Page 49 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Anita sees it too.

Her body goes rigid.

“No,” I say, because I know her before she moves.

She drives her heel into my shin and twists out of my grip just enough to lunge toward the case.

I catch her coat and drag her back. She fights me like a creature possessed, all elbows, curses, and grief. “That data is the only proof we have!”

“It is not worth your life.”

“It is worth more than mine!”

I turn her forcibly toward me. “Do not say that.”

She flinches at the command in my voice, but her eyes blaze. “You don’t get to decide what my work is worth.”

“I get to decide whether I let you die ten meters from cover because grief made you stupid.”

“That’s not grief. That’s evidence.”

“It is both.”

Another explosion tears through the research tent. Heat washes over us, carrying burned plastic, scorched fabric, and the awful organic smell of bodies too close to flame. Anita’s face crumples for one terrible instant before she clamps it down.

I make the decision for both of us.

I throw a smoke charge into the open ground, wait three seconds for the gray cloud to bloom, then shove Anita behind Brakk. “Keep her moving.”

She grabs my arm. “Ghar.”

I run into the smoke before she can finish.

The world narrows to heat, shadow, muzzle flashes, and the exact position of every threat I can sense through sound and movement. Plasma slices past me close enough to score armor. I drop one attacker at the cusp of the smoke, break another’s knee with a kick, and use his falling body as cover while I seize the data case from beside Teren.

Teren is still breathing when I reach him.

His eyes find mine.

For all my strength, for all my training, I cannot carry him and the case and keep Anita alive under this fire. He knows it. I know it. The universe offers no mercy merely because a man deserves better.

“Tell her,” he whispers through blood.

I crouch low enough to hear. “What?”

His mouth tries to form a joke and fails. “Tell her I was right. Obvious tension.”

Pain cuts through my chest in a place no weapon touched.

“I will.”

He exhales once, shaking, and the life leaves his eyes before the next round of fire punches through the smoke.

I close his eyes with two fingers, take the case, and return to the others with death at my back.

Anita sees my face before she sees the case.

Her grief hits the bond like a blade.