Chapter 20

Eve … Miraculously Survives

I’ve been abducted by aliens more times than I can count. Of all my abductions, this one begins the most pleasantly of them all.

I’m flat on my back in a large, comfortable bed. Across the room, there’s a window looking out over a grassy field with a forest behind it and a beach in front. A deck separates the house from the field, and I realize as I blink my way back to reality, that I can hear the sloshing of waves.

Where was I? Where am I now? Why can’t I remember the last … however many hours?

I sit up on my elbows and force my blurry eyes to focus on the figure at the end of bed.

“It’s been about twelve Earth hours since you passed out,” he says. It’s Officer Hyt. I recognize his voice right away and breathe a sigh of relief.

That’s right.

I was in the cosmic chapel with him when I passed out. I feel great now, but … I’m here. Wherever here is. I don’t sense either Rurik or Abraxas in the building with us. I know it sounds weird, but I actually can sense the both of them. Let’s just blame pheromones again. It’s probably that.

Hyt is sitting on a stool at the end of the bed, bent over with his elbows on his knees. His chin is propped up by his fists, and his tentacles are dancing a jig of their own all around him. One folds a stack of clothes while another wipes the window clean. A third tentacle tail sweeps the floor with a small broom and the closest tail to it helps out with a dustpan. All nine of Hyt’s tails are doing something different right now.

He appears calm, even if they’re not.

He smiles at me.

I scoot back a few inches in the bed.

“Good morning, Eve,” he says, and he has the oddest expression that I’ve ever seen on a man’s face. I swallow, and his smile widens. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I …” I look around as I sit up, and then I turn and get on my knees to peep out the curtains of the window above the headboard. Hyt makes a sharp hissing sound that I ignore as I part the fabric, finding myself faced with an endless, glistening sea.

The sun—just one of them so far as I can tell—sparkles prettily on the small white-capped swells. In the distance I spot a few islands, but no buildings to be seen on any of them. I look back around to see Hyt watching me with his strange eyes. They’re the most alien part about him. That’s saying a lot, seeing as the guy has nine sucker-tipped tentacle tails that change color when he lies.

I look over my shoulder to see my own ass, prominently displayed by the way I’m sitting, on my knees and all that. Err. I’m wearing a white ribbed tank top and a thong. A red one.

“They were the only human clothes I had on me,” Hyt tells me, leaning back and lifting both hands up, palms out, in surrender. He can’t resist the way the corner of his lip quirks up a bit in amusement.

“You undressed me?” I choke, tired of this whole ‘passing out and being violated’ bit. Really, it’s not fucking cool. I snatch a pillow up and chuck it at him—hard. He catches it with a tentacle and then curls the appendage around it, squishing the pillow into an hourglass shape.

“I averted my eyes,” he assures me, and I throw another pillow. This, too, he catches, as I scowl at him. I turn around and then stand up, putting my hands on my hips. I’m torn on what to ask next. I am dying to know why he has a woman’s tank top and a red thong on his person, but we don’t have that sort of relationship. My eyes shift back over to the unmade bed. The sheets are vaguely damp. I don’t like that at all. “I was a gentleman,” he tells me, and then he turns pink. He was blue when he made the first statement.

“Only one of your statements is true, but which one?” I ask with a groan, sitting down hard on the bed with my head in my hands. “The last thing I remember was you holding me in the chapel and then …” My mind blurs a bit as I try to recall what happened last night. “A pearl? Did you kiss me with a pearl in your mouth?”

“Ah.” That’s all Hyt says, waiting for me to drop my hands from my face. “Only one of my statements is true because I couldn’t avert my eyes, Earthling.” He smiles, like that’s meant to be a cute nickname and nothing at all derogatory. How could it be? This guy goes out of his way to save humans, even if it’s a whole hell of a lot of skin off his back to do it. I trust him, and I don’t know why. Maybe because both Abraxas and Rurik told me to seek Officer Hyt out if shit hit the fan. Is that why I’m here? “You were burning up with fever, and I learned from my sister a long time ago that humans and hot temperatures don’t mix.”

His face shifts then, a very human expression. I think that’s why he appears so human to me. It’s not his appearance. He has fox ears with fins for fuck’s sake. Nine tails, scaled skin, too many abs (literally), and six irises. He is not human, but his emotions are relatable. His reactions are relatable.

“You’re still pink,” I tell him, and then I walk right up to him as he uses his tentacles to toss the pillows back onto the bed. “Say something definitive. Like, I’m a Falopex.”

