Page 6 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
I’ve bedded queens and killers and fugitives and things that blur the line between, but I’ve never felt this. Never beenhookedlike this.
And the worst part? The most dangerous part?
She’s mine now.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
I glance over my shoulder at Molly, who’s trying very hard not to look smug.
I step toward her, fast enough that she flinches.
“You live,” I say.
Her mouth opens like she’s about to thank me.
I raise a hand. “Not out of kindness. Don’t mistake this.”
She nods, quickly. “Understood.”
“You live because you showed me something more important than your bounty.” I let the threat hang there, low and sharp. “Don’t ruin it.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll need credentials. Background. Something passable for her filters.”
“I’ve got files,” she says. “Backup identities. Some of them even believable.”
“Make me her type.”
Molly swallows. “She doesn’t have one.”
“Then make her believe I’m it.”
She nods again, tapping frantically at her console, sending data into the ether. She’s a survivor—gotta give her that.
I don’t care about her.
I don’t care about anything else tonight.
Only Yara.
And whatever it is fate just did to me.
CHAPTER 2
YARA
The first thing I do this morning is pour myself a half-cup of recaf and whisper that it’s going to be okay. Then I check the ledger reports and realize I’m a liar.
CY8 is on fire.
Not literally. I’m pretty sure the building’s still standing. But financially? Strategically? In every way that matters to the Helios Combine and its thousand hungry competitors? We’re a gaping wound bleeding out goodwill and credits by the second.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and exhale, staring at a spreadsheet so red it looks like it’s been wounded. Dad’s last expansion push—his big, legacy-cementing gamble—turned out to be exactly what I told him it might be: unsustainable.
And now he’s gone, and I’m stuck holding the knife and the debt.
The office is too quiet. The kind of quiet that rings in your ears after a shout. There’s a faint hum from the light panels overhead, the occasionalpingof a new notification begging for my attention. I ignore most of them. I can’t keep up, and even trying makes my chest tighten.
