Page 13 of Mated to the Alien Rogue

It was clearly more than horns that made him a warrior. He had a stamina and power I couldn’t hope to match.

If it turned out this was all a ruse and he was lying to me, I’d be hard pressed to fight him. I needed to make him think I believed him, while not falling under the spell ofactuallybelieving him.

He splashed through a creek and came to a halt, setting me down and pulling off his pack. “Drink.”

I took the can from him as he bent down to fill the one we’d emptied before.

Max crouched on the other side of the stream, his little pink tongue a blur as he drank. Then he leaped from one raised brown rock to the next, zigzagging his way across without getting his paws wet.

Wrin and I stood side by side, staying under the stealth cloth as we drank. The water splashed and burbled, a soothing, natural sound such as I’d never heard on Earth. I wished I could see more than the fabric allowed.

I brushed the toes of one slipper over the soft bed of dried needles. “If we’re far enough away, I want to walk.”

He pressed his can into my hand to hold and pulled a knife from a sheath on his belt. Eyeing the fabric around us, he gathered up one edge and sliced cleanly across the material overhead with a ripping sound. When done, a smaller piece covered me, with a larger piece over him.

We no longer had to stay so close together.

Instead of satisfaction, a curl of disappointment soured my stomach.Stop being stupid, Viv. This is what you wanted.

He fashioned his into a sort of cloak, fastening it with a small clamp. Then he did the same for me. “With the bulk of our bodies covered, just our heads should register as nothing more than small animals.”

“Thank you.” I really meant it. It would be a relief to be able to walk without the fabric blocking the view of everything around me.

Instead of saying “you’re welcome,” he commanded, “Finish your water.”

I snorted but did as he asked.

When we were done, he refilled both cans and stowed them in his pack. Then he pulled out a small package. “Here. The other females wanted you to have these.”

I opened the wrapping to find golden disks of pastry, and a sweet smell teased my nose.

“Cookies!” I bit into one, and sweet nuttiness burst over my tongue, making me moan. It tasted like a cross between a Chinese almond cookie and an American peanut butter cookie. The flavor shocked me back to a feeling of childhood, of home.

Then his words finally penetrated. I swallowed. “Other females… you mean humans? Like me?”

“Yes.”

My heart stopped for a second, and I held my breath as every muscle in my body locked rigid. I longed to know and also dreaded the answer, but I made myself ask, anyway. “These women, are they fromARK 1? Are they my crew?”

“Yes.”

Relief whooshed through me, loosening all my muscles… for about three seconds. Then anger sparked in my chest. “You knew about my crew, and you didn’t tell me!”

His eyes narrowed. “I’ve been a little busy saving you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

True. My gut roiled with confusion. The most logical answer was that he worked with the other blue aliens from the lab. But that ship explosion hadn’t seemed faked. And now he knew about the other women…

Get it together, Viv. Him knowing about the other women does not mean asingledamned thing. If anything, it proves he’s working with those others.Because the only people I’d seen holding a human hostage were blue fuckers who looked just like him.

A million questions bubbled up on my tongue, but one pressed forward, ahead of the rest. If he was for real, he had to have a good reason for his actions. “Whydidyou save me?”

“Are your males so despicable that you even need to ask?”

“What? No!” My father’s face flashed through my mind. No matter how horrible a lot of the guys in college had been, Dad was one of the best people I’d ever known—honorable, hard-working, kind.

“We need to move,” he said, his voice stern. “We can’t let them find us.”

“If they get close, we’ll split up,” I said. “You can be just a guy out for a hike in the woods.”

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