by Ruby Dixon
A dark, hooded figure slips into our room. I stiffen, wielding my blade, ready to attack. Sophie is utterly silent behind me, but I can feel her trembling.
"Did I interrupt something?" comes a familiar female voice. "Please, please tell me I interrupted."
I relax even as the female taps the light panel and the hotel room floods with artificially bright light. "What the kef are you doing here?"
Bethiah lowers her hood and beams a too-sunny smile at me. "I heard Lankham was here with the ugliest wife in three galaxies, so I had to come see for myself. Please tell me you're not keffing an ooli. You have bad taste, cousin, but surely not that bad."
I sigh.
"Bethiah?" Sophie peeks around from behind me, her hands on my arm. "What are you doing here?"
My cousin's eyes widen. "Oh, look! It's one of my favorite little humans! Now I really want to be interrupting." Bethiah gestures at the bed. "Go on. Get back to work. Pretend I'm not here…unless you want me to join in. You know how I love an adventure."
"No," I say firmly. I grab one of the blankets off the bed and wrap it around Sophie, who looks extremely confused. When she glances up to me, I shake my head. "My cousin has a poor sense of humor."
"Amazing," Bethiah corrects, reclining on the bed as if it's her hotel room. "Amazing sense of humor. And no one told me you were here with a human female." She gives me a lascivious look. "You've gotten bolder, Jerrok. I like it."
"Shut up—"
"We can share, just like we have in the past."
Sophie steps away from me in horror. "Ew!"
I put my hands on my hips, facing my irritating bounty hunter cousin. "We have not shared in the past and you know it."
Bethiah traces a finger on the bed. "Okay, maybe it was just a fantasy. But I'm willing to experiment if you are."
At Sophie's disgusted look, I make a sound of irritation. "She's saying this just to shock you. That's what she does." I shoot an angry look at my cousin. "She gets you off guard because she can manipulate people easier when they're rattled."
"Plus, it's fun," Bethiah agrees, tracing little patterns on the bed. She beams a sunny smile in my direction. "You look like shit, cousin."
I take the other blanket and wrap it around my body, aware of my scars and prosthetics on display. "Is there a point to this visit?"
Bethiah sits up, mock-pouting. "I mean, yes? The solar storm stranded me, so I went drinking. The port officers have loose lips and couldn't stop talking about Lankham and his hideously ugly new mate, so I thought I'd come and see for myself if you were really sticking your cock into an ooli mouth, or if it's more of a rubbing situation, or—"
I put a hand in the air. "Stop talking. Please."
Bethiah sighs dramatically and flops back on the bed. "I hear that far too often."
I turn to Sophie, who's looking at my cousin with a mixture of confusion and distress. The human's hair is disheveled around her face, a cloud of tangles, and my hand itches to touch her—and it—again. Somehow, I don't think that will happen.
"She's your cousin?" Sophie asks, brows furrowed.
"Unfortunately." I glance over at Bethiah. We look nothing alike, despite the fact that our mothers were sisters. My cousin is tall and slender, her hair roped into dozens of artfully decorated braids between a shiny pair of perfectly-kept-up horns. Her clothing is fresh and neat, and knowing Bethiah, her weapons are state of the art.
Me, I'm just a mess. Rusted horns, rusted parts, worn clothing. No wonder Sophie's so full of disbelief. I hold the blankets tighter around my chest. "I'd like to get some sleep before I have to fly us back to my station, so can we save the visiting for in the morning?" I snap.
"Temper temper," Bethiah says, sitting up. She pretends to whisper to Sophie. "He's a bit of a cranky one."
"I know," Sophie says.
I scowl at both of them.
"Oh, hey, since you're here, wanna help me with my bounty?" Bethiah asks, fluttering her lashes as she gets to her feet. "It's an easy one. Pays nothing but pocket change, but I figured I'd check it out and all."
I scrub a hand over my jaw, tired. My cousin is—as always—talking fast as if she's made of pure energy. I'm exhausted, and I want a carcinogel. Badly. More than that, I just want to be home, away from everything. "You woke us up to ask for help with a bounty?"
"Well, I was hoping that you weren't sleeping. New mate and all." Bethiah gives me a pointed stare. "I mean, I had no idea you knew little Softie here—"
"Sophie—" the human breaks in.
"—but good choice. " Bethiah grins at me, oblivious to Sophie. "She's got nice flanks."
Sophie makes a sound of outrage. "We're pretending to be mated so we can buy food. I've been wearing a disguise."
"Oh. Well, that's far less exciting than what my mind was coming up with." Bethiah taps at her wrist communicator. "Let me pull up the file. This one's a human, too. You all know each other, right? Maybe you know this one."
I glance over at Sophie, my mood sour. I heard the disgust in her voice when she told Bethiah that we were pretending. Of course she'd never want to be with anyone like me. I just let myself get too swept up in the moment. Too distracted from her touch. I won't let that happen again. I scowl at my cousin and Sophie both, waiting for Bethiah to finish talking about her bounty so she can leave.
"Not all humans know each other," Sophie murmurs, glancing over at me.
