Page 3 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

She didn’t know how much time passed between the moment when she closed her eyes to await her death and the instant when she realized it wasn’t coming.

Her stomach lurched oddly as the ship pulled up hard once more.

The harness bit into her as the Cassandra twisted sharply, pulling her to one side with such force that she briefly lost consciousness.

When she came back to herself, the ship was skimming low over the ocean, moving significantly slower than it had been. A moment later, it skipped over the water, rattling her so hard she thought her teeth might crack. She cringed into her seat, gripping the straps of her harness.

She skipped like a stone a few times, water surging in through the holes left by the absent pods, swirling around her ankles as the scent of brine filtered through the mask. The ship was sinking even before it had come to a full stop, listing to the side where the pods had been.

I’m alive?

Water swept up over the window, revealing the flashing metallic bodies of a school of small fish.

I’m going to drown.

Already, the water was soaking her to her calves.

If she stayed in her seat much longer, with the way the ship was sinking sideways, she’d be trapped with her head below water.

The mask might have been a source of oxygen, but she didn’t want to be trapped in the ship as it sank to the depths.

She ripped off her mask and smacked the release for her harness several times before it finally clicked, freeing her to tumble sidelong into the water.

With a gasp, she scrabbled to grab onto the chair, using it to hold her head above the rapidly rising tide.

Not like this, she thought desperately, glancing helplessly around the ship. Death by impact had sounded quick, painless. This was… something else. Fear pounded through her veins.

The water kept coming until she was pressed up against the far side of the ship, her hands digging into the vents.

She had her head tipped back and her lips brushing the metal siding so she could make use of the scant few inches of air left to her.

Something slammed into the ship. For a moment, she thought she’d struck the bottom of the ocean, but something squeaked, shrill and deafening, across the window.

Bioluminescent blue suction cups undulated over the glass—testing or tasting, she didn’t know.

Cordelia moaned in horror. Was drowning better or worse than being eaten by an alien sea monster? She shook violently, the terror and chill water both biting her to the bone.

The Cassandra lurched and pulled upward so fast that she nearly lost her grip on the vents.

The water lightened outside the window. As it did, the tentacle gripping the ship dulled, turning a flat, speckled gray.

A furious shriek pierced through the sound of rushing water.

A moment later, the craft was hauled back to the surface, pulled up into the air by some unseen force.

The tentacle fell away with another shriek.

Water gushed back out of the ship. It poured too violently for her pitiful choice of anchor and fatigued hands.

She lost her grip and was slammed to the ground by the shifting water.

It dragged her toward the open side of the ship as it rushed back out the same way it had bled in.

She screamed, her nails clawing at the smooth metal floor panels.

At the last moment, she managed to grip one of the metal supports that had once cradled the pods, clinging to it for dear life. Water sluiced over her head, briefly drowning her. She coughed, her whole body trembling from the effort of holding her weight.

A shriek from below drew her attention. The creature hadn’t returned to the depths. It was there below her, churning the water with a dozen tentacles as long as the Cassandra herself, pointing a beaked mouth lined with hook-like teeth at her.

She screamed, swinging her legs, desperately trying to scurry back onto the ship. One of the tentacles stretched up out of the water, reaching for her dangling legs.

“No, no, no!” she shouted, pulling them up as high as she could. The exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her adrenaline. Her body had been through too much in too short a span, and so soon after waking from cryo.

“Please,” she begged the universe. “Not like this, please!”

A blinding light fell upon her as a whirring, blaring sound filled her ears. There was a small, black aircraft hovering beside her, slightly bigger than an SUV.

A door popped open as she stared, sliding up and out of the way, and a man stretched out of the opening.

He was dressed all in black, nearly all of him obscured up to his eyeballs, which were a bright, impossible green.

His eyes had no sclera, and his pupils were vertical slits that narrowed as his eyes met hers.

The skin she could see was pale lavender, and he had a pair of massive, twisting horns sprouting from his head.

“Help!” she cried as the shock subsided, swinging her feet up again as the tentacle brushed the sole of her bare foot. “Help me, please!”

The vehicle came closer, and he leaned over the side, dangling from a rope.

His hands stretched out to her, snagging around her waist. She let go with one arm, turning into him and wrapping it around his neck as she swung her legs up around him.

He grunted, taking her weight, and she let go of the beam.

She knew she had to be strangling him, but she couldn’t bring herself to loosen her grip. His aircraft drifted away from the ship as he pulled them both back into its interior. The outer door sealed around them.

All the noise of the outside world was suddenly cut off, leaving only a soft whirring and the sound of their panting. She finally loosened her grip on his neck, sitting back in his lap as she straddled him.

“Thank you,” she whispered, holding herself up with straightened arms braced against his shoulders. “I thought—I thought I was going to—” She shuddered, the horror of it all rolling through her.

Moving slowly, as though she were a wild animal, he reached between them and pinched the fabric covering his face, dragging it down below his chin.

