Page 7 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

Assuming I ever see an airplane again, which was looking increasingly unlikely given that I was currently being slammed around the inside of an alien escape pod like a sneaker in a dryer. The restraints held, thank god, but my organs were staging a full revolt. My stomach was somewhere near my throat. My brain had detached from my spine. My teeth were vibrating at a frequency that suggested they were about to leave my skull.

The pod hit something—atmosphere, canopy, mountain, another planet for all I knew—and bounced. Actually bounced. Like a stone skipping across a lake except the stone was me and the lake was a planet and the skipping was going to kill me.

I screamed. Obviously. I'd been screaming so long my throat was raw and my screams now sounded like a cat being stepped on. Beside me, my terrifying armored kidnapper gripped the armrests hard enough to make the tendons stand out in the bare one. So at least he wasn't enjoying this either.

Another impact. My head snapped forward and the restraints caught me across the chest so hard I'd have bruises for a week. The pod was spinning, rolling now, and the horrible grinding sound of metal against something — rock? trees? — filled the tiny space. Through the viewport, I caught flashes of green. Then brown. Then green again, spinning. I squeezed my eyes shut because watching was making everything worse.

And then we stopped.

Not gently. Not like coming to a controlled halt. More like slamming face-first into the last thing that was going to tolerate our presence. The pod crunched and shuddered, and went still.

My ears rang. My chest hurt where the restraints had caught me. Everything tasted like copper, which probably meant I'd bitten my tongue at some point during the screaming. I kept my eyes closed for a few more seconds because I was genuinely not sure I was alive and wanted to enjoy the possibility for as long as I could.

Gravity. That was the first thing my rattled brain registered. I was being pulled down into my seat. Actual, directional gravity. Not the floating horror show from before. Down existed again. I could have cried.

I opened my eyes.

The viewport was cracked but intact. Through the fractures: green. Lots of it. Bark pressed against the glass—we'd come to rest against a tree. Or through a tree. Hard to tell.

To my left, the alien was already moving. Even folded into the pod, he was obviously bipedal and enormous — a head and shoulders taller than me, with two arms, two legs, and broad armored shoulders that nearly filled the aisle. He'd released his restraints and was doing something with the control panel, pressing things with five gloved fingers, reading the glowing symbols that flickered and died on what was left of the dashboard. Half the pod's interior lights were out. The other half were flashing in a pattern that looked distinctly like an alarm, even in alien.

He turned to me and held out his hand, palm flat, fingers spread. Stop. Stay. Wait.

"Buddy, I'm not going anywhere." My voice came out as a croak. "I'm not even sure I can feel my legs."

He either didn't understand me or didn't care, because he turned back to the hatch and started working on it. The mechanism appeared to be jammed — dented from the impact. He braced his feet, gripped the manual release, and pulled.

Nothing happened.

He pulled. Muscles strained against his armor. His shoulders tensed, his legs braced. He was strong. Terrifyingly strong — he'd hauled me through that ship one-handed and braced both our weights when the pod launch slammed us backward. But the hatch wasn't cooperating.

He let go, repositioned, and drove his boot into the seam of the hatch three times in quick succession. Each kick sounded like a gunshot in the enclosed space and I flinched with every one. On the third kick, the hatch groaned and shifted. He got his fingers in the gap and wrenched it open.

Air flooded in — warm and humid with a thousand smells I didn't recognize — sweet and sharp and earthy and something almost metallic underneath. My lungs expanded and I coughed. The air had been degrading slowly and I'd missed it entirely.

He climbed out. I watched him through the opening, framed against a sky that was the wrong shade of blue — too pale, almost lavender. He scanned the surroundings with that efficient, military way he had, then turned back and reached for me.

I fumbled with my restraints. My fingers were shaking badly enough that I couldn't get the release mechanism to work. His hands covered mine, steady and patient — one gauntleted, one bare and startlingly warm — and pressed the release. The restraints retracted and I nearly face-planted out of the seat.

He caught me. One arm. Didn't even shift his weight. I was getting real tired of how effortless it was for him.

I half-climbed, half-fell out of the pod and my boots hit dirt. Alien dirt. Soil that was a shade of reddish brown I'd never seen in any geological survey. I looked down at it for a second, brain struggling to process, then looked up.

Jungle.

Green and massive and dense, stretching endlessly in every direction. Towering trees with trunks wider than cars, their bark a deep reddish-purple. Broad leaves the size of dinner tables in shapes that didn't exist in any botany textbook. Vines thick as my arm hanging from canopy so high and dense that the lavender sky was barely visible through it.

It was a jungle. Another jungle. I had left one jungle, been abducted by aliens, escaped a slave ship, nearly died in an escape pod, and landed in another jungle.

"You have GOT to be kidding me."

The alien looked at me. I looked at him. He did not appear to be kidding me. I took a slow breath and let it out through my teeth.

Fine. Fine. I could do jungle. I'd been doing jungle for a week. Different planet, same basic concept: hot green things that want to eat you. I could work with this. I was basically a jungle expert at this point. An underemployed, volunteer-grade, barely-surviving jungle expert, but still. More jungle experience than the average Minnesotan.

I turned in a slow circle, taking stock. The escape pod had carved a path through the canopy — broken branches and shredded leaves marked our descent route like the world's most violent nature trail. The pod itself was half-buried in soil at the base of an enormous tree, its hull crumpled and scorched. That thing was not flying again. It was barely a thing anymore.

My stomach chose that moment to remind me that it had been through significant trauma. I held up a finger to the alien in the universal "one moment please" gesture and walked as quickly as my shaking legs could carry me to the nearest large tree.