Page 54 of I'm Not Your Pet

The hallway chilled my bare feet, but I barely noticed. I only had to duck behind a corner to hide a handful of times from other crew members—which was a relief. Even if every time made me feel like I was James Bond or some shit—and not a nosy bastard, who needed reassurance he couldn’t get with words.

Because Roark didn’t know the words I needed.

I wasn’t sure why I was so angry at the prospect of Roark getting some nookie on the side. I knew I wasn’t a shark-dude myself. I hadn’t seen a single cross-species pair on the ship, andit didn’t take a genius to infer that wasn’t a thing these creatures did. How would they procreate, after all? This was a question I’d asked myself about a thousand times—since I hadn’t seen a female shark-person even once.

Could male sharks get pregnant?

No. That didn’t seem likely. Roark was see-through enough I could somewhat see his organs at the right angle. And I’d never spotted a womb or ovaries.

Besides, he was made ofJell-O.

The idea of Roark making hypothetical shark babies with anyone but me made me want to scream, though. So I put that train of speculation to rest. I didn’t need another thing to angst about. Not when I was already annoyed at myself for acting out like this. Not when there was no point working myself up before I got solid answers.

I heard quiet barking when I rounded a corner in the hallway, and my hackles rose. It wasn’tRoark’slaugh. I’d recognize that sound anywhere. I seriously doubted he was off laughing in a dark corner alone, so that confirmed that he was with someone else.

Fuck.

I could see more light spilling from the open doorway I’d followed him to. Always aware of the buttons that could be there, I slipped along the surface of the cool metal wall as silently as I could, ready to catch my owner in action.

Except, when I peeked around the lip of the doorway what I saw was…yeah.

Not at all what I expected.

What the hell are they doing?

I frowned, trying to make sense of the sight in front of me.

Roark sat on a hover-chair in the back corner of the unfamiliar room. Along the walls were all sorts of tools and implements, and in the center was a row of identical tablescovered in machines I had no hope of understanding. It looked like a lab.

A science lab.

Similar to the ones I’d worked tirelessly at during high school, but bigger—and brighter—with glowy objects and instruments I’d never imagined in my wildest dreams. Ushuu was beside him. Which again, had not been what I expected. He had a chair of his own, and his sleeves were rolled up, his body turned toward me, where Roark’s was tipped away.

And they were—yeah. I didn’t really get what I was seeing. I mean, Idid. Obviously. I was a straight-A student,hello! I would’ve been doing exactly what they were doing right about now if I’d never been abducted.

Except I’d be at Harvard surrounded by trust-fund brats who didn’t know what Oscar Mayer hotdogs tasted like.

Which was to say…the two sharks were…

Yeah.

They werestudying.

Actually—more accurately—Roarkwas studying.

He had about forty images hovering in the air surrounding him, holograms blown up in a myriad of colors. Various illustrations and photographs were splashed across each open window. I was unfortunately too far away to tell exactly what any of them were. The shapes, however, looked somewhat familiar?

Which was weird, because since I’d been abducted three years ago I hadn’t really had that thought often, aboutanything. Space was a strange place full of a variety of oddly shaped things. Nothing had the color you expected. Nothing tasted the way you thought it would taste. Nothing smelled the way you thought it should smell.

So, tell me why…why—if I squinted—it looked like there were images of Earth hovering in the air? The Eiffel Tower. The Statue of Liberty. The pyramids.Sushi?

“Thank yew fuhr comming,” Roark said in English, slow and annunciated. The words were clunky on his tongue, but recognizable all the same.

“Thank you,” Ushuu corrected him.

“Thank you,” Roark repeated, much more slowly, but smoother all the same.

“For.”

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