Chapter 24
Flack
First aid was not my strong suit, but luckily I knew everything about supplies.
As I caught my collapsing mate in my arms, I pushed for one last surge of strength and dragged both of us into the escape pod.
With the flick of a button, I started the launch procedure, and my hands were already flying to do other things.
I yanked out the first aid kit that came standard with the pod and located both the pain relief and the plas film bandages to cover Irena’s wound.
“It’s not bad!” I crooned to her, cradling her in my lap as I bent over the injury.
“It really isn’t bad!” I tried again, though I suspected she had to be in absolute agony.
Seeing her get shot had made me fear the worst, but the laser had only grazed her shoulder.
I wasn’t sure whether it had been Xathena or the death squad killer sent by Jalima who had fired the shot.
Either way, they were both about to be dead.
Our escape pod jettisoned from the ship with force, rattling it and forcing us back into the inadequately shaped seat.
I held onto Irena so she would not get injured any further.
Forces pulled at us, making my fractured ribs creak and ache in a very unhealthy manner.
Moments later, another shock wave rocked our tiny pod, and the lights inside it flickered and went out.
Plunged into darkness, I heard only the frantic pounding of our hearts and the soft beeping of a system sounding an alert.
“The Vidu must have blown. That shockwave was much bigger than I expected,” I groaned through the pain.
I’d dropped the bandage and injector, but there was just enough light coming from one small panel blinking with warnings to see by.
I located the injector first and hurried to press it to her skin.
It hissed, and almost instantly, she began to soften in my arms, relief flooding her system. “That’s better, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
I bandaged her wound, forced to rip the sleeve entirely off her dress to do so.
Neither of us cared about the tattered, once-white dress anyway.
“Thank you,” she said, a tremble still in her tone.
“Is there more?” She couldn’t see in the dark, not like I could, but she was tilting her head in the right direction, toward the med kit.
“Is it still hurting?” I asked, worry spiking again.
I wasn’t sure now, but it hadn’t looked deep.
Had she been hit elsewhere too? My hands began a frantic search for more injuries, and the pain of my own got shoved further to the back of my mind.
Her spine, the curve of her hip, her belly, and the lovely globes of her breasts.
Nothing, but she squirmed as if I’d tickled her, shifting on my leg, and a lance of agony shot down my shin.
Right, I’d broken the damn left leg, badly, too.
That, and my ribs, had gotten me stuck, unable to shift, until I’d seen Xathena and that assassin and feared for Irena’s life.
I shouldn’t have been able to shift, not to mention run, but when I’d seen the danger to her, everything had been shoved to the back of my mind.
I’d known only one purpose in that fraction of a moment: move and protect her, and I had.
Now I was just as frantic to heal her wounds, but I was certain she’d only been struck on the shoulder.
“For you, Flack,” she said. “Aren’t you in terrible pain?
I know your ribs hurt, and you must be bleeding from your leg.
What can I do to help?” Her hands slid along my chest, very gently touching me in a search similar to my own.
She was very careful as she twisted in my lap, too, but it still made my leg feel like it was on fire.
Gritting my teeth, I forced out a joke instead.
“I gave you everything, so you’ll just have to find another way to distract me from the pain.
” I hoped the Varakartoom wasn’t too far out, but at least we were relatively safe in here.
The Vidu had blown up, at least, that’s what it had felt like, so that took Xathena completely out of the equation.
There was only the other ship, if it had survived the explosion.
Not much either of us could do about that, not while adrift in a pod we couldn’t steer.
I couldn’t see enough of my mate’s expression, but I knew she was scowling at me.
At least the pain drugs were making her a little more relaxed, and it seemed, also, more smiley.
The frown did not last long, and then she cupped my chin and actually kissed me.
I hadn’t expected that, and I certainly hadn’t expected it to help as much as it did.
With her mouth on mine, it was like the rest of the world just faded away, though.
I could focus on her taste, her nearness, the scent of her, and get so lost that the pain was barely a memory.
I didn’t know how long we clung to each other like that, my hands roaming, our mouths clinging.
Long enough that I’d forgotten the pain in my leg and gotten a serious ache in my cock instead.
If she hadn’t been injured herself, I would have wanted her to ride me.
A perfect way to pass the time while we waited for my ship to show up.
“I feel a little faint,” Irena muttered, but she seemed more interested in kissing me than talking.
That should have alarmed me, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel it.
I was in no pain now, but I was beginning to experience a floating feeling of euphoria myself.
Then came a thud, loud and jarring, and pain lanced through my leg, bringing me back to the present.
Blast, that hurt—but worse, we were going hypoxic, the thinning oxygen in the air getting to us.
Either the pod had sprung a micro-leak, or the air scrubbers were broken.
Both options were equally likely, given the sorry state much of the Vidu was in.
My mate kissed me again, and I forgot what I was thinking.
What did it matter anyway? I had her, and we were safe.
“Flack, are you in there?” That safe bubble burst with a very distant voice reaching me.
I lifted my head, breathed deeply, and my mind felt clearer.
The voice came again, and then a buzzing, grinding noise.
I winced at the painfully sharp sound, but when light suddenly pierced our dark little pod, I did not protect my ears.
I tugged Irena more tightly against my chest instead, shielding her eyes from the sudden brightness.
“Ah, thank the stars!” I recognized that voice.
“We’ve got him, Cap. Drav, you get your butt in here!
” Ysa was always so informal, and yet the captain let her get away with it.
