Page 109 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

“I’ll check the samples to ensure the system is keeping their individual containment parameters steady.” Cyro turned to the research station, tentacles tapping furiously, as if he needed to put all his effort into this minor task so he could stop focusing on Earth and Tammy and the horses. And everything we all were longing for. “Containment parameters are holding,” he reported, his voice steadier than I expected. “Preservation not compromised.”

What he didn’t say—what he didn’t need to say as our eyes met in silent understanding—was that no preservation protocol could maintain what truly mattered.

The memory of Tammy’s laughter would fade. The specific shade of her fire-kissed hair would become harder to recall. The animals would forget us, and the warmth of belonging we had found at Sunflower Hills would cool with distance and time.

We were fulfilling our mission. We were saving our world. We were doing exactly what we had sworn to do when we embarked on this journey.

And in succeeding, we had never felt like greater failures.

VANTOR

The command center fell into silence as the water purged from inside the ship, returning to where it belonged.

Returning… to where it belonged. Which was what we were on the path to doing. So why did it feel so wrong? Why did our home world not call to me?

Maybe it was because even as a young one, unable to leave the many waters, I longed for the surface. And when I was finally able to surface, I saw the sky and longed for the stars. I’d poured myself into being the best security specialist G.E.F. had to offer. To what end?

To get me off planet.

To reach those stars I longed for.

To, I realized now, find her.

The quiet that filled the ship in place of the saltwater was charged with tension, regret, confusion. I watched as Cyro’s human fingers tapped an irregular pattern against the edge of his console, while his tentacles hung listlessly down his back. He looked unmoored. Cyro, who was always confident even when he should not be, looked like a lost youngling at the bottom of a dark ocean. His normally impeccable facade had cracked, revealing the emotional turbulence beneath. My security training had taught me to recognize the subtle signs of a coming avalanche—the small shifts that preceded massive change. This moment felt like the first tremor before everything would slide inexorably into motion. The only question was, which of us would be the catalyst? Which of us would break first?

I was on the edge.

Ready to leap.

The water levels were lowering. The saltwater splashed against my shoulders as I shifted uncomfortably, wondering what I should do, what I should say.

Then Cyro turned from his station, abandoning all pretense of monitoring the samples. His human disguise flickered, eyes drifting, nose drooping, neck gathering in folds.

“I cannot stop thinking about her,” he said, the words emerging with such force that I knew he had been containing them for as long as I’d been containing my own need for our fire-haired Omega. His grayed skin flushed with bright purple. “About Tammy. About the ranch. About the peculiar sense of peace which I experienced while conducting what should have been mundane tasks like feeding horses, repairing fences, observing the night sky without quantitative instruments.”

Peace. Cyro was not one to put stock in such a pedantic concept. Yet, peace was the word he chose. And I felt that to the center of my body, to where my hearts beat, to where Tammy had planted herself.

Cyro’s tentacles natural body revealed itself now, his human form dissolving as he surrendered to his true nature. Patterns of light danced across his skin—not the controlled, deliberate signals of our formal communication system, but the instinctive expression of emotions too powerful to contain. The tentacles he’d kept in his hybrid form, recently lifeless, rose into the air and rippled.

We all followed suit, embracing our natural state, as if that would force us to accept leaving Earth.

“I have visited countless worlds in my pursuit of knowledge and answers,” he continued, his voice carrying that liquid quality that emerged when his speech organs reverted to their natural state. “I have cataloged thousands of species, analyzed countless environments, and I have never felt that I belonged anywhere but in our research facilities at home. Until Sunflower Hills.”

The raw honesty in his admission broke the last of my own control. The rigidity I’d maintained throughout my career softened. All my life, I’d hid behind security protocol, staying on my guard, never fully trusting any being on my home world or on strange worlds. Professional distance was safer than confronting the hollowness that had taken root in my central cavity, keeping me at tentacles’ length from real connection. Oh, I’d learned to enjoy Kalith’s company on missions. I’d learned to tolerate, and even respect, Cyro’s keen mind and ego. But it was only on this mission, after so many missions with the duo, that I had found within them a family.

When we went back home, diving into waters and culture of our people, would we drift apart? Without Tammy tying us together, would we lose this brotherhood?

“The first time I reached the surface,” I found myself saying, “when I was barely mature enough for independent swimming, I breached our world’s ocean and saw the stars directly, without the distortion of water. That moment created a question without words, a yearning without direction.” My tentacles shifted, curling inward in the gesture that signified deep vulnerability in our species. “At the ranch, watching the Kansas sunset with Hoover on my shoulder and Tammy beside me, I found the answer to that question.”

Kalith lifted his smallest tentacle out of the water, which was now waist high. His gaze dropped, eyes clamping on the shorter appendage. He stared at it with obvious distaste before shaking himself. His expression softened.

“Earth’s primitive technology is fascinating,” he said, his voice barely a whisper but gaining strength with each word. “The simplicity of their mechanical solutions and the ingenuity born from resource limitations are things that I could spend lifetimes studying. The challenge of improving their systems calls to me.” He paused, his chromatophores pulsing with warm browns and muted oranges. “But that’s not why I want to return. I want to return because Tammy looked at this—” he extended his shorter tentacle, “—and saw not dysfunction but uniqueness. Not deficiency but difference.”

Our hues changed rapidly as emotions surged through us, overwhelming our natural, unique coloring—blues of sadness for what we were leaving behind, reds of passion for what we had found on Earth, and greens of hope for what might still be possible. Our skin became living canvases painting the complexity of our shared experience, more eloquent than any words our mouths could say or our bodies could communicate with light.

I moved toward the central navigation console; drawn by an impulse I didn’t try to analyze. Cyro and Kalith followed, until we stood in a triangle around the glowing interface that controlled our course through Earth’s oceans, through its atmosphere, and eventually back to our distant home world.

“We all feel the same,” I said, stating the obvious but needing to hear it confirmed aloud. “Sunflower Hills Ranch and Tammy are where we belong.”