Chapter 6
Chapter Six
QUIN
Ifelt the heat of him before he touched me.
Vennox eased into my personal space, crowding me as the moment stretched between us, thick and heady.
His thumb brushed my cheek before his hand cupped my face, cradling me as if I were precious.
That molten gaze seared into me, prickling my skin with sensual awareness.
"What are you staring at?" My lungs were tight as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.
"The twin moons of Valose," he murmured. "When they rise together after the suns-fall, they cast a light unlike anything else in the sky. Quiet. Steady. Something a warrior learns to navigate by when all other light fails him. That is what your eyes remind me of."
For a moment, I just let them land, his poetic words settling over me like a warm blanket I hadn’t known I was cold without.
Then my brain caught up. I looked at him, really looked: the silver eyes still trained on me, patient and deliberate, and I felt the flush climbing my neck with a sudden, embarrassing clarity. He was good. I’d give him that.
Apparently, the universe was big enough to contain males from other planets who’d figured out that pretty words were the fastest way past a woman’s better judgment.
"Pickup lines, Valosian style,” I smirked. “You sure do have a way with words, making boring gray sound amazing."
“Grraay,” he repeated slowly, as if he was hearing the word for the first time. I leaned out of reach, his thumb grazing my cheekbone one last time before dropping his hand. “There is nothing boring them. You are... remarkably lovely, Quin—”
Panic fluttered low in my belly, and I didn't let him finish. This warrior of Valose was dangerous to my sensibilities. I needed distance. Needed to shut this down right now and get back to reality.
Before I could think too hard about why my pulse had suddenly kicked into overdrive, I jerked the bio-spectral analyzer up between us like a shield.
The device vibrated alive in my hand, its screen flooding with scrolling data as I tapped through the incoming readings with far more focus than the situation warranted.
"Your bioluminescence," I said quickly, latching onto the first coherent thought in my head. "And these scales — the camouflage.” Another series of readings flashed across the display. “How does it work? Is it involuntary, or can you control it?”
The analyzer hummed softly as I forced myself to focus on the familiar stream of data instead of the male kneeling between my legs.
This attraction to him wasn't normal. It was too fast, too intense, like my body had skipped several steps my mind refused to take. I had never reacted to any man like this, and that alone made it feel dangerous.
Surprise flickered briefly across his face before his expression shuttered behind a careful, unreadable mask.
"Our scales respond to the environment," he answered evenly.
"Light, shadow, movement... even the bioluminescence of the flora.
In the jungle of Huren, the plants glow during suns-fall, and our scales and bioluminescent markings shift to mirror the surrounding foliage. It helps conceal us from predators."
I was still watching the analyzer screen when something at the edge of my vision made me look up.
His ears had shifted. Those elegant, pointed ears had caught my attention in the first few seconds of meeting him.
Both had swiveled simultaneously toward the far end of the ship, cupping forward, like a satellite dish orienting toward a signal, precise and involuntary.
"Did you just—" I leaned forward. "Your ears. They moved on their own."
He blinked, as if he hadn't noticed. "They respond to sound."
"Can you control it?"
“Yes.”
I couldn't help it. "Can I—" I reached out slowly, giving him time to pull back, and touched the pointed tip of one ear with a single fingertip.
It twitched under my touch immediately, a quick, involuntary flinch, and he went very still. His expression shifted, as he quickly masked it with indifference.
"Sorry," I said, lowering my hand. "Occupational hazard. I document things."
"I noticed," he said with a tinge of annoyance.
"How far away can you hear?" I asked, pulling the analyzer back up as cover for the sudden heat flushing my face.
“About half a milose.”
The translator behind my ear said that was the Valosian term for a mile. I thought about that. The way his ears had swiveled toward the back of the ship, while I heard nothing.
"Like a cat," I said.
He tilted his head. "I do not know what a cat is."
"A small domesticated animal from Earth. Furry. Four legs, retractable claws." I gestured vaguely at his ears. "Pointed ears that rotate independently to track sound. Extremely sensitive hearing. Very difficult to sneak up on."
He considered that with a careful neutrality. "And this is a compliment?"
