Page 44 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

Cordelia was panting by the time she reached her opulent yet sterile room. The door whooshed shut softly behind her, amplifying her anger. She wanted something to slam, damn it. This place and its stupid, pretentious tech.

Her vision was blurred with tears; her heart was an erratic, stumbling mess.

With a cry of fury, she grabbed a vase off the dresser and hurled it across the room.

It shattered in a shower of ceramic confetti all over the rug.

A door slid open down the hall, and then someone was knocking on her door.

“Commander?”

“I’m fine,” she barked.

She hovered over the mess she’d made for a moment, but her blood was still laced with such impotent anger that spite would not allow her to clean it up.

How could she have been this stupid, again?

After everything she’d been through, it should have occurred to her to be more skeptical of his character and his intentions.

And anyway, his interest in her was always just some weird function of alien biology.

Had she really thought it meant something that they’d had a few long conversations and backed each other up in a couple scuffles?

The only hybrid on Yulaira who had betrayed his own kind. That was what Yelir had said. What the hell kind of luck did she have to crash on an alien planet and end up with the singular traitor on its surface?

Cursed.

She didn’t know what to do. Ask Thalen to pull Rentir off the mission? Would he even listen to her over one of his own men? Could she trust him, for that matter? What if they got all the way into atmo and one of his hybrids started reciting a manifesto?

Not again, the desperate, frightened voice that lived deep in the pit of her stomach whispered. Please, no, no.

She bit her knuckles to keep from screaming in frustration.

She had been a soldier once. A woman trained to rub dirt in her wounds and keep it moving.

A woman who saw no purpose in dwelling on things—wound, failures, old hurts.

The job had worn her down. After the mission where she’d lost her whole squad, she never had quite the same pep in her step, but she had been good at faking it.

Damn good. She had faked her way into that first mission on the Leto, and it was all going to be worth it.

Then the Leto blew, and Felix blew, and Olga and Jia and Kenji and four hundred sleeping, helpless—

There had been no more pretending. Not for a long while. Bit by bit, she’d pieced that facade back together over the years. She’d landed command of the Cassandra, and for one brief moment, she’d almost believed her own lie again.

That she was competent, brave, and capable. Someone worth following. Someone who didn’t get everyone else dead.

Her gaze drifted over the room, landing on the mirrored door of the towering wardrobe, where her own sad, sallow face looked listlessly back at her.

No more facade.

She paced over to it, meeting her own bloodshot eyes as she approached, enraged by the puffy-eyed evidence of her misplaced vulnerability. Anger flared again, so much less painful than defeat.

“Idiot,” she hissed, enraged at the sight of her reflection condemning her right back. “You fucking moron!”

She launched her fist without the awareness that she was doing it.

The glass crunched beneath her knuckles, shattering into sharp, jagged pieces that still clung to the frame.

Pain lit up her arm, reverberating all the way to her shoulder, but she punched it again, and again, and again, until her knuckles were numb and full of glass and the blood was dripping down her elbow.

“Commander!” A different voice, now. Nyx, she thought.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she dug her hands into the gap between the wardrobe and the wall, and with a hoarse cry of effort, sent it plummeting onto its face.

The door hissed open, but she didn’t look. She couldn’t. She just put her boot through the back of the wardrobe, taking grim satisfaction in the splintering hole that opened beneath the force.

Hands caught at her as she kicked another hole in the expensive piece of furniture that had flown across the galaxy from a planet she had never seen just to be destroyed by her. She fought their grip, shouting a sound of wordless rage as she kicked the thing again and again.

More hands grabbed her other arm, and she was being hauled back while she kicked and flailed and shouted.

She turned her fury on one of the women who believed they had the right to intervene; her bloody, glass-encrusted fist cracked across Nyx’s jaw with staggering force.

For a moment, she was sure she’d broken her knuckles.

The white hot pain was a brief reprieve from the mindlessness, but she fought it, fought the return of good sense.

“God damn, I take back the diss about her limp wrist, already,” Nyx slurred, wriggling her jaw back and forth.

Cordelia turned toward the other woman holding her, mindlessly raising her fist to strike again, to keep striking until there was nothing and no one between her and total self-destruction—but it was Seren.

Seren flinched, ducking her head and rounding her shoulders, becoming as small as she could in the instant before she was struck.

Cordelia realized it was too late to pull the punch in the same moment an arm wrapped around her neck and wrenched her back.

Relief sang in her veins as she was dragged to the ground.

“Knock it off,” Eunha snarled in her ear. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

She let out another incoherent scream of fury, kicking her legs, unable to form anything resembling a cohesive thought.

“I’m gonna say yes,” Nyx answered wryly, still rubbing her blood-smeared jaw.

It was like watching herself from outside of her body, as though it was unable to contain both her soul and her turmoil at the same time.

Stop, she thought. Just shut up and stop. This is why you failed all those psych evals. This is why you should never have been assigned to the mission. You’re fucked up. You could only hide it so long. And now they know. They know.

You’re not worthy.

Her anger cracked like an egg, giving way to a terrible despair. She fell limp in Eunha’s arms, silent tears streaming down her face.

Seren was standing a few steps away, hugging her arms around her chest, still trying to shrink.

“I’m sorry,” Cordelia croaked, barely able to distinguish her through the haze of tears. She looked up at Nyx and said it again.

Nyx shrugged, putting her hands on her hips. “What’s a few cheap shots between friends?” she mused. “If you want to be even, I can deal you one back.”

“Nyx,” Pandora said reproachfully from the doorway. She kneeled beside Cordelia.

Eunha squeezed her throat in warning, briefly cutting off her air. Cordelia didn’t object. In that moment, she was grateful to her copilot for controlling a body that she, for some reason, could not.

