Page 5 of Alien Engineer's Mate

"That's... all of it?" Her stomach dropped.

"Supplier hiked the price. Again." He pushed the bottle toward her. The label—K. Coleman: Anti-xenobiotic Regimen—was streaked with dust. The damn stuff got everywhere. "I told you to switch him to generics. They're much cheaper, and I can get you the full dose."

"Generics make him vomit blood." The words came out sharper than she'd intended. Beck's expression tightened, his gaze darting to the security cam in the corner. The powers that be were always watching. He shifted a little to the left, so she was between him and the camera, looking down as he reached for a req pad.

"Look," he said, voice low and soft. Pitched not to carry. "If you can front another 200 credits by Friday, I'll try to barter with the Thalax traders. They sometimes carry unregulated stock."

Her fingers tightened around the bottle. Two hundred credits was half a month's air ration. Two hundred credits were Grace and Kyle's school fees, Leo's mask filters, or the leaking seal in their pod she kept meaning to get around to dealing with.

Her throat burned. "Errr… no worries. I'll... figure something out."

She didn't remember leaving the store. The storm had worsened, reducing the settlement to a smudge of amber light and screaming wind. Her mask's alarm shrilled—FILTER CAPACITY AT 16%—as she staggered toward the residential blocks. Sand needled her exposed wrists, her neck, and the strip of skin above her goggles where her scarf and hood had slipped.

For one wild, airless moment, she considered ripping the mask off. Let the storm scour her lungs clean, and the dust bury her under the same rusted plating her parents had died maintaining.

Grace. Kyle. Leo.The names hooked into her ribs, sharp as shrapnel. Grace, who'd started hoarding her protein bars "for emergencies" after Kyle's last fever. Kyle, who couldn't sit still if his life depended on it. And Leo working split shifts in the refinery to cover what she couldn't.

She grabbed at her hood, wrapping her scarf around her head and using it to pin the hood in place. She reached in her pocket for a rag to clean the front of her goggles.

Her hand brushed the leaflet, and she yanked it out, squinting at the text through her cracked goggles. The wind tried to tear the paper from her grip, but there, in cramped legal script at the bottom:All relocation and medical costs for eligible females and all dependents will be covered by the Latharian Mate Program (Clause 14-5B).

She blinked.

Medical costs.

Kyle's medication. The tariff markup. Generics that don't work.

She looked at the leaflet again, but the words blurred. She blinked, her pulse roaring in her ears.All dependents.Grace. Kyle. Even Leo, technically, though he'd turn eighteen in six months.

She looked up, jaw clenched in determination as she turned on her heel. She ignored the storm's fury as she strode eastward. The colony manager's office lay in the opposite direction to her pod, but she didn't care. Her boots crunched over debris, her grip on the leaflet tightening.

The dust screamed behind her, but she didn't look back.

She could fix everything.

All she had to do was marry an alien.

Pain stabbedthrough Maax's neck as consciousness clawed its way back. Light from the viewport pierced his skull like needles, blazing its way through his defenses. Damn it. He'd fallen asleep in the living room chair again, with his daughter Emily’s small form a warm weight against his chest.

He blinked sleep from his eyes and lifted his arm, trying to force his wrist bracer to come into focus: 0720 station time.

Draanthing hell.

Twenty minutes late to the nursery already. The engineering meeting... Emily shifted against him, her tiny fingers still curled into his shirt like she feared he'd disappear. His chest tightened at the dried tear tracks on her cheeks. She'd jolted awake, screaming about the dark three times. Each time, he'd carried her here where the lights could burn away the shadows that haunted her dreams.

"Emily." The gentleness in his own voice startled him; his engineering crews would never believe their ears if they heard him. "We need to wake up now."

She burrowed closer, her face pressing into his chest like she could hide there forever. "No."

He smoothed a big hand over her tangled hair as a proud smile curved his lips at the defiance in that tiny 'no.' Two months ago, she would have snapped awake at his first word, the terror of punishment driving her from sleep.

"Yes, poppet. We need to."

"Don't want to." Her voice wavered between sleep and waking, and she snuggled closer.

"The other children will be at nursery already." He tried a different tactic. "And Red Dragon needs an adventure today, doesn't he?"

One eye cracked open, and she looked up at him through her tangle of hair, hope warring with sleepiness. "Can I take him?"

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