Even polite, uptight Dravion did not correct her on the strange way she’d shortened his name.
We were safe. This time, we really had made it.
Being brought to med bay after they extracted us from the pod was a bit of a blur to me. I might have been more injured than I’d realized, and when Dravion pumped me full of meds, I’d gone even more euphoric than the lack of oxygen had caused. Then I might have even passed out.
When I next blinked my eyes open, I was in the med bay, and everything felt so normal it took me a moment to adjust. Panic struck the moment after, because I could not sense Irena anywhere.
I shoved myself upright, my chest constrained by tight bandaging, and discovered a splint around my leg that was going to make Aramon laugh when he saw it. I didn’t care.
“Irena! Irena, where are you?” I called out when I stumbled out of bed and landed heavily on my unsplinted leg. That one was terribly sore, too, and my leg buckled, forcing me to cling awkwardly to the cot just as I discovered I’d been bucknaked under the sheets.
Dravion rushed into the med bay from the glass-walled operating room to my left, while several women came rushing in through the med bay’s entrance.
I did not care that they got an eyeful when I turned toward them, because I caught her scent then—a painful, bruised lungful of Irena’s scent.
Clean, with a hint of flowers that wasn’t usually part of her scent, and the thick scent of something I’d learned was chocolate.
Humans were very fond of chocolate. Except Thatcher. Thatcher didn’t care.
“Flack! Why are you up? You should be resting,” my mate said, freeing herself from the gaggle of women to rush to my side.
I stared at her, drinking in the transformation she’d undergone while I’d been out.
Her pretty brown hair, silky, soft, and tangle-free, hung to her shoulders.
A black tunic hung down to her thighs, which were encased in a type of pants the Earth women had all requested I find them at one point or another: leggings.
Her shoulders were both bare, but one was still covered with a small bandage.
More important: she looked utterly radiant.
A wide smile on her face, her eyes sparkling, and the grid-like scar on her left cheek only a vague reminder of what she’d gone through.
Even her skin appeared to hold a little more warmth, a hint of health that hadn’t been there before.
“Ah, stars, you are so beautiful,” I said.
“And you’re naked,” she responded, pulling the sheet from the cot and holding it out in front of my hips.
I shrugged because I truly did not care, but she gave the women behind her a glare as if to say, Don’t look, that’s my male.
Now that I liked. I liked it a lot. So I tucked the sheet around my hips and awkwardly kept myself propped up against the side of the cot, hoping they wouldn’t notice how painful it still was to stand.
Dravion, of course, did notice, but he politely assisted me back onto the cot under the guise of needing to check my vital signs.
“I’m fine,” I said, and once the weight was off my legs, I truly did feel fine—especially when Irena tucked herself close against my side, settling in like she planned to stay.
“Truly. I’m in good hands with Dravion. He’s the best.” I was surprised he was here alone with me.
I would have expected at least one officer to be waiting around so they could debrief me.
Then the thought occurred that I might have been out long enough that they’d gotten the story from Irena instead, and I didn’t like that one bit.
What if they’d had the Sineater interrogate her?
Her wide smile told me that was unlikely.
“He is; we all know that, and we told her, Flack,” Mandy assured me.
As the captain’s mate, it was no surprise she had taken my Irena under her wing.
They’d done a good job, too, because my shy little Tikai was clearly much quicker to trust them than she had been to trust me.
“I got the story from her,” Mandy added, as if she knew exactly what I’d been worried about.
“And since Dravion gave her a clean bill of health, we figured she’d enjoy a shower and a change of clothes.
Otherwise, your mate has not left your side. ”
I twisted my head to catch Irena’s expression and discovered a lovely pink hue to her cheeks.
She was smiling, a little embarrassed, but she had nothing to be embarrassed about.
“I was afraid to go anywhere on the ship without you,” she admitted.
That, I could see, but I’d make sure she’d be safe everywhere she went.
I’d remind the Sineater, Solear, and Aramon that my Irena was untouchable.
Even they came to me with requests, and nobody pissed off the one guy on the ship who could get you anything—especially when they had a mate they wanted to please.
I eyed Mandy, who opened her mouth, probably to assure me that she’d been completely safe, but then my eyes caught something behind her.
Dravion was still fussing with the readings and checking the cast around my leg, but he’d come from the glass-walled operating area.
There was a guard standing just beyond the glass who normally wasn’t there.
“Hang on, you’ve got a wounded prisoner?
Who is it?” If that was Xathena, I’d get up this instant to finish her off.
“The assassin,” Irena said while everyone else was still sharing uneasy glances.
Harper and Mandy, Dravion with the guard, who, by the looks of it, was Raukesh.
“She’s human, Flack! Jalima sent a human woman to kill everyone on the Vidu.
Apparently we blew up her ship too, and they found her badly wounded, drifting in space near our pod!
” That was… unsettling to think about. No wonder they were trying to heal her but also keeping her under guard.
A human was unlikely to have acted of her own free will, and yet.
She’d seemed an awfully capable shot when firing at my mate.
“No,” Dravion and Irena both said at once.
“You are leaving her alone,” Irena added.
“First, you get your leg healed, and then we’ll think about things like punishing her for shooting me.
Okay?” I was pretty sure she was going to convince me not to make her pay for shooting my mate down the line.
I kind of looked forward to having my Irena try.
“Heal first,” I agreed. “Can anyone tell me where my pants went?” Though I was perfectly serious, everyone laughed—my mate perhaps loudest. I let myself get distracted by the lovely sound.