“You got the manacles off,” I noted with relief.
“Not a lock made that I cannot pick,” Rhodes stated calmly, but his expression remained tense.
“There was that one door… ” Zyair’s voice wasn’t more than a croak.
“I was using a toothpick,” Rhodes protested as he helped lower his brother into the navigator’s seat.
Zyair looked like hell, with sunken cheeks and flushed skin. I caught Yani’s eye, and she shook her head at me. “Nothing we have in the medbay will help with that venom once it has grabbed hold.”
“Many have tried to come up with an antidote,” Rhodes rumbled. “Each individual is unique in its properties. We have yet tofind success.” His concern radiated through the link. “We need to get him to Amelia.”
“Amelia?” I asked, suddenly hopeful.
“Our elder brothers’ mate is a healer,” he replied. “Her talent is extraordinary. It saved Zyair last time.”
“Where is she?” Yani asked.
He answered, and my heart constricted. We were alongway from Earth.
The panel beeped, and a light shone above the aft bay marker. “He remembered,” I breathed, and reached for Xandros.
He was leading the pursuing landfighters through the storm. I envisioned him landing the ship in the appropriate spot, before returning to theStardrifter. The pulse he sent me was a mixture of regret, and relief.
It was time to go.
Our scanners watched Kurt hurry down the ramp and head east of the dockyard.
“He might just run into the city,” Yani stated.
He might. But I didn’t think he would.
As soon as Kurt vanished into the gloom, Xandros’s dragon landed. He’d used the sandstorm to slip past the patrolling fighters and landed the ship in the right spot for Kurt to find. Within moments, he’d come up the ramp and into full view of the ship’s cameras.
Yani put a grumbling Sookie on the dash, leaned forward to activate the comm and demanded in a no-nonsense tone, “There are more coveralls in the lockers.”
As the ramp closed and locked behind him, Xandros froze in all his humanoid naked glory and glanced up to the camera. “I am not wearing more of those shaftzing coveralls.”
“Well, we’re out of cloaks,” she reasoned. “So, it will have to be the coveralls.”
He lifted a lip off a lengthening canine. “I hate coveralls.”
“Nevertheless, you will put them on,” Yani insisted.
He glowered. Then he turned and headed for the lockers.
I took a deep breath. I could stare at Xandros all day, but as I warmed upStardrifter’sengines, I acknowledged that I didn’t need the distraction.
“Clearly Drolgoks are more prudish than I believed,” Rhodes provided.
“It isn’t sensible to parade around naked,” Yani declared. “And we need Jaz focused on flying.”
Well, we did, actually. And I was so worried about Zyair that romance would have been the furthest thing from my mind—if it weren’t for the pulses of pure lust that kept radiating from him.
It was even making it hard to fucking breathe.
TheStardriftervibrated as her powerful drive engines came online. All I wanted to do was lift off and blast for home. To get Zyair the help he needed…
We watched the navcube intently. The landfighters swarmed over the city like angry bees. Xandros had done an excellent job of stirring them up, and then vacating. They had to know we had a ship here, but with her new power core, theStardrifter’senergy signature had blended with the Nirzk ships’ when she’d arrived. And the docking authority hadn’t insisted on any identification…
