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He scanned the mezzanine below in search of the pink ship, smiling when he spotted it.
There, nestled under the bottom lip of an asteroid.
He had a reason to board it now.
* * *
LUCCA
Her fuel station was gone.
The humans were gone.
She’d watched in speechless horror as they’d blown apart. People one moment. Stardust the next.
She was too shocked to react when an alarm glowed on her screen. Caligher stood in her airlock.
God, it was really happening.
She’d known this was coming. Once she’d heard those screams and spotted his ship, some sixth sense had warned her. She couldn’t help but be amazed by her spectacularly horrible timing.
With chilling gentleness, he pulled shut the outer door and let oxygen restore. Such a contrast to what he’d done to those ships.
He fiddled with the wall terminal, tapping into her speaker system as if the machines answered to him.
“Lucca. Open this door.” His eyes lifted to the camera, a threat if she ever saw one. Up this close, his striking face was almost human. The alert eyes, his tall nose, and the unimpressed line of his mouth. “We need to talk.”
She said nothing, holding deadly still as if he might turn around and leave.
Some component in her brain was bargaining for a do-over.Let me go back one day. Just one day, and I’ll fix this. That was what Lucca did in the face of explosions. Stall, deny, bargain, run. And look where it had brought her.
Eyes narrowing, his tone dropped to something far icier. “Or I could come find you.”
Dread frosted her blood.
“J-just don’t freak out, please,” she answered in a small voice. With trembling fingers, she released the door.
The ship creaked and tilted as if its gravitational center was drawn toward the back, toward him. Every fine hair on her body went alert—attuned to him steadily eating up that distance—her stomach bottoming out with every dreadful footstep.
She knew when he was on the other side of the door. She knew with her entire nervous system.
After an excruciating pause, the door hissed open.
Caligher stood at the entry above the cockpit, all pearly hues glimmering over his bulky silhouette. He scanned the depths of the cockpit until his eyes centered on her.
She didn’t breathe as she drank him in. Her lungs simply stopped taking air.
His face was devastating in person—sharp eyes beneath a head of glowing fins, a nearly birdlike nose that was well-proportioned with the strong lines of his face.
His mouth dropped into a frown and her spirit sank lower. That beautiful face was suddenly burned into her retina, to be forever associated with this moment—this monumental failure.
She would always remember his frown.
Her gaze swept over his body purely by accident, taking in the blend of familiar and alien features. What had looked like body armor from a distance was confirmed to be built into him, part of him. Dark, dark purple, practically black, and rough like pumice. His face and underlying skin were the lightest shade of lavender. Whatever wasn’t covered in rock was lined with muscle. Her eyes fell down his legs, noting his transparent, webbed feet.
She found his eyes quickly. And damn her to hell for thinking it, but he was more stunning in person than she could have dreamed.
No longer just a voice, but a real, breathing entity.
