The Alien Jungle Warlord’s Bride (Starfallen Brides of Xytheos #1)

1. The Last Hour

THE LAST HOUR

ELENA - NEW TERRA

Fate is out for blood today. It picked my name.

The levels above us bleed orange through the cracks, sirens howl, and impact tremors are knocking concrete loose from the ceiling.

Twenty women sprint through what might be the last surviving corridor on New Terra, and it’s barely holding on.

I’m one of them. The dust burns my nose, acrid and sharp, like scorched wiring inside a fried processor.

Everything looks like someone spilled molten solder across the entire planet and then torched it for good measure.

Honestly? That’s probably close.

It's funny what fades into the background when the survival rate drops below statistical relevance. Like how my lungs scream for mercy, but all I can focus on is the gold ring digging into my finger and palm. Retro and impractical. A keepsake from my grandmother, who once told me, “If you’re going to be vaporized, Elena, do it with style.” Her version of wisdom.

So I’ve got a death grip on this heirloom like it can save me, even though it’s been useless in every practical sense since the day she gave it to me.

It’s from Earth. That still counts for something, right?

We hurdle over fallen girders, duck under half-collapsed signage. Banners hang black with soot. Sloane’s behind me, silent except for her breath, one arm tucked tight around a data chip.

Dana and Tessa are just ahead of us. Dana plows forward like she’s got charges to file against the hallway for obstructing justice.

Tessa, barely five feet tall, weaves through the rubble.

I hear a sob behind me—Piper, maybe—and then the mechanical clunk of her prosthetic as she pushes harder.

Three years of training for this, and we've run out of time.

Maya’s keeping pace in the front, but she should be in the back.

We can’t spare anyone with medical training—including me.

Maya’s the real deal. I’m just an engineer cross-trained as a trauma nurse.

I’ve got a multi-tool and a medkit and I pray they’ll be enough to fix whatever might be wrong with the escape ship we’re heading for. If we make it.

Women aren’t usually targets of war, what with the shortage of fertile uteruses in the galaxy, but the enemy made it clear that if they can’t have us, no one will.

If we survive this, I’m building something better. That’s not optimism. That’s necessity.

The enemy will not take us. We’ll go down fighting.

We round the final corner into the evac bay, and I almost barrel into Tessa. She’s doubled over, hands on her knees, trying to suck in air that barely counts as breathable.

The bay is a wreck.

The launch gantry overhead leans at a dangerous angle, half-collapsed and sparking like it’s trying to start a fire we can’t afford. And the shuttle. Ugh, the shuttle. It's technically present. But it looks like it died ten years ago and someone slapped a bandage on it and hoped for the best.

Foam insulation peeled back like dead skin.

Hull scorched. Paint blistered off in jagged patches.

And yet, miracle of miracles, the hatch is open, and someone has started the liftoff sequence and opened the long tunnel hatch that will get the ship out of this buried hangar.

Its underbelly beacon blinks a steady rhythm, calm and impersonal:

LIFTOFF IN 4:09

We’re forty floors underground, but the air feels thinner than it did on top of the atmospheric stack. My lips sting. My skin itches. Heat radiates from the bulkheads in strong waves. Two of the outer bay doors have already fused shut, their seams melted into something unusable.

When that counter hits zero, anyone not on that ship is out of oxygen, organs liquefying.

Six of us run up the boarding ramp. The pilot’s dead.

Sophia gets three other women to help her take his body outside and dump him.

Poor guy. He was so close to being the only male evacuating with one of the last groups of fertile human females from New Terra.

His death won’t stop us. We brought our backup.

Sloane.

“Only ten seats,” Sloane breathes, voice almost too soft to hear. Her protective glasses fog, clear, then fog again, fast as her breathing. Sloane's pilot training is all simulator hours and no sky. As a pilot, she's going to need help.

“Seats are optional,” Dana grits out. She's already at the hatch, planted across it. "We stack."

She’s the only one taller than I am, and she knows it. Elbows wide. Chin up. Shoulders squared like a challenge.

I step in behind her. “Now’s not the time for personal space, Dana.”

“Is there ever?” she snaps. There’s something oddly comforting about it. If Dana’s still arguing, we’re still alive.

The others crash in behind us, a flood of limbs and survival instincts. The bay fills fast—elbows, sweat, heat, breath. Everyone moves with the same singular focus.

Don’t die.

I spot Dr. Aria Patel. Impeccable, even now, still smelling faintly of sanitizer.

Medical kit thumping against her hip. She sees the blood on my sleeve and reaches for me without asking.

I think about how many New Terran soldiers she patched up over the past couple of years.

I wonder how many of them knew their doctor was a veterinarian who had to cross-train on humans.

I shake my head, brushing her away. It’s fine. Not worth the time. She nods once, but I can see the calculation in her eyes. Wherever we end up, she’s going to need Maya and me on our feet. I hate putting myself first, but I have to do it. I can’t help anyone if I’m down. Or dead.

