Page 37 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

Kel was in the co-pilot seat before she finished the sentence. His markings had shifted — the warm, emotional glow replaced instantly by that hard and cold light. Combat mode. The switch was so fast I got whiplash watching it.

"Distance?" he asked.

"Close. Two minutes, maybe less."

I gripped the cargo hold's frame as Zhara fired the engines. The shuttle lurched and shook, lifting off on a trajectory that pressed me against the back wall.

"Strap in!" Zhara yelled.

I scrambled for the restraints. My hands were shaking but not from fear this time — from adrenaline and unresolved emotion and the fact that the most important conversation of my life had just been interrupted by alien slavers.

The shuttle screamed into the sky and I screamed with it, internally. Of COURSE. Of course this was how it went. Of course the moment he finally opened up, the moment I finally got the truth, the universe decided that what this situation really needed was a high-speed alien car chase.

His words stayed with me, repeating in the quiet spaces of my mind: compatibility was biology, but wanting me was a choice.

I was going to survive this. I was going to survive this specifically so I could continue that conversation. The slavers could get in line.

16

KEL

She knew. And she hadn't run.

I processed this while simultaneously managing weapons systems on a shuttle that should have been decommissioned and repurposed as scrap metal. The Saurok pursuit vessel was closing fast — smaller than Zhara's shuttle, faster, better armed. A scout ship, likely one of several Draxis had deployed to cover the continent.

"Coming in on our starboard," Zhara called, banking hard. The shuttle shuddered ominously. "Their weapons are charging."

I rerouted what remained of our weapons power to the rear deflector. It wouldn't hold against sustained fire but it might buy time. "Can you outrun them?"

"In this? No." Zhara's hands moved across the panel with the fluid confidence of someone who had been outrunning things her whole life. "But I can outfly them. There's a canyon network thirty vekt south. My scanner picked it up on approach. Tight corridors, unpredictable thermals. Good for us. Bad for them."

"Do it."

She banked again. The shuttle groaned. Behind us, in the cargo hold, Taylor was strapped in and silent. I could feel her through the resonance — the fear, the cold metallic spike of it — but underneath: determination. Anger. Knowing Taylor, I suspected some of that anger was for the interruption. The possibility that she could be furious at an armed pursuit vessel for its timing as well as its threat was so distinctly Taylor that I felt something in my chest loosen despite the circumstance.

The first shot hit our port side. The shuttle bucked violently. Alarms screamed. I read the damage: hull integrity reduced but holding. The engine coupling Zhara had just checked was strained.

"Return fire?" I asked.

"Save it. We'll need it in the canyons."

She dove. The shuttle's nose dropped at an angle that my stomach rejected and my training accepted. The jungle canopy rushed up, close enough to scrape our underside, and then fell away as the terrain shifted to exposed rock and ravines—the jagged mouth of a canyon system.

Zhara flew into it like she'd been born there.

The canyons were narrow, carved from dark red stone by millennia of water erosion and tectonic shift. The walls rose towering on either side, close enough that the rock strata were visible from the cockpit. Zhara threaded the shuttle through gaps that left no more than an arm's length of clearance on each side, banking on instinct, reading the canyon's curves through the viewport rather than the shuttle's damaged scanner.

She was a better pilot than me. I would never say this aloud. But it was true.

The Saurok scout followed us in: a narrow orange-black wedge with a blunt armored nose, swept-back wings, and weapon ports glowing along its belly. Mistake. Their ship was faster in open air but less maneuverable in confined space. Within minutes, they fell behind, unable to match Zhara's turns. They fired twice — one shot hit the canyon wall above us, raining debris. The other went wide.

"Taylor, are you alright?" I turned.

"Define alright!" she yelled from the back. "Am I alive? Yes! Am I alright? ASK ME WHEN WE LAND!"

She was alright.

Zhara barked a laugh, then banked hard left into a side canyon so narrow that both wing tips scraped the walls with a shriek of metal on stone. The Saurok scout couldn't follow. I heard their engine whine as they overshot, trying to find an alternate route.