Page 33 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

Rentir flew as low as he dared through the forest, darting between tree trunks and beneath sprawling boughs as Cordelia clutched him. He had his tail wound tightly around her like a safety belt.

The dropship was just ahead of them somewhere, traveling with a surety that implied they had the location of another female.

What were they doing? They hadn’t set foot on Yulaira since the rebellion, and now suddenly it was worth the risk to claim these females?

Thalen proposed that they were waiting them out rather than trying to reclaim their facilities with the meager skeleton crew they had.

In the fifty-seven years they’d been operating, there had never been any sign of rebellion, and so the Aurillon had not seen fit to keep sending large squadrons to Yulaira to oversee the operation.

They’d been left with a few dozen auretian guards and just as many soft-handed, profit-minded overseers.

Many of them were dead now, killed by their hubris.

Those who remained had no way to call for help.

Fendar worked tirelessly to disrupt any attempt at long-range communication, never leaving his room full of holoscreens—not even to sleep, lest he miss an alarm.

That meant the only recourse for the auretians remaining on the Gidalan was to bide their time and wait for the freightliner that would come to collect a load of teserium that had never been mined.

They’d been planning for that eventuality, finding ways to barricade themselves in and setting the mines with charges that could blow the entire haul to rubble if it came to that.

In all that time, the most the crew of the Gidalan had done was make their orbital strikes and interfere with local communications. The Aurillon saw themselves as too valuable to be fodder for angry hybrids. Yet now, they were willing to risk themselves to kidnap the human women. Why?

Cordelia patted his thigh, pointing at something off to his left. The dropship—they were hovering over a small lake. Their thrusters were boiling the water below, creating a curtain of steam that partially obscured them.

Rentir slowed and set the bike down behind the expansive trunk of an ancient tree.

Cordelia slid off the bike with graceful movements, slinking closer to the lake one tree at a time.

He followed her as she ducked behind a bush, palming his blaster with his right hand and unsheathing his knife with the left.

“Careful,” he murmured into her ear.

She shivered, looking back at him with that same simmering look she’d had just before she’d pulled away from his kiss. She shook herself, turning back toward the dropship.

“What the hell are they doing?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said, holding back the frond of a fern to see better. “It almost seems like they’re scanning the water for something. But why…”

Something dark breached the surface. It wasn’t until Cordelia gasped that he realized what he was looking at. A human female, looking up out of the water with dark eyes. Half her hair was plastered against her face, the rest billowing around her in the water.

“It’s Sophia,” Cordelia said, gripping his arm. “We have to help her.”

Sophia was slowly drifting toward shore, her eyes locked on the dropship. It turned suddenly, so the open door was facing her.

“There!” one of the males inside called, pointing at her. The male beside him dove in, surfacing quickly and cutting through the water with sure strokes.

Sophia flailed onto the shore and crawled in the dirt for a moment before she found her feet. She was tall for a human and leaner than any hybrid. She was wearing the same inconsiderable uniform that the other humans had, but it was now translucent with water.

Cordelia sprang forward and snatched Sophia by the arm as she stumbled past the bush where they were hidden. Her hand clamped over Sophia’s mouth, smothering the scream of surprise the woman loosed. They struggled as Cordelia dragged her deeper into the brush.

“It’s me!” Cordelia said urgently. “It’s Commander Normandy. Calm down!”

Sophia went limp. Her eyes were wild, and her chest heaved from the struggle. Her face crumpled, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Where did she go?” one of the auretians shouted—the dry one, who’d dropped down onto solid ground while the other swam to shore. There was something vaguely familiar about him. Maybe it was the long, black braid hanging down his back. Rentir couldn’t recall his name.

Rentir peered through the bush, watching the other drag himself onto dry land.

“Soaked for nothing,” the auretian griped, shaking out his short, white hair. “Bitch.”

This one Rentir knew; he’d been part of the rotation accompanying the Lord Commander of the Gidalan when he deigned to set foot on Yulaira.

Melet, a foul-tempered auretian who complained about his assignment at every opportunity.

