Alien Paladin's Redemption - Mina Carter Page 0,37

to him. He slid her a sideways glance to see her knuckles white where she gripped the armrests of her chair. Her expression was calm, though, if a little pale, and she kept quiet, not distracting him with the hysterics he’d been told females were prone to. Pride filled him. His female was made of sterner stuff.

“Can’t go higher.” He shook his head, out of options. “We’re going to have to go lower, see if we can break through under this storm.”

“Just keep us safe,” she whispered, her words lost to the sound of the storm, but he saw the shape of them on her lips. Her eyes were dark as they latched on to him. All the sass and sharpness was gone, but he saw the trust there, and it humbled him.

Turning back to his task, he put them into a dive, taking the shuttle deeper and deeper into the storm. Winds buffeted them, rain running in torrents against the front view screen. Lightning cracked right in front of them, making Indra scream, and the vicious arc left him blinking white spots from his eyes as he tried to maintain their course.

“It’s no good,” he yelled. “There’s no break. We’re going to have to land.”

“Just do it!”

Her shout back was controlled, but he heard the edge of panic in it. Despite everything that had gone between them, and their terse words, he wanted to pull her close and comfort her. Ease her worries.

But he couldn’t, not until they were safely on the ground.

The next five minutes were a battle between him and the gods of this world who wanted to keep him in the air and fry them with bolts of lightning. Nyek flew like he’d never flown before, reflexes borne of desperation and utter determination to keep his little female safe suddenly sharper than any war cruiser pilot’s.

He snarled as the lightning created a cage around them, panic beginning to fill him until… there, he saw the opening. With a bellowed war cry, he darted toward it, the little shuttle streaking through the sky and beyond the deadly lightning.

His heart hammering in his chest, he swooped the shuttle down low over the landscape, almost clipping the heads off the trees below. Eyes sharp for any clearing, he finally found one and, before the lighting could find them again, neatly banked the shuttle and dropped them into cover.

A sigh of relief escaped him as the landing pads gripped solid earth and the little shuttle hunkered down, safe in the cover of the trees as the storm raged overhead.

“There,” he said, his voice sounding loud in his ears without the noise of the storm. “We’re safe now.”

9

“It’s not much, I’m afraid, but it will keep you going.” Nyek’s voice was low as he handed her a bowl.

She peered inside and smiled. “The famous chocolate cake. You’ve done your research.”

“Research? What do you mean?”

He frowned as he hunkered down next to her, settling himself on the edge of the low padded platform that served as a bed. The back section of the shuttle had been transformed into a living space, and she was wrapped in a couple of blankets against the cold.

They couldn’t run the engines all the time, not without attracting the ferocity of the storm overhead. She didn’t understand all the science Nyek had tried to explain, other than something about their engines attracting the lightning that had nearly killed them. So… engines on, lightning tried to kill them. She could cope with being a little cold to avoid getting fried.

“Chocolate cake.” She waved the bowl at him. “Way to a woman’s heart. Or a human woman’s heart anyway.”

“Really?” his eyebrow winged up as he watched her devour the cake. “So human females do not require expensive gifts or other signs of devotion from the males who wish to mate them?”

She barked a laugh. “Oh god, yeah. We like all the pretty things. Don’t have to be expensive though. Well… some women are like that, but if it’s just about the money, it’s not love.”

He blinked, surprise flowing over his face. “Love? You mean you are not assigned the next worthy male as your mate?”

She froze, fork halfway to her lips. But he was serious, she could see it in his eyes. Slowly, she put the fork down. “No. There’s no system for assigning couples to each other. We fall in love. That’s how we decide who our life partners should be.”

“It seems… inefficient,” he commented, reaching for the