Page 32 of Owning His Pet
“I agree,” I say.
“Go well, Tasin,” she says.
Wow, fucking useless.
Again, my pet’s thoughts are loud and scandalous. She cannot help them. And Alara cannot help but hear them, and though she schools her features and her mind, I know she must be furious.
“Goodbye, revered one,” I say, bowing low.
My pet thinks something so unrepeatable I don’t dare even think it in my own mind.
As we prepare to leave, we are not alone. Three warriors come to stand with me.
“Is this the escort to make sure we actually leave?” I make the joke lightheartedly, though I am sure Alara would want to ensure me and my pet are no longer on her plane of existence. We have caused her much embarrassment.
“Did you think we’d let you go alone?” Aric laughs and shakes his head. “We’re coming with you, brother.”
“And we’ve got a ship!” Fidas says.
“And my axe!” Drak adds.
We all laugh, even though we’re not sure why. Jokes are funny things. They have a tendency to get into the cosmic fabric and just stay there, sometimes for millennia, being funny for no reason at all. Humans like to say death and taxes are inevitable. But they’ve forgotten about jokes.
I am pleased. One of our kind can be a formidable enemy, but four is a war party. We will be more or less untouchable. It ishard to catch our kind off guard at the best of times, but with four minds directed toward threats at all times, we should be very safe in the rough and feral lands of common existence.
Time chimes, and we step back to the world that my pet would probably consider real. A place where time flows in the usual way, and actions have consequences, rather than the other way around.
I feel her breathe a sigh of relief, taking air deep into her lungs. I wonder if she noticed that there wasn’t really oxygen where we were, and that she did not need to breathe? I won’t ask. I don’t want to panic her. She did so well to tolerate it for as long as she did.
“Where are we?” She asks the question, and it is a good one.
“This is a battleship,” I explain. “I did mention that we’re at war, did I not? It would be a big thing not to mention.”
“At war with who?”
“Our enemies,” I say. I hate to be vague, but being specific might cause her to become panicked, and she has been through enough.
“And who are they?”
“Well, there’s a few species. The World Eaters are our main opponents at this stage.”
The image of something like a giant fish opening its jaws leaps into her mind as she suddenly imagines a universe that feels as though it is made up of vast distances and massive planets being nothing more than a pool with baubles of life dancing in it, being consumed by creatures multitudes of times bigger.
“They’re big enough to eat worlds?”
“No. They have fleets of small robots that can consume entire planets within a matter of years. It’s interesting to watch, but horrific to experience.”
“Sounds like a lot of life,” she says.
She is not wrong.
“Captain Tasin, what’s our heading?”
CHAPTER 4
Mara
Just like that, I find myself a captive pet on an alien warship.
