Azdrei’in leaned against the wall and folded his arms loosely across his chest while Artemis walked about the room. Even though he had volunteered to share her quarters with her, there was a part of him that was uncomfortable with the knowledge that they would be sleeping in the same space. It wasn’t that he believed he was in danger. He trusted that she wouldn’t suddenly attack him while he slept, but he felt strange because she was a female. They didn’t belong to the same species—this was something he reminded himself of consistently—but for some reason, it was impossible for him to look at her like he had the other animals on her planet. She was undeniably similar to a Lunvalgan female, and because of that, he had an attraction to her that made their temporary living situation feel more intimate than it should have.

“You will see more of space,” he assured her, letting his gaze wander to the windowless walls. “There are places to look out in the spaceship. They are just not here.” A thought made him brighten slightly and he turned back to her. “Seeing Earth is good.” Beautiful, breathtaking, or incredible would have been better words, but he didn’t know them in English, so instead, he projected the emotions that those words elicited as a substitute. “You will like it,” he assured her confidently. They had already seen part of her planet on their way to the mothership, but they had been too close to the surface to get a good look at it. From the larger craft, drifting at a distance, they could see far more, and he was eager to see her reaction to looking down on the planet she called home.

When Artemis spoke about how his kind was nonviolent, Azdrei’in said nothing. He wouldn’t have called his people nonviolent, personally. They were predators by nature and equipped with all the biological tools to hunt and kill. However, their violence was directed more properly than the human race’s was. Instead of using their weapons to fight each other, they mostly spilled blood to survive. They ate other creatures when they were hungry and defended themselves from threats. When it came to interpersonal squabbles, their leaders were quick to mediate and shut down conflicts before they could escalate to the point of physical violence. The heavy-handed leadership combined with the hive-like mentality of their people was what kept the peace among them. Perhaps when he became more fluent in her language, he would explain it to her more thoroughly.

He looked down at the video playing on the human’s device when she showed it to him. “I can teach you,” he told her idly in response to her request to learn his language. “We might be here for a long time. When we are in this room, I will give you more words to learn.” That would be a perfect distraction for him too, so he would have something to think about other than the fact that he was sleeping in the same room as a female human that he found inexplicably attractive.

In the next moment, the pocket door slid open as two male Lunvalgans entered the room carting his bed from his old quarters. Azdrei’in looked up and stepped away from the wall he’d been lounging against. “Bring it over here, thank you,” he instructed them with a gesture toward the side of the space opposite of where Artemis’s bed hung.

The two nodded and placed the mat on the floor. They took the furled cords that were attached to the edges and unwound them, lifting them up to the ceiling to hang the bed magnetically to the metal canopy over their heads. Since they shuffled rooms around so often, it was easier to make the furniture as portable as possible, so it wasn’t a hassle to move it from one space to another. Suspending it was an easy solution to meet the need.

Once they were done, he thanked the two again, and they left, leaving him alone with Artemis once more. Azdrei’in stepped over to his newly added bed and sat on the edge. The mat bowed slightly under his weight and swung backwards by its cords, but it supported him just as well as the bed in her hideout had. “Do you need food?” he asked, beckoning her to come closer. “You brought food from Earth, yes? I don’t know if the food here is good for you.”