he wasn’t too late to save her.
24
The world was hazy.
Everything was a blur.
And everything hurt.
There were voices, too. Voices she didn’t recognize in a language she couldn’t identify.
The creature! That disgusting oversized centipede-scorpion had gripped her with its long scaly legs extending to tighten around her entire body. It opened its mouth...opened it to…
It was going to kill her!
It was all coming back, her memory of the last moments before her eyes had closed.
She’d stabbed it; she remembered that. But it had wounded her. In her side. There’d been pain.
So much pain. Pain that had been excruciating.
But there wasn’t pain now. As a matter of fact, she felt blissfully at peace.
And...and...Kyris.
He’d been leading the creatures away but there’d been too many.
Terror gripped Song as she tried to lift herself. But her body wasn’t responding.
Kyris.
She hadn’t seen him after she’d turned around to fight the creature. Had he been alright? Had he made it?
Attempting to raise once more, a new level of terror flooded through her.
This wasn’t sleep paralysis.
This felt real.
She was frozen. She couldn’t move.
As the horror of the situation dawned on her, her heart rate picked up speed.
This was all too similar…
Too close to how it’d felt when she’d woken up on the Isclit slave ship…
Woken up to realize she’d been taken from the only world she’d known as home…
Abducted.
Those voices she didn’t recognize...
Was it the aliens?
Had they caught her again?
Was she back on the Isclit slave ship?
Those unspeakable things she’d seen them do in the videos...
Was it her turn this time?
As the panic moved through her and held her down with invisible hands, she could feel her brain straining to force her muscles to struggle, to move, to break free from whatever was preventing her from moving.
But it wasn’t working.
Her body refused to respond.
She’d never experienced anything like this before. This was…this was unquestionably worse than that first time she’d woken up on the slave ship.
But as her vision slowly cleared, the blurry haze dissipating, a large figure came into view.
Iridescent wings folded back, his head was down and his forehead was resting on her hip as he held her hand between his.
His eyes were closed and his brows were knit. Yet, even with his eyes closed and head down, she could see the utter torment on his face.
Kyris.
Kyris was here.
Was this some sort of weird dream?
Trying to open her mouth to call his name, she realized she couldn’t.
She was…paralyzed. Trapped in her own body.
As her vision cleared some more, the beings moving around her became clearer along with her surroundings. Yet, visibility was incredibly low; her eyes were almost shut. Lids so low, even her lashes were obstructing her view.
It took her a while to make out that she wasn’t on a ship. At least, it didn’t look like one. She couldn’t be sure, not without being able to open her eyes fully or turn her head.
But it looked as if she was in a room.
And the beings moving around her…they weren’t the slug-like Isclits, the toad-like Tasqals, or the gator-guards.
Whenever one came into view for her to decipher what they looked like, she saw that they looked like little monks.
All were dressed in brown robes similar to the color of the desert sand and they all looked to be about half her size.
Whatever had happened to her had rendered her almost completely immobile. She could move her eyelids but a fraction and she was breathing fine.
That was about it.
Trying again to move, to even
