“Pity,” the matriarch says. “I always liked trains.”
Before the meeting can get any more tense, someone decides to interrupt, and I could not be gladder for it.
“Tasin!” Another one of his kind bursts into the room. This one is younger, male, and entirely exuberant. His hair is longish and his face is broad, and he is wearing robes much like Greek or Roman ones, and they do nothing to stop me from seeing hisrippling alien musculature. Whatever these creatures are, they are universally hot.
“Miko!” Freak responds in kind. He puts me down for a moment, which confuses me, but then the newcomer physically rushes him and slams his chest into Freak’s, and I realize that I’ve just been saved serious rough contact.
“Easy,” Freak laughs. “You’re frightening my pet.”
I don’t think Miko even saw me until Freak pointed to me and confirmed that I exist. His eyes widen as he looks at me too, but in pleasure, not horror the way the woman’s did.
“Oh, my gosh! Tasin! A human! Can it talk?”
“Of course I can talk,” I say.
He chuckles, as if talking means something else here. I bet it does.
“I love small mouth noises,” he says. “It’s so primitive, but in a good way.”
Then they start to communicate in another way. I can’t understand it. I can’t even really explain what it is, or how it works. I just know that they are. I can feel a kinship happening nearby, something in the way their eyes flash and their faces move. A whole conversation is happening, but not audibly.
“Rude,” I complain.
“Sorry, pet,” Freak laughs. “It’s just a lot quicker to discuss things that way among ourselves. I was just telling Miko how I came to find you, and how good you’ve been.”
He reaches out, takes me by the hand, and pulls me close to him. I kind of want to bite him now. I don’t like feeling as though I aman animal in a human world, but that is how I feel around these aliens.
“Everyone is going to be so happy to see you,” Miko says, switching to a verbal language I can understand, though now that I know they’re basically doing the equivalent of talking down to me it doesn’t feel as good.
“I’m not stupid,” I grumble. “Just because I can’t talk with my brain.”
“Of course you’re intelligent, pet,” Freak says indulgently.
“Do you want to bring her with us? Or do you have a crate or something to put her in?”
“If anybody puts me in a crate, I’ll chew my way out of it and I’ll come and bite you,” I promise.
“She’s pretty violent,” Miko says.
“Humans often react to fear with aggression. Stop talking about her out loud,” Freak says. “It makes her uncomfortable.”
“Don’t talk about me at all!”
Freak pulls me close to him, lowering his voice so it feels like only I can hear him, though I bet his words are going far and wide in this freaky alien place where everyone reads minds.
“I’ve got you,” he tells me. “You are mine. It’s going to be strange for the others to get used to you, but you can help by being a well-behaved pet for me, do you understand?”
“I’m gonna bite them all,” I mumble back.
He laughs, but taps my ass at the same time. “Don’t,” he says firmly. “I need you to be on your best behavior.”
“You barely know me,” I tell him. “Maybe this is my best behavior. Maybe my normal behavior is much, much worse.”
“It’s about to get a lot better if that is true,” he says. “Otherwise I am going to take you into a corner of this place and give you a very thorough training session, pet.”
He is using the same tone as the one he had when he punished me, and every part of my body thrills to it.
“Mmm, yes. Teach me how to be good,” I purr against his chest.
