Page 48 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Anita grips the lift frame. “The infiltrator.”

“Yes.”

Teren shoves past us as a group of civilian researchers stumbles from the analysis tent under fire. “They need help!”

“Teren!” I bark.

He ignores me and runs.

For one breath, I see the measure of the man beneath all his jokes. He is terrified. His whole body knows he is terrified. Yet he runs toward the civilians anyway, waving them toward the lift corridor while plasma rounds flash over his head.

“Move!” he shouts. “This way! Come on, come on, move your asses unless you want your obituary to say you died politely!”

The researchers stumble toward him. One Alzhon woman falls, clutching her leg. Teren grabs her under the arms and drags her upright with a strength panic lends to the gentle. He almost reaches cover.

An attacker steps from the smoke.

I fire, but the angle is wrong and the distance is too great.

The attacker’s rifle flashes.

Teren jerks as the round hits him high in the chest.

Anita screams his name.

The sound tears through me.

I kill the attacker with two shots before he fires again, but Teren is already down. The Alzhon woman scrambles behind cover sobbing. Teren lies on his back in the dust, his ocular implants cracked, one hand pressed weakly against the wound while red spreads between his fingers.

Anita starts toward him.

I grab her around the waist and haul her back as plasma fire chews through the lift frame where she stood.

“Let me go!” she shouts.

“You cannot reach him.”

“He’s dying!”

“Yes.”

The word is cruel, but the truth is crueler if delayed.

She twists against me with shocking force. “You bastard, he’s right there!”

“And if you run into open fire, you die beside him.”

Her elbow slams into my ribs. Pain flashes, but I do not release her. The bond roars inside me, wild with her grief, her rage, her refusal to abandon someone she met only yesterday but already claimed as one of hers.

Teren turns his head toward us through the dust.

He sees Anita fighting me.

Somehow, impossibly, he smiles.

“Don’t,” he mouths, though no sound carries.

Then he coughs blood and looks toward the fallen data case beside him. Even dying, he reaches for it. The case contains the portable archive fragments Anita pulled from the scanner network before the lower structure destabilized.