With nothing for it, I jumped out of the window to explore. A thick canopy of leaves covered the entire garden, blocking a considerable amount of light. Ferns and underbrush grew all over the ground. Multi-colored vines crept up the tree trunks, decorated in bright flowers. Birds sang; small animals darted back and forth, barely letting me catch a glimpse of fur or scales. Butterfly-sized bees sporting barbed stingers near the length of my pinky on their fluffy asses fluttered by.
It was awesome. This place alone would take a while to explore.
Eventually, the meandering path spat me out in front of another church-esque building made completely of glass. This one was way smaller, though. Maybe it held Crystal Jr.? Through the glass walls, I saw the inside was filled with flowers and plants on tables as well as some floating on nothing but air.
When I went to investigate, the seamless front doors slid open. A drakcol stepped out. His waist-length white hair blew in the wind and around his lean frame. His pitch-black scales had glimpses of silver and white skin around them that I longed to trace with my fingertips. His tail slowly swished back and forth, making me notice his muscular ass. He set down a pot with a bright red flower bush. His long fingers plucked off a couple of decaying leaves before pushing his hair behind his tapered ear, smearing dirt over his scales. Gold earrings and cuffs adorned his ear and one golden chain with an emerald on the end brushed his neck.
“There you go,” he said in a steady voice that drew me in like a moth to the flame.
Damn, he was lovely. His strong features, long nose with his septum pierced, and full lips were like candy to my eyes. Every movement was graceful and liquid. What wouldn’t I give to shoot my shot with such a guy? Then of course be brutallyrejected, but such was life—well, death in my case. No one that pretty was within my league.
Undeterred, I bounced up to him and asked in English, “Aren’t you a pretty one?”
He froze and straightened, long hair falling around his shoulders. His deep green eyes stared straight at me. “Little Soul, what are you doing here?”
My mouth dropped open. He saw me? Heactuallysaw me. It was like everything came into focus as I looked at him. Someone in this vast universe saw and heard me. Suddenly, I wondered how much my afterlife was about to change.
Chapter 3
The drakcol medium.
A human spirit stood in front of me with his mouth hanging open in a disconcerting way. He didn’t resemble my younger brother’s mate, Seth Harris, but he was definitely the same species.
His light brown hair hung to his narrow shoulders in soft curls, and his blue eyes with round pupils so different from mine stared at me. He was short. I didn’t realize humans came that short. Seth wasn’t as tall as most drakcol, but this human was even shorter than him with a thin frame. He was clad in odd clothes. His shirt depicted a human with their tongue hanging out and white hair sticking in every direction, and his blue trousers appeared rather stiff.
“Little Soul,” I said. “How did you get here?”
He didn’t reply, grinning and showing off his even, bright white teeth as well as his unscaled pink tongue.
How had he even gotten here? Tamkolvanloknol was a great distance from Earth, and Kalvoxrencol hadn’t landed on the planet when he retrieved his mate, answering the longing the Crystal had instilled in him. So where exactly had this human spirit come from? And how had he gotten here when most spirits didn’t wander far from their families or where they’d died?
“Do you understand me, Little Soul?” I asked. He probably didn’t speak my language. He might speak the same language as Seth Harris, but from my understanding, there were multiple languages on his planet, unlike my own, which had one. For Seth to speak to this spirit, I would have to explain my inner fire, though Kalvoxrencol might have already done so.
It was my duty to help this soul find peace. I would have to take him to Seth, but I should probably contact him first. He and Kalvoxrencol hadn’t been mated long, and they might be engaged in an activity I had no desire to witness. I suppressed a shudder. Watching my little brother fuck his mate wasn’t something I wished to see.
“Will you follow me, Little Soul?” I asked, even though he didn’t understand me. “You will have to because Seth is the only one who can speak to you.”
“My name is Caleb Smith,” the human said in passable Drakconese. His voice was higher pitched than any drakcol; it fit his slight frame perfectly.
“You understand me?”
His head bobbed. Seth did that too, and I didn’t know what it meant, though I doubted it was him acknowledging my dominance or position. Caleb continued, “I learned. I was on the space station for a while, and then I was on the Admiral Ven.”
I crossed my arms, tail flicking. “How did you get to the space station?”
He grinned, eyes twinkling, and it created the oddest swooping sensation in my stomach. He said, “I was on Earth when I followed purple aliens capturing spiders.”
“Illegal traffickers,” I said. A rather sizable illegal market for spiders existed, but vveki worshiped a goddess whose aspect was similar to that of an Earthen spider, and they considered all of them her sacred children. There was a ban on buying or selling Earthen spiders, as well as a few other planets’ spiders, within Coalition space.
Caleb lifted and lowered his shoulders before a torrent of words fell from his mouth. Some were Drakconese, others were human speech. I understood, though, he was on a ship with spiders that had been altered to be significantly larger, from his swinging arms. Said spiders killed the scientists. Eventually, he boarded a passing shuttle.
“Then you came to our space station?”
He waved a hand. “No. I wandered for cycles. Can’t even tell you how many. I’ve been everywhere.”
“And you are here now.”
“Yep,” Caleb said, smiling at me. “I went on the Admiral Ven to go home, but they didn’t land, so I stuck around for Seth.”
