“They’re small chambers that kept us asleep until we reached Valo Prime,” Taylor answered.
Brexl reached into one and pulled out a retraining belt. His face darkened into a terrible frown. “They held you like animals.”
Taylor and I looked at each other before I answered. “We were less than animals to them. We were just goods to be sold for profit.”
Drovo frowned down at the cryotubes now and Brexl clenched his fist around the strap as if he could choke the life out of our captors by doing so.
“I don’t like this place. There’s no nature here, just the dull humming of this strange cold material.” He ran his hand along a metal wall and shivered.
“I don’t like it either,” I agreed.
“Over here,” Taylor motioned for us to join her on the other side of the room, where Brexl was doing his best to not hover over her. He looked ready to lunge at anything that might harm her, as if the walls themselves might come alive and attack us.
“The cabinets are behind these heavy tables that fell down.”
Drovo and Brexl quickly got to work, moving the tables to the side so Taylor could fiddle with the cabinets until she coaxed one to open by pushing on the door causing it to pop out against whatever latch had held it shut.
“There are rations in here!” She joyfully exclaimed, but her joy quickly turned to disappointment as she reached the back of the cabinet. “There’s not very many, though.”
“What about the next one?” Drovo asked.
Taylor pushed on the next cabinet door and it opened to reveal even fewer rations than the first one. She opened all five cabinets, four of which only held a small amount of ration packs, while the fifth held medical supplies such as bandages and medicines with labels we couldn’t read.
“It’s better than nothing.” I tried to cheer Taylor up as she counted the rations she had neatly laid on the ground outside the ship.
“I really thought there would be more in there. We nearly got eaten last night, and for what? So we could have a few more days of food in the winter?”
“A few more days could be the difference between life and death in the last month of winter when the food has run out and there are no beasts to kill,” Brexl assured her.
Taylor looked up at him and smiled in appreciation of his encouragement.
“I’m going to walk the perimeter,” Drovo announced before he disappeared behind the ship.
“You wanna help me put these under yourbench seat?” Taylor asked as she held up a few ration packs.
“Sure.” I agreed.
It didn’t take long to stuff the forty packs of food into the storage compartments of my chariot. It had been decided that we’d camp here for the night, so as Taylor and I packed the chariot, Brexl gathered wood for a fire.
The grim reaper shifter had finished gathering wood and had even dug a hole for an underground fire, but Drovo still wasn’t back yet. The ship wasn’t that big. Where could he be?
Brexl had started to grow concerned as well. “I’m going to walk the opposite way around the ship. I’m sure he’s close by.”
Brexl’s blue form disappeared around the corner and I got up and informed Taylor I was going to go search for him, too.
“I’ll come with you.” Taylor got up and together we started walking.
We hadn’t walked far when we heard voices, unfamiliar voices.
“Is this your doing, you shifter filth? Was it not enough to be an abomination that you had to bring another down upon us?”
There was a vile disdain in that voice and he had said the word shifter as if it were a curse word that fell like lead from his tongue.
I picked up the pace and rounded the corner first. Down on the ground, with his hands tied behind his back, was Drovo and for the first time since I’d methim, he looked terrified.
It didn’t make any sense. He was powerful, like super-hero levels of powerful, and yet the group of Sirret males who stood gathered around him didn’t look scared at all. One even kicked Drovo in the ribs causing him to wince in pain. The trees surrounding us all shuddered at once, but none of the Sirret’s noticed.
“What are you doing?!” I walked up the group of bullies with my fists clenched.
