Page 13 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

“I’m coming with you,” Nyx announced, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned one hip against the window.

“No shot.” Cordelia shook her head.

“Commander, I can help. If this is about my leg—”

“It’s not. I know how capable you are.”

Some of the anger in Nyx’s face subsided.

Cordelia sighed hard, rubbing her jaw. “Look, this whole situation is a shitshow. I’ve got six people missing from my manifest right now, and these aliens don’t seem like they’re doing much better.”

All four of them darted a glance at the group of aliens waiting nearby. The men all looked away at the same time when they realized they were being perceived.

“I’m not taking anyone else out there to get shot out of the sky,” Cordelia continued in a low voice. “You’re going to stay here where I know you’re safe, and I’m going to bring the others back.”

“But I can help, sir,” Nyx implored.

“You will. You’re going to stay here and look after these two so they don’t get carried off by aliens.”

Nyx muttered something about babysitting under her breath, looking away.

“There, there,” Pandora said, patting her on the shoulder. “I’ll feel much safer having a pit bull like you at my side on this unfamiliar planet.”

Nyx’s hard eyes softened as she looked down at Pandora. They’d become fast friends during mission training; Pandora had an uncanny ability to disarm the hot-headed officer. Nyx heaved a sigh, shrugging.

“Fine, I’ll stay and pretend it means something,” Nyx grumbled.

Pandora smiled, nudging her encouragingly with an elbow. “That’s the spirit.”

Cordelia turned toward the men, whistling sharply. They startled at the sound.

“How did you do that?” Rentir asked, his brows near his hairline.

She snorted, shaking her head.

“Let’s roll out,” she said, walking over to them. “Who’s coming?”

Lidan started to raise a hand, and Rentir smacked it back down.

“I will take you,” Rentir said.

“I’m the better pilot,” Lidan argued.

“She does not need a pilot, and I can manage a hovercraft perfectly well. I will take Cordelia. You can go try to make contact with the others. Thalen needs to be recovered—go to his last coordinates.”

“Who, exactly, put you in charge?” Lidan’s eyes narrowed.

“Idiots,” Haerune grated. “Lidan, do as he says. If we lose Thalen, the movement will lose ground that we may not be able to recover. He should never have left the base to begin with, the stubborn fool.”

Lidan huffed, throwing up all four hands. “Very well. I’ll depart, then.” He spared a final glare for Rentir, rocking his shoulder hard as he brushed by.

“Let’s go,” Cordelia said to Rentir. She bounced on the balls of her feet, testing the too-big boots she’d demanded from him. She’d put on a second pair of socks and laced them tight around her ankles, and while it wasn’t ideal, it would be better than running around barefoot in an alien forest.

His eyes followed her nervous movements appreciatively.

“Yes,” he agreed distractedly. “Let us go.”

Cordelia bobbed her leg restlessly as Rentir punched in the coordinates Lidan had given them on the holomap projected over the windshield of the hovercraft. He typed something in, and a blue circle popped up, encompassing the three points of interest.

“This is our projected range,” he said. “I suggest we start where Lidan found the others, then we head north and start a clockwise sweep, expanding our circle as we cycle back around. We have three hours of daylight left.”

Her translator fumbled a bit with the word hour, clearly offering her the best approximation for whatever alien unit of time he was actually using.

“Let’s do it,” she said, rolling her head until her neck popped. She was anxious to do something. Already, she wasted too much time getting her bearings and sitting on her hands.

He fired up the hovercraft, taking manual control of the vehicle as the blast door lifted away from the mountain.

The smoking forest came into view, and her fingers bit into the fabric of her pants as she remembered the massive laser that had sliced the rotors clean off the hovercraft earlier.

Her final moments on the Leto flashed before her eyes.

Rentir’s hand fell over one of hers and squeezed. She looked up at him, finding his green eyes studying her with concern.

“All will be well, Cordelia,” he murmured, his thumb stroking over her knuckles. “I will not allow you to come to harm. We will find your passengers.”

With no one else present to see her falter, she couldn’t help but take the comfort he offered.

She twisted her hand in his grip until she could curl her fingers around his, squeezing back with all the nervous energy that plagued her.

He looked from their joined hands to her face in open amazement, swallowing hard.

His eyes fell on her lips and grew heavy-lidded.

She cleared her throat, pulling her hand away as the moment stretched and morphed into something less innocent.

“We need to move,” she said, avoiding his gaze.

“Right. Of course.”

When his tail slid along the edge of the bench seat and brushed a soothing path back and forth over her shin, she pretended not to notice.

She looked out of the side window at the forest beneath them. Half the sky was a curtain of smoke from the swath of smoldering trees the laser had left behind. “Do I need to worry about being chopped in half by a space laser?” she asked, glancing over at Rentir.

“No.” His mouth went tight around the corners, his anger obvious. “It will take them a long while to regenerate their charge. A day, at least.”

She looked skyward. “Who are they? Why are they shooting at you?”

“They are auretians.” He shifted restlessly. His tail withdrew from her leg. “Of the Aurillon Empire. Our former overseers.”

“Overseers?”

He hummed a confirmation. The scaled tip of his tail clacked against the metal console as it flicked restlessly.

“Elaborate,” she said, commanding.

He sighed, releasing the controls with one hand to rub at the back of his neck.

“We are quetari,” he said. The word didn’t translate.

“Quetari? What does that mean?”

“Ah, we are… made. Not born. Created for a purpose.”

Her eyes widened. “Genetically engineered, you mean? Like, test tube babies?”

“Tayst toob?” His eyes flicked to her in confusion.