Hyt grins at me and sits back with his arms crossed over his hard, slick chest. I try my very best not to look at it, but it’s like right there, and this male radiates sex and self-confidence in spades. If things hadn’t gone the way they’d gone, I might’ve fallen for him. Hard.

“You don’t want me to say I’m a liar?” he asks, and then chuckles as my cheeks go red. “Alright then, I’m a Falopex.” He stays pink as I narrow my eyes.

“You tell everyone that your truth color is blue and then spend most of your time lying, is that it?”

“Hell of a lot harder to sleuth out where a brothel owner is keeping his illegal, underage human girls if you tell him that’s what you’re after.” Hyt pauses and exhales. The expression on his face is harried, and it matches the frantic, anxious movements of his tails. He’s making the bed with one of them, straightening a picture on the wall with another, and touching the side of my leg with a third. I should slap him away, but I just stand there and wait instead.

I’m … wherever this place is. With Officer Hyt. Rurik isn’t here. Abraxas isn’t here. I’m not sick.

Something happened, and I was passed out for the duration. Fuck, that’s annoying. I vow to myself that I won’t black out again for some time, but hey, I guess that’s a deal that even a stubborn bitch like myself can’t control.

“Easy to convince him to tell you if he thinks all Falopex tell the truth—because they do—and the one right in front of him never changes color.”

“Wouldn’t word start to spread after a while?” I ask, cocking a brow. It’s nice and warm in here, and I can feel a breeze from the back door. I’m tempted to go outside and rest my arms on the railing, look out over the water.

“Not if you clean up the witnesses afterward,” Hyt tells me dangerously. He stands up at the same time, and then he’s looking down at me, and his face is cold again. I should probably be scared, but I’m TSTL, remember? I just look right back up at him. He smiles wryly and uses a tentacle to adjust his hat. It’s a brown one today, a worn leather one with a gold band around it. Looks good on him. “But who cares about all that. You and I.” He points between us with a tentacle, his hands planted on his naked hips. He’s got the loincloth on, but … we both know it’s a split second between him being covered and me touching it. We’ve been there, done that before. “We have things to talk about.”

“Abraxas and Rurik aren’t here,” I say and Hyt nods.

“Nope. Sure aren’t.” He cringes again and turns away, gesturing at the open bedroom door with his tails. “You want a drink, little human woman?” He gives a humorless laugh before walking out, not bothering to wait for an answer. “Once you know what’s up, you’ll want one.”

He disappears from sight, and I only hesitate a few seconds before following.

There’s a hallway with a wall on one side, an open railing on the other. The railing itself looks like coral, but it’s clear and catches the light like glass. The staircase is even stranger, crafted from stone that’s rough against my bare feet, a bit sparkly. I see veins of blue and gold as I walk down.

Also, the steps are wet.

When I get to the next floor, where Hyt is waiting, I see that everything is wet. There’s a window directly in front of me that looks into the water. As in, we’re under it. Of course we are. We were right at water level upstairs, and now we’ve come down.

A school of brightly-colored … somethings swim by. Frogs? I have no idea, but they had legs.

“Sorry about all the damp.” Hyt gestures with a finger to indicate the space. “I lowered the water level for you, but it takes a bit of time to dry.”

“The … water level?” I ask as he walks into what’s recognizably a kitchen area, even if I don’t recognize anything else about it at all. The countertops are made of the same stone as the stairs, and the cabinets underneath are sleek and white, absurdly modern in appearance. There’s a tank in the corner with creatures swimming it and—

An excited chirp draws my attention to another tank, and I see Hyt’s companion lifting up out of the water. The little pink octopus swirls over to me and settles on my bare shoulder, its tiny tentacles sticking to my skin with quiet pops. It trills happily at me, and I feel like I’m on the verge of sort-of-almost understanding what it’s trying to say.

Hyt gives the creature an adorably exasperated look and then shakes his head, opening a cabinet to reveal an icebox of some sort. I wouldn’t take the liberty of calling it a fridge, but it appears to be a metal locker with icicles hanging from the roof. Hyt extracts a tray of ice cubes and sets them out before collecting a bottle of golden liquid and a pair of glasses.

He tosses a few of the cubes in either glass, pours a dash of liquor into each, and turns around to hand me one. It’s almost a shame that he turns around at all because, as usual, his ass cheeks are on full display for all the Noctuida to see.

“Here,” he says, holding the glass out with one of his tentacles. “It’s just whiskey.” He smiles at me again, flashing sharp teeth. “Nothing fancy. I don’t get a lot of choices when it comes to human liquor. Whatever the slavers steal, I confiscate.”

