The wooden doorframe trembled as someone tested the knob and found it locked. Penny rolled over in her bed and glared at the door. Sun streamed in through the window, bright enough that it had to be hours later than she normally woke.

 “Why is your door locked?” Resa demanded from the other side, still trying to open it as if determination alone was enough to counteract the bolt. Given the age of that door and the flimsiness of the lock, it might have been. Penny threw back her covers, grumbling under her breath. Resa was old enough to see to herself in the morning, and old enough to know about boundaries. She just didn’t care.

Penny swung her feet down to the floor and nearly missed the still form of the muscular blue alien. Krayter. She swallowed hard and her stomach dropped all the way down and a heavy knot settled inside. Fuck. Last night had actually happened like she remembered. She’d really hoped it would all turn out to be a migraine induced nightmare. Not that she’d ever had one before, but there was a first time for everything.

Her sisters whispered at each other through the door, harsh, but not loud enough for Penny to make out the substance of the argument. Eventually their feet shuffled away and Penny was left alone with the rescued alien.

After she’d sent Nicole to bed the night before, there hadn’t been much else for them to say. No, that wasn’t right. They could fill encyclopedias with what needed to be said, but at 2AM, neither of them was in any position to speak coherently on any subject. So, for safety reasons, she’d invited Krayter to sleep on the floor beside her bed.

If anyone, even God himself, had told her that she would an invite an alien to stay the night in her room, Penny would have called them a liar and a fool. And here it had happened, without even an hour’s acquaintance.

But if she had to choose an alien, Krayter seemed like a good one. She studied him, grateful for the sun and highly conscious of the creep factor. Maybe he didn’t have a conscious power that drew her to him, but he was doing something to her. Why else would she want to lay down beside him on the hard slats of wood on the ground and snuggle up against his broad, muscular chest?

He was as finely sculpted as any man, human or alien, could hope to be, standing over six feet tall with broad shoulders and muscles thick enough to crack a tree in half. Those mysterious markings of his peeked out of his shirt and she wanted to lean down and get a closer look. A closer feel.

Penny reared back, realizing that she had bent down. Nope. Not cool.

She forced herself out of the bed and into the bathroom, where she quickly washed and changed into regular clothes. By the time she was done, Krayter was awake, as she saw when she opened the bathroom door.

Those eyes of his belonged on a demon, but the rest of his face might have been from a strange angel.

She didn’t lick her lips while she looked at him, and for that she deserved a damn award. “You can wash up if you like,” she said. He was already standing and stretching, thankfully on the other side of the room from the window. Gauzy curtains hung down, obscuring the outside view, but a strong enough sniper sight might catch a glimpse of him.

She stepped out of the bathroom doorway to let him pass and Krayter brushed up right against her, sending an erotic sizzle of awareness shooting down the entire left side of her body. Without thought, Penny’s hand shot out to steady herself, landing on his naked bicep.

They froze and stared at one another. His skin was hot under her palm and that seemed strange. Blue might have been the color of ice, but he was an inferno. Her eyes darted down, finding those kissable lips of his. His own mouth opened and she saw that his teeth were sharper than a human’s. Not quite fangs, but scary nonetheless.

Still, she wanted him.

Penny pulled back, lowering her arm and stepping away, putting that much needed distance between them so he couldn’t use his weird passive mind control powers on her. No fancy sex powers! Not today.

“Come down once you’re dressed,” she said, striving for normalcy and immediately conjuring the image of him naked and wet. Did he look like a man when his pants came off? Or was she in for a—no, she wasn’t going there. “Unless you hear someone other than me, Nicole, or Resa,” she continued. “Or if we put something in place. Or, maybe just—”

She knew she was rambling and was thankful when Krayter cut her off with two simple words. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she responded. It was so normal it hurt.

“I’ll be cautious,” he promised, his eyes glowing that bright red again. They hadn’t done it when she first saw him. Maybe they were like pupils and reacted to the light. Or maybe it was something else.

Penny knew she was staring, and after another few seconds she tore herself away. Krayter closed the bathroom door behind him, leaving her alone in the bedroom. She left the room, walking slowly down the stairs into the kitchen, where she could already hear Nicole and Resa messing around.

Or, rather, cleaning and cooking. My my, her sisters were on their best behavior. Resa cooked eggs and sausages at the stove while Nicole had cleared up her mess of knives from the night before. The clock on the wall told her it was almost noon, but both of her sisters still wore pajamas.

“Is the alien upstairs?” Nicole asked once Penny came into sight. “In your shower?”

“Shut up.” Penny hadn’t had coffee and was still on edge. She did not want to deal with prying sisters.

