Page 17 of Claimed By the Vykan

The word tradition sent a shiver racing up Morgan’s spine.

“I don’t know what that means,” she whispered.

Raeska regarded her for a long moment, as though deciding how much a human could comprehend.

You will be bathed,the stone translated gently,dressed, and calmed. It is important you do not meet the Vykan in distress.

Calmed.

As though she were something fragile. Something delicate.

Something that might break.

Morgan felt a tremble run through her fingers.

Her mouth tried to form words—objections, questions,anything—but nothing came.

Raeska waited patiently.

Morgan forced in a breath, her voice shaking. “And if I’m… not calm?”

The alien’s head tilted again, eyes soft but inscrutable.

Then I will assist you until you are.

A warmth spread through Morgan’s chest—fear, disbelief, and something sharp that she couldn’t name.

“The Vykan,” she repeated quietly, almost to herself. The word felt heavy now. Final.

Raeska nodded once.

He is expecting you.

CHAPTER 10

Raeska’s words lingered in the air like a weight.

He is expecting you.

Morgan stood on the warm stone tiles, the sound of the trickling water behind her suddenly too loud in the quiet. Her fingers curled reflexively at her sides. Part of her wanted to tell this alien woman to leave, to say that she would not meet anyone, least of all some masked warlord who believed he could claim her the way her father had tried to hand her over to Daniel Li.

Part of her wanted to run, except there was nowhere to run.

The reality of that pressed in from all sides: the stone walls, the fortress, the mist outside, the alien planet, the cold certainty in the Marak’s voice when he told her resistance would be futile. She was so far beyond any world where rules she understood applied that the idea of escape felt like a half-remembered dream.

She drew in a breath, held it for a moment, and then let it go slowly. “What happens,” she asked quietly, “if I tell you I’m not going anywhere?”

Raeska did not flinch. Her large black eyes watched Morgan with an opaque calm that gave nothing away. When she spoke,her voice was musical, the translator stone in Morgan’s pocket echoing it in perfect, seamless English.

You would not be forced,Raeska said.You would be persuaded. Guided. This is safer for you.

“Safer,” Morgan repeated, tasting the word. It did not fit easily in her mouth. Everything about this situation felt like the opposite of safe. And yet, she thought of the hands that had bathed her on the Vykan ship, the food she had been given, the way the attendants had watched her without cruelty, without ridicule. No one had raised a hand against her. No one had shouted. No one had tried to break her down.

They had simply moved her. Relocated her. Redirected her life without asking.

Just like her father.

Only this time, the cage had moved too far away for him to follow.