Page 81 of Alien Wants A Wife

“Yes.”

“It was too dark. You can’t have seen?—”

“It was dark outside because the ship is gone. There were no lights.”

“No!” My head’s spinning. “Maybe the ship ran out of power.” Maybe this is all some terrible joke.

“It is gone.” He pauses, then mumbles an “I am sorry.”

It’s his apology that does the trick. There’s no way Killan would apologize to me for anything less than an absolute fucking disaster.

“No—” But my voice has lost its conviction.

I’m vaguely aware of Killan helping me down the stairs to the kitchen and setting me onto a hard-backed chair. I’m vaguely aware that I’m still a semi-breathing, semi-functioning Human, but all I can focus on is those four tiny words.

The ship is gone.

Something (I don’t know what) is pressed into my hand.

“Drink,” Killan insists, and mechanically I do as I’m told, his hand guiding mine to my mouth.

The liquid burns its way down my throat.

I’m left coughing.

“Lydia. I’m so sorry, Lydia.” Harlee presses my asthma puffer into one of my hands. Her fingers are hot. Or maybe mine are cold. “Lydia? Can you hear me?”

I want to nod my head. I really do. But moving is more than I can bear.

It’s hard enough to keep breathing, but for once it isn’t my asthma that’s the trouble. It’s me. I’m on the verge of panic.

The ship is gone.

Who am I trying to kid? I’m not on the verge of panicking; I am panicking. And breathing is like trying to pull gravel into my lungs.

“She has been like that since we found out,” I hear Killan say, but his voice is distant, as if he is standing far away from me. He must have woken Harlee and brought her here. Then Harlee must have gone through my duffle bag, searching for my medication.

“How did John Smith even get out?” Roan asks, and his voice is quiet, too.

“We did lock him up, right?” I think it’s Harlee who asks that. She blows on my hand, clearly trying to warm me.

The ship is gone. Again.

For real this time.

“Yes,” Killan answers. “He must have had some way to open our locks that we did not know about.”

“And Chloe?” Harlee asks.

“Still here,” says Killan, nodding toward the pantry door, where Chloe (and her makeshift bed) have been secured for the night. There’s a pounding sound; she’s banging her fists on the door and yelling obscenities at us—or maybe at Mr. Smith for abandoning her. She’s as trapped on Ril II as I am.

Serves her right, the fucking bitch.

“Are we sure he’s leftleft?”asks Harlee, raising her voice to be heard over Chloe’s commotion. “Maybe he’ll come back for her.”

“I have checked the results of our ground sensors.” Killan, again. “His ship left our atmosphere and is beyond our range. We cannot track him, and there is no way to bring him back.”

We should have—But even as I start that thought, I shut it down. There wasn’t anything we could’ve done differently that would’ve kept Smith on Ril II until the end of filming. Yes, we’d made an agreement with him. And, yes, we’d locked him away, but that had been a rudimentary and temporary solution.

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