“And put to good use, I see,” I tell him, accepting the glass, accepting the strange tiny octopus as it burbles on my shoulder, accepting that the walls and ceiling of Officer Hyt’s house are dripping water. I’m an old hat at this whole abduction thing by now. I’m not feeling panicked. What I am though is unsettled, nervous. If I’m here, then something must’ve happened. “Please tell me that Rurik and Abraxas and Jane are okay.”

I don’t mean for my voice to break on the words, but it does anyway. I can’t help it. Hyt softens up a little—although I think he was already soft enough. He’s looking at me in a way that I’m not sure he should be looking at me. Like … well, like he looked at me in his office, I guess.

He knocks his drink back and pours another before answering, his back turned to me. My eyes drift to his perfect ass, and I curse myself out in my head, looking down at the drink in my hand with a barely withheld sigh. For some reason, I don’t feel like telling Hyt that I’m pregnant. The information is too raw, too weird, too intimate. Although we weren’t sure at the time, Rurik outed me that day on the World Station; Hyt was told. I’m just hoping he’s forgotten by now.

I just hold onto the drink with both hands and hope he thinks I’m simply too nervous to drink it.

“Well?” I ask as he turns back around. His eyes drift past me to the water outside.

“Close the second floor blinds,” he says, and down they go. I guess he has, like, a Google Home setup or an Alexa or the alien equivalent of that shit. “Sorry. I don’t like shutting myself off from the views, but … we can’t be seen together just yet.”

“Hyt.” I stare him down, and he stares right back. “What happened?”

“Captain Kidd’s ship was set on by …” He laughs strangely then, and I see him grit his teeth, jaw clenched in frustration as he stares down at his drink. “Well, you wouldn’t know the guy that attacked him, but I do. I’ve been after this motherfucker’s ass for years, but he’s Vestalis nobility and gets what he wants most of the time. Anyway, I guess what he wants this time is your friend.”

I choke on a gasp, and the drink falls from my hand. Hyt catches it with one of his tails before it hits the floor. He tries to pass it back to me, but I don’t take it. I wouldn’t even if I could drink it. I’m shaking too badly now. I can handle a lot. Clearly, I’ve handled abduction after abduction. Glowing vaginas. Giant millipede queens. But losing one of the people I love? I … that’s another matter entirely.

“Just fucking say it,” I whisper, reaching up an unconscious hand to stroke Hyt’s companion. He watches me do that with an odd expression on his face, and then he uses his tail to bring my drink to his lips. He swallows that in one go, and uses that same tail to set the cup on the counter behind him without even looking.

“The attack was … well, they got the pop star girl. Tabitha?” Hyt tries the name out, like it’s something foreign and hard to remember. “Anyway, this man—he’s … a businessman, I guess you’d call him—managed to take Tabitha, but nobody else was harmed.”

I sag against the wall behind me, uncaring that my tank top soaks up a whole lot of seawater in the process. I put a hand to my chest to still the frantic beating of my heart.

“Just to clarify for future reference: Tabbi Kat is not my friend. She’s a person that I know—against my will and better judgment—and while I do feel somewhat sorry she was kidnapped, I’m not about to lose my shit over it.”

Hyt grins at me, crooked and sexy and playful, but it doesn’t last. He frowns again, sighs, finishes his other drink.

“If it weren’t for Abraxas, the others would be dead. Your friend, Jane. Captain Kidd. Abraxas himself. He defended the ship. I thought you might like to know that.”

I do. It makes me smile, but it also makes my heart ache for him. Last I knew, I was dying without him. I was meeting with Hyt to ensure that I could meet with Abraxas. And now …

“We’re not on Dome anymore, are we?” I ask, and Hyt laughs.

“Yaoh, actually. My home planet.”

I look back toward the closed blinds. Guess that explains all the water. But … how did we get here? More importantly, why are we here? I turn back to see Hyt studying me carefully. He’s still pink. Telling the truth. He uses another tentacle tail to put his empty glass on the counter, and then he crosses his arms and stares at me.

“The attack not only delayed Kidd’s ship, but it attracted the attention of the Vestalis armada. First chance they get, they’ll blow my friend—and your friends, your mate—right out of the sky. So they hooked it through another star-jump and, well, it’s going to be at least a week until they get here.”

I just stand there. What else can I do? My mouth opens. Snaps shut. My brain flickers wildly through different theories before discarding them all.

“I feel a lot better today, so that’s good …” I hedge, and Hyt laughs. Bitterly. The sound gives me pause, and I find myself just staring at him, wishing he’d spill whatever secret it is that he seems to be dancing around. “Where is Rurik?”

