Page 38 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“I am trying very hard not to be.”

“Try harder.”

I grin. “That sounded jealous.”

His expression hardens instantly. “Of a hallway?”

“You’re the one competing with it for my attention.”

Brakk groans loudly. “If you two start flirting during gravitational anomalies, I’m requesting hazard pay.”

“We are not flirting,” I snap.

Ghar answers simultaneously. “We are not.”

Teren points between us. “That synchronized denial was deeply unconvincing.”

I glare at him hard enough that he nearly walks into a support beam.

The tunnel eventually widens into a fractured excavation chamber illuminated by portable floodlamps and emergency beacons. Collapsed scaffolding sprawls across the floor beside piles of shattered basalt and twisted support braces. Rennik’s dropped survey kit lies overturned near the far wall, one lantern still blinking weakly beside it.

Rennik himself is nowhere in sight.

The chamber falls silent except for distant dripping water and the low groan of machinery vibrating through the deeper structure.

Ghar raises one hand immediately.

Nobody speaks.

The air feels colder here. Dust drifts through the floodlights in slow curved spirals instead of falling naturally. My skin prickles beneath my field coat as the gravitational distortions pulse faintly through the chamber floor.

Ghar advances toward the abandoned equipment with deliberate caution. Watching him move down here unsettles me in ways I do not entirely understand. Everything about him changes inside dangerous environments. He becomes quieter, more focused, more terrifyingly precise. Nothing in his posture is wasted. Every glance measures exits, angles, and threats automatically.

For the first time, I fully understand that the Centuries War did not merely scar him.

It trained him into this.

Ghar crouches beside Rennik’s lantern and touches one claw lightly against the dust-covered floor.

“What?” I whisper.

“Tracks.”

Brakk immediately joins him. “More than one set?”

“Yes.”

My stomach tightens.

Ghar angles his shoulder lamp downward. Faint impressions emerge through the dust. Rennik’s boot prints stagger toward a collapsed excavation breach near the far wall. Narrower tracks overlap them. Lighter. Harder to distinguish.

Someone else came through here.

Recently.

Teren swallows audibly. “Please tell me those belong to rescue workers.”

“No,” Ghar says quietly.