Page 53 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)

She’d never seen Rentir look so sheepish and uncertain.

He looked down at his hands for a pregnant pause, fiddling with the rotting log he sat on.

She wondered if maybe he was going to try to get out of the conversation; most men she’d known on Earth would have done whatever necessary to worm out of a topic this heavy.

He proved her suspicions wrong.

“I was never stationed on Yulaira,” he said, surprising her. “I served as security on board the Gidalan. I only ever saw the surface in stolen glimpses, when Lord Commander Tellefan descended to check on his interests.”

“Lord Commander?”

God, could they be any more pompous?

He nodded, chipping away a bit of bark beneath his thumb. “He is the one who oversees all of this endeavor. He works for another—a High Lord, I think he is called. We are not privy to much of their politics; I only know what I have gleaned from years of overhearing conversations.

“I was one of Lord Tellefan’s personal detail.

Life on board the Gidalan, outside of the crèche…

it is different from how the hybrids live within the base.

The miners mingled when they worked, as did the teserium processors.

The others, those in specialized roles, they spoke to one another in the halls at night, or through the stalls of their showers, or in the mess hall during meals. ”

He pulled both of his glowing hands into his lap, tucking them between his thighs.

His tail was a sad, limp thing draped over the log beside him.

“I was not granted the same clemency. Once I was enlisted into the Lord’s detail…

the last conversation I had with Haerune before our placement was the last conversation I had for many years that didn’t end in ‘my lord’ or a groveling apology.

“It is hard to mark the passage of time on the ship, but I think I served for at least… nine cycles? All of that time, and the only words I ever spoke to another were to affirm my obedience or demand it of another.”

The last words were strangled, and he had to take a moment to catch his breath before he continued.

“I hurt people, Cordelia,” he said, looking up at her through glowing green eyes with his chin tucked low.

“That is what was asked of me. Those who resisted were to be taught a swift lesson, and I was the tool that delivered it. Even… even unto myself.” He stared down at his boots, his shoulders rounding.

“Those scars on your back…” she murmured.

Regretfully, he looked up, nodding. “They are self-inflicted. In my first few cycles, I was… resistant to the realities of enforcing Aurillon law on my fellow hybrids. Especially the younger males.” His arms wrapped around his chest. “Sometimes they panic. They see their first brother meet an early ‘retirement,’ and they get it in their head that maybe they can escape, outrun a similar fate. But they couldn’t, you see?

Of course, they couldn’t. Because there I was, standing in their way. ”

She heard the creak of his jacket, and she knew he was digging his claws clear through the reinforced fabric. Part of her wanted to soothe him, but she had a feeling that if she interrupted him, he might not find the courage to finish his tale.

After a wavering breath, he pressed on. “I was forced to break myself of my own weak character, and eventually I learned to stop thinking, stop feeling, be nothing but an instrument. I don’t know why I wasn’t retired for my insubordination.

I suspect… well, Lord Tellefan is rumored to have certain appetites.

A taste for suffering. And I suffered much in those early years. ”

She sat on her hands to keep herself from crawling over to him and taking his hands in hers.

“By the time of the rebellion, I was not myself any longer. There was no Rentir who had crept into Haerune’s bunk at night and rehashed all the teachings of the day.

There was nothing of the boy who had picked his sparring partners off the mat and checked them guiltily for bruises.

No hopes, no dreams, no desires. I woke, and I worked, and I closed my eyes at night and tried to forget that I would have to do it all again the next day. ”

He rose to his feet, planting his hands on his hips and pacing back and forth the length of the log, his tail sweeping through the air in twitchy strokes of purple light.

“It sounds like an excuse when I lay it out like this, but I do not intend to make excuses for myself. The things I have done are unforgivable. I know that, I know.”

She couldn’t take any more. Springing to her feet, she stepped into his path and wound her arms around his middle, pressing her cheek against his chest.

He froze, his hands hovering in the air over her. “Cordelia?” His voice was so small.

She clutched him tighter; she was at a loss for words, so she wouldn’t bother with them.

After a moment of hesitation, his arms came around her shoulders.