“Rurik is, presumably, still on Dome?” he says with a little lift of his brow. Again, he has fins instead of eyebrows but they look like eyebrows. That’s what matters, right? “The Vestalis haven’t moved out of position, and there’s been no news about the Imperial Princess having gone missing, so I guess he’s buying us time. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t talked to him. Didn’t get a chance to.”

Now my jaw is hanging loose, and I’m staring at Officer Hyt in disbelief.

“Rurik doesn’t … he doesn’t know where I am?” My voice is loud and screechy, a bit like Tabbi Kat when she’s in one of her moods. I make a quick course correction, unwilling to adopt a single feature that aligns with any of hers. Godspeed, Tabitha. Hope your new jailer is your destined mate or something, the way my last kidnapper was. “Real quick: you are going to save Tabbi Kat, right?”

Hyt smiles without humor as his pet chirps in my ear. I pat its head with two fingers, and it purrs back at me.

“Aww, and I thought you didn’t care?” He pushes up off the counter with his tails and comes to stand too close to me. A bubble escapes the end of one tail and pops near my face, causing my breath to rush in on a sharp gasp. Damn it. I’m instantly aware of my near-nakedness, of his beautiful body and his fascinating cock and his pretty, flirty smile. “I will. Eventually. I can only handle one thing at a time, and I chose to prioritize you.” He exhales, and that cold frown is back. “I don’t know what it is about you, Eve. I’ve known a lot of humans in my day, have watched many of them die while I stood by, helpless to do a damn thing to save them. But …” He lifts up a hand like he might touch my face, but I shy away from the touch.

Not because I want to. Because I don’t want to. I don’t want to shy away, and that’s a problem.

I already betrayed Abraxas with Rurik. I can’t betray them both with Officer Hyt. I’m not that sort of person. Loyalty means a lot to me. Caring about somebody else’s feelings, that goes a long way. I doubt either of them would be thrilled if I had a fling with a sexy Falopex.

Hyt sighs and steps back again, opening one of the cabinets with his tail. He doesn’t even look as he sets about gathering a carafe of water from the icebox. He pours me a glass with his tails and then, again, passes it over with a tentacle instead of a hand.

“His Imperial Majesty does not know where you are, no.”

I freeze with the glass halfway to my lips. That’s … that’s not good. Already, I can feel a tightness in my chest. Now, I not only miss Jane like crazy, I miss Abraxas, and I miss Rurik, too. Ugh. I finish the water off in one swallow and hand it back for more. Hyt uses his hands this time and pours me another glass.

“You kidnapped me.” It’s just a statement of fact at this point. “Why?”

Hyt looks me over, working his jaw just a little.

A bell goes off somewhere in the house, and he curses, stalking over to a table and snatching up a glass tablet. He turns the screen on and looks at the notification waiting for him. With another curse, he tosses it back onto the tabletop and turns around.

“Let me just lay this all out for you,” he says, but not unkindly. “I had a choice to make when you came to me in the chapel. Let’s say that, theoretically, you had a choice to live or die, but the living part came with certain … complications. Which would you choose?”

“Asking weird theoretical questions is not ‘laying it all out’. Stop talking in circles. Of course I’d choose to live. Wouldn’t most”—I almost say people—“living things?” I knew I was dying there in the chapel as he held me. I could feel it, but … here I am. I feel great. Better than ever, actually. Plucky. “What happened? What was that pearl? What did you do to me?”

Hyt exhales, using his tails to lift his hat off his head. He spins it around on one of them, absently, like he just needs something to occupy his appendages while his mind works.

“Fuck it,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. He looks me dead in the eyes. “I gave you my pearl, so that I could save your life.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. I guess that explains why you kissed a dying woman.” I wait for a further explanation as Hyt’s companion flits up from my shoulder, dancing around us and drawing another bubble design that looks like a heart. I pretend not to notice. My own heart is thumping like crazy.

I have a vague recollection of—

I pause as the double-headed cat trots down the stairs and yawns. Well, one head yawns. The other hisses at me. Yep. Definitely the same cat.

I point at the thing as it proceeds to scratch its nails on Officer Hyt’s wall. Nails screech against metal until he makes a frustrated clicking sound with his teeth that somehow attracts the cat to rubbing on his legs. He stares down at it with a long sigh.

“As if I don’t have enough shit to worry about,” he mumbles, noticing the direction of my stare. “It wandered onto my cruiser and, well, I was in a bit of a hurry.”

