Page 16 of Resisting the Alien Rider

Shanti tossed her head and then levelled her blue eyes at me accusingly.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I grunted at her.

What in the great, dusty blazes had my life turned into? My brain was melting into a perverse sort of soup, and now I was arguing not only with a child, but with a shuldu who could not even speak.

I never should have agreed to bring Magnolia with us.

“Hello?”

It was absurd – and more than a little alarming – the way my heart staggered in response to that sleep-hoarsened voice filtering through the tent’s walls.

“Get up,” I grunted at her from outside. “We should have left by now.”

“Oh… Oh! Sorry!” The sound of mad scrambling followed her words. A moment later, the tent flap was wrenched to the side.

My body went rigid.

I’d never seen Magnolia in clothing quite like this. At least not without her jacket covering her as it had been last night or her blanket just now. I’d noticed the sheen of it when she’d been lying down, but that had not given me the full effect.

The fabric was as pink as her tongue. It looked exquisitely smooth – nearly glossy – and was incredibly, throat-tighteningly thin. The top flowed and clung to the mysterious human mounds of her chest, swaying at her waist and pulled taut at the curve of her hips.

The morning light made her brown skin glow. It caught like little spangles of glittering dust on the two thick plaits of her hair and gleamed along the tufts around her eyes.Eyelashes.

The eyelashes were odd to me, but surprisingly they were not ugly. They made her eyes look even larger than they actually were. She stared out at me from above the high, rounded shapes of her cheekbones. Her plush lips moved quickly as she spoke.

“So sorry,” she said again, her voice tight with worry. “I can’t believe I slept in this long!”

“We leave at dawn,” I told her, striving, fighting,beggingfor patience. “Every day. Just as we did yesterday.”

“I know! I want to get going, too. I’ve been waiting to meet Oaken all this time!”

Something inconvenient – that I promptly ignored – lurched painfully in my gut.

“I just didn’t sleep all that well,” she called as shedisappeared back into the tent. “It got a lot colder than I thought it would at night.”

Wouldn’t have been so cold if she’d had a proper bedroll…

I glanced over to where mine was on the ground, jaw tightening.

I did not like to think of myself out here, sleeping and blissfully ignorant, while she suffered unseen in the tent. Even if that suffering was due to her own unpreparedness. But then, could I really blame her for being unprepared? She’d expected to be picked up by her groom as Darcy and Cherry had been. Had Oaken not been injured, he could have brought a covered wagon for her and transported her home much more comfortably than this. He would have brought blankets and bedrolls to spare.

No. Not to spare.

They would have shared.

And they still would. Once I brought her to him.

By the Empire, but my mood is already foul this morning.

It was simply because we were late. I was annoyed at still being here when we could have left by now.

That was it.

It had to be.

7

MAGNOLIA

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