Page 21 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

Rentir helped Cordelia down from the tree, showing infinite patience at her molasses pace. Her wound had begun to throb in earnest. Every flex of her abdomen caused a shock of pain to spear through her.

When they reached the ground, her eyes darted restlessly despite Rentir’s reassurances that the yethor would be sleeping.

“I don’t suppose you’d lend me that blaster of yours?” she asked, shuddering at the phantom sensation of being watched by a predator.

He gave her a wry look. “I cannot. The weapons are biolocked to my signature. Only those of us who were granted access before the rebellion are able to wield them, though Fendar has long been working to change that.”

She threw up her hands in defeat. At his crestfallen look of personal failure, she slapped him on the arm.

“It’s okay, Ren. Really.”

He did a double take at the nickname, his tail rattling with what she thought was excitement. His mood seemed to lift.

“You’re a soft touch, aren’t you?” she murmured.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head, grinning as they set out for the day.

She couldn’t believe it was the same forest she’d seen last night.

The woods were almost entirely quiet, no longer teeming with life and color.

The sun warmed her skin where it streamed down between leaves made translucent by the light of dawn.

A curtain of moss rippled in the gentle breeze, carrying a candy-sweet smell of nectar.

“What are you thinking?” Rentir’s tail skimmed along the outside of her thigh.

“That this place doesn’t feel real.” She caught the tip of his tail in her hand. The scales that covered it were smooth and warm. “How does your tail do that thing where it becomes sharp?”

“There are bones within that extend at my will, stretching the scales taut,” he said. “Like this.”

He stopped walking, and his tail gently tugged free of her grip, the tip swaying in front of her face. Between one blink and the next, its rounded shape warped into a sharp-edged blade.

She whistled, amused by the way he flinched and flicked his ears at the sound. “Must be nice to have a built-in weapon.”

She pressed a tentative finger to the tip, and blood welled. The blade receded to the rounded tail tip as Rentir snatched her hand up.

“Careful!" He stared at the bead of blood on her fingertip. Abruptly, he dragged her hand closer, locking his lips around her finger. His tongue, hot and wet, swept over the tiny cut.

She felt the stroke as though he’d delivered it to her clit, instead. With a strangled sound, she twisted her hand out of his grip. “What are you doing?” Cordelia dabbed at the cut with the hem of her shirt.

“I… I don’t know.” His eyes were glazed, simmering with intensity as they followed her hand.

She cleared her throat hard. “We should keep moving.”

“Yes… yes, of course.” He blinked hard, dragging his gaze from her. “This way.”

They hiked in silence for a while. Rentir repeatedly checked the navigation on his comm device.

“So…” She panted, pressing a hand over the pain in her side as she clambered over a root. “What’s up with this ‘lodge’?”

“What’s up?” he echoed, visibly confused.

“I mean, what is it? Why is it out here?”

He nodded in understanding, reaching out to help her over a rotting log covered in silvery moss. She pulled her hand back as soon as she was over it. The lingering tingle in her fingers unnerved her.

My crew is out there being abducted by aliens, and I’m thinking about climbing on top of one. God, they never should have sent me on this mission.

“The lodge is a leisure facility,” he said, pressing the hand that touched her against his stomach. “A place for the elites of the Aurillon to enjoy themselves. They hunt game for sport.”

“Huh. Guess some things are universal.”

“I have heard things about Auretia—the homeworld of the Aurillon—that there is precious little left in the way of wilds.”

“That sounds familiar, as well.” Bitterness soured her tongue.

“My homeworld was picked clean, too. I doubt there’s anything left now.

” She sniffed, wiping her runny nose on the back of her sleeve.

“I’ll probably never see it again. Maybe I shouldn’t be sad about that.

It was a shithole, but… it was home, you know? ”

He looked around the forest. “Yes, I believe I do.”

She stumbled over an uneven patch of earth, landing hard on her hands and knees. Rentir was by her side in an instant. Groaning, she sat back on her heels.

“Sorry. I’m a little dizzy.”

“You’re dehydrated,” he said, cupping her face in his big hands. “I must find you water.”

“I can make it. How much further?”

Grudgingly, he released her, twisting his wrist to check the map. “Another hour, maybe more at this pace.”

Fuck. She didn’t know if she had another hour in her.

He was right; she was dehydrated. Her canteen had been empty long before they’d found their camping spot the night before.

She was losing a lot of her water to sweat.

Beyond that, she was still dealing with the sluggish clumsiness that always followed a long cryosleep.

Ideally, she’d be curled up in a nest of blankets somewhere, waiting for her faculties to come back online.

Rentir studied her reluctance. His mouth thinned with obvious frustration. Without warning, he lunged at her, banding his arms beneath her back and her knees. She couldn’t help the little shriek that escaped her as he hauled her off the ground.

“I can walk!”

“You will not,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. His tail wrapped around one of her bobbing ankles. “I can get us there faster this way.”

“Seriously, Tarzan, put me down.”

“I will not.”

She squirmed, but he only held her tighter.

“Cordelia,” he said, scolding her.

She fell still, grinding her teeth in frustration. “Fine.”

Defeated, she twined her arms around his neck for stability. His fingers dug into her, and the sordid combination of authority, proximity, and his constant hard-on had her squeezing her thighs together again.

Rentir stumbled, recovering before he dumped her onto the ground. His nostrils flared as his pupils blew wide in his green eyes. “That smell again…”

“What smell?” She hedged, self-conscious.

“It is you,” he said, his tone accusing. “You’re… you smell…” He was panting, and she didn’t think it was from exertion. He hefted her higher in his arms, burying his face in her pelvis.

“Rentir!” She squirmed in earnest, unsettled by the deep, chuffing breaths he took with his nose against her groin.

One of those inhuman whines escaped him, and he looked up at her with his cheek rubbing restlessly over her mons.

“It’s getting harder to ignore. The longer I’m near you, the more it affects me. I need… I need to…” He whined again, squeezing his eyes shut and turning back into her crotch. “I don’t know.” The words were a muffled moan.

It was obvious at this point that he was smelling her arousal, and it was clearly making him insane. She didn’t know what to do.

Offer to end his suffering, the horny, moronic part of her whispered. Give him what he doesn’t know how to ask for.

She couldn’t. They were in the middle of an alien forest filled with predators she’d only begun to scratch the surface of, and she was supposed to be looking for her missing crew. Guilt twisted in her gut at the memory of Thea’s strangled scream.

You’d only destroy him, anyway. Her mind, eternally self-loathing, reminded her of the love and resignation that Felix had worn in his final moments as he’d wrestled her into her lifepod. It was like a bucket of ice over her arousal.

“I think you should put me down.” She was relieved when her voice came out so much steadier than she was feeling.

“No,” he said, straightening and resuming their path toward the lodge. “I apologize, I will not forget myself again. Allow me to do this for you. Please. You are fatigued, and I cannot bear your suffering.”

His words made her heart stutter. She would have clocked it for love bombing from any human man—no one normal made such grand and desperate declarations to someone they’d only known for a day—but Rentir was no normal man.

It was clear that something weird was going on, something he was struggling with.

She thought she had more guile in her pinky finger than he had in his entire body.

“Just… keep your nose to yourself,” she muttered, avoiding his gaze.