Page 19 of Married to the Alien Rogue

“Me come!”Lila raced out of a clump of ferns, setting the orange fronds swaying. A feeling of satisfaction brushed against my mind as she fell into step beside me. Her tail rose proudly above her back, and she pranced.

I chuckled. “Good lunch?”

“Me fierce hunter.”

“Yes, you are.” She’d certainly taken down that lizard quickly. “Come on. We need to catch up with Raxnor.”

But even though he’d stormed off, he hadn’t gone far. I dodged around a tree to find him waiting, his usual scowl easing a bit as soon as he saw me. Then he took off.

“He extra grumpy,”Lila said.

“Yes, he is,”I thought back to her.

As his straight back moved away from me yet again, I wanted to know why my concern had caused him such pain.

And what I could do to fix it.

The golden-trunked trees continued to thin the longer we walked, finally allowing a view of mountains ahead. Their jagged peaks make pink triangles against the sky, and I couldn’t wait to find out what kind of rock they were made from. The ground steepened, and not long after lunch, the first rock formation blocked our path.

I stopped to run my fingers over the rough surface. It was a rosy pink lined with white veins and dotted with bits of clear quartz that reflected the sun.

“Something interesting?” Raxnor asked.

“Nope. Just feldspar.”

At his confused frown, I added, “It’s a pretty common type of rock. It’s rich in silicates but doesn’t have any metals worth fooling with.”

Instead of clearing, the crease in his brow grew deeper and picked up a couple of friends as the corners of his mouth pulled down into a proper scowl. “Then why did you get so excited?”

“Because…” Mierda? How to explain? I hadn’t even let myself really feel it. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Because I just spent the last week of my life being treated like a ‘pet’ instead of a person. Because it gave me no way to use my knowledge and my skills to do what I love, and I thought I might have to spend the rest of my life being that, beingnothing.” My fingers traced a vein in the rock. “Seeing this reminded me of my training.”

I spun to face him. “It reminded me of all the possibilities I now have, thanks to you.”

A flash of shock stripped the frown from his face, and I stepped forward, pulled to him. I wanted to hug him, but I’d settle for holding his hand.

His head whipped around, his eyes squinting into the distance. “Frek!”

His big hands were on me. In a blink, he had us on the ground, me on his lap, facing him. He pulled his cloak up to form half a tent over us. “Make yours meet mine,” he barked.

My fingers scrabbled at the neck, tapping to release the hold of the rods. As soon as they went limp, I yanked the cloth up overhead until our hands met.

Nothing came to me but the sound of our breaths and the pounding of my heart. “What—?”

“Shuttle,” he whispered. “We’re exposed out here. But with those rock formations beside us, hopefully we’ll look like a rock.”

I didn’t point out that our gray cloaks didn’t match the pink of the feldspar. Hell, most people didn’t notice things like that. I only knew how unusual it was because of the geology classes I’d taken.

“What friend do?”Lila called out.

A jolt of anxiety raced through me. “Lila! There’s no way they’ll miss her purple fur!” My heart raced.

“Have her crawl under.”

I widened the crack where our pieces of fabric met.“Get in here. We’re hiding from the lizards.”

“Me already hid.”

“They’ll be looking from the sky,”I warned.

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