Pain.

It was all Calexa knew as she regained consciousness. The pain speared her temples and stabbed her eyes. It pounded the back of her head, as if someone were brutally trying to crack open her skull.

She hadn’t hurt this badly since she’d undergone enhancement therapy. Too bad the pain receptors in her head were mostly unaltered.

Her eyes snapped open. Bright light flooded in. She gasped in agony, blinking furiously as her world came into focus.

Her memories were hazy. “Wha—?” She flailed about like a madwoman as she tried to regain her bearings. With a groan, she pulled herself up into a sitting position.

Grey walls surrounded her. She closed her eyes again. The pain was too intense. It was a sharp, stabbing, throbbing kind of pain, and it was all in her head. Literally.

She grabbed the sides of her head with both hands and found a thick band wrapped around her skull. It felt… rubbery underneath her bare fingers.

And her hair. What the hell had happened to her hair?

Her armor-gloves were gone. So were her combat helmet and her weapons and her exterian armor. She wore nothing but her skintight thermosuit.

Memories returned to her like a tidal wave crashing onto a rocky shore. A ridiculously dangerous mission to Torandor at the behest of a crazy Primean. Paxnath slavers turning the entire thing into one huge clusterfuck. A frantic Panic Jump into the Netherverse. Engine failure. System failure. A giant ship, bigger than anything she’d thought possible, drawing them in against their will. Aliens. They were purple and black, with tails. A species she’d never seen or heard of before. She’d fought furiously, viciously, with that dark scaly-armored warrior.

Strong. Fast. Inescapable. That’s what he was.

Oh, shit. She’d toyed with death again.

On the upside, she was still alive.

For now.

A tingling sensation ran along the backs of her arms, alerting her to a presence. Summoning all of her willpower, she pushed the pain to the back of her mind, opened her eyes, and looked over her shoulder.

And came face-to-face with…

Him.

It was him. The Mysterious One. She knew it with every fiber of her being. His scaly armor was intact, but his helmet was gone, revealing his face.

Whoa.

How magnificently striking he was. Calexa could have become mesmerized by his molten eyes, but anger got the better of her.

“You fucking—” She flew at him, one fist raised. “What have you done to me?” Pain became her weapon, sharpening her rage.

She was on her feet, jumping off the cold metal bed and launching her powerful body into the air. Her bionic joints tensed, ready to unleash a barrage of pent-up kinetic energy.

Her anger was white-hot and undeniable as realization coursed through her. She’d been violated somehow. These strange creatures had done something to her while she was unconscious.

She didn’t know what they’d done, but something felt different. Her head was heavy. The pain was excruciating, to the point where she felt she might pass out. Her thoughts were fragmented, disjointed, scattered. The thin veneer of her self-control had been stripped away, leaving only the primal things: instinct, impulse, and rage.

Oh, she’d been here before. She knew this place, and she hated what it did to her.

As for the one who was responsible for all this, she would beat him fucking senseless.

Calexa’s fist flew toward his face. Her attack was wild and unfettered, driven by anger. She put all of her strength into the blow…

And met resistance.

His hand closed around her fist, and for a moment they were trapped in a battle of wills.

Silver eyes narrowed. “Stop.”

Calexa gritted her teeth and pushed forward, wanting to break his resistance.

“Stop,” he said again, his deep voice cutting through the haze of her anger. “Do you understand me?”

A thread of sanity took root in her mind. She blinked, wondering whether she was still dreaming. “What?” The word sounded strange as it dropped from her lips.

What did I just say?

She was no longer speaking in her native tongue.

The meaning was the same, but the word was different.

What. The. Fuck?

“This possible… how?” Her question felt clumsy.

“How is this possible?” The alien corrected, his tone dry. “It takes time to get the syntax right, but now you speak the language of slaves.”

“No slave,” Calexa spat. “Not for you, not for anyone.”

“You misunderstand,” the alien said, maintaining his grip on her hand. He was a strong bastard, there was no doubt about it. “This is the language of slaves. Clearly, you are not ideal slave material.”

Calexa’s arm grew heavy as the pain in her head intensified. “Observant, you are.” She shook her head in frustration as her thoughts seemed to correct themselves. “I meant to say: you are observant.” Sarcasm dripped from every word.

