The word sprang to mind from some childhood memory, some story her mother had told her about the old myths of Earth.
“You can’t be real,” she said to the unconscious creature.
He didn’t respond. Just kept breathing, shallow and labored, while the storm raged outside and her habitat slowly fell apart around her.
She sighed, then reached for the medkit and started working.
CHAPTER FOUR
Pain was the first thing he knew—before consciousness, before memory, before anything else. Pain radiated from his side in waves that crested and fell with each labored breath. Pain throbbed in his left wing, a deep wrongness that spoke of bone and membrane damage. Pain pulsed behind his eyes, sharp and insistent, demanding attention he couldn’t spare.
He kept his breathing slow and steady, giving no outward sign that awareness had returned.
Where am I?
The surface beneath him was soft—softer than stone, softer than ice crystals. Some kind of fabric, perhaps. The air around him was warm, almost uncomfortably so, and it carried scents he couldn’t identify. Chemical.Wrong.But underneath all that, something intriguingly sweet. Sweet enough to tempt him to open his eyes. But not yet.
His ears tracked the sounds before his mind could process them. Breathing. Footsteps. The subtle shift of weight from one foot to another. Someone was watching him. A guard? An enemy? Heflexed his arms and legs in small, subtle movements but found no indication that he’d been restrained.
He opened his eyes.
The light was strange, harsh and artificial, and it took his pupils a moment to adjust. When they did, he found himself staring at a curved ceiling made of some kind of smooth white material.
The watching presence was to his left. He could feel her attention like pressure against his scales.
Her.
He turned his head slowly, fighting the dizziness that accompanied the movement, and looked at the female who had taken him.
She was small—impossibly, absurdly small. Barely taller than his chest would be if he were standing, with small curved limbs and soft skin and no scales whatsoever. Her coloring was warm, some shade of gold that reminded him of nothing in the polar wastes, and her dark hair was pulled back from a face that watched him with wary, calculating eyes.
He was sure he’d never seen a female like her before, but he was equally sure she was not a threat. She couldn’t possibly be a threat. He could snap her spine with one hand, could tear through her fragile flesh without effort, could?—
The thought brought a wave of revulsion that surprised him. He didn’t want to hurt her. The realization settled into his mind like an unwelcome guest, defying explanation.
“You’re awake.”
Her voice was low and careful, the words shaped strangely, but he almost understood them. The sounds were familiar, tickling at the edges of comprehension, but the meaning kept slipping away like water through cracked ice.
He said nothing, just studied his surroundings.
The space around him was small and unfamiliar—a single room cluttered with equipment and supplies. One wall was dominated by a window that showed only swirling white chaos beyond.Storm.The structure groaned and shifted around them, and he could feel vibrations through the floor that spoke of a foundation that wasn’t quite secure.
Shelter. She brought me to shelter.
The female took a step closer. Her scent intensified—metal and snow and exhaustion, yes, but also something underneath. Something his body recognized before his mind could name it. Something that made his scales prickle with unexpected awareness.
“Can you understand me?”
He knew it was a question, and he could guess the context, but he chose not to answer. He tried to sit up instead. The pain in his side flared white-hot, and he couldn’t quite suppress a hiss. His left wing screamed in protest as the movement jostled it, and for a moment his vision went dark at the edges.
“Don’t.”
Hands pressed against his chest. Small hands, cool against his scales, and firm despite their size. He looked down at them, then at her, and felt his pupils narrow to slits.
She didn’t flinch. Her eyes met his, amber and deep and surprisingly calm, and her hands remained steady against his chest.
“You’re badly injured. Moving around is going to make it worse.”
