Page 20 of Rebirth

“I am not. I merely repeat the sentiments on the ground. That of some of your kin.”

Her throat moves again and her shoulders rise and fall as she releases a breath.

“Is this…not your sentiment?”

Again, a laugh huffs from her, coming through her nose this time. Mirthless like the first, before her gaze darts away from me, traveling over the blank walls enclosing us. “No offense to those on the ground, but it would be stupid of me to hate the very beings that freed my planet. Gave me a chance to live a few years longer.” Those eyes of hers meet mine, commanding a level of respect even some males do not have. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“Friend,” I say, turning the word over in my mind. “You have only just encountered us.”

“But I’ve seen what you’ve done.” She takes a step forward and my head lowers a little to match her piercing gaze. “It doesn’t take a genius to weigh the odds. You could have killed them and killed us all too. Yet, you’re helping us rebuild.”

I remain silent.

I was right.

Her intelligence strokes something deep within me and sets it alight. If I stayed, a partner like this would renew something within me I’ve long buried.

“Now,” she says, “Tell me there’s not more going on here.”

Clicks pass between us as I study the little hyu’man standing up to me, and I do something I shouldn’t.

I let her in.

“I could tell you that, hyu’man Soh’fee.” She stiffens as if she knows I am about to continue. “But that would all be a lie.”

CHAPTER SIX

SOPHIE

He’rox’s words make a sliver of fear go down my spine and I fight to control it. To control the way my breaths want to come out in uneven gasps, and the way my belly’s twisting into a knot.

He turns, leading me toward a wall that suddenly opens to an oval hole big enough for us both to walk through.

On the other side, the hole closes and we are in a room with—

I stop short, the wall at my back and two massive transparent cylinders a few feet in front of me.

Within the cylinder closest to me is a pale, slender woman, completely nude and floating motionless in translucent fluid. Her face is so calm, she looks like she’s some sort of sleeping beauty caught in a forever sleep.

But my brows draw together as I step forward, that sick feeling rising in my gut as I see the dark veins underneath her pale skin. Like a writhing darkness seething in her flesh.

“What’s…wrong with her?”

I don’t get a response, or maybe the alien beside me answers and I don’t hear it, because as my gaze lands on the next cylinder, I freeze in my bones.

There, right before me, is a creature I have never seen before. And one I wish I never saw.

It clearly isn’t from here. This world. This planet.

Or, if it is, it’s from the deepest, darkest part of the sea, not yet discovered by man. But even as my brain tries to understand, to make sense of what I’m looking at, I know the thing before me is from somewhere else.

It stares back at me, eyes soulless, dark and deep, completely lacking in emotion but filled with a silent intelligence that stops the breath in my lungs. It floats unmoving in the liquid before me and everything that makes me human tells me that this thing before me is evil. The hairs rising along my arms. The way adrenaline spikes deep in my veins.

Fight or flight.

My body’s telling me to run.

I gulp, glancing at He’rox, and his intense gaze does not falter. He watches me though, as if he expects me to scream, to run. But even if I wanted to.

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