Chapter Prologue

Daeja paced the tiny rectangular holding cell for the ten thousandth time since the small welcoming committee had placed her there.

Their phrase, not hers.

She scoffed. Her Drakein had been growling incessantly inside her mind’s eye since she arrived.

There was nothing welcoming about the dozen armed non-Drakeins who’d aimed their loud, barbaric weapons at her immediately upon seizing her person.

Inconceivable.

She did not know how they did it, but the planet’s simplistic natives seemed to detect her single exploration pod the moment it touched ground.

When was that exactly? Hmmm.

She struggled to recall her lessons in measuring time on this planet. Non-Drakein 9, or Earth, as it was called by the natives, was strange indeed. They had but one sun and moon and time, though ever moving, was counted in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries—so very bizarre for beings who lived for blips of a Drakein’s lifetime.