Page 7 of Vylit: Glowing for Her
My throat went dry as I caught my reflection in the holo screen. My skin shimmered with a faint luminescence, and the Breather Mask pulsed in perfect rhythm with my heartbeat.
"It's me," I whispered. "I'm the beacon."
Vylit's gaze burned with contradictions… reverence and dread tangled together. His thumbs traced my jawline with surprising gentleness.
"Yes," he said. "The Breather adapts to your biochemistry. Our bonding has made you visible to my kind… and to others."
The moss beneath us stirred restlessly, tendrils reaching to pull me back into its protective embrace. I kicked free.
"I need to see the reef directly. Not through displays." I grabbed the Breather, securing it around my neck. "If I'm the beacon, I need to understand exactly how it's working."
Vylit swore, the translator failing entirely with whatever guttural language he slipped into. His luminous patterns shifted through colors I couldn't name, emotions I couldn't read. When he finally spoke again, the translator struggled to keep up.
"Dangerous beyond measure," it managed. "Cannot risk your capture."
"Can't risk doing nothing either." I stepped toward him, close enough to feel the electrical field that seemed to surround his skin. "Unless you plan on locking me up somewhere… I'm not asking permission. I'm asking for your help."
His inner light pulsed, a war playing out beneath his translucent skin. Finally, he conceded with a gesture that reminded me of a bow.
"On one condition." His voice deepened, the translator giving his words a strange, formal cadence. "I never release you from my reach. Not for a single pulse."
I rolled my eyes at the possessiveness, but my chest betrayed me with a thudding pulse. There was something about his fierce devotion, however misguided and alpha male it might be, that sent heat coursing through me. Damn my body's reactions.
"Fine. Consider me your barnacle." I secured the Breather tighter. "Now how do we get out there?"
In answer, the skiff's hull began to peel open, splitting along previously invisible seams like a living gate unfolding. The sea rushed in, not flooding us as I expected, but creating a controlled pressure gradient that felt like walking through heavy mist. The scent hit me first, salt, ozone, and something sweeter, like crushed flowers mixed with metal.
Vylit's arm wrapped around my waist, solid and secure. "Breathe normally. The Breather will adapt."
Together we stepped through the opening, and cold water swallowed us whole. The Breather activated fully, creating a thin membrane over my face that felt like nothing at all yet somehow converted the seawater to breathable air. Scientific curiosity momentarily overrode my fear. The technology was beyond anything human science had conceived.
Currents tugged at my body, trying to separate us, but Vylit's grip remained firm. His massive form moved with surprising grace through the water, his multiple fin-like appendages propelling us forward. I'd never felt so simultaneously powerful and helpless.. carried by an alien being through an alien sea, hunted by threats I barely understood.
The reef spread before us in all its terrible beauty. Bioluminescent growths stretched for what seemed like miles, every pulse synchronized to the beacon's call. What I'd previously studied as fascinating xenobiology now revealed itself as something far more sinister… a galactic invitation system, lighting up like runway lights for every pirate and predator in range.
Vylit's glow blazed around us, sending warning signals I couldn't decipher but instinctively understood. His body tensed against mine, pulling me closer as if daring the galaxy to try to take me. Through the water, a low rumble vibrated, an unseen presence that might have been engines or something far more dangerous.
My lungs burned with borrowed air, my nerves screamed with dread, yet a dangerous thrill coiled inside me. If I was bait, then together we would have to fight off the hunters, or be claimed by them. For a scientist who'd spent her life observing rather than participating, the stakes had never been so viscerally, terrifyingly real.
"How many are coming?" I managed to ask, my voice strange through the Breather's filtration.
Vylit's response came not in words but in a pulse of light that spread from his body to mine, a visual representation of incoming threats. Three distinct patterns, approaching from different vectors.
"Can we disable the beacon before they arrive?" I pointed toward the largest node cluster, its pulsing now so rapid it appeared almost solid.
His glow flickered… uncertainty, I guessed. "We can try."
That was all I needed to hear. If I was going to be hunted across the galaxy, I'd damn well understand the mechanism before I became prey. The scientist in me wouldn't accept anything less. Once I was hunted, then I could find a way home.
CHAPTER 4
VYLIT
I powered through the water, one arm locked around Maya's waist, the other parting the currents before us. Her body felt impossibly fragile against mine. The nodes spread across the reef blazed brighter as we approached, recognizing her genetic pattern. My mate, unclaimed and a prize that set the galaxy's hunters drooling. Her defiance burned hotter than her fear. When she pointed toward the central cluster nestled in what appeared to be a tide cave, I didn't argue. If she was determined to understand the mechanics of her captivity, I'd make sure she survived the lesson.
"There." Maya's voice vibrated through the Breather's membrane, her finger jabbing toward the darkness. "The signal pattern converges at that point."
My skin flared warning colors, instinctive, uncontrollable. The tide cave's mouth gaped like a predator's maw, its interior walls lined with pulsing nodes so densely packed they resembled a living heartbeat. Even from a distance, I could feel their vibration disrupting my internal rhythms.