“Oh,” she murmured.

He had a long, sharp jaw, full lips, and high cheekbones.

It was as though he’d been chiseled from stone.

The only strange thing about his face, other than his eyes, was his nose—broad and flat, it would have looked less out of place on a large cat.

There was a speckled pattern of darker purple that trailed over his cheekbones and disappeared into the high neck of his shirt.

His lips were a darker shade of purple than the rest of his face, and when his tongue flicked out to wet them, it was starkly black.

Alien. He was an alien. She was sitting in an alien’s lap.

Maybe she should scream or scramble away, or something, but her mind was strangely blank with the revelation.

It didn’t feel real. She was mesmerized by the impossibility of it.

All those years of longing for spacefaring, and she’d never actually considered that she might meet a sentient alien being.

He said something to her then, and she recognized his low, lyrical voice from the intercom.

“That was you trying to hail us?”

He said something that sounded like an affirmation, his hand reaching up to brush a matted tangle of hair out of her face.

She flinched away from the touch, and his hand hovered in the air between them before falling to the side.

He had six fingers instead of five, each a little too long for a human.

He watched her with his massive green eyes, tossing his hair out of the way.

It was as black as his tongue had been and just a little longer than his brow.

She shifted in his lap, disconcerted by the force of his attention.

He made a strained sound, his hands falling to her hips, stilling her. Another lyrical strand of words left his lips.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

His dark brows drew together as he spoke again. She shrugged. He began muttering to himself, his eyes searching her. She looked down, following his gaze.

Her white shirt and short boxers were all but see-through, soaked and clinging to her.

They were stained black and red in places, some combination of grease and blood from sliding around the ship.

Her bare flesh was a mess of scratches and scrapes, and there was a cut on her left forearm that was bleeding sluggishly but insistently.

She pressed it against her stomach, letting the ruined fabric of her shirt soak it up.

He said something softly, prying at her arm and turning it over to inspect it. She struggled against him again, pulling it back. He released the limb, sucking in a sharp breath and squeezing his eyes shut as his hands hovered uncertainly in the air.

Something pressed against her butt, hard and insistent. When she made a low sound of realization, it twitched. She scrambled out of his lap, kneeing him in the stomach in her desperation to get clear of him. He grunted, but he didn’t complain.

The craft listed to one side, and she nearly head-butted him. Her hand slid into his lap as she tried to catch herself, brushing hard over what was clearly an erection. She snatched her hand back, gripping the buttery fabric of the seat to keep it from happening again.

The lights in the cabin turned red. There was an angry, insistent beeping followed by a chain of alien words played repetitively as the hovercraft bucked.

He cursed, adjusting himself roughly with one hand as the other reached for the door they’d just come through.

“What are you doing?” she shouted.

He looked back at her, leaning in to tug something from over her head.

Twin straps stretched over her shoulders, and he handed her what looked like some kind of metal latch.

She patted around the seat between her legs until she found a place to insert the harness, and he waited until it clicked before turning back to the door.

Sitting forward, she had a clear view out of the front windshield.

There was a huge, jet-black ship hovering above them, dangling a massive chain that held the waterlogged Cassandra over the water.

The Cassandra dropped free, plummeting into the water with a gigantic splash.

Water frothed and bubbled over it as it sank once more, and the chain retracted back into the ship above them.

Her alien rescuer braced his feet on either side of the frame as the vehicle jerked again, and the door popped open.

Something flicked through the air behind him.

Stunned, she realized he hadn’t been dangling from a rope earlier—he’d been hanging by his tail, a long, prehensile limb densely covered in dark purple spots.

The last several inches closest to the tip were covered in gleaming black scales.

He pulled a strange, sleek gun a little bigger than a pistol from his thigh and aimed it at the tentacle that was warring with the hovercraft.

The creature was trying to pull them under as the vehicle insistently attempted to right itself.

Cordelia braced a hand against the door closest to her to keep from smacking the side of her head against it as she was jerked around like a rag doll.

A shrill droning grew louder and louder, and then a burst of red-hot energy discharged from the alien’s weapon.

It seared a massive hole clean through the meaty tentacle, and the creature released the hovercraft with a shriek.

The door slid shut once more, and her alien rescuer stowed his weapon, bracing himself as the hovercraft righted itself.

Straightening his clothes, he turned to grin at her, flashing a mouth full of fangs. All those gleaming, sharp teeth triggered a primal fear in her brain. When she didn’t return the smile, his withered, and he cleared his throat in a surprisingly human gesture of awkwardness.

He turned away to situate himself on the bench seat, his legs so long that even in the ample space, Cordelia felt crowded.

She watched in numb silence as he deftly buckled himself in beside her.

He tapped a few words on the heads-up display that overlaid the front window, and a set of controls emerged from the dash in front of him.

Once he took control, they passed through the shadow of the larger ship, leaving it behind in pursuit of land.