Page 12 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

“Rentir?”

Lidan swatted him hard in the gut with his tail, twitching it out of the way before Rentir could grab it. “We’re talking to you.”

“Right,” he muttered, tearing his eyes away from Cordelia.

She paced back and forth before the windows as she trained her translator, her gaze flicking restlessly over the smoldering trees in the forest beyond.

Her agitation was obvious, and she’d tried twice already to convince him in broken conversation to take her out of the secure facility.

He’d pretended not to understand, unwilling to face her disappointment when he outright refused.

For years before he’d been stranded planetside, he’d been singularly feared by the males around him.

Aboard the Gidalan, his mere name had been a threat.

Yet when it came to this human female… his spine was shockingly weak.

He had not taken an order off any but Thalen and Haerune since parting with his former master, but he thought he would pull the moon down from the sky if she demanded it.

The other females were gathered on the couch, talking to their translators between bites of food.

He’d brought them a second round of rations after seeing how ravenously they ate the first portion.

They were all outfitted in the same standard issue performance wear that the hybrids wore, two of the newcomers as swamped as Cordelia had been in the fabric.

The third, the human missing her lower leg, fit comfortably into the smallest size.

She was a towering female with a personality to match.

She’d taken off her prosthetic and propped it against the low table, crossing her legs under her while she ate.

His attention drifted back to Cordelia, to the tension in her shoulders that he longed to ease. He would venture out and personally retrieve every human if it would bring her—

“Rentir,” Haerune repeated in exasperation.

“What?” he growled.

“Did you hear anything we said?”

Rentir rubbed the back of his neck, his tail lashing. “…No.”

Haerune cursed, scrubbing a hand over his face as his tentacles scrunched up unhappily over his shoulder. “Why is your brain not addled?” he asked Lidan. “You were around three of them, and your faculties seem intact.”

Lidan shrugged his upper shoulders. “I’m not a fool?”

Rentir narrowed a glare on him, his scyra sharpening to a cutting edge.

Lidan eyed it, taking a step out of reach.

The pilot was tiresome—those who transmuted their fear to anger always were.

He could see it in the male’s eyes, flickering beneath the loathing, and in the way his chest rose and fell too shallow, too quickly.

Rentir was weary of it. If he could unzip his skin and don another to escape the lingering curse of that sour fear that followed him, he would not hesitate.

“Enough,” Haerune said, scolding. “I was trying to tell you that we’ve received word from Fendar. Communications are to be kept to a minimum, as he has reason to believe they’ve decrypted our secure channels. The last word we had from Thalen was that he and Elten were on the ground.”

“Do we know how many more humans are out there?” Rentir asked, his attention drifting back to Cordelia and her restless grief.

“There were nine pod signatures when your Cordelia dropped her load.” Lidan crossed all four arms over his broad chest. “We’re not sure if they all survived.”

My Cordelia. His chest tightened even as pleasure rippled through him at the acknowledgment. His ire toward the male thawed a bit.

“We have four here,” Haerune mused, oblivious to Rentir’s inner turmoil. “That leaves six unaccounted for.”

“Who was in the other hovercraft when the Gidalan fired on them?” Rentir asked.

Lidan scrubbed his jaw. “Ah… Xeth.”

Rentir made a sound of outrage. “Thalen sent Xeth out after the females?”

“He’s an extremely resourceful male,” Lidan said, defensive over his batch brother. “I’ll remind you that none of us would be standing here at liberty to speak freely to one another if not for his sacrifice.”

“He’s a feral creature.” Rentir fired back, slicing a hand through the air. “He should not be permitted within thirty feet of the females. We cannot anticipate how he will react!”

“And what of how you might react, Rentir? Xeth is not the only hybrid with a reputation for violence.”

Rentir reeled back as the blow landed right at the heart of him. His shoulders sagged, his tail falling limp behind him. He worked his jaw, looking away from Lidan, unable to meet his eye.

“You’re the one who has become unpredictable,” Lidan pressed. “You had your scyra at my throat not long ago, ready to cut me open for a female you’ve known for less than a day. At least the last time you cut your own kin down, it was out of a loyalty not so easily bought.”

“Enough!” Haerune snapped. “This is fruitless. Slinging aspersions does nothing to help our cause, nor the females. We must formulate a plan.”

Lidan blew out a terse sigh.

“Haerune is right,” he admitted begrudgingly.

“We haven’t been able to hail Thalen on the comms, and Xeth is down.

We need to regroup, and quickly. Thalen wanted the females safe and recovering before he brought Yelir in on the update, and it’s going to be difficult to keep him from asking questions with the Gidalan firing on us. ”

Rentir began to pace at the mention of the miners’ leader. They lived below the facility in their original quarters, numbering in the hundreds. They held no trust nor any love for the hybrids who had worked aboveground in service to the overseers, except for Thalen and Xeth.

Thalen was a twin to Ven, Yelir’s second. They were identical, an egg that had split during incubation. True blood siblings, an extreme rarity among the hybrids. Thalen had been assigned to security, and Ven to the mines when they came of age.

Xeth… Xeth had been deeply bonded to a male from the mines. He had a place among them still, if he sought to claim it.

Yelir was an honorable male, but he was also stubborn and exacting.

Thalen wasn’t sure how he would react to the news of the females, so they had deigned to keep the news of the arrival under wraps until they had more information.

Ven had been tasked with making excuses for the surface squabbling, which Yelir was not concerned with unless there were auretians on Yulairan soil.

There wasn’t much he and the other miners could do long distance; they were all biolocked out of the ranged weapons and other software.

