She woke up warm, which was wrong on every level she could think of before coffee. Amelia hadn't woken warm in… shit, she couldn't remember. She woke up with frozen feet and a stiff neck, hunched under blankets that had been thin to start with and hadn't improved with age, trying to work out whether the hot water would last long enough for a shower or whether she'd be washing her hair in the sink again.
She did not wake up in a bed that cradled her like a baby, under covers thick enough to bury her.
Her eyes snapped open and focused on dark paneled walls, with recessed amber lighting that brightened as she moved under the covers.
Right. The alien emperor's yacht, hiding in a mining shaft somewhere in deep space, with pirates circling outside.
This is fine. Everything's fine. This is my life now.
She sat there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and trying not to breathe too deeply because the pillow smelled like leather, with something underneath that was definitely not human. She breathed it in before her brain caught up with what she was doing, and then she stopped breathing entirely.
Don't be weird. You're not sniffing your kidnapper's bedding.
Then her eyes widened. It wasn’t Thyaar’s bedding, though, was it? Shit. That made it all the more weird.
Rolling over, she reached for the warm spot beside her and frowned when she found it empty.
Where was Barnaby?
She sat up quickly. The cat had vanished along with Thyaar, whose pillow and folded blanket sat neatly by the door, and a prickle of guilt worked its way up the back of her neck. She'd taken the bed and he'd slept on the floor when the bed was enormous and he could have?—
Nope. Not going there. So not going there.
Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she dropped onto the carpet, which was thick and warm under her bare feet. Her borrowed shirt hit her mid-thigh. She tugged at the hem uselessly, then gave up. Until the ship finished with her pajamas, it was all she had.
She padded out into the corridor looking, she suspected, like a kid who'd raided her dad's wardrobe, except her dad had never owned anything this nice and neither had she.
She padded barefoot out of the bedroom and into the corridor. Thyaar's voice, low and exasperated, rumbled through the walls.
"...I have adjusted the protein ratio four times. Four. This is not a negotiation. What about this makes you think it’s a negotiation?”
Barnaby yowled back at him… a long, theatrical, deeply offended sound that she'd heard a hundred times before, usually when his bowl was empty or someone had moved his favorite blanket. He was a cat with opinions, many of them.
"I added the poultry compound. The medical scan indicated your species finds poultry compounds acceptable, so what, precisely, do you want?"
There was another yowl, longer than the first and somehow even more insulted. If it could have been translated from cat to human, it would no doubt have insulted both Thyaar’s intelligence and his parentage.
She padded down the corridor, bare feet silent on the carpet, and stopped in the doorway to the bridge.
Thyaar was in the pilot's chair with his back to her, Barnaby was draped across his shoulders like a ginger fur stole. The cat’s front paws dangled over one side of the big alien’s chest, and his tail hung down the other while he purred loudly enough to rattle the bulkheads. On the console sat seven small containers, each one holding a slightly different shade of brown mush.
She bit the inside of her cheek so hard she nearly drew blood.
"What did he do now?"
Thyaar's head came around, and his expression was a masterpiece of exhaustion, bewilderment, and the defeat of a man who had never lost a battle until he'd met a twelve-pound cat.
"This animal," he said, "is draanthing impossible."
The laugh escaped before she could stop it.
"Yeah. Welcome to Tuesday."
Barnaby took that as his cue to abandon Thyaar's shoulders and launch himself at her. Twelve pounds of ginger hit her chest hard enough to make her stagger back a step, and she caught him on reflex, her arms locking around his middle.
"Barns, for fuck's sake."
He bumped his head under her chin and started purring as if he hadn't just spent the last ten minutes rejecting seven meals from an alien warrior.
