The Runaway Alien (The Lost Planet 9)

“Tastes like rogshite,” Henry agrees.

“Henry!” Stella chides. “Don’t say rogshite.”

“Dad says it all the time,” he argues. “He doesn’t get in trouble.”

“He has a point,” I offer, earning a scowl from Stella.

Henry shoots me a mischievous grin. He reminds me a lot of Hadrian when he was that age, which makes me like the mortling a lot. Though he’s human, he is Galen made over, clever with growing plants, but his mouth is like his uncle Hadrian’s and gets him in trouble quite often these solars.

I pick up the carfey and inhale the dark root aroma. When the females learned carfey root is close to something of a coffee bean, they went insane. So many shrieks and squeals, I thought my ears would bleed. We’d only used carfey root for medicinal purposes, but once Molly invented a way for it to taste like the coffee many of them knew of, us morts quickly discovered the appeal of consuming it that way.

“This is the second-best part of my solar,” I say, sipping the dark liquid.

“What’s the best part?” Catori asks, flashing me her double fangs.

I wink at her. “When my little sunshine wakes me up of course.”

She preens, wiggling in her chair. Unlike the other mortlings, Catori likes to play with fabrics and materials. Between Aria and Oz, they’ve accumulated quite the collection for her to experiment with. Sometimes, her attire makes my eyes hurt because it’s so…different, but she’s pleased and that’s all that matters. This solar, she’s wearing a sabrevipe hide smock that she stained with many different colors and attached little pouches all over to hold her things.

Aria says every dress should have pockets, so Catori sees to it that hers have at least fifteen. It’s better to pretend the pockets are empty than imagine what all she collects in them.

“Everyone still asleep?” I ask Sayer, sipping at my carfey.

Sayer plates up some strips of meat and sets them in front of the mortlings, who dig in right away. “Grace is already in the labs this morning. Calix woke us up to show her something interesting.”

“Interesting is code for way over our heads,” Stella pipes up. “Seriously. When those two get together and nerd out, I feel like my IQ falls a few points.”

“IQ?” Sayer and I both ask at once.

Stella grumbles out something, ignoring us. Even after all these revolutions, we still get hung up on some of their quirky human sayings.

“They’re the only ones up?” I ask, choosing to skip over the IQ thing. “Galen?” I down the rest of my carfey and set the empty glass down on the table.

Stella gets a silly smile that makes me chuckle. “He’s in his greenhouse. Emery said they’re going to start crossbreeding some plant species this week. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.”

I steal a niblet of meat from Catori’s plate, earning me a snarl. You don’t mess with that mortling when she’s eating. You might lose a finger or two. Sokko required stitching up once because of her little fangs.

“I’m going to make my rounds and get to work in the Command Center.”

“You don’t want breakfast?” Stella asks, scrunching her nose.

“I’ll have breakfast with my mate.” I kiss Catori’s dark-haired nog. “Be good for Miss Stella and don’t be late for school.”

“I’m never late,” Catori huffs. “Sokko gets marks almost every solar for being late.”

Her brother enjoys his beauty sleep much like his mother.

“My apologies, sunshine.”

I leave the mortlings to their meal and make my way into a tunnel that leads to the working section of our underground Faction. All of the housing is on one side with the Great Hall separating everything. The first room I pass is the greenhouse. And, just as they said, Galen and Emery are each in their corners, already hard at work, quietly murmuring. I don’t interrupt them and peek in on the next room.

Quinn and Willow are stacking books on a shelf of the classroom. Currently, all the children take their lessons here each solar, though Quinn says we’ll need to separate the older mortlings soon. Both Quinn and Willow share the task of educating the mortlings on both human and mort ways. They often take “field trips” to learn certain duties. I cringe just thinking about having dozens of mortlings all crowded in the Command Center touching everything. Quinn promises the solar is coming soon.

“Morning,” I greet, waving at the two females.

They both turn to smile at me. Their stomachs are protruding. Pregnant again. Every time I see one of the females, their bellies showing growth inside of them, my heart sings with joy. Pride fills me to the brim. They may not be my mortlings, but they’re still family.

“Oh,” Quinn chirps. “Don’t forget. Tomorrow we’re taking a field trip to see what our great Commander does all day.”