Page 44 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid

“It was a drone, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. They don’t usually deploy them to the surface like that. It’s… a strangely desperate act. They’re meant to monitor the airspace around theGidalan—clear debris and deter pirates, that sort of thing.”

“Pirates?”

He shrugged. “I have never seen any, but I suppose they must exist.”

“Space pirates. Shit. I guess we’re lucky we didn’t get picked up.”

He seemed to bristle at the thought. “Yes. I suppose you’re right.”

Another awkward silence. Damn it.

“I’m sorry for being a burden,” she blurted.

He cast her a look of astonishment. “A burden? Why would you say that?”

“You are quite literally carrying me around. I think that’s the textbook definition, actually.”

He snorted, shaking his head. She ducked her head as they slid beneath the towering frond of a green fern.

“If you believe that holding you like this burdens me, then human women are less perceptive than you led me to believe.”

Her cheeks flushed despite her poker face. “If you’re talking about the fact that you’re, ah, standing at attention… I was honestly starting to believe you’re just built that way.”

“Standing at…” Nowhewas blushing. He cleared his throat, avoiding her gaze under the pretense of scrutinizing the path ahead. “No, that… that is not how I am built.”

“Just happy to see me then,” she murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She patted his shoulder.

“How did you become the Commander of your ship?” he asked, changing the subject.

That was a softball, and she intended to take it.

“Well, I did ROTC in high school—that’s a kind of program that prepares you for the military. My mom could never have afforded college, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in the same trailer park I grew up in. It’s probably ungrateful of me to say so, but I didn’t want to struggle the rest of my life the way she had. Military offered a stipend for school, so I enlisted.”

He nodded, though she could tell he hadn’t quite caught everything she said.

“I did eight years, got my master’s degree during that time. When I got out, I was eligible to join a special program that the government had set up to meet the demand for off-world colonists. By that point, greed had basically chewed our planet up and spit it back out. Even the most generous estimations held that it would take three generations to reverse the damage, and that was assuming we stopped polluting the Earth the next day.” She gave him a droll look. “That wasnotgoing to happen, so everyone who could afford it was bailing out.

“They needed pilots, and I was one, with leadership experience to boot. When it came time to pull names for the next mission, mine came up.” Regret gripped her throat, and she found she couldn’t finish that particular tale.

“Anyway, it didn’t work out. A few years later, I got called on again for this mission, and…” She laughed bitterly. “Well, I guess it didn’t work out, either.”

Cursed. She swallowed the thought like poison.

“Perhaps it will yet,” Rentir said.

She looked up at him in surprise.

“Your story isn’t over yet.”

That coaxed a genuine smile from her. “Are you an optimist, Rentir?”

His leonine nose scrunched up at that. “Not often.”