Page 13 of Exiles on Earth
Oh fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
The big guy collapses against my chest, dead weight pinning me down. His breaths come steady and deep, but his body is likely battered—he shielded me from an explosion, and his burns have to be bad. I squirm, trying to slide out from under him, but he’s heavy; stacked with solid muscle, every inch of him. Over his broad, bare shoulder, the garden’s littered with the smoking remains of the machine we destroyed. It’s scattered like one of Floss’ old dog toys, ripped to shreds but still faintly smoldering.
In a nightmare I can’t wake up from, my gaze is dragged further, to the barn. My barn. The barn that’s been in my family for generations, the one I was going to breathe new life into with that damn bank loan—it’s rubble.
Slabs of stone lie scattered, soaked by relentless rain, keystone and beams smashed into splinters. My throat tightens at the sight of it, my nails biting into my palms as I take it all in.
The cause looms in the wreckage. A fucking spaceship, bright orange and shaped like a warped dressmaker’s needle witha bulbous end. White-hot metal hisses in the rain, fusing with the shattered stones of the barn as it cools.
“It’s a miracle you missed the house, I suppose,” I croak, but right now I’m not feeling lucky at all. Not when my barn’s gone. Not when my future’s fucked.
And now I’ve got a shirtless alien draped across my legs like some cosmic punchline.
“Fucking fantastic.” My gaze shifts to the guy on top of me, and my frustration spikes. His cropped black hair is shorn close to his scalp, and the smooth lines of his shoulders sweep down to his back, shimmering with blues and greens over deep purple skin. Is it some kind of paint? No, Earth to Ellen, this guy isn’t remotely human. This is alien armor or something.
I gulp, hands trembling as I press them to his shoulders, trying to muster the strength to shove him off me. But then I hesitate. He shielded me. Took the brunt of the explosion. Saved me. I can’t just dump him unceremoniously into the mud. Guilt gnaws at me as I press two fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse. It pounds beneath my fingertips, erratic and wild, like a panicked lamb leaping every which way. Way too fast. But his broad chest rises and falls steadily, his face slack with a kind of deep, untroubled peace I’ve never known.
His eyelashes, impossibly long, rest on high cheekbones, and faint speckles scatter across his cheeks. Dust? No. As I lean closer, I spy fine, intricate lines webbing across his face, like the filigree on antique jewelry. They’re delicate but symmetrical, bunched tightly around his eyes and brows like he frowns a lot, and spreading out across his nose and cheeks. The subtle patterns look like they’ve been etched into him, almost invisible unless I’m really looking.
And I’m really looking.
I catch myself, flinching back as if burned, and the sudden movement jolts him awake. His eyes snap open, fists clenched in an instant. “Drok na…” His words are sharp and guttural, and his bright blue gaze locks onto mine. They widen, nostrils flaring as he stares at me, and I freeze, every muscle in my body screaming at me to run.
Oh, shit. He looked almost serene while asleep, but awake, with those steely muscles coiling under his skin, it’s obvious he’s a warrior—dangerous, and not remotely at ease.
Even so, he rises slowly from my legs, moving like I’m something fragile or volatile. His dark eyes flick over me. “Are you hurt?” he asks, his English accented with a lilting drawl, somewhere between Australian and Southern American.
“Me?” I blink, startled. “No. Aren’t you? You took a bloody big fireball from that… thing.” I wave vaguely at the smoldering pile of mechanical debris in the garden.
“I scaled up,” he replies, his mouth twisting as though the words don’t sit right. “An imperfect translation in your language. If you speak more, the nanites will learn.”
“Nanites? You mean, like… tiny robots?” My gaze darts toward the wreckage. “Like that one?”
“That was an exploration robot. Nanites are…” He pauses, his mouth working to find the words. “Nervous system… fixers. Your language, it… overlaps. Meanings collide.”
“I know what a nervous system is,” I mutter, though my fingers fidget, skimming through my tangled hair. My heart is racing, my hands trembling. My whole body trembles from the shock of the explosion, my nerves frayed to hell.
His sharp gaze locks onto my hands, unblinking. He watches my fingers catch and snag in the escaped strands of my hair, mesmerized.
Embarrassment flares hot in my gut. I yank my hand down and push to my feet. He towers over me, easily a foot and a half taller, but I lift my chin anyway, planting myself firm on my land. “So, uh… you’re here. On my farm.” Anger surges, lighting a spark deep in my chest. “You destroyed my barn. My great-grandfather built that barn, it’s been in my family for generations. And you—” I jab a finger at his scaly chest “—just smashed it to pieces! Why are you here? Why me? Wait, are you here to steal sheep? Don’t even think about it! Hell, I’d almost rather you were here to abduct me!”
He blinks, slow and deliberate, clearly caught off guard by my outburst. I’m not usually one for theatrics. If a sheep gets loose or the car breaks down for the hundredth time, I keep my cool. But this? This is not an escaped animal or a flat tire. This is extraordinary. Extra-terrestrial. Extra everything.
And I’m extraordinarily pissed off about it.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline still coursing through me after surviving that explosion, or the sheer absurdity of the situation, but I step closer again, demanding, “Well? What are you going to do about it?”
He stares down at me, rain beading on his broad shoulders, running in rivulets down the gold shimmer of his purple skin, and it’s like my brain switches on. He could snap me in two without breaking a sweat, and my shovel—the only thing even vaguely resembling a weapon—is now cooling in pieces in the obliterated kitchen garden. Cold fear drenches me.
But then he kneels.
The movement is slow, deliberate, like he wants me to be aware of every move he makes. He lowers himself until his head is level with my collarbones, and his eyes, steady and solemn, pin me in place.
“I will fix it,” he says, his voice soft, weighted with conviction. “I swear.”
Then he bows his head. Rain streaks down his back, tracing the contours of his bare back, into the little channels in his skin. Between scales. He’s got actual scales, not skin. For a moment, I can only stare.
My chest tightens, the ebbing anger and something softer twisting together, tangling up my thoughts. He looks so… sad. Vulnerable, despite the sheer size of him and the alien strength radiating off his frame. I swallow hard, a lump rising in my throat as I wrestle with the part of me that wants to scream at him for ruining everything, and the part that can’t ignore what he did to save me.
