Page 38 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"Lost them," Zhara said. "For now. The canyons fork six ways ahead. They'll have to guess."

She slowed marginally, navigating the narrowing canyon with exacting precision. The walls were almost close enough to touch from the cockpit. Below us, a river churned through the canyon floor. Above, a strip of lavender sky.

"How far to the other side?" I asked.

"The canyon system exits onto a plateau. The outpost is approximately forty vekt from there. Two days' walk."

"Can the shuttle make it?"

As if answering my question, the engine made a sound that engines should not make. A grinding, rhythmic shudder that I felt through the deck plating.

"The shuttle can make it to the plateau," Zhara said carefully. "After that, probably not."

Another impact. Not weapons fire — the shuttle hitting a rock outcropping that Zhara had almost, but not quite, cleared. The starboard side crumpled. More alarms.

"Definitely not," Zhara amended.

We emerged from the canyon system onto a broad plateau of scrubby vegetation and exposed rock. The jungle was thinner here — lower canopy, more light, drier air. Both suns were fully visible in the open sky for the first time since the crash, and the lavender sky made the red rocks of the plateau look almost gold. The light was warmer than it should have been, and everything below cast double shadows across the rock. The shuttle was making increasingly concerning sounds.

"Setting down," Zhara announced, and brought us in for a landing that was controlled by Zhara's standards and terrifying by anyone else's. We hit the ground, skidded across bare rock, bounced once, and came to a stop in a cloud of dust and the smell of something electrical burning.

The engine died. Not shut down. Died.

Taylor's voice from the back: "If you make me crash-land ONE more time, the slavers will be the least of your problems."

Zhara looked at me. Her four eyes held an expression I recognized: respect mixed with concern. "She's interesting," she said in the common trade language — a guild channel the disc she'd given Taylor kept locked.

"You have no idea," I replied in the same.

We crawled from the shuttle into the doubled light, my shadow stretching out in two faint copies across the rock. Taylor's legs were shaking; I could see it from where I stood. But she stood straight, brushed herself off, and surveyed the plateau with the same assessing look she used on ruins.

I stood near her. Not touching. Not speaking. The conversation from the shuttle, the real one, before the alarms, hung between us like a living thing. She knew about the resonance. She knew I'd been hiding it. She knew what I felt.

And she was still here. Standing next to me. Close enough that my markings glowed.

She looked at me. The anger was still there. I could feel it, a low simmer under everything else. But it wasn't alone anymore. Alongside the anger was something I hadn't felt from her before, directed at me: possibility. She was considering me. Not as a captor or a rescuer or a secretive alien. As a man she might let in.

My markings pulsed. I didn't hide it.

She looked at them. Looked at me. Almost smiled.

"Two days' walk?" she said.

"Approximately."

"And the slavers?"

"Lost in the canyon system. Temporarily."

"Temporarily." She nodded. Straightened her shoulders. Put her hands on her hips. "Then we walk. And while we walk, you are going to answer every single question I have about the resonance. No more 'complicated.' No more 'various stimuli.' Everything."

"Everything," I agreed.

"Starting with whether you can actually feel what I'm feeling right now."

I held her gaze. "Yes."

Her eyes widened slightly. "Right now? You can feel what I'm feeling right now?"