“How’s that?” I ask, walking up to him and setting my water glass on the table. We’re maybe two feet apart now. Not sure why I feel the need to stand so close to a literal stranger. An alien stranger, at that.

“Well,” he hedges, all six pupils in both eyes turned to the side and not looking at my face. “The pearl I gave you, it splits my lifeforce.” He finally drags his attention back to me, gaze serious. “You and me, we’re sharing the same lifeforce. As in, if I die, you die. If you die, I die. Does that make sense?”

I don’t respond right away. I have no idea what to say.

“You gave me half of your lifeforce to save me?” I ask, my voice surprisingly low and soft. Not a normal tone for Eve Wakefield, I’ll give you that.

“Abraxas won’t get here for another week,” he repeats, lifting both hands and all his tentacles palm—or suction cup—up toward the ceiling. “And even then, he would never have been able to land on Dome after the incident with Tabbi Kat. I had to bring you here. The Vestalis don’t mess around with Yaoh, and Kidd knows how to land here without being seen.”

“You’re a lying cop who’s friends with a space pirate.” I’m just stating facts. Hyt smiles, but it’s not a particularly nice smile.

“And also one who saves pretty girls when he should rightfully let them die.”

I cringe at that. He has a point. I wasn’t trying to be critical this time, but I can see how my statement might’ve been taken that way.

“We share a lifeforce,” I repeat, and he waits for me to come to terms with that. “For how long?”

“Forever.” Hyt stays pink. Either he’s telling the truth or … well, how could he not be telling the truth? He said he was a Falopex which he is, so … “Until one of us dies, is what I mean to say. Then it’s lights out for us both.”

“Say some other true things,” I assert suddenly, staring him right in the face. “Tell me that I’m a human. Tell me that I’m female. Say that you’re male.” Those are the only facts I can think of at the moment. As soon as I say them, I regret it. The mood has changed.

The sex thing.

Shit.

I started it, and I don’t know how to finish it. There is no finishing it. I take several steps back, still curious as to why Hyt has human women’s clothing in his house.

“Took that outfit out of a dead girl’s backpack,” he explains, as if he can read my mind the way Rurik can. I cringe at the thought and the statement both. “It felt wrong to strip the clothes off of her, but I take what I can for my little sister, Kayla. You’ll meet her here in a minute.” He glances back over at the tablet, and his face looks decidedly grave. “Sooner than that, really. We don’t have a lot of time.”

My mind conjures dozens of awful scenarios, most of them ending up with me in the throne room on that ship, watching Rurik’s head come off his shoulders, watching blood spray. I can’t leave him to that fate. I have to get back to him before his parents kill him out of spite. Look what they did to his brother. They’re capable of it, no doubt.

“Why don’t we have a lot of time?” I ask carefully, fear turning my empty stomach sour. I’m thinking all sorts of things, but definitely not the one he says.

“Because we’re having dinner at my parents’ house.” Hyt cringes again, curses, shoves his hat back on his head, and yanks both sides down with his tentacles.

“How old are you?”

He’s mentioned his parents a half-dozen times before, and we’ve barely spent two hours in one another’s company.

“Twenty-five,” he says, and then flashes a cheeky grin. “In Earth years, that is. Yaoh moves rather slowly in orbit. One year is like … ten back where you come from.”

Fantastic. More useless space facts that I won’t remember.

“I … do you know what day it is on Earth?” I know I’m detracting from a pretty serious conversation, but I can’t resist. Hyt seems to know a lot about humans and Earth, and I’d just really like to know how long Jane and I have been gone.

“September sixteenth,” he responds easily, just like I knew he would. “Kayla keeps human calendars on all of the family’s devices.” He points at his own tablet.

September sixteenth. Jane and I went missing on … I think it was July twenty-third. Fucking hell. We’ve been living with aliens for nearly two months. It almost feels … dare I say normal, at this point.

“My birthday is in exactly two weeks,” I whisper, and Hyt’s smile hitches strangely.

“Two Earth weeks?” he says, and then shakes his head. “Mine, too.” We both stand there in awkward silence until he adds, “that’s a coincidence, by the way. It doesn’t … well, that particular coincidence doesn’t mean anything.”

“Right.” I don’t even know what to say to that. His companion seems to find it amusing, spinning in circles around us, and staying well-away from the stalking cat. I doubt the two-headed feline could ever catch the tiny octopus; one of its heads always seems to be in disagreement with the other. “Explain to me why we would have dinner with your parents. You do realize that you kidnapped the Vestalis princess?”

Hyt just looks at me like he wishes this moment were long over and past. For someone as confident and flirty as he is, I can only imagine how bad our situation truly is.