His hand was rather large and warm, even when it was encased in that strange scale-armor. Funny that she should notice such things when he held her fist in a bone-crushing grip.

“What have you done to me?” This time, the sentence came out correctly. Somehow, she just knew it was right. She understood every word of this strange language, even if she was still struggling to master the grammar and syntax and the different intonations. “What is this?” With her free hand, she attempted a swing at his face, but the debilitating pain behind her eyes disrupted her speed and accuracy. Her knuckles grazed his jaw and kissed air as he moved his head to the side, evading her blow.

He was fast.

“Stop fighting,” he growled. “I won’t hurt you… if you co-operate.”

“Not… hurt? Then why my head feels like this… this…” She struggled with the alien tongue, searching for the right word.

“Pain,” he offered. “Fucking hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Calexa ground her fist into his palm, trying to force him to release his grip.

Like a damn rock, he didn’t budge. She couldn’t do anything to him. Considering her own immense strength, that was rather scary.

He was more than a little scary.

“Your brain is rewiring. The language is integrating. You’re still disinhibited. If you try to stay still and stop fighting me, I can get you something for the pain.” His tone was stern but not unkind.

His voice had a strange effect on her. It cut through the haze of her anger and diluted her pain.

She blinked, taken aback by the oddness of it all. With a sharp intake of breath, she absorbed him in all of his silverdark glory. His face was so close that she could see tiny tendrils of liquid metal swirling in his irises.

Swirling. What?

He possessed the same deep violet skin as the others, but the unique black markings on his face were imbued with silver. The metallic stuff shifted and writhed beneath his skin, making his face appear a hundred different ways all at once.

“Wh-what you are?”

What are you? That’s what she meant to say, but it came out sounding awkward and broken in this odd new tongue.

Naaga. That was what the language was called. Somehow, the word came to her unbidden, solidifying out of the torrent of information they’d forcefully rammed into her brain.

The alien frowned, his brows drawing together in a wicked scowl. The dark patterns on his face made his expression seem all the more fearsome.

Calexa’s breath caught. Had she offended him somehow? But then he smiled, revealing two pairs of sharp canines. Like the rest of his teeth, they were silver, and they gleamed wickedly in the harsh light, curving from top and bottom like the teeth of a wolf. The effect was unnerving. “I am Vradhu, still.” If irony were universal, perhaps there was a trace of it in his voice.

“Still?”

He tipped his head in response to her question but didn’t elaborate.

Vradhu? She’d never heard of that species. “Wh-where are we?”

“On a Drakhin destroyer, in the orbit of Khira. You are just beyond the Shadowring.”

His words didn’t make any sense, and it wasn’t just because they were speaking a new language. They were probably well beyond the charted territories of the Universe, and that was more than a little worrying.

Correction: it was downright terrifying.

Calexa decided not to dwell on it.

The Vradhu squeezed her hand, his touch surprisingly gentle. “If I let go, will you promise me you won’t try and hit me this time?” He shook his head slightly, still baring his teeth. “You have hard hands, woman.”

“Calexa,” she corrected. “Me, Calexa. I…” She closed her eyes, struggling to find the right words in Naaga as she clenched her teeth and fought the throbbing pain in her head. It was like doing complicated sums without an AI. The solution was there, but it took all of her concentration to arrive at the answer. “My name is Calexa, and I won’t hit you, but only if you promise not to strangle me with that, that…”

“Ilverium,” he supplied as the silver stuff trapped beneath his skin rippled and momentarily disappeared, turning his stripes black. Calexa stared at his face in wonder, entranced by his alienness. His eyes were rimmed with black, and the obsidian pigment extended over his sculpted cheekbones as two distinct slashes; symmetrical twin daggers tapering into fine points.

Black on violet. It was the most decadent thing.

Like his features, his markings were severe and unmistakable, and if she were crazy enough, she might even describe them as beautiful.

“That moving metal…” Calexa shuddered. There was no question that he controlled it somehow. “What is it?”

