Page 21 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"This is like finding the Library of Alexandria intact and walking past because you're late for a meeting."

He didn't respond.

"Do you know what archaeologists on Earth would give to see an alien ruin? Literally anything. Their careers. Their savings. Their firstborn children. I know a professor who would sell a kidney."

Nothing.

"I'm just saying, when we get to civilization and someone asks 'did you document the Kethari ruins on Zha'kari,' I'm going to have to say 'yes, from memory, at a dead run, because Kel wanted to stay on schedule.'"

He walked faster. I walked faster to keep up.

"And you'll be known as the guy who⁠—"

I stopped talking. Because I'd looked down.

The stone along the riverbank wasn't random. It was laid — flat and fitted, parallel to the water in a band about three feet wide. Worn smooth by millennia of weather, but the joints between the stones were still visible. And carved into the surface at regular intervals — small symbols. Directional markers.

I crouched. Traced a symbol with my finger. My heart was hammering and for once it had nothing to do with fear.

"This is a road," I said. "Or a path. Intentional construction, laid stone, directional carvings every..." I measured with my hand. "Every two meters or so. Kel, this is a maintained route. It was GOING somewhere."

He stopped. Turned. Came back.

I followed the markers. They led upstream, away from the direction Kel had been heading, but only for about thirty meters before they turned sharply toward the river. And there, beneath a layer of silt and accumulated debris, hidden under the water's surface, stepping stones.

Large, flat stones formed a submerged path across the river. The water ran over them, obscuring them unless you knew to look. Unless you'd followed the markers.

I turned to Kel with the smuggest look I have ever worn in my entire life. And I have been smug before. This was a personal best.

"I'm sorry, what were you saying about the crossing not being feasible?"

He looked at the stepping stones. He looked at me. His markings flickered bright and I was pretty sure that was the Valorian equivalent of "okay, you got me." He nodded once. Single, sharp.

We crossed. The stones were slippery with algae but solid — whoever had placed them had used dense stone that hadn't eroded significantly in twelve thousand years. The water came up to my knees at the deepest point. Kel kept a firm grip on my hand, his massive frame anchoring us both against the rushing current as I carefully tested each stone before committing my weight.

The far bank. The ruins.

"Five minutes," he said.

"Fifteen."

"Seven."

"Ten and I'll stop complaining about the food for one whole day."

He considered this. "Ten minutes."

I was already running.

The ruins were stunning. Even crumbling, even swallowed by jungle, they were clearly the work of a sophisticated civilization. The stone was a deep red-black, different from the surrounding rock, which meant they'd quarried it from elsewhere. The joints were precise — no mortar visible, just perfectly cut stone fitted so tightly that even after twelve millennia, most joints were still flush.

And the carvings.

I pressed my hands against a wall and felt my throat tighten. Carvings covered every surface. Not decorative — narrative. Sequential panels showing figures, structures, bodies. A story. Told in stone. Just like humans had done on Earth for tens of thousands of years. Different species, different planet, same impulse: we were here. This is what we knew. Remember us.

And then my brain did the thing it does — the pattern-matching thing that had gotten me through grad school and into trouble in equal measure. The symbols. Some of them were unfamiliar, completely alien. But the visual grammar — the way the panels were structured, the spiral motifs, the repeating geometric language — nagged at me. I'd seen something like this before. Not identical. Not even close. But the underlying logic, the way the symbols interlocked...

The Colombian temple. The chamber I'd fallen into while running from the jaguar. The strange carvings I hadn't been able to place — the ones that didn't match any known South American archaeological tradition. I'd touched the stone column in the center of that room like an idiot, half expecting something to happen.