“You never know,”she’d told him, wagging her brows.“The opportunity for a death-defying feat lurks around every corner.”
If she’d known how right she was, she would have never let any of them board that fucking shuttle.
She lowered her face, sniffling, and wiped at her tears with the cuff of her sleeve. Feeling someone watching her, she glanced over at Rentir, who was standing a few steps away. His expression was inscrutable as his strange eyes moved restlessly over her.
“You are distressed,” he said uncertainly, nostrils flaring.
“Overwhelmed,” she corrected, flashing a smile. “I’ve never seen anything like this, orsmelledanything like this. It’s humbling.”
“You do not have trees on your planet?”
“Some. But not like this. Not so many. And the air… where I come from, it’s all chemical byproducts and acid rain. I’ve never breathed such clean air.”
He took a deep breath, looking around at the forest as though he was seeing it for the first time. “It pleases you,” he said in a musing tone.
“It does,” she said, brushing her fingers over the rough silver bark of a purple-leafed tree.
“You should stay,” he said suddenly.
She turned to look at him, brows climbing. He looked… shy. Shifting from foot to foot, his tail moving in slow arcs behind him. He took a deep breath.
“Stay,” he repeated. “You and your crew. You would be welcome here, on Yulaira.”
“Yulaira… Is that what this planet is called?”
“It is what we call it. It means ‘new hope.’”
She chewed on that for a moment, pacing and enjoying the crunch of bracken beneath her boots.
Stay.
It wasn’t like they had a lot of options, though there was still the chance they could find a way to navigate one of those ships in the hangar back to Earth if they could recover theCassandra’s black box. The decision shouldn’t come down to her; everyone who had been stranded deserved the opportunity to weigh in.
She sighed, rolling her shoulders. A creature swooped by overhead, calling a pretty song as it disappeared into the high boughs of a tree. It reminded her of the mourning dove that had cooed outside her apartment window every morning. She’d loved waking up to that sound, that little proof that all of life on Earth hadn’t been polluted to death.
Yulaira must be teeming with it.
Stay, he’d said. It wouldn’t be the worst thing.
“What do they call it?” she pointed toward the sky. “The Aurillon.”
Distaste scrunched up his nose. “Mining Colony 13.”
She mirrored his expression. “Yeah, yours is better. Fuck those guys.”
He grinned. “Come.” He pointed off to her left. “North is this way. Let us begin our sweep.”
CHAPTER 11
Rentir watchedCordelia swat a towering blue fern out of her face as they walked deeper into the forest. She’d begun to sweat, her fragrance thickening in the air as the moisture evaporated off her skin. It was driving him to distraction and making his cock ache painfully in his pants.
He’d had his fair share of erections in his life, but he had never felt anything like this. It had been more of an itch he had to scratch from time to time, a minor annoyance. Now it was a struggle to drag his thoughts from it.
He shoved at it surreptitiously, tucking it into his waistband. If he thought he could slap sense into it, he would have tried.
Cordelia glanced back at him, and he yanked his hand away from his dick like it was on fire.
“I’m not picking anything up,” she called, holding up her holoscreen where he’d set her up to detect short-range frequencies. “You?”