He shuddered as he leaned into the hug, curling around her and burying his nose in her hair.

The embrace stretched on for a long while, until Cordelia could bear the thought of letting him go to face his regrets on his own.

She cleared her throat, smoothing down the front of her shirt and resuming her seat. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “Continue, please.”

He searched her expression and sat back down as well, following her bidding.

“Lord Tellefan does not make appearances on Yulaira often. Maybe once every few years, when it can no longer be avoided. He has all that he could wish for aboard the Gidalan, and he sees Yulaira as a filthy, backwater planet. Beneath him.” He huffed a laugh at that, his eyes flicking up toward the night sky.

“And so it is, I suppose. So are we all, even now.”

“Not for long,” she said darkly.

That coaxed a wicked smile from him. He sobered before he continued.

“That day, Lord Tellefan descended upon the base to snuff out the whisperings of rebellion.

And so, I arrived, armed to my teeth and numb to it all, all too ready to kill every last one of my own kind at the bidding of my overseer.

At first, it seemed that the rumors had been exaggerated; everything was running just as it should.

But then he went for a walkabout in the mines, and we crossed paths with Xeth.

“He didn’t strike right away. I think he must have waited for an opportunity to rally the others with Thalen, and rally they did.

By the time we made it back to the upper levels, madness had broken loose.

Hybrids were killing their overseers in the halls, beating them to death with anything they could find, strangling them with hands and tails.

“I want to say that I was steadfast in my decision, that I was merely brainwashed, as I know Haerune believes, but”—his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat—“I thought about it. I saw them all, fighting to their deaths for freedom, and I did think about joining them. Just for an instant. And then my lord gave the command to kill them, and I raised the muzzle of my blaster, and I obeyed.”

He looked at her then, and somehow he had aged a dozen years in the space of that confession. “I cut down more than half the crew on the upper levels. Anyone who turned their head toward my lord, I ended. We had nearly reached the exit when Haerune crossed my path.”

The glow of his eyes dimmed as he closed his eyes, shaking his head hard. “I was going to kill him, Cordelia. I hardly recognized him, even when he called out to me. He had his hands up, trying to reason with me, and yet when Lord Tellefan snapped at me to fire, I nearly pulled the trigger.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. I didn’t. Thalen knocked the gun from my hand.

Haerune tackled me, pinned me to the ground as the others chased Tellefan and what remained of his retinue out of the base.

They would have killed me, too, had Haerune not begged and pleaded with them not to, even while I tried to wring his throat.

“Thalen was moved to mercy by Haerune’s tales of our childhood, and I was imprisoned for half a cycle as they determined whether or not I could be trusted.”

She sat forward, resting her elbows against her thighs. “What convinced them?”

“There was a ground assault. The only one the Aurillon attempted, given how badly it failed. They were heavily armed, and there are only a handful of us in the base with the clearance to wield a blaster. It was mere desperation that led Thalen to free me. I killed for them, and when I saw that Thalen was about to take a deathblow at the end of a plasma rifle… I took the shot on his behalf.”

The too-vivid memory of that plasma bolt whizzing right past his head surfaced in her mind, and she was briefly strangled by the accompanying horror.

“I was in the medpod for three days.” He continued his story, oblivious to her turmoil. “It should have killed me. I am not sure why I lived.”

He opened his jacket and rucked up his shirt, revealing a smooth, rounded scar just below his pectoral that she hadn’t noticed that day in the dimmed light of the baths.

She got up and knelt between his legs, tracing the scar from the near-miss he’d survived with her fingertips.

Tingles started at her scalp, and like an egg cracked over her head, they slid down her spine, lighting her whole body with awareness.

A strange sense of destiny swept over her.

I am not sure why I lived. She’d asked herself the same question so many times.

“What if this is why?” she asked softly, looking up at him as tears pricked in her eyes. “What if this is why we both lived, Rentir? To be here, in this moment together. To free you of the Aurillon once and for all.”

She could see from the longing in his face that he wanted to believe it, but he shook his head, catching her hand in his own and dropping his shirt.

“I am not a good male,” he said hoarsely. “The way you look at me… I do not deserve such faith, Cordelia.”

