Page 87 of Claimed by an Alien Warrior

She covered his hand with one of hers briefly, brushing her fingertips over his scales, before taking hold of the wheel.

“I…I think we’ll need to backtrack. That cop probably realized we were going to get on I-70 before he pulled us over, and they saw us run in this direction.”

Rendash nodded, smiling pridefully. “And the last thing they would expect is for us to move directly toward their search.”

“Right. We’re supposed to be runningaway.” She inhaled deeply, moved the stick on the wheel column, and backed the vehicle out onto the road. “You wouldn’t happen to be able to access any kind of maps with this thing, can you?”

Ren was silent for a moment as he interfaced with the vehicle’s internal systems. “No. Not without enabling functions that would allow us to be tracked.”

“Okay. Well, we have almost a full tank of gas, so we have room for a couple wrong turns.” Shifting the wheel-stick again, she drove the vehicle forward, her gaze restlessly scanning the area. Her muscles were tight beneath his hand, and she kept adjusting her grip on the wheel as though her fingers were stiff. She was frightened, and he couldn’t blame her.

She guided the vehicle slowly down narrow roads lined by large dwellings and tall trees on both sides. The snow piled along the edges of the road was black and gray rather than the pristine white he’d grown used to over the last several days.

Gradually, the air blowing from the vents warmed.

“Maybe it’d be better if you go invisible,” she said after a little while. Up ahead, the road descended into a place where the buildings were positioned closer together and the roads were wider. Numerous vehicles were moving through the area.

He obeyed without question. Though they were both being hunted, the enforcers were likely more interested in locating Rendash. Having a completely different vehicle with darkened windows would help, but she stood the best chance if she appeared to be alone.

The cloaking field was easy to maintain now, completely unlike it had been when he first encountered her. He’d considered it before, but he couldn’t stop the thought from reemerging — so much had changed since that night.

He turned his head to watch her. She kept her face surprisingly neutral, but he could see in her eyes that she was still shaken up. He gave her thigh a gentle squeeze. Zoey offered a soft, brief smile in reply.

Rendash had told himself — had told her— that he’d stayed to ensure her safety.

Selflessness.

That was one of the core tenets of the aekhora, and he’d neglected it so thoroughly that he should have been ashamed of himself. There was little selflessness in him protecting Zoey — she deserved comfort, security, and happiness, that could not be denied, but he was not doing it simply because it was right.

He was doing it because his want for her, hisneedfor her, had grown to become a driving force in his mind. If he truly wanted her safe beyond all else, he would have left her behind days ago. Before he’d destroyed her life. Before he’d taken away her future on this planet.

It wasn’t so much that he wanted her safe as that he wanted her safewith him.

After some aimless wandering, Zoey found the road she called theInterstateand directed their SUV onto it. The insistent call of his ship, clear but still distant, screamed that he was going the wrong way. Even knowing that they were deliberately backtracking, it was a struggle to prevent himself from correcting her course.

With the weather having cleared, there were far more cars on the road than he’d seen so far, and he was glad that she’d told him to cloak himself. They saw several enforcer vehicles driving on the sideroads just off the interstate as the town passed around them, but no such vehicles crossed their path.

“Okay,” she said as they approached a fork in the road, “I think this is our exit coming up. One-seventy-one. I’ve never been great with maps, but I think I remember this cutting south…and then bringing us somewhere east where we can get back onto seventy?” She sighed heavily and shook her head. “How the hell did people do this before GPS?”

“What is GPS?” Ren asked.

“I think it stands for Global Positioning System, or something like that. It uses satellites to pinpoint your location, and then translates that onto a map. You basically tell it where you want to go, and it figures out the best route for you to take based on where you are.”

She took the right fork, following it around a sharp loop and onto a narrower road, which only had one lane going in each direction. A river flowed to their left, and the road seemed to more-or-less follow its course as it wound through the hills and mountains.

Before long, Zoey leaned forward, her gaze flicking upward. The sky in the distance had an ugly gray cast to it, as though there’d be more bad weather soon, but that wasn’t what she was focused on.

“That’s not a coincidence, right?” she asked.

Ren’s gaze followed hers. Far-off — but approaching rapidly — were three black, familiar shapes.

Helicopters.

It seemed as though he and Zoey both held their breath as the helicopters passed overhead, the chopping whir of their blades audible even with the windows closed and the rush of wind that enveloped their vehicle. Rendash shifted to look in the side mirror and watch the aircraft speeding toward Vail.

Zoey released a shaky breath. “I think we’re safe. For now.”

Ren stared at the darkening sky reflected in the mirror. When the helicopters didn’t reappear, he nodded and squeezed her thigh again. “Yes. We’re safe.”

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