Page 17 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"Earth is classified as an uncontacted world. No sanctioned species is permitted to interact with your planet. The Saurok violated this classification when they abducted you. A human from an uncontacted world would be extremely rare in the galactic slave market. Extremely valuable."

My stomach dropped. "Valuable."

"I do not say this to frighten you."

"Too late."

He looked at me across the fire. The purple light caught the planes of his face and made his violet eyes catch the light like something predatory and beautiful. His markings were a steady low glow. "You are under my protection. The Saurok will not take you again."

He said it like a fact. Like gravity. The Saurok would not take me again because he would not allow it, and I believed him. The absolute certainty in his eyes caught me low in the body — one warm, startling pull that had no business existing beside fear.

"Okay," I said. "What about the diplomat's daughter? Did you get her out?"

Another pause. Longer this time. "No. The ship was attacked by a rival faction, Korvathi raiders, before I could reach her cell block. The structural damage cut off access. I was unable to complete the extraction."

"So she's still out there? Still with the slavers?"

"I have incomplete information. My communications equipment was damaged in the crash. The pod's emergency beacon fired automatically on impact, before the array failed. The Authority knows I came down, and roughly where."

"And they're not coming."

"The Authority does not scramble a retrieval for a specialist who is off-assignment and still transmitting vitals. The beacon gives them an approximate search ellipse under canopy, not a landing point, and no craft can safely put down here. I am expected to walk out." A pause. "A secondary team may have been deployed for the diplomat's daughter."

"May have been."

"Communications have been intermittent."

I stared at the purple fire. A girl was out there, somewhere in space, taken by the same monsters that had taken me. And the guy who was supposed to rescue her was sitting across a campfire on a jungle planet because he'd grabbed me instead.

"Why me?" I asked quietly. "Why did you take me instead of going after her?"

The question hung in the air between us. The fire crackled. His markings pulsed once brighter, then settled.

"The ship was failing. Your cell block was the only one accessible. Leaving you to die was not an acceptable outcome."

It was the right answer. The noble answer. But something about the way he'd said it, too carefully, too controlled, made me think it wasn't the whole answer.

I let it go. For now.

"Okay. One more question for tonight. Your markings. 'Various stimuli' is not an explanation. They changed when you talked about leaving that girl behind, and again when you said leaving me to die wasn't acceptable. Your body keeps answering questions you won't."

His markings brightened. Even he could not pretend otherwise.

"I am not prepared to give you the whole answer."

"Then say that instead of pretending there isn't one."

"There is an answer."

"And you're choosing not to trust me with it."

He said nothing. I turned away from the fire before he could give me another controlled fragment. This was not over.

I lay down on my side of the fire, pulled the thermal blanket from the pod around my shoulders, and stared at the bioluminescent canopy above. Two moons were visible through a gap in the leaves — one gold, one pink. Alien moons. Alien sky. Alien planet.

Alien man who glowed when I got close to him and wouldn't tell me why.

I should be terrified. I was, partly. But there was another feeling there too, warm and stubborn and entirely unhelpful, and I identified it with the same clinical detachment I used for cataloging artifacts.