Dweller of the Mists (Tales from the Darvel Exploratory Systems #2)

This was supposed to be Noelle's last trip as part of one of Darvel Corporation's exploratory teams. After several years of service, she was finally done and ready to retire on Earth with her citizen benefits. It is just her dumb luck that she has been sent to a dangerous world covered continuously in a heavy blanket of fog that one team had already been lost to. It is worse, however, when it quickly becomes apparent that she was assigned to a doomed trip. An explosion on ship that forced an evacuation not only separates her from her team but drops her deep in the swamps, far from their intended base camp.

Frightened and alone, Noelle is forced to survive in a hostile and alien world where her only company is a strange alien lurking in the swamp. The male sings every night for her, his bioluminescence lighting the swamps, but the amphibious alien is an unknown factor. Alien or not, she needs to get to base camp and rejoin her team, but can she trust a potentially dangerous stranger with her safety, or with her heart?

**This is a companion novella to Mist Asylum of Graelf coming spring 2025. Although it can be read as a standalone it is a better reading experience when one is familiar with the Darvel Exploratory Systems series and has already read The Frog Prince.