“If Ven finds out we can’t hail his brother, he’ll have a full host of miners on deck in an instant.” Rentir’s blood cooled at the thought.

They had mistrust of the surface crew, but they despised Rentir the most. He was always forced to sit out the negotiations between the two groups, lest his presence start a scuffle.

It wasn’t his own hide he feared for if it came to that—it was Cordelia.

If they figured out she mattered to him, without Thalen here to diffuse tensions…

He shuddered.

“He can’t find out,” Rentir said urgently, grabbing Haerune by the collar.

“Be at peace,” Haerune said, prying his hand away. “There’s no reason to assume the worst, yet. We won’t give Ven reason to worry without due cause.”

“If they come up here…”

“It won’t come to that.”

Rentir looked askance at Lidan, who nodded tightly despite the aggravated way he ground his teeth. Rentir’s shoulders sagged.

Haerune cleared his throat. “Now, if we’re done catastrophizing, we need to—”

“I need something to write with,” a feminine voice interjected.

They all turned, wide eyed, to look at Cordelia. Her chin was hitched up, her hands on her hips.

“If you’re done arguing?” she pressed. “Something to write with. Now, please.”

Rentir couldn’t stop gaping at her in amazement. His eyes flicked to the other females, who were still working tirelessly to update the language bank with their unfamiliar words. Clearly, they had established enough of a baseline for the translator to become conversational.

“Ah… you… you just need to switch the mode on your comm,” Rentir stammered.

She frowned, her arched brows drawing together.

“My comm. You mean this thing?” She held up the band around her wrist. It was the simplest of comm technologies—the Aurillon didn’t waste money purchasing the nicest tech for their hybrid workforce—but it had several basic functions.

Haerune had them all set for translation.

“Yes. May I?” He held out a hand, palm up. His heart stuttered when she rested her wrist in his grip without hesitation. His skin pressed against hers, and a tingling sensation spread up his arm.

“I thought it was just a translator.”

“It may as well be,” Haerune griped. “It’s not safe to transmit at present.”

Rentir slid his thumb over the metal band and back again, flipping through the apps on the device until he reached the rudimentary note-taking application. A small holographic keyboard popped up, covered in Tualithan symbols, the language of the Aurillon.

She barked a bitter laugh.

“Um, any chance you’ve got an Eenglesh keyboard? I can’t type in… whatever that is.”

“Tualithan,” Rentir said. “You can use the gestural setting. Here.” He tapped a button to switch to gestural controls, and the keys flattened into an empty box.

“Like this.” He scrawled his name with the tip of one finger.

“Then you can just…” He held two fingers over his name and flicked upward, sending them up to the holographic screen and clearing the writing space.

He demonstrated how she could move them around, showing her the boundaries of the holographic screen.

“That’ll work.” She immediately began to draw alien symbols in the air. Her little fingers were deft, working quickly to scribble out things and flick them up onto the screen. All three hybrids watched in silent fascination.

“These are my people,” she announced when she was done, holding up two columns of text.

“These four are those of us gathered here.” She pointed to names as she pronounced them.

“Me, Cordelia, and then that’s Nyx, Pandora, and Lyra.

These six are the ones I need to recover.

Eunha, Celeste, Seren, Thea, Sophia, and Juno.

“The pods I launched have a protocol to attempt to remain with a kilometer of another pod. If you give me a map and he”—she pointed at Lidan—“marks where he found those three, we should be able to establish a search area. Aside from that, they should be transmitting an SOS signal that we can trace to their exact location. I just have to figure out how to pick up the frequency with your tech.”

Lidan cleared his throat, shifting from foot to foot. From behind his fist, he muttered, “Not anymore.”

“What was that?” Cordelia asked sharply, turning her shrewd blue gaze on him.

Lidan looked taken aback by her intensity. Jealousy twisted in Rentir’s gut as they met eyes. He wanted to step between them and bare his fangs at the pilot.

“Ah, they’re… not transmitting anymore,” Lidan said, rubbing his arms. “Fendar shut the signal down as they descended.”

Cordelia took a step toward him, tension rippling in her shoulders. “Who the fahk is Fendar and why is he fahking with my lifepods?” Venom dripped from her words.

“Your lifepods?” Haerune asked.

She glared over her shoulder. “That not translating for you? I want to know where your men get off interfering with my passengers. Who the fahk shuts down an SOS?”

“What is ‘fahk’?” Lidan asked.

Cordelia closed her eyes and sighed, threading her fingers into her tangled hair.

Haerune interjected. “As I said, communications are not secure. Fendar must have decided the females were at greater risk transmitting their location with the Gidalan in orbit than they would be waiting for us to retrieve them through baser means.”

“I want to speak to this Fendar. Now. And somebody needs to bring me a map.” She jabbed a finger at Lidan. “You’re gonna mark the exact coordinates where you found these three.”

Rentir caught her finger before it could poke Lidan in the chest. He didn’t like the appreciative glint in Lidan’s eyes. She tugged out of his grip just as quickly as he expected, but at least she wasn’t touching the other hybrid.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re damn touchy?” she asked, turning her ire on him.

“I apologize.” Rentir bowed his head deferentially.

Haerune made a strangled sound of surprise. There was only one male Rentir had bowed to—the most feared and hated of the Aurillon. The gesture wasn’t lost on Lidan, either, given how his jaw went slack.

“Fendar is not here,” Haerune said. He gestured to the window. “He is out there, part of the effort to recover your passengers before the Aurillon see fit to intervene.”

A muscle feathered in Cordelia’s jaw as she studied the horizon.

“A map,” she bit out again. “Now.”