Page 4 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

A female.

Rentir had found a female. He bit down on his bottom lip to keep himself from grinning with excitement again. She hadn’t liked the sight of his teeth. Perhaps it was a sign of aggression to her species.

He and the other hybrids had been bickering for two years about what was on the odd alien ship they’d found drifting through space on their radars. In the end, none of them had come close to the truth.

There were no females on Yulaira. Rentir wouldn’t have even known what she was if not for spending so much time in Haerune’s medical lab as he sifted through the limited records in the system.

She was so… alien.

Her body was all soft swells that strained against the fabric of her clothing. There were no scales nor velvety fur on her skin, which was so pale he could see the blue veins that ran beneath it. Her hair was deep brown, like the bark of the green-leaved phyla trees that littered the mountains.

She looked up at him from beneath the fringe of her lashes as though she could feel his gaze upon her. Her strange eyes were small and blue with an unsettling white border, and her pupils were round.

Like the Aurillon. He pushed the thought away, refusing to taint his image of her.

She was not auretian. She lacked the pointed ears, the sharp canines, the desaturated hues of their skin.

No seam split her chin. When her tongue flicked out to wet her chapped lips, it had not been pointed.

She was something other, something unfamiliar that must have evolved under similar circumstances.

He flicked the button to silence the blaring warnings that one of the propellers was damaged and on the brink of failure. The way the female was cringing made it clear the noise was hurting her ears as much as it did his.

“Rentir,” a voice barked over the intercom, startling the female.

Rentir glared at the console. “I’m here,” he replied, steering the hovercraft away from the tantrum of the ateela below. Did she know how close she had been to a miserable death?

Lidan’s remote piloting skills were second to none, but her ship had been so damaged in the crossfire with the Aurillon that he hadn’t been sure he could land it at all.

They had watched the escape pods launch, assuming that the crew were all safe, but Rentir had noticed that there were still signs of life on board.

Lidan had done all he could, but the best he could do in the end was crash it as gently as possible.

“Status report,” Thalen demanded.

“There was a female on board,” he said, trying to tamp down on the embarrassing excitement in his voice. “She’s here in the transport with me now. Injured, but alive.”

“A female?” another voice butted in—Elten. “What species?”

It was the most excited he’d heard the male in years. Why did that rankle?

“Elten,” Thalen said, reprimanding. There was the sound of a scuffle.

“I don’t know.” Rentir glanced at her. Her eyes had gone glassy, unfocused. Concern knitted his brow. “I’ve never seen anything like her.”

“Bring her in,” Thalen said. “We’re organizing a team to track down the pods she dropped.”

“Can’t yet. I have to set down to deal with a critical failure in one of the propellers.”

“Very well. Once you’re sure you can stay airborne, return immediately.”

He piloted the limping hovercraft down to the beach, stirring up a cloud of purple sediment. The landing gear unfolded with a series of clanks, and the transport jolted softly as the propellers powered down.

He turned to the female when he was done, studying her once more. She had been doing the same, it seemed. A strange red flush rose to her face as their eyes met.

“What’s your name?” he asked, musing to himself since she clearly couldn’t understand him.

She said something and shrugged. His translator could make no sense of her words yet.

They understood fragments of her written language from what they’d found on her ship’s systems, but there had been precious few samples of her spoken language, and her ship’s AI had been nearly impossible to reason with.

Fendar, their technology specialist, said it was as though the program itself was diseased, incapable of doing much more than announcing errors.

He bit his bottom lip, thinking.

“Rentir,” he offered, gesturing to himself. He waved his hand toward her. Her eyes fell on it, widening slightly. “Your name, female?”

When she didn’t respond, he tried again.

“Rentir,” he repeated, patting his chest.

“Rentir?” she echoed uncertainly.

He beamed at her, delighted by the sound of his name on her lips.

“Clever female,” he crooned. The flush on her face darkened, worrying him. He pressed the back of his hand to her cheek.

Her skin was soft as feather down, eliciting a strange shudder of pleasure from him.

