Three
WELL NOW I’VE done it. Willow kept the brittle smile on her face as she stared down Eegen and the rest of the Scozid.
She could feel Renjik behind her coiled and ready to strike.
She wanted to reach back, put a hand on his arm to let him know to stand down, but she couldn’t very well do that without tipping off that she knew exactly what Eegen’s phrasing had meant.
It meant one of two things. Either Eegen had stumbled over his phrasing. Or the moment the Scozid cleared that doorway, something terrible would happen.
Willow was betting on terrible.
As long as they all stayed in the hangar, everything should be fine.
She hoped.
After several tense seconds, Eegen finally clipped, “Very well.”
She started breathing again. The Denchui delegates grumbled about having to negotiate standing. She wanted to yell that it was better to be standing than dead, but she didn’t. Poems should be written about her restraint.
It wouldn’t last much longer. As soon as she’d stepped onto the deck, she’d gotten a migraine. It started small, like always, a pressure at the base of her neck. It had reached her temples by then. When it moved and covered her entire skull, she’d be in serious danger of vomiting.
She hoped to leave before then.
Or at least escape to the shuttle for her rescue med.
She doubted either would happen. She couldn’t very well leave these clueless delegates and their proficiency at doing incredibly offensive, though unintentional, things from the Scozid point of view. That was the fastest way to pour accelerant on the flames of this war.
She wasn’t one hundred percent certain she could avoid that, but figured they stood a better chance with her present to attempt to smooth the Scozid’s ruffled... tentacles?... when one of the delegates did something stupid.
She never got the chance. The one at the back moved first. One of the Scozid broke from the back and sprinted to the door in a flurry of windmilling tentacles.
A few of the others hesitated before taking off after it.
One tried yelling at it to stop and come back, but the command was ignored.
Eegen turned back and forth a couple of times before joining the others in a race to the door.
Willow turned around and ran straight into Renjik.
“We’ve to go. Now.” He picked her up and sprinted for the shuttle.
“The others!”
“Have legs.”
“Renjik!”
“You’re my assignment.”
A few of the other delegates had clocked what was happening by then and ran for the shuttle. She thought a few of them might make it. Renjik never slowed as he pounded up the ramp and to the front of the shuttle.
“Get us off this station!”
The pilots blurred as they pushed buttons and pulled levers. Three other delegates had made it on board and were buckling themselves into seats. The ramp began its ascent and two more jumped inside while it was still partially open.
The shuttle jolted as an explosion ripped through the hangar.
It tilted wildly and she vaguely heard one of the pilots say they’d lost part of the landing gear.
By then she was almost completely enclosed in Renjik’s arms, his body curled around hers.
He sat in one of the seats but didn’t bother fastening the belt.
It wouldn’t fit around both of them, and he obviously had no intention of letting her go.
Which was fine with her.
The shuttle skid and scraped its way across the deck toward the force field like a wounded animal. Another explosion rocked the station and pushed the small craft into space, along with hundreds of metal shards that tinged against the hull like ominous chimes.
She whimpered as the migraine intensified.
“You’ll be okay.”
Renjik’s tone was more statement of fact than comforting, but Willow appreciated it either way. Oddly, his confidence soothed her. The migraine still pounded her brain to sand, but she was less worried about dying.
In the emptiness of space, the shuttle careened wildly.
The pilots struggled to get it under control but the spin created a false gravity that pinned them to their seats.
The planet coming in and out of view through the forward screen made her dizzy, which increased the threatening nausea.
She focused on Renjik’s hand wrapped around her thigh.
It wasn’t lost on her that he’d picked her up so his cybernetic arm was behind her back.
The ship shuddered and groaned as it hit the planet’s atmosphere. She squeezed the back of Renjik’s neck. “Is this shuttle rated for atmospheric entry?”
He didn’t answer, which was answer enough. She didn’t want to die with a migraine. The headache sucked enough on its own without adding dying to the mix. She’d hoped to live long enough for the Molzaed to figure out a cure—or at the very least—a remedy that worked.
The rescue medication they’d formulated was better than what Earth offered, but it still didn’t resolve the headache entirely.
It left her with a sense of pressure and the feeling the migraine could come roaring back at any minute.