I ignore her. "Just make this fast. I can't pilot on an hour of sleep, and I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to."
"Some praxiian looking for his pet that ran off," Bethiah says, tapping information into her comm. "No vid scans of it, alas. I'm told she's young and pretty and her name is Grothtauk."
My translator chimes in with a response. Grothtauk is praxiian for “Sleepy one.”
I glance over at Sophie, remembering what she said earlier. She's gone utterly pale, her mouth tight. But she manages to shake her head. "I don't know her."
25
SOPHIE
The bounty hunter won't stop talking. She just keeps prattling on, talking about the solar storm and the prices at the bar, and I just want to put my head in my hands and scream. And scream. And scream.
There's a bounty on my head. Of course there is. My owner wouldn't let his precious fuck-toy disappear and not try to retrieve me. I figured it would happen, but I was also hoping it would end up like most “missing pet” posters—largely ignored by the public. I just didn't think anyone would try to retrieve me, truly.
The urge to hide is overwhelming, but there's nowhere to go.
"Ah well, that's life," Bethiah says, sprawled out on the bed as if she belongs here. "So when are you two heading back to that pit you call home, Jerrok?"
"As soon as the storm is over." He crosses his arms over his chest and looks every inch as surly and gruff as the first time I met him. "Wasn't like I wanted to be here overnight as it is. We just got caught in the weather."
"This ended up being lucky, though! A brief family reunion."
"So lucky," Jerrok says sarcastically.
Bethiah seems immune to his lousy mood, ignoring it as she glances over at me. "So how are those big strapping va Sithai brothers? Did you take them all for a test drive like I told you to?"
"No," I choke out. The thought of touching one of them repulses me. They were nice to me. I don't want to repay niceness with my body. I want to be normal again. I want to want someone again before I feel like climbing into bed with them. "I'm not interested."
"Praxiians made you hungry for a furry type of guy, hmm?"
"No! I don't want anyone! At all!" The urge to run away hits me again, and I look over at Jerrok. He doesn't look thrilled either, his shoulders tense and his mouth flat with irritation. I'm not sure if he's irked with me or with our visitor, or if he's just being his normal cranky self. He just scowls, body rigid. I remember how nice he was when I woke him up, how soft his face was as he stroked my hair. That man is gone, and old, gr
Maybe he's thinking about letting his cousin retrieve her bounty on me. It has to be obvious that it's me, right? Bethiah hasn't figured it out, but that doesn't mean she won't. How many runaway humans—on the run from praxiians, no less—can there be?
The urge to flee becomes overwhelming, and as Bethiah starts to chatter again, I turn and head toward the lavatory, locking the door behind me. There's no seat-like toilet here like there is on Earth, so I sit on the floor instead, burying my head in my hands and waiting for the panic to subside. I hear Bethiah talking, surprise in her voice, and then Jerrok snapping back at her. I can't make out what they're saying—nor do I want to. I just want this all to go away.
I miss Sleipnir. I don't feel safe without him at my side. He'd eat Bethiah and then I wouldn't have to worry about being dragged back to my old master. I'm filled with intense longing for my carinoux. He's only been mine for a few days now, but I didn't realize how much he affected my mood.
Right now, I just feel alone.
It eventually grows quiet in the room, the sounds of arguing ending. I wait for Bethiah to storm in and drag me out, my entire body tense, my heart pounding.
There's a knock at the door. "Can I come in?"
It's Jerrok. For some reason, I find that surprising. Is he handing me over to his cousin, then? "Go away."
He ignores that, testing the handle on the door before I hear the beep of an override. I clench my jaw, glaring, as he steps into the lavatory with the keycard in his hand. He sets it down on the nearest counter, and the blanket is gone from his shoulders. He's wearing his trousers and nothing else, like he was when he slept. "Bethiah's gone. I'm sure she'll show up at my station in a few days just to be a pest, but for now, she's off to go drinking again."
"Great." I hug my legs closer to my chest, wishing he would leave.
To my surprise, he moves into the small lavatory and lowers himself onto the floor, sitting next to me with a creak of parts and a crackle of joints that sound painful. He doesn't complain, though, just rests his back against the wall next to me and watches me with that weird, intense way of his.
"She knows it's you," Jerrok says, and his voice is more gentle than I've ever heard it.
I stiffen, terror flaring through me. "So she's coming back to get me?"
"No. You're safe," he says. "I wouldn't let her, even if she wanted to. She didn't show up just to visit. This was her way of warning you. My cousin always has a plan, even if she goes about it in the most irritating way possible." He draws up one leg, resting his elbow on it. "She's going to sit on your bounty."
"Sit on it? What's that mean?"
He glances over at me. "When someone posts a bounty through the guild, it can be claimed by a hunter. It's assigned to them at that point, so no one else will work on a bounty and steal it out from under someone else. Bounty hunters have a method of stalling out particular bounties that they don't think are right, or that target their friends. They claim it in the guild system, then sit on it until it times out and the original request has to be resubmitted or just closed entirely. Bethiah's sitting on several bounties just so no one else can touch them." He nudges me with his shoulder. "She's got one on me, too."