"Cats are considered highly intelligent," I said. "Excellent hunters. Self-possessed. They decide who they allow to touch them."
"Then yes," he said. "Perhaps like a cat."
The analyzer chirped sharply in my hand, pulling me back to the screen. I frowned at the readings scrolling across the display. The biological data fluctuated in bizarre overlapping waves, unlike anything I had documented on this planet so far.
"Wait..." I muttered, staring harder at the display. "What the hell?"
The scan pulsed again. Two distinct rhythmic signatures echoed through the reading. Almost like...
"Two heartbeats?" I whispered.
"An ancillary heart," he said. "It remains dormant until a male finds the female whose spirit complements his.
" A silence settled between us. I watched his jaw tighten before he added, low enough that I wasn't sure I was meant to hear it, “If only he can prove himself worthy.” He stood abruptly and was already turning away by the time the words reached me.
I watched him retreat across the ruined command deck, his broad shoulders rigid beneath the pale light of emergency lighting.
He crossed to the opposite side of the ship and lowered himself heavily onto the floor beside the damaged wall plating, forearms braced on his spread knees, his head bowed as if something weighed on him and had finally become too much to carry.
A strange ache tightened in my chest at the sight of him.
We'd met less than an hour ago, fought void weavers together, patched each other's wounds, and somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, some fragile thread had formed between us.
Whatever this attachment was, it had happened far too fast and far too intensely for me to trust it.
I wasn't looking for anything here. Not with him. I was eventually going home to Earth, and Vennox belonged to Valose. That alone should have made keeping my distance easy.
So why did he look so alone sitting there, and why did every instinct inside me suddenly want to cross the room and sit beside him?
I forced my focus elsewhere before I did something stupid, like go after him. I hadn't meant to hurt him, but I couldn't let whatever this was go any further. It was easier if we kept that distance.
I tightened my grip on the analyzer and was halfway to the back of the ship when the thing vibrated sharply in my hand. I frowned at the display as the bio-readings surged and fluctuated in dense, overlapping waves, the device struggling to resolve a single, massive lifeform.
“What is it?” Vala asked, stepping in close behind me to peer over my shoulder at the screen.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, adjusting the scanner’s sensitivity. The readings steadied, collapsing into one dominant signature, massive and closing fast. “Something big is coming.”
Behind us, Truxxet straightened from where he’d been crouched beside Brunnex, his hand moving instinctively to the spear at his side. Tyrk and Ruze exchanged a look of alarm before moving to the shattered viewport, scanning the clearing beyond.
“The void weaver carcasses,” Vala said grimly. “They’re drawing predators.”
I edged toward the shattered viewport, drawn by the movement outside. The others shifted with me in quiet, practiced coordination. Mara pressed in close at my back, Brooke’s grip tightening on my arm, while Vala stepped beside me, his presence steady as he guided us into position.
“Stay silent,” he said, his gaze fixed on the clearing beyond the jagged opening. “And do not move until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Behind us, the Valosian males shifted into defensive positions, forming a loose barrier between the danger outside and the rest of us.
Vennox moved in close at my back, not touching, but near enough that I felt the heat of him through the thin fabric of my clothes, his steady breathing a controlled counterpoint to my racing pulse.
To my left, Truxxet angled his spear toward the opening, ready, while Ruze checked his weapon with quiet precision, his focus never wavering from the clearing beyond.
Brunnex remained on his pallet where we’d left him, still too injured to move, with Mara at his side.
She kept low, one hand braced against his shoulder as if she could anchor him there, her attention fixed on both him and the threat outside.
Tyrk positioned himself just in front of them, his body forming a solid line of defense, ready to protect the injured male if anything slipped through the opening.
I crouched at the edge of the viewport, careful to avoid the jagged polycarbon fragments still embedded in the frame.
Beyond the shattered opening, the alien clearing stretched in silent menace.
The void weaver carcasses we’d left scattered along the ridge had already begun to change, their translucent flesh darkening as some unseen process broke them down.
The analyzer vibrated again, its readings spiking erratically as it tracked the approaching predator. I acknowledged it with a quick tap, then focused on the treeline.