“A curse.” He shrugged and let go of her hand. For a split-second his eyes flashed black, his pupils momentarily disappearing. “Do not ask again.” A dark undercurrent entered his voice. “In my culture, such familiarity between strangers is unacceptable.”

Abruptly, he stepped back, creating distance. His action had the same effect as a gust of icy wind, cutting through the shred of familiarity that had sprung up between them.

She froze. She’d almost forgotten that this alien was fucking dangerous.

He must have sensed her unease, because he raised a hand and spread his fingers wide in an appeasing gesture. His ominous expression evaporated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You knocked me out and abducted me.” This time, her words flowed more naturally, spurred on by her indignation. The unknown device they’d implanted in her brain seemed to be integrating at a rapid pace.

“If you’d just come with me in the first place…” He shook his head, appearing mildly exasperated. “You shouldn’t fight me.”

“What did you expect me to do? You were hostile. You tried to restrain me.” Accusation crept into her tone.

“It was the only way.” The alien’s eyes gleamed with the promise of violence as the silver hue returned to his facial markings, swirling amongst the black lines. “If you want to survive in this place, do not fight me again. You should never fight me.”

Calexa stared at the Vradhu, taken aback by the force that radiated from him. The floor around his feet seemed to quiver, threatening to turn into liquid metal.

Back off. That’s what he was telling her. His entire demeanor was a threat.

Friend or foe? She couldn’t tell.

“What about my people?” Calexa touched her ear in alarm. Her comm was gone. She had no way of communicating with the others. “Promise me you won’t harm them.”

“I have no intention of harming them, and as long as they don’t do anything foolish, my clan-brothers won’t, either.”

“As long as they don’t do anything foolish…” Calexa shook her head in frustration. “Not good enough.” There was too much room for misunderstanding, especially when Mai and Zahra were involved. Especially when none of them spoke a word of Naaga. “I have to go back.” It was urgent. The girls were notorious hotheads. She shuddered as gruesome and disastrous possibilities flickered through her mind.

She looked the Vradhu up-and-down, taking his measure. Could she get past him? There was an open doorway behind him. Beyond the threshold, the shadows deepened into darkness. The eerie blackness was punctuated by the slow pulse of a flashing green light.

She became keenly aware of the fact that they were alone.

She became aware of his sheer physical presence. The scale-armor encasing his body left little to the imagination, accentuating the powerful contours of his arms and shoulders. His body was broad and lean, and his honed torso tapered to muscular thighs. His tail—at least she thought it was a tail—was tightly coiled around his left leg. She followed the odd, sinuous thing down to its tip, which rested against his lower calf. It flickered slightly, suggesting impatience.

He was surely built for power and speed. Nature had given him these gifts, and he wore them effortlessly, unlike Calexa, who had twisted the arm of fate to get her enhancements, fighting every single step of the way.

She was a scrapper. In comparison, that made him a thoroughbred.

She was staring.

He was staring.

This was too surreal.

“What the hell are you?” His voice had become a little bit hoarse. He was watching her with undisguised curiosity, and his ilverium tainted eyes seemed to see right through to her metal-coated bones.

She disguised a shudder as she wondered whether he was some kind of sorcerer.

Sorcery? Impossible. She pushed the ridiculousness out of her mind. Even the infinite Universe had rules, although they kept getting broken.

“I’m…” She wasn’t entirely sure what she was anymore. Those who stayed on Dashki-5 long enough inevitably became mixed up and messed up. “I’m human.”

Am I?

“Human?”

“Standard-issue sapiens. Nothing fancy.” She’d acquired a few extra bits along the way, but that was beside the point. With her temper and her vulnerabilities and her penchant for violence, she was as human as they came, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The alien looked at her as if she were speaking another language. He’d obviously never heard of her species before.

Holy hell. That meant they were very far from home, because humans were well known throughout the Universe. They were prized for their soft skin, average intelligence, and manual dexterity. Not too smart, not too stupid, and compared to most alien species, they were physically weak.

That made them malleable, and perfect for certain… purposes.

“Human.” The Vradhu’s eyes slid down her body, absorbing every last detail. “And female, yes?”

“In the same way that you are obviously male. Does it matter?” Her Naaga was growing more fluent by the minute. It was actually easier to find the words when she was angry.

