Protected by the Alien Warrior Hope Hart (books that read to you .txt) 📖

but once you look at his hard face and those whiskey-colored eyes, it’s a challenge to look away.

“Tell me about your planet,” he murmurs.

“Well…it’s nothing like this one, that’s for sure. At least where I live. Men don’t carry around swords, and you don’t have to worry about potentially being attacked by a pack of flesh-eating cannibals at any moment. Although, we have to deal with door-to-door salespeople, which is basically the same.”

He grunts behind me, and I laugh.

“You know, I blame the Arcav for this. We had no problems before they invaded, looking for their mates. Once they’d found the Arcav queen, they left Arcav bases across the planet, saying they were there to protect us from the Grivath.” I scoff at that. “In reality, I think they were there to make sure we humans didn’t get any ideas about kicking them off our planet. Life kind of returned to normal after they invaded, believe it or not. Unless the blood test found that you were a match as an Arcav mate. But it was still a small portion of the population.”

Vrex is tense behind me. “What is a blood test?”

I explain how it works. “Every living being has what we call DNA. One of the Arcav scientists had a meltdown when his mate died, and he was responsible for messing with human DNA. Now human women have to get their blood tested to see if they’re a match and an Arcav mate.”

“Are you a match?” Vrex’s voice is hard, and his arm tightens around my waist.

“Nope. Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve been open to checking out another planet one day. Arcavia sounds awesome—their technology is way ahead of ours. But I was pretty damn happy that I wouldn’t be expected to give up my career and move to Arcavia. That’s kind of ironic now, huh?”

I grimace at the thought of the Grivath. I thought the Arcav were assholes when they invaded, but at least they pretended to play nice with us.

Vrex is silent for a long moment. “What is a ‘career’?”

“It’s different for everyone. I’m a firefighter.” I describe my work, and Vrex pulls Nari to a stop, staring at me when I turn around to see what’s going on.

“You run into buildings that are aflame?” His eyes move to my hair, and I laugh.

“I wear a ton of protection, and it’s not like I do it alone. We’re putting out the fire to save people’s lives.”

“What would make you do such a thing?”

I attempt to ignore his tone. From the way Vrex has described this planet, it’s clear that women don’t really get out much.

“My dad was a firefighter. He went down in the twin towers. He was a hero, and I always wanted to be just like him.” I turn back around, staring sightlessly at the trail in front of us as Nari begins walking again. “When my mom found out I was going to be a firefighter… Let’s just say it didn’t go well. She was broken by my father’s death, and she always hated that he was constantly putting his life in danger. When I finally admitted that I was planning to do the same thing, she told me not to contact her again until I’d changed my mind. She moved down to Florida with her boyfriend a year later, and I haven’t talked to her since.”

I ignore the way my eyes sting at the thought. Who knows if I’ll ever get the chance to talk to her again?

“I’m sorry,” Vrex murmurs in my ear, his tone grave.

“Thanks. It is what it is, I guess. She didn’t have it in her to spend any more time wondering if a family member was going to come home, and I’d dreamed of being a firefighter since my dad let me try on his helmet when I was six.”

“It is…difficult when parents behave this way,” he rumbles, and I open my mouth to ask him about the pain in his voice, but the mishua breaks through the trees, and my mouth drops open.

“Holy shit. It’s our ship.”

I can feel Vrex nod behind me. “I thought you might want to look at it.”

I glance over my shoulder at him. “I do. You’re a good guy, Vrex.”

His cheekbones turn a dull red, and I grin.

“Are you blushing?”

“No,” he grinds out. “Go see it before I change my mind.”

I laugh at him as I jump off the mishua before shifting from foot to foot while he ties Nari to a tree branch. He reaches into one of his packs for a handful of food for her, giving her a pat on the snout while I wait impatiently.

Then he joins me, and we both stare at the ship. If it were a car on Earth, my dad would’ve called it a “write-off.”

“How the fuck did we survive that?” I murmur. Vrex tenses beside me, glancing from the crumpled visage of the ship to my body and back again. He seems to be thinking the same thing because his face is grim, his body tense as we move closer.

When I stumbled out of this ship with the other women, the purple aliens who bought us were all dead. Not all of them had died on impact. From the blood splatter, it was evident that the aliens who had survived the crash had then been taken by surprise by the pack of Voildi. Those Voildi pretended to be our rescuers and convinced us to follow them. In reality, they were taking us home for dinner. And we were going to be the main course.

The door is still flung open, and I brace myself for the stench of decomposing corpses. But they’re gone.

“What happened to the bodies?” I mutter, glancing at Vrex. He shrugs and obviously immediately regrets it, his mouth tightening as he winces. Just a couple of days ago, he refused to let me see his pain, and something unclenches in my chest as his face clears.

Small steps.

Get it together, Ivy.