She shook her head. “Sorry, I’m just trying to say—they made you in a lab, right?”

“Yes, that is what I mean to say. We are hybrids, a bred and trained workforce.”

“Overseers,” she said thoughtfully, looking back up as though she’d be able to see the ship in orbit through the dense cloud cover. “I’m guessing they’re not all up there because you guys decided to unionize.”

He cast her a blank look.

“What did they do?” she asked, sobering.

A muscle ticced in his jaw. He fiddled with some of the controls on the dash before he answered. “Whatever they pleased.”

“So, you rebelled.”

“Yes.” The flicking of his tail grew more agitated, and the steering controls creaked beneath his grip.

“How long have they been up there returning fire?”

“One cycle around the sun and thirty-seven rotations.”

“A year and… a month?” She took a guess. “You guys have held out that long against that beast of a ship?”

Rentir didn’t answer as the hovercraft’s nose dipped toward the trees.

“We are close,” he said instead. His tone was colder, more guarded. Did he think she was judging him? That she might side with the mad scientists who’d cooked up their own workforce?

“I’m with you.” She laid a hand on his arm. “What you did was brave, overthrowing the people who thought they had a right to control you. I understand it more than you would guess. Earth wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, either.”

For some reason, that only seemed to ratchet his discomfort higher.

She let her hand fall away, puzzling over his behavior.

She didn’t press the matter as Rentir maneuvered the hovercraft down through the old-growth trees, lowering it next to a lifepod.

The propellers slowed as the craft set down with a soft bump.

Rentir hit a button and both doors popped up and away, baring the forest. She unlatched her harness and slid down the bench, jumping to the ground.

Fresh air filled her lungs as she sucked in a deep breath, savoring it.

It was cleaner than any air she’d breathed, crisper than even the ultra-purified air of the Cassandra had been.

Scents overwhelmed her, floral and loamy, wet and woody.

Was this what nature smelled like? Real nature? There had been so little of it left on Earth by the time they’d departed. Even the few state parks she’d been to had reeked of food stands and were polluted by the noise of arcade music and pickleball courts.

Something in her DNA unfurled at the sight of the untouched habitat her primordial ancestors must have enjoyed. The towering trees, the unfamiliar animal calls, and the sweet kiss of mist on her skin. Her eyes welled with tears.

This was why they had all taken the mission to Lapillus.

This was what they had been searching for.

And sure, some of them wouldn’t have been permitted to stay.

They would have had a year of this and nothing more, would have spent the rest of their lives yearning to go back, but that year would have been more than anyone else on Earth would have. It would have been priceless.

She tipped her head back and let the tears go, rolling down her temples as she tasted real freedom for the first time.

A smile tugged on the corners of her mouth even as she wept.

She wished the crew of the Leto could see this—Felix especially.

He’d joked endlessly about finding a lake and fishing for the rest of his days once they reached Lapillus.

He’d called her ‘a creature intolerant of boredom’ when she’d objected.

“You’d rather be anything but bored, wouldn’t you, Commander?

” He’d teased. “You’ll probably be on the first return flight back to this burning landfill, chomping at the bit for another mission.

I’m surprised you even took this one. Ferrying colonists?

It’s not your speed—not enough death-defying feats. ”

“You never know,” she’d told him, wagging her brows. “The opportunity for a death-defying feat lurks around every corner.”

If she’d known how right she was, she would have never let any of them board that fucking shuttle.

She lowered her face, sniffling, and wiped at her tears with the cuff of her sleeve. Feeling someone watching her, she glanced over at Rentir, who was standing a few steps away. His expression was inscrutable as his strange eyes moved restlessly over her.

“You are distressed,” he said uncertainly, nostrils flaring.

“Overwhelmed,” she corrected, flashing a smile. “I’ve never seen anything like this, or smelled anything like this. It’s humbling.”

“You do not have trees on your planet?”

“Some. But not like this. Not so many. And the air… where I come from, it’s all chemical byproducts and acid rain. I’ve never breathed such clean air.”

He took a deep breath, looking around at the forest as though he was seeing it for the first time. “It pleases you,” he said in a musing tone.

“It does,” she said, brushing her fingers over the rough silver bark of a purple-leafed tree.

“You should stay,” he said suddenly.

She turned to look at him, brows climbing. He looked… shy. Shifting from foot to foot, his tail moving in slow arcs behind him. He took a deep breath.

“Stay,” he repeated. “You and your crew. You would be welcome here, on Yulaira.”

“Yulaira… Is that what this planet is called?”

“It is what we call it. It means ‘new hope.’”

She chewed on that for a moment, pacing and enjoying the crunch of bracken beneath her boots.

Stay.

It wasn’t like they had a lot of options, though there was still the chance they could find a way to navigate one of those ships in the hangar back to Earth if they could recover the Cassandra’s black box.

The decision shouldn’t come down to her; everyone who had been stranded deserved the opportunity to weigh in.

She sighed, rolling her shoulders. A creature swooped by overhead, calling a pretty song as it disappeared into the high boughs of a tree.

It reminded her of the mourning dove that had cooed outside her apartment window every morning.

She’d loved waking up to that sound, that little proof that all of life on Earth hadn’t been polluted to death.

Yulaira must be teeming with it.

Stay, he’d said. It wouldn’t be the worst thing.

“What do they call it?” she pointed toward the sky. “The Aurillon.”

Distaste scrunched up his nose. “Mining Colony 13.”

She mirrored his expression. “Yeah, yours is better. Fuck those guys.”

He grinned. “Come.” He pointed off to her left. “North is this way. Let us begin our sweep.”