Her face was warm, but not feverish. Of course, he had no idea what a normal temperature was for her species.

Concern nagged at him. He’d only just found her, and already the thought of her perishing made him feel ill.

She batted his hand away after a moment, frowning.

“Rentir,” he said again with a hand on his chest, distracting himself. He gestured at her.

She snorted, her eyes lighting up. She babbled something at him, then sighed.

“Cordelia.” She pointed at herself.

“Cordelia,” he purred.

Cordelia sucked in a sharp breath, averting her gaze. She tensed, turning toward him and letting out a stream of frantic words.

“Cordelia, I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said in a soothing tone, touching her hand where it rested against the cushions.

She stared down at their joined hands before sliding her own away.

He battled the strange urge to reach out and reclaim it.

Her fingers had been cold as ice beneath his own.

She twisted in her seat, peering out the window closest to her that faced the forest further inland. Pointing, she began to rant once more. He could only stare at her, lost as to what she was trying to express. She growled, threading her hands through her hair.

She pantomimed something with her hands a few times, ranting all the while, until it finally clicked. She was asking him about the pods that had deployed from her ship before the crash. Were there more females within? He wanted to ask her, but what would be the point?

“We are searching for them now,” he said in a tone he hoped was reassuring. “They will be brought to you. Do not worry.”

Her darting eyes made it clear she didn’t understand his words, but some of the tension in her shoulders eased. He turned his attention back to their flight path. The base wasn’t far from where her ship had crashed, which was why he and Lidan had been able to reach her so quickly.

Rentir pressed the button to release both doors.

Cordelia startled as it whirred open, leaving her exposed to the elements.

He gave her a reassuring smile before sliding out on the other side, circling the transport to stand before her.

She wrestled with the latch for her safety harness, baring her flat little teeth in obvious frustration as it refused to come loose.

“It can be tricky,” he said, ducking into the cab. “Here, let me help.”

He reached between her thighs to grip the latch, fingers brushing her bare skin.

She shivered, her body going rigid as a faint scent flooded his senses.

It set something churning within him, making his cock even more painfully hard.

The scent clung to his sinuses, eclipsing the metallic tang of the transport and the cold, chemical scent of its recycled air.

It was all he could think of, and he did not understand why.

His hand trembled as he twisted the latch and popped it loose, carefully retracting the harness over her head.

She murmured something, squeezing her thighs together as she edged away from him. He cleared his throat.

“I’m, ah, just going to do a patch job on this propeller. You can stay here, or you can stretch your legs if you want.”

She stared at him uncomprehendingly, making him feel like a fool. He ducked back out of the transport as he cursed himself silently. He had never thought of himself as a particularly awkward male, and yet he could not keep a grasp on his social graces around her.

He made his way to the back right propeller.

The ateela had managed to bend the frame and break two blades off.

The frame would need a mechanic’s touch, but the blades he could fix.

He popped the trunk of the transport and shoved one of the two back bench seats forward, revealing the compartment of spare parts.

Carefully, he pulled a spare propeller out along with the emergency repair kit.

Cordelia walked past him, distracting him from his task.

Her long, dark hair whipped in the wind.

The sun shone through where the fabric of her minimal outfit sagged away from her, offering a clear silhouette of every soft, unfamiliar curve.

She stood at the shore with the tide lapping at her bare feet and stared at the water that had threatened to consume her only moments before.

He set his tools down in the sand beside the spare prop, helpless not to follow her. He stood a few steps behind her, following her gaze, wondering what she was thinking as she stared at the place where the endless waters met the horizon.

“Cordelia?”

When she glanced over at him, her eyes were unfocused. Concern lanced at him.

“Are you well? You don’t look—”

She swayed on her feet and collapsed to her knees with a splash.

He crouched and caught her upper body before she could fall face-first into the waves.

She murmured something that sounded slurred even to his unattuned ear.

Maneuvering her until he could scoop her up into his arms, he carried her away from the water.