“ARCHAIC LANGUAGE DETECTED. DRAKAVIAN. CALIBRATING.”

I leap backward with a snarl, dropping into a defensive crouch, my claws extending instinctively. My eyes dart around the cave, searching for the source of the disembodied voice. The glow beneath my skin suddenly dies and I sniff. All I can scent is her. Jus-teen.

Confused, my gaze shifts back to her. That’s when I notice the same hand that had reached toward me now reaches to her ear. To the stone she has lodged within it.

Jus-teen’s eyes widen. Her mouth falls open.

“You heard that?” she vocalizes.

I’d noticed it before but hadn’t given it much thought. Discovering her presence was shocking enough. Her wearing a stone inside her ear was the least strange thing about her. Now it glints unnaturally, and I realize the voice came from there. Some kind of magic? A trapped spirit? Is she possessed by something?

I bare my teeth, claws scraping against stone, ready to defend us against whatever unseen threat has revealed itself.

“Oh my God,” she breathes.

I wish I could understand, but I am no fool. She does not appear to be alarmed. Why?

Because she knew of this intruder all along. How long has this spirit been watching us? Listening to us?

My nostrils flare. My spine curving as I get ready to pounce. I will rip it from her ear and smash it till it turns to dust. I cannot trust this female’s instincts when she has left such a thing so close to her skull.

This is an unknown. Danger.

Danger she was aware of.

The tribe. My clan. I cannot take her there. Not yet. Not until I understand what she is, and why Ain has sent her.

Seeing my stance, she rises slowly, arms stretched out toward me, palms pointing down. “Wait!” She’s standing now, approaching me like I would a creature of the dust that I do not want to startle. “It’s not dangerous—it’s helping us!”

Useless words.

Useless words mean nothing.

“Rok…Rok…It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s just my translator. It’s not dangerous.”

The stone in her ear speaks again. “CALIBRATION AT 10%.”

The sound seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

I do not trust it. I do not trust anything that speaks words without a mouth, that hides inside her skull like a parasite.

This is…unnatural.

I stare at her outstretched hands, at the hope blazing in her eyes, at the stone that whispers with voices that should not exist. My muscles remain coiled, ready to strike. To protect. To destroy.

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Chapter 18

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VIOLENCE: NOT THE BEST COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

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JUSTINE

It happens so fast I can barely process it.

One moment, I’m watching Rok crouch defensively, his golden eyes fixed on my translator earpiece, his body coiled like a spring about to release.

The next, there’s a blur of movement—so quick I can’t even track it—and then his clawed hand is at my ear, a sharp pain flares across my skin, and he’s leaping back with my earpiece clutched between his fingers.

“NO!” I scream, lunging forward. My hands wrap around his forearm, but it’s like hugging the branch of a tree. He doesn’t even seem to notice my grip, my strength completely negligible against his.

With one swift, savage motion, he slams the earpiece down and crushes it with a rock. I would laugh at the pun if a scream didn’t lodge itself in my throat instead. Over and over he slams the rock down until only fragments remain—bits of crystal, twisted metal, and tiny components I can’t even identify.

The world stops.

I stare at the destroyed remains of the translator as they fall like dust from the stone.

My last connection to understanding. My only chance of communication. Gone.

The sound that escapes my throat doesn’t even sound human—it’s raw, primal, a keening wail of loss and fury and disbelief.

“What have you done?” My voice rises, breaking. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

Rok stands motionless, watching me with those unreadable alien eyes, his posture still tense but no longer poised to attack. His claws are still visible, though, and the set of his jaw is still tight.

“You had no right!” I scream, my hands balling into fists at my sides. “No right! That was mine! Do you have any idea what you just destroyed? Any idea at all?”

He tilts his head slightly, and the gesture—that same goddamn head tilt he’s done since we met, like I’m some curious specimen he’s trying to catalog—only enrages me further.

“Stop looking at me like that!” I shout, taking a step toward him. “Like you’re so superior, like you know what’s best for me! You don’t know anything about me! You don’t know where I’m from, what I need, who I am!”

My emotions are a hurricane, tearing through me with such force I can barely stay upright. I’m shaking, my whole body trembling with a cocktail of rage, helplessness, and a soul-deep despair that threatens to drown me.

“That was my only chance to understand you!” I yell, gesturing at the destroyed earpiece. “My only chance to tell you what I need, to ask for help finding my people! And you just…crushed it! Like it was nothing!”

Rok remains still, his expression unreadable. Is he even capable of regret? Of understanding what he’s done? Or am I just a pet to him, some strange creature to be managed and controlled?

“You primitive, controlling, arrogant alien!” My voice breaks on the last word, and I hate it—hate the weakness, hate the tears that are now threatening to stream down my face, hate how utterly, completely powerless I feel.

My only hope. Crushed by a fist that could just as easily crush me.

“I don’t even know why I’m screaming at you,” I say, my voice dropping to a bitter, choked whisper. “You can’t understand a word I’m saying, can you? And I can’t understand you. You made sure of that.”

I turn away from him, unable to bear the weight of his gaze anymore. My eyes fall on the remains of the translator, scattered like stardust across the stone floor. With trembling fingers, I kneel and begin to gather the pieces, though I know it’s futile. The technology is far beyond anything we have on Earth—I couldn’t repair it even if I had all the tools and knowledge in the world.

But I can’t just leave it there, these fragments of my last hope.

“You don’t get it,” I whisper, not looking at him as I collect the tiny pieces. “I’m lost. I’m stranded on an alien planet with no way to contact my people, no way to get home. That translator was my only link to understanding anything about this place. About you.”

My hand closes around the last shard, a jagged piece of crystal that cuts into my palm. I barely feel it. The physical pain is nothing compared to the hollowness spreading through my chest.

“I was starting to trust you,” I whisper, still not turning to face him. “I thought…I don’t know what I thought. That maybe we could figure this out together. That maybe you weren’t just some mindless brute who found me in the desert.”

I stand slowly, the pieces of the translator clutched in my hand, blood from the cut mixing with the broken technology. When I finally turn to look at him again, my anger has crystallized into something colder, more bitter.

“I was wrong,” I say flatly. “You’re just like every other man I’ve ever met. Thinking you know best. Thinking you have the right to control everything. Making decisions for me without even asking what I want.”

I know he can’t understand the words. But he understands the tone—I can see it in the way his posture shifts, in the subtle movement at his throat, the clenching of his jaw.