Page 18 of Exiles on Earth

He moves his forearm in her way to protect his chest and stomach, but he doesn’t strike her as she bats at him with her paws. Floss barks once, wagging her tail harder, utterly content.

“Floss, enough.” I grab the elderly dog by the scruff of her neck, as if she were an unruly puppy again. “Down.”

Ilia and the standing men drop in perfect unison. It’s a smooth, deliberate motion, their legs folding beneath them before their knees slam into the sodden earth. They bow, pressing their foreheads to the ground. Even Gara, weak as he is, raises a hand to press his knuckles to his forehead.

“Yes, female,” they intone together, their voices low and reverent.

I stagger back, air stolen from my lungs. All of these massive, powerful men, on their knees because of what I said? The weight of the moment presses against me, an unfamiliar power I didn’t ask for and don’t understand. What the hell is this?

“Oh, fuck me,” Arabella breathes.

Gara looks at her sharply. “Your meaning?”

“Do not question them,” Ilia growls to him in English. For the benefit of us earthlings, I’m sure.

Ilia turns his face up from his supplicant position on his knees, and the breath in my chest catches. “As you can see, we mean you no harm. We need to fix our ship and we will leave. I only ask that you do not involve your… leaders. We know nothing of this planet, so I would guess your leadership knows nothing of ours.”

“How do you figure that?” Laura asks.

“We’re scouts,” Ilia explains. “We go to new planets all the time, and we knew of no life within the travel time it took us to get here.”

“What do you do to these new planets?” Laura drums her perfect pink fingernails on her forearm.

“Take resources. My team, we find rare lower life forms.”

Laura tenses. “Which are?”

“Uh… your words include greenery here.”

What could that mean? “Plants?” I offer.

Ilia closes his eyes briefly, his scales dimming. He wavers a little, probably exhausted, but he recovers quickly. Perhaps he’s holding himself together with determination.

Oh, how well I understand that.

“Yes,” he says with a contented sigh. “Plants. That’s the word I struggled to find.” He puts his hand out and strokes a cropping of grass before looking up at me, steeling himself with his hands fisted at his sides as if he’s done something wrong.

“So you say.” Laura paces back and forth, heels sinking into the wet earth, ruining the effect a little.

The men don’t move except for their eyes, tracking her every step.

“I promise we will not harm you. You have my word, our word, whatever assurances you need.” Ilia glances at the manacles, heaped in a pile in front of him. “We would never hurt any female.” His breath catches, scales flashing red, like a ruby. “Not deliberately.”

There’s something there, I know it.

“And yet, you blew up Ellen’s barn,” Laura says sternly.

“My deepest apologies. I steered as well as I could,” Arture, the pilot, explains.

“Nevare told us there was life in the way,” one of the triplets adds. “We avoided all loss of it.”

“And I saved you,” Ilia adds quietly, eyes sparking with challenge as he locks gazes with me, but then dropping his eyes again like he’s not allowed to look at me.

I’m grateful for him saving me from the explosion, same as he’s hopefully thankful I helped him subdue the robot. But looking at the scattered remains of my barn, hot flames burn in my chest.

“I wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t literally dropped into my life and broken what remained of it. You might be happy as Larry once you fix your ship, but what am I going to do? I can’t raise money for a business, let alone repairs! You’ve really ruined everything, you know.”

He weathers my anger, an immoveable rock kneeling in the mud. “We’ll fix it,” he says, a rumble in his voice. “We’lldevote our labor to restoring your building before our ship. In order to do that, I ask you not to turn us in, unless the work isn’t to your satisfaction.”