That made him weak, as far as Rentir was concerned.

He had no desire to die for honor or money.

“Who even cares if they find the females?” Melet whined. “Let them have a few warm cunts to amuse themselves. They’ll be so busy fighting over them that they won’t even notice when the Celtalair shows up to blow them to pieces.”

The Celtalair—that was the freighter that came once every three years to collect the next shipment of teserium. They were equipped with far stronger weapons than the Gidalan to deal with pirates, given their priceless loads.

“It is not for you to question the Commander’s wisdom,” the other argued.

“Oh, ease up, Yefan. You’re only agreeing with the directive because you’re hoping the Commander will toss some of that snatch your way. You’re always havering on about bonding and settling down.”

Yefan glared at him. “Must you be so crass?”

“Yes.” Melet sniffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

Yefan looked up at the dropship, sighing heavily. “Let us find the female so we can be done with this.”

He pulled up a mask that was hanging loose around his neck, covering his mouth and nose.

It was peculiar; Rentir had never seen any of the Aurillon wear such a mask, though he’d seen a similar design among the miners, meant to protect their lungs from the teserium dust as they worked.

Melet did the same, then he drew a length of rope from a canister at his hip and stretched it between his hands.

Rentir glanced back at Cordelia, who’d let go of Sophia and put herself between the trembling woman and the other males.

She had the blade Melam had given her in her fist, and she was shaking slightly.

He thought she was afraid, at first, but when their eyes met, he realized it was a battle rage.

With pride, he turned back to the others.

Kneeling, he held up his blaster, closed one eye, and took a deep breath.

Holding the air in his lungs, he steadied himself and squeezed the trigger.

The plasma bolt only grazed Melet, blowing off the tip of his ear and burning all the flesh on the side of his head.

The searing heat had him on his knees screaming, anyway.

Rentir sprang from the bush, launching himself at Yefan, who had turned to gape at Melet.

He took the auretian to the ground, scyra lashing at the male’s neck.

Yefan recovered before the blade of Rentir’s tail could sever his arteries, bringing up an armored wrist to block the blow.

He grunted, rolling until Rentir was pinned beneath him.

“Istaflit plasma round!” Melet shouted, pressing a hand over the wound. “Bastard! Kill him, Yefan!”

Rentir wrapped an arm around Yefan’s neck, legs around the male’s waist, and moved to rake his plasma blade over his throat. Yefan caught at Rentir’s arm with his free hand, the other still struggling to keep his scyra at bay.

“Damn it, Yefan!”

Melet lurched to his feet and drew his blaster. Cordelia burst out of hiding, crying out with anger as she caught the male around the middle. His feet shifted in the soft, uneven earth, and Cordelia managed to upset his center of gravity enough to take him to the ground.

“Cordelia!” Rentir’s heart began to beat double time. He’d expected her to use that blade defensively, not throw herself into danger. He should have known better after their last encounter.

She followed the male down and wrestled him for control of the blaster.

Rentir could see the hilt of her blade jutting from the male’s ribs, but it wasn’t enough to weaken him.

Melet balled up one massive hand and punched her hard in the side.

Something cracked beneath the blow. She wheezed in pain, but she didn’t release her grip on the male’s wrist, refusing to let him turn his weapon on Rentir even at the cost of her pain.

Rentir saw red. A strange, lethal calm spread through him.

Suddenly, Yefan’s auretian strength was not enough to combat him.

His muscles bulged and burned as he brought the plasma blade into the male’s throat.

The blade sank into him inch by agonizing inch as Yefan screamed in agony and tried to jerk free. Rentir felt nothing for his suffering.

When Yefan stopped thrashing, Rentir threw him aside and twisted in the dirt until he was braced on his hands and knees.

Cordelia had ended up under the male, whose mask had been knocked loose in the struggle. She was still managing to keep him from aiming his blaster despite how her arms trembled with the effort.

“I will not bond with an insignificant human whore like you,” Melet spat. He struck at her with his teeth, biting down on her wrist until she screamed, but she would not relent.