Of course, that was the exact wrong reaction. Smelling blood in the water, they both grinned. Resa turned away from the stove, wielding her spatula like a sword, and pointed it in mock accusation, though Penny wasn’t sure of what.

“Seriously,” she said. “Shut. Up.” Little sisters could be the worst. And she didn’t even know why she was embarrassed.

They continued to giggle.

A confident knock pounded on the front door, freezing the three of them in place and cutting off Resa and Nicole’s giggling with startling efficiency. As one, they looked down the hall, and then their gazes turned upstairs, to where the sound of the water running in the shower was as loud as a waterfall.

No one could know Krayter was there. And no one could think that anything out of the ordinary was going down in this household. Penny recognized that knock and she knew they had only seconds before things started to look weird.

She turned to her sisters, whispering harshly. “Resa, go sit in my room and pretend you’re in the shower. Keep Krayter there unless we give the signal.” Resa nodded and padded away on her tiptoes, careful to avoid the creaks in the floor. “Nicole, upstairs too. Just in case.” The teenager went without a fight.

Penny stood and straightened her clothes, taking a deep breath. It wasn’t Braxton at the door this time, and she couldn’t count on the strangeness of the night to cover irregularities. A door upstairs closed quietly as she made it to the entrance. She swung the door open and saw a tall man with a mane of graying blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. The crags on his face ran deep, giving him an air of authority and making him seem older than his fiftyish years. “Hello, Father.”

Kurt White, her father and the leader of Highland Settlement, gave her the gimlet stare and stepped inside, knowing she’d step out of the way to let him. Something deep in her gut roiled, even as she moved. This was her home and he still moved like he owned the place. “So all of my daughters have abandoned me for greener pastures,” he said with all the air of a doting father.

They walked into the kitchen and Penny spotted the pans on the stove and her food at the table. She sat down casually and brought no attention to it, eating like it was normal. She wasn’t the cook in the family. But her father grabbed a cup of coffee from the thermos and took a seat beside her, seemingly oblivious to the food.

“Braxton and I spoke this morning,” he said while breathing in the aroma of the coffee. He’d always liked how she brewed it, and her sisters had learned well.

“I see.” Don’t react, she cautioned herself. But she could smack Braxton upside the head. How long had he waited to tattle? An hour?

Her father said nothing about her distress. “He mentioned that you were out late last night and that there might have been suspicious activity.”

“Did he?” A trick she’d learned early on was to never give more than needed. Her father loved to needle and he’d unravel a person with one careless sentence.

And then the bomb dropped. “I want you and the girls back at the Residence by nightfall.”

The water turned off upstairs and it took a great deal of composure to keep from looking up. Penny tried to figure out a way around his command. She couldn’t leave this house with Krayter, and she didn’t know how to get him out of the Settlement safely. “I’ll ask the girls,” she said. “But I know they like the quiet out here.”

“That wasn’t a request, Pen.” She scowled at the nickname, as always, and fought the instinctual urge to immediately fight back.

Penny tried logic. It rarely worked, but miracles happened every day. “Why do you need us out there? I trust the rotations to keep us safe. I do my duties. Why can’t we stay here?” She rarely put a toe out of line, and hadn’t done so since she was sixteen.

Of course, her idea of well-behaved and her father’s were bound to differ. “You haven’t done a guard rotation in over a year. Do you really want to talk about duties?”

Had it really been that long? She could still remember the mud of the forest squelching in her boots, feel the hot blood—no. She closed that door tight and locked it shut before it could swallow her whole. That was what nightmares were for and the sun still shone bright in the sky, protecting her. “Father…”

“You’re an adult,” he conceded, changing tack. “But your sisters will be at the Residence by night.” He didn’t need to add an ‘or else.’ That was the perk of being leader. “If you don’t come with them, so be it. But you will sign up for guard rotations starting on the next roster. You’re a soldier. It’s time to act like one.” He stood, leaving his cup on the table, and went back down the hallway the way he came. Never once did he ask to speak to his other daughters, and it wasn’t because he was sure that he’d see them at night.

He just didn’t care. His pretty little trophies would come to him.

Penny’s hands shook. She’d been so focused on how to get Krayter away from them that she hadn’t realized the danger lurking in the Residence. Her father had plans for her. He always had. That was what leaders did. But the thought of taking the reins, becoming the leader he surely wanted her to be, turned Penny’s stomach.

She’d slept beside an alien and never once worried about her safety. She’d protected him from a patrol and promised herself she wouldn’t kill him. She didn’t have the hate that lived in her father’s heart and didn’t know that she could conjure it to do what he’d command.

It came to her slowly, dawning like the winter sun. She had to leave the Settlement. With Krayter. It was the only way to guarantee that he got out, and the only way to keep her hands clean.

She didn’t have it in her to murder an alien. Not again.