Laina #2
This was the answer.
His other hand found my waist and pulled me flush against him.
I made a sound that would’ve embarrassed me if I’d had any working brain cells left, and his response was a low rumble I felt through his chest. My fingers found the front of his shirt, and I held on.
He deepened the kiss until I forgot we were standing in the medical bay in broad daylight where anyone could walk in.
The door crashed open.
We jerked apart. Brovish’s hand remained at my waist, and I couldn’t make myself step away from the heat of him.
Drogar filled the doorway, a crate in his arms, his grin so wide it put his tusks on full display.
“We’ve arrived and the fizzlings are sparkier than usual,” he said. His eyes went from Brovish to me and back again, and his grin went feral. “Oh. Oh. Am I interrupting a claiming?”
“No,” Brovish said.
“Yes, you’re interrupting,” I said at the same time.
Drogar’s laugh boomed off the walls. “I’ll return after enough time has passed for proper claiming activities. The fizzlings can maintain their sparking without supervision. This requires no audience and much privacy. I’ll guard the door.”
He backed into the hallway and closed the panel.
The silence rang louder than his laugh had.
“I should—”
“Don’t.” Brovish’s hand tightened at my waist. “Please don’t say we shouldn’t have done that.”
“I wasn’t going to.” I looked up at him, my heart still racing. “I was going to say I should probably check on Cooper, but I’d much rather stay here.”
His expression softened. “Then stay.”
“Drogar’s coming back with creatures who need examining.”
“In twenty minutes.”
“That’s not—” I stopped, because he’d leaned down again, his forehead resting on mine, and we were breathing the same air.
“Ten minutes,” he said against my mouth. “We have at least ten minutes.”
I kissed him again, and we used every second.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
We’d separated, both breathing hard, my back pressed against the exam table and his hands braced on either side of me.
The phone buzzed again.
“You should check that,” he said, his voice rough.
I didn’t want to move.
The phone buzzed a third time.
I pulled it out and the screen lit up with my mother’s contact photo. The one with the bright Florida sky behind her, her smile even brighter.
I read the text once. Then again.
Honey I’ve been worried since you abandoned the partnership.
Are you sure you want to sell? Decisions like this need time.
And this new job. I’m not sure. I’d like to see what you’ve gotten yourself into.
I’ll be there Friday. I’ll stay with you so you don’t need to worry about finding a hotel in that town we both know has no hotel.
The warmth that had been pooling in my stomach turned to lead.
“What’s wrong?” Brovish asked.
“My mother.” I stared at the screen. “She’s coming Friday. She wants to see what I’ve gotten myself into.”
He straightened, his expression going guarded. “Your mother is welcome here.”
“She didn’t ask to visit.” My thumb hovered over the screen without pressing anything. “She informed me. That’s different.”
He was quiet for a moment. “This is not how caring is shown in the kingdom.”
“It’s how she shows it.” I shoved the phone back into my pocket. “She left when I was eleven. Moved to Florida and started a new family. Now she likes to arrive unannounced and share her opinions about my life choices.”
His hands had dropped away from the table.
“What will you tell her?” he asked. “About this place? About—” He gestured between us, the motion uncertain.
About us. That’s what he wasn’t saying.
“I don’t know yet.” The honesty tasted bitter. “She’s going to have questions. A lot of them.”
The door opened again.
Drogar stuck his head in, his earlier enthusiasm dimming quickly by whatever he read on our faces.
“The fizzlings truly cannot wait much longer,” he said. “They’re creating a concerning amount of static charge in close quarters.”
I pushed off the table. “Right. Let’s get them examined.”
Brovish didn’t move right away. He watched me with an expression I couldn’t read, one between concern and retreat. “Laina—”
“We should handle the intakes.” I couldn’t look at him. If I did, I’d see the questions forming, and I didn’t have answers yet. “Before they short-circuit something.”
I walked past him toward the door, and I felt the exact moment he let me go.
