Page 107 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid
He froze, his hands hovering in the air over her. “Cordelia?” His voice was so small.
She clutched him tighter; she was at a loss for words, so she wouldn’t bother with them. After a moment of hesitation, his arms came around her shoulders. He shuddered as he leanedinto the hug, curling around her and burying his nose in her hair. The embrace stretched on for a long while, until Cordelia could bear the thought of letting him go to face his regrets on his own.
She cleared her throat, smoothing down the front of her shirt and resuming her seat. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “Continue, please.”
He searched her expression and sat back down as well, following her bidding.
“Lord Tellefan does not make appearances on Yulaira often. Maybe once every few years, when it can no longer be avoided. He has all that he could wish for aboard theGidalan, and he sees Yulaira as a filthy, backwater planet. Beneath him.” He huffed a laugh at that, his eyes flicking up toward the night sky. “And so it is, I suppose. So are we all, even now.”
“Not for long,” she said darkly.
That coaxed a wicked smile from him. He sobered before he continued.
“That day, Lord Tellefan descended upon the base to snuff out the whisperings of rebellion. And so, I arrived, armed to my teeth and numb to it all, all too ready to kill every last one of my own kind at the bidding of my overseer. At first, it seemed that the rumors had been exaggerated; everything was running just as it should. But then he went for a walkabout in the mines, and we crossed paths with Xeth.
“He didn’t strike right away. I think he must have waited for an opportunity to rally the others with Thalen, and rally they did. By the time we made it back to the upper levels, madness had broken loose. Hybrids were killing their overseers in the halls, beating them to death with anything they could find, strangling them with hands and tails.
“I want to say that I was steadfast in my decision, that I was merely brainwashed, as I know Haerune believes, but”—his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat—“I thought about it. Isaw them all, fighting to their deaths for freedom, and I did think about joining them. Just for an instant. And then my lord gave the command to kill them, and I raised the muzzle of my blaster, and I obeyed.”
He looked at her then, and somehow he had aged a dozen years in the space of that confession. “I cut down more than half the crew on the upper levels. Anyone who turned their head toward my lord, I ended. We had nearly reached the exit when Haerune crossed my path.”
The glow of his eyes dimmed as he closed his eyes, shaking his head hard. “I was going to kill him, Cordelia. I hardly recognized him, even when he called out to me. He had his hands up, trying to reason with me, and yet when Lord Tellefan snapped at me to fire, I nearly pulled the trigger.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t. Thalen knocked the gun from my hand. Haerune tackled me, pinned me to the ground as the others chased Tellefan and what remained of his retinue out of the base. They would have killed me, too, had Haerune not begged and pleaded with them not to, even while I tried to wring his throat.
“Thalen was moved to mercy by Haerune’s tales of our childhood, and I was imprisoned for half a cycle as they determined whether or not I could be trusted.”
She sat forward, resting her elbows against her thighs. “What convinced them?”
“There was a ground assault. The only one the Aurillon attempted, given how badly it failed. They were heavily armed, and there are only a handful of us in the base with the clearance to wield a blaster. It was mere desperation that led Thalen to free me. I killed for them, and when I saw that Thalen was about to take a deathblow at the end of a plasma rifle… I took the shot on his behalf.”
The too-vivid memory of that plasma bolt whizzing right past his head surfaced in her mind, and she was briefly strangled by the accompanying horror.
“I was in the medpod for three days.” He continued his story, oblivious to her turmoil. “It should have killed me. I am not sure why I lived.”
He opened his jacket and rucked up his shirt, revealing a smooth, rounded scar just below his pectoral that she hadn’t noticed that day in the dimmed light of the baths. She got up and knelt between his legs, tracing the scar from the near-miss he’d survived with her fingertips. Tingles started at her scalp, and like an egg cracked over her head, they slid down her spine, lighting her whole body with awareness. A strange sense of destiny swept over her.
I am not sure why I lived. She’d asked herself the same question so many times.
“What if this is why?” she asked softly, looking up at him as tears pricked in her eyes. “What if this is why we both lived, Rentir? To be here, in this moment together. To free you of the Aurillon once and for all.”
She could see from the longing in his face that he wanted to believe it, but he shook his head, catching her hand in his own and dropping his shirt.
“I am not a good male,” he said hoarsely. “The way you look at me… I do not deserve such faith, Cordelia.”
“You are not what they made you do.” She wrapped her other hand around their joined grip.
“I am,” he refuted, trying to tug away from her. There was a catch in his breath, like he was battling against the urge to cry. “What else is a male except his actions? Do not defend me.” He shrugged out of her grip and paced a few steps away, hanging his head.
“Okay. You’re right.”
His tail pinned between his legs at that.
“I won’t try to forgive you for the things you’ve done. That’s not my place. I’ll give you that.” She stepped closer.
He flinched when her hand landed on his shoulder.
