Page 117 of Owned By Two

As we entered Rigel 12’s atmosphere, the entire terminal was smothered with blinking emergency lights and wailing alarms.

I found myself praying we wouldn’t explode, that we would pull through this.

I shut my eyes once more, preferring to meet death’s darkness head-on if it had to happen this way.

Uhti brought the ship down as smoothly as he could, although with how it was bucking, we might have been riding a bronco.

We had barely sat down before Uhti leapt to his feet and yelled:

“Out! Out! Out! Everybody out!”

He grabbed a handle under the terminal desk and yanked out a small box.

Blor slapped the hatch door button and it whirred open.

It barely opened a crack before Blor picked me up and shoved me through it.

I fell out on the other side and landed on a soft sandy beach.

There was a heavy thud behind me as I scrambled to my feet.

Blor was there, grabbed my arm, and rushed across the open space toward the dense woodland on the other side.

A second thud struck the sand and Uhti hustled up behind us.

“Down! Down! Down!” he bellowed the moment we crested a shallow hill.

I hit the ground and both Blor and Uhti threw themselves on top of me.

Less than a panicked breath later, the shuttle exploded in a ball of blue fire.

I watched it race upward to kiss the perfect purple sky.

Random shards of detritus rained down on us but only tiny pieces came anywhere near us and bounced ineffectively off the two aliens’ scales like droplets of rain.

After the big explosion came a series of smaller ones, popping like air in an open fire.

The males rolled off me and we shared a look.

After a moment, I let my head flop back on the sand and chuckled, my laugh beginning small and then building as the others joined in, growing louder and more explosive until we were all overtaken by it.

Once we stopped, and I had massaged my cheeks and stomach that were suddenly painful, I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and said:

“So what happens now?”

Uhti raised the box he’d pulled from the ship’s terminal. “I have the beacon. Someone will come rescue us.”

“What if it’s the Hive?” I said, fearfully.

Uhti shook his head. “It won’t be them. They don’t know the frequency.”

“Then… we really escaped?” I said, incredulity painting my every word.

“It looks that way, yes,” Uhti said, leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek.

He pulled back and looked across at Blor, who might have been angry — I knew how territorial the Elkik could be — but instead, his reaction surprised me.

He sighed and shook his head. “Turn around.”

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