Traig and Drogar waited in the exam room next door with the crate of fizzlings sitting on the table.
Traig nodded my way and tapped on his tablet. “The fizzlings are siblings, from the Valadar region. The family couldn’t keep them once they started building a shared charge. It was too much for them.”
I leaned closer, studying the yellow and pink striped ferret-shaped creatures. Electricity zipped across their fur. They clustered together near the far side of the crate, tiny arcs of static crackling between their glowing stripes.
“Are they friendly?” I asked.
“Unless you’re a wallodroop,” Drogar said. “They’re sworn enemies.”
Krem’s lips thinned. “If the wallodroops would stop dumping water on the fizzlings, putting out their sparks, they might make friends.”
“We don’t have any wallodroops here,” Brovish said.
“Yet,” Krem added.
“If we ever do, we’ll keep them apart.”
I poked my finger between the bars of the crate, and the first one shocked me twice before I worked out a grounding technique. The second shocked Krem, who burst into laughter.
“Let’s take them out of the crate so I can examine them,” I said.
Drogar released the latch and tugged them out, placing them on a clear space on the table. Two sat placidly where he’d put them, but the third ran up his arm and behind the hair at his nape, where it sat, shooting sparks.
“She has chosen me,” Drogar said, his chin lifting.
“She’s discharging static into your hair,” Traig said with the dry voice I’d come to appreciate. Traig could be counted on for a subtle joke and a steady presence at any time of the day. “If you’re not careful, she’ll set you on fire.”
“She has chosen me,” Drogar said again. “She will not set me on fire.”
I reached out to examine one of the fizzlings, and it shocked me, making my teeth crunch together.
It was more like grabbing a doorknob in winter than sticking a fork in a light socket—something I hadn’t done but had read about.
A jolt that ran up my arm and made me step back.
The fizzling watched me with bright, completely unrepentant eyes.
The driftwhisps lifted off my head and circled around, giving me a sparkling halo, before resettling in their original place.
“Their static discharge is worse when they’re stressed,” Brovish said from behind me. He handed me some rubber gloves.
We’d developed a rhythm over the past weeks. He anticipated what I needed and positioned himself where I’d have the best angle, moving back when I needed space. But today that rhythm felt different. Heavier.
I kept thinking about my mother walking through the front door of the rescue.
How she’d look around with a slight sneer on her face.
Standing where Brovish stood now, watching me examine creatures she’d dismiss as “those things from underground.” She’d ask pointed questions about my future while implying she knew better.
What have you gotten yourself into?
The third fizzling discharged into my gloved hand, and I barely felt it.
“Your expression changed,” Brovish said. He’d moved closer without me noticing. “Are you thinking about your mother’s visit?”
“Among other things.”
“Such as?”
I looked up at him. “Such as what I’m going to say when she asks why I gave up a successful clinic to work at a creature rescue facility in the middle of the woods.”
“You’ll tell her the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That you chose the place where you could grow instead of the place you’d grown beyond. That creatures need you here. That—”
“That what?”
His jaw worked. “That perhaps other things need you here as well.”
The fizzling in my hands sparked, and I set it down carefully on the table before I dropped it. “Brovish—”
Krem, Traig, and Drogar watched us, their mouths ajar.
“I’m not asking you to explain me to your mother.
” His voice had gone formal, the way it did when he was trying very hard to find the right words.
“I understand families are complex. Especially human families. But I want you to know that what we’ve begun, whatever this is, it matters to me. Whether your mother approves or not.”
Drogar cleared his throat.
“The mirrormoose,” he said, gentler than usual. “Once we’ve finished here, Greth has her ready in a pen outside.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
I finished my examination and put the fizzlings back inside their crate. We’d have their fireproof enclosure ready before the day was over and they could run free. They were healthy for now.
Brovish held the door, and I walked past him into the afternoon light, feeling his presence behind me like heat.
“I’ll take them to the next room to wait,” Drogar said. He hefted the crate to eye level and crooned to the beasties as we left the exam room.