“Because we need to act like absolutely nothing is wrong. Because if the Vestalis find out that you’re here, they will start by nuking Earth, and then they’ll turn their lasers on us.”

My heart pounds, and I end up pulling out a chair, cringing at the squish of the cold, wet cushion as I sit down. I still don’t quite know what he meant by ‘adjusting the water level’ in the house, but I can take a wild guess. He’s a water-dwelling creature, isn’t he? So … it would stand that maybe his house is usually flooded with water.

“Until I get a chance to see Abraxas, I have to stay here,” I offer carefully as Hyt leans over, curling his fingers around the back of another chair.

“Pretty much. I gave you my pearl, but I bet we have ten days tops before we’re both dead. My entire life hinges on whether or not you fuck an Aspis.” He laughs dryly at that, but he sounds more resigned than he does upset. “I have no way to send Rurik a message without the king and queen finding out, but he’s a smart cookie—for a Vestalis prince, that is. He’ll figure out a way to contact us, and you can explain the situation.”

If he lives that long, I think with a violent stab of fear. I just hope like hell that none of his other brothers show up with their mate. I have a feeling that the next time his parents call a son to their throne room for murder, it’ll be Rurik on the chopping block.

“And until then, we have to, what, convince your family and the other Falopex that I’m some rando human? Won’t they recognize me from all the wedding footage?”

Hyt exhales and then takes the chair out so that he can sit down kitty-corner to me. He puts his elbows on his knees again, head in his hands.

“Yeah, well. The whole of the Noct might watch those broadcasts, but not the Falopex.” I like the way he said that, the whole of the Noct. “Even if they did, I … my people can be … a bit racist. You’re a human. All humans look the same to them. They won’t even think to check.”

“Your pearl … you only have one, don’t you?” I’m remembering snippets of things he said in the chapel—I only get one of these, just one—and I realize what a big deal this was for him. He hitched his wagon to mine. If I die, he dies. That’s a lot of faith and trust to put in another being.

“Just one.” His voice is gravelly now, and he’s sitting up, his gaze so intense that I want to squirm underneath its heat. “There’s more, and you’re not going to like it.”

“Try me.” It’s my attempt at being quippy, but it doesn’t come out that way. A strange warmth settles between us as Hyt scoots his chair a little closer.

“Fuck, I’ve thought about this moment all my life, but I had no idea that this is the way it would go.” He looks at his companion as the creature lands in my hair, chirping and releasing pearlescent bubbles. Hyt returns his attention to me, and I shift restlessly, waiting. Here it comes. The big reveal. “If you don’t give me the pearl back, I’ll die.”

“Huh?” I’m confused now. That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. Not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it. Hyt crosses two tentacles over his chest, like they’re arms. His actual hands are parked on his hips again, like he’s purposely trying to draw attention to his narrow waist and his hips and the low sling of his heavy belt … Ugh. “So, how do I give it back? Kiss you again?”

The thought makes me feel a little twitchy, especially when I remember the way he rolled that pearl across his purple tongue and clacked his sharp teeth around it before he tongued me into oblivion. But I mean, I can’t not kiss him and let him die. As messed up as kissing him might be, with Abraxas and Rurik both worried about me, I can’t not do it.

“No.” He smiles grimly. “You have to fuck me.” A pause. “Or, more preferably, let me fuck you.”

I cling to the sides of the chair, the red thong burning against my hips, my nipples dark and obvious through the fabric of the white tank top. Hyt notices, despite not having nipples himself, and he looks at them appreciatively until I cross my arms and cover them up. He lifts his gaze back to mine.

“You don’t have to do it. I certainly won’t make you. But … please don’t let me die.”

There’s a gentle earnestness to his statement that makes me fidgety.

“I … you’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” I ask.

“I’m fucking with you,” he says, and he turns blue. “I’m a human woman. You’re a Falopex male. I find you to be hideously unattractive.” He remains blue through all of the lies, still smiling strangely back at me. I see now why he had that expression when I first woke up. “If we don’t sleep together, I’ve got”—he glances at the tablet curiously and then back to me—“about twelve hours left. I’ll die. In all fairness, I should tell you that you won’t. We only share a lifeforce if you give the pearl back. As of right now, all I’ve done is given you mine.” He sounds so unbelievably sad when he says that, and I realize that I’ve done it again. Also, he turns pink. “But I don’t want to pressure you.” Blue again. Meaning he does want to pressure me, but he’s not going to.

