He frowned. The gravitors on the escape pod should have prevented anything like that. The scars were weathered, long-settled into the wood. Not his doing then.
He let out a slow breath. He didn’t like the idea of damaging land that likely belonged to his little captor.
He turned back toward where he’d crashed, scanning the ground. His damper had to be—
There.Near the house.
He moved fast despite his aching wings, scooped up the black mask, and examined it. The mask was wrecked. The internal regulators were slag; the filtration system cracked beyond repair. He’d never get this working again without specialized equipment. Which meant he was stuck regulating his pheromones manually, on a planet where his biology had already proven unreliable and even dangerous.
Fantastic.
He pocketed the ruined mask. Leaving advanced tech on an X-Zone planet was a violation he didn’t need added to his growing list.
Movement from within the dwelling made him freeze.
Sore wings or not, he launched himself upward. His boots hit the roof with a muted thud, and he almost lost his balance on the slick surface. He crouched low, cursing the ice, and watched.
She emerged bundled in thick layers, practical against the cold. Smart. Artaisans were climate-adapted and hardy, but even he felt the frigid air. Seeing her appropriately dressed sparked an unexpected flicker of approval in his chest.
Her hair caught what little light there was—a warm brown, like rich soil, curling wild around her face. Soft-looking. He had a sudden, intrusive urge to wind his fingers through it.
Her eyes matched her hair when she glanced around, wary. Pale skin with a pinkish undertone stood in stark contrast to his white felted complexion. The creature was delicate compared to the females of his species—triggering every protective instinct he possessed. No wings. No antennae.
Definitely not Artaisan. His brows furrowed.
But his body didn’t care about taxonomy. His lumin glands pulsed, neck warming as they tried to release claiming pheromones into the air that no longer had a damper to filter them. The pull to go to her, to drop from this roof and finish what he’d started last night, was almost overwhelming.
He forced himself to stay put. There was no way his body was actually driving him toward a female who wasn’t even Artaisan. It was absurd. He watched her trudge through the snow, his focus sharpening when she let out a harsh noise near the barn doors. What he assumed was a curse.
He snorted. She should be more panicked. He was a big, unknown male who’d chased her down and pinned her against a wall. Yet here she was, stomping toward the barn like she had every right to be annoyed instead of terrified.
A tinge of guilt pricked at him when she reached the door. He’d broken the lock getting out. Every instinct screamed at him to follow. He forced himself to hold his position.
For now, anyway.
Maelic watched her stomp into the barn from his perch on the roof.
She emerged moments later with the heating unit, muttering something he couldn’t understand. Her scent carried on the wind. It was inviting and comfortable.
His lumin glands pulsed in response.
He needed to leave. Find the pod and get off this planet. Instead, he stayed rooted to the spot and watched her.
She moved toward a section of damaged fencing close to the barn he had spent the night in. It was a primitive sort of barricade, made of wire construction and half-collapsed. She struggled with some kind of cutting tool, her movements jerky and frustrated.
He should go. This wasn’t his concern.
But she kept working, stubborn despite the cold. Some time passed. She wrestled with the wire, swearing in her incomprehensible language. The temperature dropped further and his wings gave a discontented twitch.
She yanked off one glove with her teeth, fingers red from cold.Foolish.She’d get hurt working like that.
Her hand slipped. Metal sliced into flesh. The sharp scent of her blood hit him.
His body moved before his brain caught up. He launched from the roof, wings catching air, and landed in the snow beside her.
She scrambled backward, landing hard. Those wide eyes fixed on him. She grabbed the cutting tool and brandished it like a weapon.
“Wone moar stap and I’ll—I’ll emphale ewe!”