“You are not what they made you do.” She wrapped her other hand around their joined grip.

“I am,” he refuted, trying to tug away from her. There was a catch in his breath, like he was battling against the urge to cry. “What else is a male except his actions? Do not defend me.” He shrugged out of her grip and paced a few steps away, hanging his head.

“Okay. You’re right.”

His tail pinned between his legs at that.

“I won’t try to forgive you for the things you’ve done. That’s not my place. I’ll give you that.” She stepped closer.

He flinched when her hand landed on his shoulder.

“But I won’t pretend that you’re some kind of monster, even if it would make your self-flagellation easier. What else is a male except his actions? That’s what you said, right?”

His ears flicked, but he didn’t take her bait.

“What kind of male would jump in front of a plasma rifle for his jailer?” she pressed, sliding her hand down his arm. “What kind of male would risk his life for a bunch of alien women he doesn’t even know? Not just once, but again and again, even when he thinks there’s nothing in it for him?”

Her fingers twined in his limp grip, her thumb tracing the smooth curve of one claw.

“A guilty one,” he rumbled.

“A repentant one. One who wants to prove what he knows is true in his heart: that he is good. That he would have been good if he had not been twisted into something else. That he can be good again.”

His fingers curled around hers.

“Do you want to go back, Rentir? Do you want to rejoin the others on the Gidalan and serve your lord again?”

His grip tightened painfully as he hissed out a harsh breath.

“No,” he said emphatically, whirling on her. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Because I don’t believe you do, either.

God knows I’m not the best judge of character, but…

when I look at you, I don’t see a traitor.

I see a man desperate to prove to everyone, including himself, that he only ever wanted to be loyal.

” She let go of his hand to catch his face in her palms. “Am I wrong, Rentir? Are you going to betray me when we board the Gidalan?”

His eyes darted between hers. “Never,” he said in a guttural voice. “I will never betray you. They could flog me to the bone, and I will still never raise a finger against you. Not you. Never.”

She nodded slowly, stroking her thumbs over his cheekbones. “That’s all I need to hear.”

“What—” The rest of his words were lost to a huff of air as she shoved him to the ground.

She whipped her jacket off and threw it into a bush as she knelt to straddle his hips.

He was sprawled out in the bracken, gaping up at her in confusion as she tore off her shirt next.

His jaw went slack as his glowing gaze dropped to her bare breasts, but she didn’t give him an opportunity to admire them.

She was too busy shoving his jacket off his broad shoulders, nearly knocking him flat as she wrestled with it.

Once he understood her objective, he sprang into motion, eagerly removing it.

His shirt was next, tangling momentarily on his horns before she figured out how to get it loose. He laughed at her, and she dipped forward to nip his shoulder in reprimand. It must have been pleasurable for him; his cock twitched in his pants.

She stood just long enough to wrestle her pants and boots off, watching as he arched his hips off the ground to do the same. When they came back together, it was skin to skin.

Dipping her head, she caught his lips with her own, sinking one hand into his hair with biting force to hold him just where she wanted him.

He growled, kissing her back as he grabbed two handfuls of her ass, and the sound trailed off into a frantic, bone-rattling purr.

She reached between them as his tongue explored her mouth, taking him in a firm grip and pumping.

He moaned into her mouth, his big frame shuddering beneath her.

That heady feeling he inspired filled her to the brim again—pure power, holding a male so strong in her thrall. Wonder was plain on his glowing face as he gazed up at her.

“I thought you would be lost to me once you knew the truth,” he murmured. “I never imagined…”

He trembled as she pumped her hand again, his head lolling on his shoulders. His tail slapped down hard in the dirt, sending debris flying as it flicked again.

“You never imagined…?”

The only answer he seemed able to manage was a slight shake of his head.

His eyes had gone heavy-lidded. He panted softly.

That purr still rolled steadily from beneath his ribs.

There was something so intimate about seeing him unraveled like this; she’d never experienced it with anyone else. It made her heart ache.

“We can play this sweet and tender later, but if you don’t have any objections, I’m going to fuck you now,” she said breathlessly against his lips.