I’ve stolen the spot of someone’s fated mate. Or something. Like I did with Abraxas, when I took his markings and became his mate and was still planning to leave. This is much the same as that, except it’s Officer Hyt who’s brought me back from the brink of death. In saving me, he’s also saved Rurik and Abraxas both.

God.

I rub at my face with my hands.

“I don’t … you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“What’s that phrase that Kayla likes?” He puzzles over that for a minute and then snaps one of his tentacle tips like he’s snapping his fingers. I think he does it by suctioning his own sucker cup against his skin and peeling it off, but I’m not sure. “Right. Serious as a heart attack.” He stays blue, and I narrow my eyes. He seems to notice. “Blue as a wild sea anemone. Pink as a scuttling spider crab. Orange as blood.”

None of what he’s just said makes any sense to me. Hyt sighs and removes his hat, setting it on the table next to his tablet.

“Wild sea anemones are pink.” He turns pink, as if to corroborate the statement. “Scuttling spider crabs are blue.” Hyt remains pink. “Blood is red, little human. Whether Falopex or Vestalis, it’s red. You should know that by now. Saying something like serious as a heart attack is neither a lie nor a truth. It’s how I get away with all my bullshit. All one need do is figure out a way around the rules, and voila. You can be a truth-telling liar or a lying truth-teller.” Hyt waits for me to respond. When I don’t, he continues. “If we don’t have sex, you’ll keep my pearl. I’m guessing you’ll live another three weeks thereabouts if you don’t find Abraxas before then. You’ll have an awfully hard time finding him without me, but that isn’t a threat. It’s just a fact. I need to bring Kidd’s ship into the dock, and keep the other Falopex away from him.”

“Can I go upstairs and look around?” I ask suddenly, and Hyt sits back in his chair, blinking in surprise.

“Uh, I … yeah, fuck, sure. Why not?” He uses his tails to tuck his hat onto his head and then stands up, gesturing at the staircase for me to lead the way.

I do, and his companion follows along with us. The double-headed darts up between my legs and nearly knocks me down the stairs. If Hyt didn’t catch me with a soft fluff of tentacle tails against my back, I’d have broken my neck.

I right myself with a hmph and continue on like his touch does nothing to me.

Why does this keep happening to me? I think, and then I decide to just talk out loud. Why not?

“The Noct”—I use Hyt’s cooler sounding nickname, and I swear that I feel him grin behind me—“it’s a bit weird, isn’t it?”

“Definitely weird,” he says as we head back into what I’m guessing is his bedroom. I don’t think about that. I walk out onto the deck, feeling the sun-warmed boards beneath my bare feet. The deck itself is connected between the house and the island with the gentle, grassy slope. To either side of us, there’s a bit of beach and some sand but it all fades pretty quickly to grass.

All around us, there’s the sea.

I turn and spot a ladder on the side of the house, so I climb up, cursing a bit at the hot metal rungs under my hands and feet. When I get to the top, I find a nice rooftop deck with no railing. There’s a pair of lounge chairs, a small table, and a large umbrella offering up some welcome shade. The sun here looks like a pallid simmer compared to Jungryuk, but a hot roof on bare feet is never fun.

I take a seat in one of the chairs, knees splayed to either side, elbows resting on my thighs, and look out at the water.

“It might seem remote, but we can be at my parents’ house in twenty minutes.” Hyt pauses beside me, putting his nearly naked body far too close to my face for comfort. I swallow and look away, studying the scenery and trying not to like it as much as I do.

But goddamn, it feels good to see the ocean—any ocean at all—after so long on the ship.

“Everything is so fucked up,” I whisper as Hyt takes the chair beside me. I should be thanking him. I should be so utterly grateful that I tear this thong off and leap into his bed. The sad part? I want to. He’s basically walking sex on a stick, and I’ve been completely enthralled with him since moment one.

But it’s not right.

I’m in the same space I was when I found out that I had to marry and mate Rurik. Poor Abraxas. I should never have … Well, I tried not to mate with him. I tried to resist even though I wanted him. He doesn’t deserve this. I’m a terrible mate. I need to see him; he’ll know what to do. He’ll know how to fix all of this.

