Page 89 of Stardusted

My knees decided to melt, and all the blood drained from my head. The room tilted, and I fell against the wall with a strangledwheeze. Fuzzy spots danced in my vision. I blinked hard, willing them away.

I wasnotgoing to faint. I wasn’t a fainter.

Sky didn’t know that, though. He jerked forward like he planned to catch me. Pure adrenaline roared through me. I shrank away with a squeak, lifting the pepper spray.

“No,” I gasped out. “Stay back.”

“Okay.” He lifted his hands in surrender and didn’t move any closer, simply settled back against the counter again and folded his arms. That broody frown reappeared.

Pladia. Lightyears. Starborn.

My brain stuttered, and I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Giving my head a shake, I tried again. “So you really are…” I licked my dry lips. “You really are an…”

The word got stuck. My knees wobbled. I couldn’t say it.

Sky didn’t have that problem. He nodded once, slowly. “An alien. Yeah. A Pladian, if we’re getting technical.”

“An alien.Pladian,” I whispered. That wordPladianseemed to ricochet in my brain, echoing over and over. “How…? How is this real?”

“It’s a long story.” He rubbed at his temple and sighed, looking, for a moment, exhausted. For some reason, that sliver of emotion grounded me. It was familiar. Human.

It was enough for me to start reasoning out loud. “Okay. Okay, so you’re an,”oh God, “alien. And…what? Is this,” I gestured at him with the mace, “like a human suit or something?”

He looked down at himself. A hint of a smirk curled his mouth, breaking through his broodiness like sunbeams through clouds. “Close. My body is bonded with a biological synthesis suit. A synth-skin. So I guess you could say I’m wearing human skin.”

“A…what?” My composure abandoned ship. “Wait,isthat somebody’s body? Did you steal someone’s skin?”

Was he walking around in some kind ofstolen hot guy body?

“What? No!” Sky lurched, eyes flaring wide. “Why would you even…?No, Rae. It’s not like that.”

When I continued to stare in horror, he muttered a curse under his breath. “No, it’s not somebody’s skin. It’s a suit. It’s tech. The Pladians—my people—we’ve been explorers for eons. This,” he indicated his long, unfairly ripped form, “has been used to blend into local populations so we can observe without disruption. It allows us to explore in a non-invasive way.”

Non-invasive. Sure. It was feeling pretty damn invasive right about now.

As if he’d heard the thought—or maybe read it on my face—his mouth pressed into a tight line. To his credit, he kept going. “Before coming to Earth, I went through a merging process. I bonded with the synth-skin and activated its shapeshifting biological interface.”

“Uh huh. Shapeshifting,” I echoed faintly. “Sure.”

His eyes flicked back and forth between mine, as if he tried to gauge my reaction. I was still firmly stuck onholy freaking crap.

“Shapeshifting,” he said, watching me closely. “But it’s more than that. It fuses with its host, all the way down to the DNA. It’s my skin now.” He presented one arm and pinched the back of his hand. The skin bunched between his fingers, then bounced back when he released it. The white mark faded to red.

I stared at it. It was a hand. With skin. Normal, human skin.

“I can feel that,” Sky said quietly, as my panic gave way to cautious curiosity. “I feel temperature, pain. I’m ticklish. The suit restructures my molecules to match your biological signature. Helps that our evolutions took similar paths. That’s more common than you’d think.”

Morecommon? As in, there was anuncommonoption, too?

Too much. That was too much for the right now. I filed that little tidbit away for later. Focused on the current out-of-this-world exposé.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “So that’s not your real skin…but it is?”

“Exactly. It wasn’t always,but it’s menow.”

That ever-present, rational corner of my mindfinallyclicked into gear. Cataloged. Processed.

An alien in a synth-skin suit. And underneath it, he was silver and sparkly.