Humiliated.
Scrambling his surveillance network, demanding answers.
A thin, sharp strand of satisfaction pricked her.
Let him think I outmaneuvered them. Let him believe I finally slipped from his control.
Her mother would worry. Elise would speculate. Daniel would likely draft crisis-management memos. But none of them—not one—would have guessed the truth.
She was not on Earth anymore.
Her memories snagged on the moment the Majarin transferred her to the new aliens—the Vykan. Their ship was nothing like the Majarin vessel. Gone were the organic curves and gentle light. The Vykan craft was metal and geometry, smooth seams and reinforced alloys, silent as a predator. Its movement had felt different too—precise, powerful, controlled.
They had given her fresh silks to wear, sumptuous slippers, and even braided her hair with ritual care. Their attendants never touched her roughly. Everything was meticulous and measured. She was pampered, but also… contained.
And then… the descent had happened.
She hadn’t seen the outside—no windows, no viewports—but she’d felt it. The drop. The shift. The sinking pressure in her stomach. They’d strapped her into a tall chair as the ship lowered through some thick, dense atmosphere. Her heart had pounded so hard she thought she might faint. She had swallowed dryly, trying not to panic.
Then they landed.
They’d brought her out into mist-choked air, the world around her barely visible. A fortress loomed in the fog—dark stone, angular, massive. A structure built not for beauty, but for dominance and survival.
And now… she was here.
Back in the present, Morgan tilted her head as a sound drifted through the air—water, flowing somewhere nearby. She followed it across the room, her slippers whispering over stone and rug, and pushed aside a sheer black curtain.
A small enclosed garden lay behind the curtain—lush, glowing faintly in the warm, misty air. The foliage was thick and lush, rising in gentle arcs, veins of pale light threading through each plant. A shallow pool curved along the back wall, water spilling over carved stone in a slow, soothing stream.
It was more beautiful than any rooftop botanical garden she had seen in New York or Singapore, more serene than Kyoto’s private courtyards, more atmospheric than the vertical gardens billionaires commissioned to impress investors.
This wasn’t a display.
This was a sanctuary.
Stone tiles warmed her feet. The air carried a floral scent that made her chest loosen. The sound of the water trickling over the stone soothed the edges of her fear.
She stood there in the stillness, absorbing it all.
She wasn’t on Earth anymore, and she had no idea what her future looked like.
She didn’t even know the name of the being who supposedly owned her now.
But this room… this garden… had beenspecificallyprepared for her.
And that knowledge sent a shiver down her spine—part relief, part dread, and something far more complicated than either.
Morgan stepped farther into the garden, letting the warm mist brush her skin. For a moment, she imagined she was alone—truly alone—and something inside her loosened. The water’s soft trickle filled the quiet.
Then the hairs on her arms lifted.
A prickle ran down her spine: a sudden, undeniable awareness. Someone was behind her.
Slowly, she turned.
An alien stood at the threshold to the garden—one she hadn’t heard enter, hadn’t sensed until she was already there. She was tall, slender, with the same smooth, seamless skin she remembered from the first attendants who’d guided her through the Vykan vessel. Her limbs were long, elegant, moving with fluid precision. Her eyes were black and glossy, large enough to reflect the violet glow of the wall behind her. Straight hair—dark as obsidian—fell to her waist, shifting like water when she moved.
Something in the gentle arch of the cheekbones, the slighter curve of her shape, and something in her posture made Morgan think she was female. She didn’t know why. The thought came instinctively, the same way it had with the first Majarin attendant.