Rentir pushed to his feet, staggering over to grab a fistful of the male’s armor and rip him off of Cordelia.

He flung him an impossible distance with his otherworldly strength.

Melet landed face-first in the lake. Rentir looked down at Cordelia, taking in her injuries.

A bruise was already darkening her cheekbone, and the male had bitten clean through her shirt sleeve to the delicate flesh of her wrist beneath.

It was a small blessing that he had not chosen to use the fangs concealed beneath his flesh.

Rentir had no antidote for the deadly venom they would have administered.

The scent of her blood made the world blur. Hatred pounded in Rentir’s veins.

“I’m fine,” she panted, eyes darting to Melet. “He’s getting up.”

Rentir turned toward him, raising his blaster.

The male reached for his own weapon, but it was lying in the dirt near Cordelia’s head.

His eyes widened with realization. Rentir walked toward him, not even bothering to aim before he squeezed the trigger.

The first three rounds punched a hole clear through the male’s chest. The gaping wound was big enough that he could see the scenic view beyond.

Melet clutched at the injury, eyes bulging, and Rentir kept pulling the trigger.

Gone was his thigh, half his hand, one big, blue eye.

When he crumpled into the water, bleeding sluggishly from all the cauterized wounds, Rentir stood over him and dumped his entire plasma mag into his corpse.

When it was empty, he pressed the button to release it.

It dropped into the lake with a splash, steaming.

“Rentir,” Cordelia called.

Rentir wrenched her blade from the male’s corpse before he looked back at her, then up at the dropship hovering nearby.

He pulled a fresh mag from his thigh and slammed it into the blaster as he approached the ship.

A male inside met his gaze, his eyes widening as he slammed the side door shut. The dropship sped away.

Rentir sucked his teeth, the bloodlust within him still not satisfied. He wanted to kill everyone on board, everyone who had played any part in Cordelia’s pain.

“Rentir,” Cordelia called again.

He holstered his blaster, turning back to her. Sophia was kneeling beside her. Her gaze was thick with suspicion as she shrank away at his approach. He handed Cordelia her blade, hilt first, and watched as she sheathed it with a shaking hand.

“What is he?” Sophia asked.

“A hybrid,” Cordelia answered, dabbing at her split lip with her sleeve. “An ally.”

“I am hers,” he told the other woman.

Cordelia’s face turned red.

“What did he say?” Sophia asked, glancing between them.

“Ah… don’t worry about it.”

Rentir huffed, kneeling in front of Cordelia. He took her hand in his and pushed her sleeve back so he could inspect the bite on her pale flesh. It was deep, but it was not bleeding fast. Rentir believed that meant it wouldn’t be lethal.

“That was reckless.” He scolded, looking up at her.

“Well, next time I’ll let you get shot, dickhead,” she muttered.

He huffed a soft laugh.

“You were very brave,” he told her.

She looked surprised.

“And yes, next time let me get shot. I would prefer that to seeing you harmed.”

Her eyes softened, and she caught his hand in her own, squeezing. “No chance.”

He pressed his lips to the back of her hand.

Sophia gaped at them. “Are you and the alien…”

Cordelia winced. “We can talk about it later,” she said, deflecting.

Sophia wrapped her arms around herself, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. “There was, um…”

“What is it, Sophia?”

“There was another one,” she said with reluctance. She looked up at Rentir. “Like him.”

Rentir straightened. “It could be one of our missing,” he told Cordelia. “What did he look like?”

Cordelia repeated the question.

“Tall, like absurdly tall. Gray skin, white hair. Huge blue eyes. A massive tail, like a crocodile or something. And he had horns like that.” Sophia pointed at Rentir’s head. “Black, just like that, but a different shape.”

“Thalen,” Rentir confirmed. “Where did she see him?”

Sophia listened to Cordelia, then looked sheepishly up. “I… I hit him over the head,” she said. “He was already hurt, and there was this weird black blood all over his face. I was scared, and I… panicked.”

Rentir’s stomach sank. “Can she take us to him?”

Sophia nodded reluctantly.