Definitely better than nothing, and probably the best she could hope for.
“My bag. I need my bag.”
Renjik looked at her like she’d grown another arm.
“I have migraines. My medication is in my bag. I’m already trying not to puke on you.”
His brows drew together. “You’re injured?”
“No. Yes. I mean, my head hurts. Imagine someone driving a spike through your skull. Then imagine doing diplomacy while it happens. I’ve had them since I was a child, and can function—until I can’t.”
That seemed to do it. He gently placed her on the seat he vacated and returned with her bag.
She threw the strap over her shoulder and started to buckle in, but he stopped her.
She found herself in his arms again as the front of the shuttle erupted in flames and heat flooded the cabin.
The pilots screamed and she closed her eyes.
She felt more than heard the deep rumble from Renjik’s chest when he said, “Just a little while longer now.”
She wanted to ask until what, but the heat was so intense it stole her breath. She pushed herself as far from him as she could and vomited on the floor.
A cloth appeared from somewhere and wiped her mouth. She mumbled “Sorry” but didn’t hear any response as the shuttle broke in half. She watched one of the delegates get sucked through the gaping hole. Wind tugged at her and then abruptly cut off.
Renjik had closed them in a space so small they both touched the walls. He set her on her feet in a slow slide down his body that, despite the pain in her head, she quite liked. She couldn’t see what he was doing behind her, but soon enough the small room jerked and then swung in soft arcs.
“I couldn’t launch the pod until we cleared the outer atmosphere.”
“Pod?” The close quarters and lingering heat did a fine job of helping the migraine cook her brain.
“Escape pod. Just a minute or two more, and we’ll be on the ground.”
Willow didn’t know whether to cheer or groan. “What then?”
“Then we assess. The shuttle should have sent an automatic distress signal, so they’ll know we’re in need of rescue.”
“What if it didn’t? What if we’re stuck here?” She focused on his full bottom lip to stave off the panic.
He chuckled. “I’ve been in worse spots than crash landed on a remote planet with a breathable atmosphere. So have you, from what I understand.”
The edges of her vision faded. Her chest bumped against his with every breath.
“Hey,” he tilted her head up with a finger beneath her jaw. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because I’m here.”
He brushed his lips across hers in a move that felt more like a caress than a kiss.
She wanted him to kiss her.
STUPID RHINO. HIS kind were called Rucieth, but since one of the humans nicknamed them rhinos after their thick natural armor, it had stuck.
Armor that didn’t protect against the Scozid cutting off his arm. He was damaged goods and had nothing to offer a woman like Willow.
His rhun.
No.
Awareness had snapped at the first brush of his lips on hers. She was his rhun, and it was impossible. He’d suffer the effects alone. He could go home. Dissolve into madness alone.
All he had to do, was get through this mission.
Her scent wrapped around him and the escape pod shrunk to an almost unbearable level. Her breasts rubbed his chest with every frantic inhale and he wanted to press into her tighter. He needed space. He needed distance, but the damn pod had none.
There wasn’t even a window to judge how far they were from the planet’s surface.
He’d calculated how long the pod should take to reach the atmosphere, and they should be through it by now, but he couldn’t pinpoint the landing area.
The planet’s surface was a topological nightmare.
He was hoping they landed on, or at least near, a mountain peak.
If they landed in a valley, they’d need to trek higher so any signal they were able to send would be received.
At this point, they could splash down in an ocean and he’d breathe a sigh of relief. He just needed to get out of the confining space so he could breathe.
He shoved his own discomfort out of the way and focused on Willow. She was having a harder time than him. Not only was the shuttle destroyed around her—the second time something like that had happened to her—but she was dealing with a migraine that made her violently ill.
“Why have the Molzaed not cured you?”
She shook her head. “Too hot. Can’t talk.”
He tried to pull his heat away from her, but the space just wouldn’t allow it.
The shuttle wasn’t originally equipped with an escape pod.
The only space he found to put one wasn’t big enough for anything larger.
It was a wonder he’d managed to shoehorn this one into the framework, but he wasn’t letting them go without one.
Something compelled him to protect her at all costs, even before he knew she was his rhun.