“Hey.” Hyt reaches out to put a hand on my knee, and his touch is so warm and gentle that I close my eyes. Once again, here I am with someone whose life is on the line, and they’re giving me a choice. Hyt could rape me and take his pearl back, save his own life. He’s not going to do that. He’s asking. I’m obviously going to do it, but I need to get my head around it first. “This doesn’t have to mean anything, okay? We can … I mean, I’ll make it good for you.” He’s grinning when I look back at him, but the expression is so unbelievably shallow. He feels bad, too. Either for himself or me or both, I’m not sure. “But I’m not asking you to commit to me for life or anything. We just …” He hesitates here. “We need to make it believable to my parents. My family. The community. Falopex are … social. And obsessive. And suspicious of everyone and everything, especially me. If there is any doubt in their minds that you’re anyone other than my new human mate, my father will clock us. He’d be the first one to turn us into the king and queen.” Hyt snorts. “If he found out what was going on, he’d bundle us both up on a transport and deliver us personally.”

Hyt tries to keep his tone lighthearted, but there’s a heaviness to his words. He’s begging me to understand so that he doesn’t have to keep repeating himself. This is dangerous, and it’s not just dangerous for him or me but for Rurik and Abraxas and Jane and Avril and Zero and Connor and Brot. For my family. For Earth. Like, this is all a huge fucking deal.

“I’m just some random chick,” I whisper, staring at the water again, trying to make sense of it all. “I’m not the chosen one. I’m not a hero. I’m just a person. An unlucky person who got abducted by some random aliens at a pop star’s house party.” I run the fingers of one hand through my hair, pausing as a distant shape exits the water, arches through the air, and then crashes back down again. I’d say it was a dolphin, but it had legs. I decide not to dwell on alien animal species. After all, there’s a two-headed cat licking its butthole on the opposite side of the roof. “How is this even real?”

“Life is random. Sometimes, that randomness drags unsuspecting people into incredible circumstances.” I look back to see Hyt playing with the brim of his hat again. He drags a finger across it, studying my face and trying to gauge my reaction. “Because of that randomness, I got sent to Jungryuk with my father and a whole team of seasoned officers. I watched them follow rules and procedure and tell truths for so long that they lost half of the humans they were sent to save before the end of the first week. All dead. By the end of the next week, another one was dead and the remaining four wished they were dead.” I cringe, but he’s not done talking. It’s like, he’s been waiting a really long fucking time to say this to somebody and, considering our strange circumstances, feels like I’m a good bet for keeping this all to myself. “Of the last four humans, three had their memories wiped and were sent back to Earth. It’s not a pleasant process. Sometimes, it comes undone and people start talking. I hear that chatter about aliens causes other humans to look on a person strangely.”

“Pretty much,” I agree, because I feel like I need to say something.

“Right, so.” Hyt turns to look at the water, too, but with a different edge to his expression. Whatever he sees, it isn’t the pleasant emptiness of a seaside retreat, but something else entirely. “Anyway, one of the four remaining humans had been mated.” He grits his teeth so hard that I worry he might break off one of the sharp points. His eyes blaze. “And the law says that mated humans cannot go back to Earth. She … Kayla …” Hyt swallows and exhales, forcing his body to relax. “Kayla had spent time in the brothel, so she wasn’t allowed to go home. My father took pity on her and brought her here when she was only thirteen. My parents raised her. I learned to be sympathetic toward humans, so much so that I would give my pearl to a woman that I don’t know much about at all.” He sighs again and forces a smile, one that’s just a little sharper than it should be. “If that’s not random, I don’t know what is. All of those strange circumstances, and we’ve arrived right here, at this point in time.”

“Your pearl … it’s for your mate, isn’t it?” I ask softly, my voice nearly swallowed up as the breeze quickens and the water sloshes up against the side of the house. A bit of spray gets on my bare leg, but it feels good. I wonder if I couldn’t go for a little swim?

Hyt keeps his gaze on mine.

“The pearl is my lifeforce. It connects me forever to the one who swallows it. And when the one who swallows it gives it back—because you could keep it and double your own lifespan—that’s an act of love and kindness. In the eyes of the Falopex, we’ll be married. And I … won’t be able to marry anyone else.”

Fuck.

“That’s so unfair,” I hiss at him, and he shrugs.

“You didn’t ask for the pearl, and I didn’t ask you if you wanted it, so as far as I’m concerned, this was my choice. I—”

I shove up from my chair and throw my arms around his neck before I can talk myself out of it.

I need to tell Abraxas and Rurik before I do this, just like I spoke with Abraxas before I mated with Rurik. That’s the right thing to do. But how can I do that when we can’t communicate with them? When Hyt only has twelve hours to live?

It doesn’t have to mean anything, he said.

No matter what happens, I can’t let him die.

So even though it’s wrong, even though I’m wracked with guilt, I kiss him with everything I have.

Hyt curls his tails around me, hefts me up with my legs around his waist, and carries me down to the bedroom.

To Be Continued…