Piper limps in, arm around Reema, the botanist. Reema’s gone pale, coughing like she’s breathing smoke, but she's still got both arms locked around her case. Seed samples. Biogenetic archives. Whatever’s inside is too precious to abandon. She doesn’t say a word. She just holds on.

Something brushes the back of my knees. I twist, already halfway to a swing, and catch a flash of auburn hair.

It’s Quinn, our journalist. Cross-trained as a cryptographer.

Of course she’s still got her notebook. Of course she’s writing even now.

Her pen scratches as she stumbles past. Paper is archaic, but Quinn insists on using it anyway.

We started with twenty-four. Down from over two hundred women who began our training.

I count who’s left.

Twenty.

Maybe less if Reema goes down. Whoever sent us here knew the numbers. Twenty-four women left for the final run to the evac site. Ten seats on the shuttle. We’ve done better than they expected.

The bay jolts hard, metal groaning, lights flaring, floor plating snapping under our boots. A chunk of catwalk crashes down behind us, smashing what’s left of the banner into the floor like a final insult.

“We have to go now,” Tessa says. Soft voice. Firm spine. No one argues. I wouldn’t have figured a chef would be chosen for a survival mission, but she has a quiet authority that speaks volumes. And, like the rest of us aboard, a human genome that’s never been scientifically altered.

Dana and I head back to the ramp to help the boarding process. The shuttle groans beneath us like it doesn’t want to hold our weight. Too bad. We’re not giving it a choice.

The craft is warming up, and it smells like expired coolant and something vaguely electrical—wires overheating or systems barely holding.

The ten acceleration couches look passable enough, and they’re built to hold men.

It’ll be tight, but we women will fit. Frayed harnesses, rusting brackets, and foam padding that’s probably full of mold.

The rest of the chamber is all cargo netting, stripped-out compartments, and handholds meant for conditions this ship hasn’t seen in years.

We pile onto the couches. There’s no room for order or ceremony. Just sitting, clinging, trying to find a way to lie as flat as possible for liftoff.

We’re a tangle of desperate bodies and held breath, trying not to think about how loud our hearts are beating or how fast our chances are dropping.

Lila's voice wavers across the cabin. "Elena, do you think anyone else made it out?"

“No,” I say quickly. Firmly.

It shuts her up. But there were supposed to be other crews. It would be suicide to broadcast our positions. As far as I know, what's left of the human race is strapped in beside me. We can’t worry about anyone else right now.

Tessa slides a hand onto Lila’s shoulder. “We make this count. For all the ones who didn’t make it.”

Dana slams her palm against the control panel. The hatch whines, then grinds shut. Seals engage with a hiss and a flicker of the lights. We’re locked in.

I exhale sharply. Across from me, Maya mirrors the motion, blowing out a breath like she’s trying not to cry. Her shoulders droop. Mine tense.

She tilts her head, working her jaw. Pressure equalizing. Or maybe she’s fighting off a sinus cold. I don’t know. But now I’m wondering if anyone brought meds for it. I didn’t. My medkit is basic. If someone has a serious medical event on ascent, we’re screwed.

With a minute to launch, the platform under us shudders and starts its climb to the surface.

The nav board glows brightly. Every status light is a warning. Life support is uncertain. Engines are cycling. The auto guidance we need to launch without an expert pilot is nonexistent. There’s just a blinking prompt, daring me to do something.

I’m the only engineer left. So yeah, I’m doing something.

I crawl to the guidance console, threading through knees and boots and tangled limbs, and slap a manual connection into place. “Manual override?” I ask the system out loud. Probably pointless. The shuttle AI’s struggling to come online.

The response is a red light and a long, sulky beep.

Great. We’re flying on spite.

I adjust the config anyway. I take ten seconds to flip a bypass. Patch in the diagnostic. It will have to be enough.

Behind me, the women shift just enough to let me wedge back into a slice of couch.

Quinn stares forward, eyes blank. Piper rolls her ankle, testing the prosthetic with a click. Sloane slots her chip into the emergency port, chin tucked, expression unreadable. Nav data. Her job starts when the rails end.

We’re the last spark of a dying flame.

Outside the forward port, the sky is chaos. Debris cuts across the view in burning streaks. Something massive tumbles past.

“Hold tight,” I mutter, not for anyone else. For me. My hands tremble. I clench the ring tighter. Think of my grandmother and how she’d flip off the void with both hands and a glass of whiskey. I’ll never know what really happened to her.

Ten seconds.

The rear cam flickers to life. One last view of the upper bay. Nothing moves but the wind. Torn banners flutter, then settle into a river of ash.

Even I can see the metaphor, and I failed poetry class twice.

The launch engines ignite.

The thrust punches me into Sloane. She doesn’t complain. The whole hull shudders. Around me, bodies lurch, brace, hold. Someone groans. Someone laughs.

It might’ve been me.

Underneath it all, under the fear and sweat and the bone-rattling ascent, something sparks that isn't hope. It's refusal to let this be the end. We are twenty women with nothing left but each other, a doomed shuttle, and a destination we don’t know.

We ascend.