He raised an eyebrow at her prickly tone but said nothing. Like a terrible itch she couldn’t scratch, Calexa’s impatience grew. She glanced toward the doorway, her worry over the Medusa’s crew and passengers growing with each passing second.

The alien’s tail-thing flickered. “You will come with me.” It was an order, iron-clad and absolute. People skills obviously weren’t his strong point. The sheer arrogance in his voice made her bristle, but what stung even more was the fact that he was in a position to issue orders. She had absolutely no bargaining power here.

“My crew,” she said softly. “Promise me your people won’t harm them.”

He gave her a long, measured look, but said nothing.

That infuriated her a little. “You can’t guarantee it, or you won’t?”

The pain in her head was still there, but it had faded to a dull throb. Fragments of Naaga-speak swirled through her mind as her understanding of the language solidified.

Sorcery or not, that implant-thing was fucking magic. It beat any of the translator nodes she’d ever owned.

Ignoring her question, the alien shook his head and turned toward the shadowed doorway, at once both arrogant and dismissive. “Follow me.”

Ooh, the audacity! Calexa clenched her fists tightly, grinding her fingernails into her palms. The pain helped her resist the urge to grab that long, gleaming, proud warrior’s braid of his and yank him backwards until he gave her a decent fucking answer. The pain helped her focus her thoughts amidst the swirling mind-fog of Naaga-speak.

The language of slaves. There was a reason he’d called it that. Why? The answer was at the periphery of her consciousness, just beyond her reach.

She shook her head, hesitating. He passed through the doorway and into the shadows, leaving her behind. The Vradhu didn’t glance backwards or speak to her. He simply expected her to follow.

Every fiber of her being screamed at her to resist. Fight him and escape. It was almost second nature; she’d been running on adrenaline and fear for most of her life, and she’d been fighting back ever since she was born.

The fear was still there, simmering just beneath the surface; an old, familiar companion. Normally, she would draw on it, channeling it into violence, but not this time. She’d tried fighting, and look where she’d ended up.

Calexa closed her eyes, exercising restraint. Slowly, she unclenched her fists, took a deep breath, and stepped forward.

Follow me.

She didn’t know what he wanted. She didn’t know where they were going. It went against her very nature to blindly follow his orders, but she was in no position to argue. She’d gotten a glimpse of what he was capable of. He’d defeated her with terrifying ease, and Calexa was no pushover. The thought made her shudder. Had he really been fighting her, or just toying with her?

Something wrapped around her waist.

It was heavy and warm and strong and strangely familiar, almost like an arm. The air in front of her moved, and she gasped as the thing tightened.

Her eyes flew open. He was there, right in front of her, barely inches from her, and yet no part of him touched her except for his…

How the hell had he moved so fast?

She froze.

His tail!

His black tail curled around her waist. It was as thick as her wrist and it felt like coiled steel. She forgot to breathe as its tip snaked up toward her neck, coming to rest at the hollow above her collarbone. There was something sharp and spiky at the end of his tail. It dug ever-so-slightly into the thin material of her thermosuit.

Calexa’s trigger finger itched, and she mentally cursed the alien for taking away her weapons. Without them, she felt naked and vulnerable. Against an opponent of this caliber, she needed every advantage she could get.

“Understand this,” he said, his voice low and soft. “I do not wish to restrain you, fight you, or hurt you in any way.”

The ground around his feet became liquid, swirling like a miniature vortex. It made a soft, metallic scraping sound as it rippled and undulated, lapping at his feet. It was as if the very heart of the ship itself were under his command.

Calexa couldn’t figure out whether his words were supposed to be reassuring or threatening. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to accept your situation. You have no power here.”

Calexa stared at him, not quite understanding his words.

He moved forward a fraction, his tail—she couldn’t believe it was actually around her—tightening in an unbreakable loop. Reflexively, her hands dropped to her waist, her bare fingers curling around the strong, snakelike limb.

His skin felt like rough velvet. It was surprisingly warm and soft, and she had an absurd desire to stroke it.

