“I’m here.” The Drolgok pushed between the Drakes, waving the cellular regenerator. Her crocheted sweater seemed to have acquired a new hole, and her striped hat was askew.
Her concerned orange eyes replaced Zyair’s as she shoved him out of the way. To my relief, I saw Sookie’s little face peering out from her pocket pouch.
“Let’s have a look at that head,” Yani said.
I glanced beyond her to Zyair, who now stood with his brothers. “How long was I out?”
“Not long,” he said. “A few minutes.” He swallowed. “You scared the shaftz out of me.”
I met his gaze, and read within it the true depth of his fear. Maybe riding his pulsing shaft while dodging rocks the size of houses had something to do with it. Even the memory had my breath hitching.
It had been pretty damned spectacular. Everything except the mating part, anyway.
Mated.
The panicked flutter in my gut did not match my pulsing heart. If I wanted to be free, I had to seize control of that traitorous organ.
Okay. Maybe it was technically a muscle. I couldn’t remember my physiology. Whatever.
“You call that a landing? What were you blockheads doing?” The shrill voice came from somewhere beyond the wall of Drakes surrounding me.
Damn. It seemed that Kurt had also survived our crash landing.
Xandros spun and growled at him. Actually growled, with a full revealing of teeth that turned it into a snarl.
Rhodes barely glanced toward Kurt. “I suggest you go back toyour quarters, before my brother decides to eat you.” His tone could have frozen hell itself.
Silence. Then, footsteps retreated down the passageway.
The regenerator hummed as it worked. Yani looked from me, to Zyair, and back again, her gaze filled with questions that I couldn’t answer.
Xandros turned back to us, and then, he sniffed. Loudly and deliberately. Several times. He regarded Zyair through narrowed eyes. “You were not exclusively focused on piloting the ship.”
Rhodes pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and said in Drakonian, “Anyone with a nose can determine that was not the case.”
At least, I was pretty sure that was what he said. The dark Drake met my eyes, and my attempt to retain a stoic expression was completely ruined by my face flushing a brilliant shade of crimson.
Xandros was now glaring at Zyair. “That is why we ended up in a shaftzing swamp?”
Zyair hadn’t taken his intense regard off me. “We were crashing anyway.”
“If you would have used the shaftzing courtesans, you would not be so easily distracted,” Xandros snarled.
One instant Zyair was towering over me, the next he was facing up to his taller and bigger brother with fire in his green eyes.
“She is ourmate.” His voice was low, but the intensity vibrated through the space. “Nothing else matters. Not this ship. Not this swamp. Not the Nirzks looking for us.Nothing.”
Silence. And then, Xandros dropped his gaze and took a step back.
Wait a minute.Our?The warmth that flushed through me was almost all-consuming, but the panicked flutter had become an earthquake.
Fuck.
Yani’s eyes were like saucers, but she kept going with the regenerator. I decided that I had a point or two to make. I cleared my throat.
“I have something to say.”
All focus immediately turned to me. All three Drakes’ eyes wereglowing. Garnet, sapphire, emerald. They had never looked more terrifyingly alien.