Sophia came into the room, wrapping her arm around Seren as Pandora checked Cordelia’s pupils and asked her to follow a finger. She took Cordelia’s pulse, at least until she got impatient with the attention and brushed her away.

“Let me up,” she said hoarsely.

Reluctantly, Eunha released her. She sat up stiffly, brushing the back of her battered hand over her tear-soaked chin before remembering that it was full of glass. It cut at her, shallow grooves that stung as the salt water of her tears filled them.

“Careful,” Pandora admonished, catching at her hand. She tutted. “You’ll need stitches for that. Or, well, you would have, once. I suppose the medpod should manage it easily.”

Sophia broke away from Seren to crouch down in front of her. Her big doe eyes swam with empathy, and the sight of it, knowing she didn’t deserve a single ounce, was too much for Cordelia. She looked down at her splayed boots instead.

“What was all this about, Cordelia?” Sophia asked softly, channeling that soft-spoken mediator’s voice that had earned her a ticket to Lapillus.

Cordelia sniffed hard, rubbing at her dripping nose.

“Doesn’t matter.” She turned her head and spat, trying to clear a splinter that must have flown into her mouth during the destruction. “I’m relinquishing command.”

A murmur broke out between the women, their voices layering.

“No, you are not,” an imperious voice rang out from the doorway. They all turned to see Lyra standing there, arms crossed over her chest as she looked down her nose at them all as per usual. “I hired you to do a job, and you are going to see it through.”

“Yeah, well, you’re as dumb as they said you were,” Cordelia said. It was meant to be venomous, but her voice wavered. “I should never have been brought on board, as I’m sure you can see.” She gestured vaguely at the mess around them.

Lyra glanced around with disinterest, then shrugged. “I don’t particularly care about the alien decor, Commander.”

“I’m not your fucking Commander anymore!” She staggered to her feet, shrugging Eunha off.

“You are the Commander that I chose for this mission, and you will be its Commander until this mission is at its end,” Lyra said coolly.

“And if you continue to protest, I am going to hold you in contempt of your contract, and your grandchildren’s grandchildren will be trying to pay off your debt when I win the suit. ”

“Lady, there aren’t any fucking lawyers on this rock,” Cordelia grated. “Hold me in contempt of whatever you want. I quit.”

“No,” Lyra said.

“No?” Cordelia barked a hysterical laugh. “Fuck you. I quit!”

“No,” someone echoed.

Cordelia whirled, narrowing a glare on Nyx. She opened her mouth, but before she could argue, there was another voice.

“No.” Eunha met her angry look steadily.

“No,” said Pandora, then Sophia, and, after a long pause, even Seren.

Cordelia scrubbed her hands over her face. “What is wrong with all of you?” She let her hands drop. “I am not fit for my post. Is that not abundantly clear to you right now? I’m trying to protect you!”

“You always are,” Eunha said, crossing her arms over her chest and standing straighter. “That’s the point. That’s why you’re in charge.”

“You were gonna burn for us that day,” Nyx said. “You were gonna crash that bitch as far away from us as you could get after making sure we didn’t wind up in the ocean. Do you think we don’t know that? Lidan told us all about how he took control of the ship. We all know you never meant to land it.”

Cordelia shrugged, her throat tightening painfully. She met Eunha’s gaze. Eunha who had fought her at the console, who had wanted her to get in her pod even if it lessened everyone else’s chance for survival.

“And then you risked yourself to search for us,” Sophia said softly. “Fresh off of cryo sickness, barely able to speak to the aliens, you went out into those woods on foot to find us. That sounds like a leader to me.”

“Stop,” Cordelia said, pacing away from them. “Just stop. I’m telling you, I can’t do this.”

“You already have,” Lyra said. “That’s what your crew is telling you. Is there some reason you’re not listening?”

Cordelia slapped her palm down on the dresser, grounding herself in the stinging pain.

She did it again and again, until someone came up to her and caught her wrist. Tawny fingers with shiny, carefully manicured nails.

Sophia rested her chin on Cordelia’s shoulder.

She said nothing, just stood there, holding her wrist and pressing into her side.

Cordelia’s throat tightened until she couldn’t breathe. “You don’t understand,” she whispered.

Sophia nodded against her. “I don’t. That’s okay. I still know I’m right. We all are.”

“I’m cursed,” she said, her voice tiny as a child’s.

The same words she’d said to Rentir, just before he’d proven them true.

She should tell them, should let them know that she’d once again failed to judge the character of her allies correctly, that she’d likely put them all in danger over some strange crush, but the words would not come.

The wound was too raw, the shame too fresh.

“There’s no such thing,” Pandora said gently, running her hand over Cordelia’s back.

“I’m going to get you killed,” she said in a pleading tone. “All of you. All of you! I can’t—I cant—”

“Shut up,” Nyx said, yanking her away from the dresser by her elbow and throwing her arms around her. “You’re such an idiot.”

Sophia came back to her shoulder, sliding her arms over Nyx’s, and then Pandora was there, and Eunha at her back, and Seren slid her hand between the tangle of bodies to find Cordelia’s shoulder.

The dam broke for the second time in as many days, until she was sobbing so hard she thought her ribs would break.

Some women shushed her while others cried softly with her, and in the haze, she couldn’t distinguish who was who.

She let them take her weight as she sagged, giving herself over to the pain, to the betrayal, to the fear of what came next and how she would fail them.

In the warmth of their comfort, freely given and wholly undeserved, the thought of losing them became intolerable.

Her tears dried as fear hardened into the unstoppable drive to protect these women at any cost. Her eyes found Lyra’s over the shoulders of the others, standing in the doorway with an inscrutable, hard look on her face.

Cordelia dipped her head tightly, and Lyra mirrored the gesture before she trailed away, letting the door hiss shut behind her.