But then he was right in her face, shattering any notion of softness or warmth. His eyes burned with a delicious intensity that was so startling against the inky blackness of his marked skin. “You will not catch me by surprise again. You are strong, but I am far stronger, and this is my domain. You are not in a position to demand anything. When I tell you to follow me, you follow. Do you understand?”

Shit. A dozen questions rose to her lips, but she bit them back. He was a creature from another world, unpredictable and unfathomable. She couldn’t read him at all. She didn’t understand his culture; why he reacted the way he did to certain things. The only thing she knew for certain was that he wanted—no, he expected—her to obey him without question.

Obey? Ha.

The last person who had demanded her complete obedience had ended up dead in his own bed.

“There is a storm in your eyes.” The barbed tip of his tail traced up-and-down the hollow of her neck. Slowly, his tail slithered upward until it was completely wrapped around the base of her neck. “You are an intelligent lifeform, are you not? Understand this. Your life is in my hands, and this place is unforgiving. If you want to survive, you must quell the storm. I see it in every fiber of your being, and I want it gone. I am not interested in fighting you.”

He didn’t tighten the noose around her neck. He didn’t have to. As tendrils of shifting liquid metal began to coil around her ankles like rapidly growing vines, Calexa understood.

She saw it in his eyes. They glowed with deep, hidden power. She got the feeling he could end her life in a heartbeat if he wished.

Whoa. Her instincts screamed at her to be careful.

Why did he suddenly seem so much more dangerous than he had when they’d fought inside the Medusa’s airlock?

His tail flexed. With a soft gasp, Calexa realized she was still holding onto it. Her first instinct was to wrench it away, but she forced herself to be still. “I understand,” she said softly. The moving metal continued to slide up her legs. It took all of her self-control to remain still when her body was primed and ready to fight. Her muscles tensed. Her bionic joints were wound tight. Her breathing was rapid and slightly hoarse, her palms clammy. Her hands shook.

She was actually trembling.

“Good.” Slowly, the Vradhu withdrew his tail. “I will make sure you have deep, painful regrets it if you try anything stupid.” Calexa exhaled in relief as the noose uncoiled from around her neck. The black loops of his tail slid across her waist in a deliberate, almost insolent manner. The moving metal—the so-called ilverium—melted away, releasing her from its unnerving grasp.

All the while, he stared at her, the harsh light turning the liquid metal in his eyes pale and iridescent, like platinum. The message was obvious. Don’t fuck with me.

He’d just succeeded in intimidating the hell out of her, and he hadn’t even raised a weapon in anger. The twin swords at his waist remained hidden in their sheaths.

Calexa didn’t know whether to feel insulted or terrified. Normally, she was the one who did the intimidating, but for now she would have to bide her time until she learned more about this strange new world and its terrifying inhabitants.

The Vradhu’s tail returned to its resting place—coiled around his left leg. “Come.”

This time, she fell into step behind him as he turned, his long warrior’s braid swinging above impossibly broad shoulders. They passed through a dim room where various objects—machines of some sort—glowed an unholy shade of green. Unable to bear it any longer, she broke the silence. “You have a name, don’t you?”

He stopped so abruptly that she almost crashed into him. Her breath caught in her throat. Had she angered him somehow?

Slowly, he turned, and when he met her gaze, his expression was distant. “You may call me Ares.”

Ares. For such an exotic being, that was a damn Earthian sounding name. It resonated deep in her metal bones, feeling ancient and familiar and powerful, like an Old Earth name, one that came from a time when their planet was a lush green paradise where men and women could only gaze up at the stars and dream of gods and monsters.

So why did he look almost… forlorn?

Before she could respond, he turned away, becoming a blur of black and violet and molten silver. The scales of his shimmering armor rippled over his broad shoulders as he stalked gracefully across the dark room, wrapping himself in silence and power. “Follow me, human,” he said. “You will be my translator.”

“Translator?”

“Your people have something I want, paleface.” The metallic echo in his deep, resonant voice made her shudder.

He sounded so damn alien.

“Speak for yourself, inkface,” she muttered quietly under her breath as she followed the mysterious Vradhu with the Earthian sounding name, hoping he wasn’t leading her to a fate worse than death.

Most aliens in the Universe only wanted humans for one purpose, and she would rather die than go down that route again.