I look over at him, some of my anxiety fading at this confession. "She does?"
Jerrok nods. "I was supposed to pay the military back for these parts they so-generously loaned me." His mouth twists into a wry smile. "I didn't think they deserved the credits, so I never paid back a single chit. They put a bounty on my head, and my cousin's been sitting on it for six years now."
"But it's different. You're cousins. She has no reason to protect me."
To my surprise, his cheeks darken in a flush. "I told her you're with me. If she thinks we're romantic, she won't bother. She wants me to find a mate, I guess. Says I'm too solitary." He averts his gaze. "If she shows up again, I don't want you to worry about it. My cousin's annoying and talkative and thinks she's smarter than everyone in the room, but she's got an honorable streak. She won't sell you out."
He told her we're romantic? Me and Jerrok? "That must have been painful for you to lie about—being romantic with me."
He flushes again, looking like a young boy instead of a battle-scarred survivor. Jerrok clears his throat and looks everywhere but at me. "It's just a lie. Doesn't mean a keffing thing. I'd tell her I was keffing a ssithri if it'd make her shut up."
I'm not sure how to take that. His words are insulting, but he's blushing and awkward. So strange. "When do we leave this place?" I ask softly. "I want to get back…to Sleipnir." To go home, I almost say, but I don't have a home.
"Storm should clear out in a few hours," Jerrok says. "I checked with the docks and we should be clear to go by morning. Try and get some sleep."
Right. Like I'm going to be able to sleep at all, knowing that there's a bounty on my head. "I don't think I'm tired anymore. I'm just going to sit here for a while."
"I'll stay with you." He shifts his weight, and everything creaks.
I wonder how hard it is for him to stay down here with me. It can't be comfortable. "If I get up, will you get up?"
"No, I love sitting on a filthy floor in a lavatory in the middle of the night for no reason. It's my favorite thing to do." The sarcasm drips from every word. "Maybe if I'm lucky, I'm sitting in an old piss stain."
I roll my eyes. Jerrok the Jerk is back in full force. I get to my feet and hold a hand out for him. "Fine. Let's at least go sit on the bed, okay?"
I expect him to ignore my hand, but to my surprise, he takes it.
26
JERROK
Sophie's relief at being back at the station is palpable. She's practically singing with excitement when I land the shuttle in the docking bay, and when she races inside to greet Sleipnir, I can hear her little cries of happiness through the doors. When I carry the first crate of noodles into the main work area, I find Sophie in the hall, lying on the floor with the large carinoux cuddled against her. She scratches his head and snuggles him, murmuring love words as the thing rubs his face all over every bit of her.
I've never been so jealous of a damned animal.
"I see he didn't starve," I grumble as I move past them.
She just laughs and fusses with the carinoux some more. "He's such a good boy. I missed you so much!" She gets up, dusting off her clothes, and turns to me. "Sorry. I'll help with putting the supplies away."
"I've got it. Don't let me interrupt your moment."
Sophie helps me anyhow, taking the smaller crates of food and transporting them into the corner of my work area, in the space I've designated for it. She puts the last box down and glances around as I pull out one of the dehydrated chunks of meat to feed her beast. "You know what I'm noticing? This station's a lot bigger than the area you use. There's tons of rooms but you only use these two halls and the terrarium. How come?"
I shrug. "Because I don't need more?"
"I guess that makes sense. But every room is a mess." She gestures at the boxes. "You could clean out another one of the rooms and put your food supplies in there, for example, instead of tripping over them in here."
"I didn't ask for your opinion," I say sourly.
"No, but you get it anyway." A little of her fierceness has returned now that she's reunited with her protective pet. She takes the tray with the big slab of meat and walks away with it, the carinoux winding his long body around her legs as if he's missed her fiercely. Oddly enough, I'm feeling less resentful to the creature. She feels safe with it around and the carinoux adores her. She deserves to feel safe.
My work area looks the same as it always does, as if I've never left. I can return to work as if I've never paused. I grab the nearest engine piece to strip and scrap, and get to work. Normally I don't care. It's something to do to keep my hands busy and my mind occupied. I can work for hours on intricate extractions of chips and drive crystals, just because it needs patience and that's one thing I have plenty of.
Today, though, instead of focusing on the task at hand, I keep wondering what Sophie is doing. After we put away the supplies, she disappeared into her quarters. Hours pass and for some reason, the day seems to be grinding to a halt. I hate that. I hate that I care. I hate that I keep thinking about the way she massaged my limbs and I wonder if she thinks about it, too.
When my stomach growls, I make an enormous batch of noodles for a meal. Sophie hasn't emerged to ask about food, so I make extra just in case she wants to come out and spend time with me. Not that she would. But…just in case. I let the noodles sit for a while, waiting, and when there's still no sign of the human, I chastise myself for being foolish and eat. Why would she spend time with me now? There's no point. She doesn't like my company—and why should she? I'm cruel to her. I hate myself for even thinking about it. I'm fine alone.
Better off alone, even.
Even so, the noodles are going to go bad if no one eats them. I glance over at the food pot a few times as I go back to work, but Sophie still doesn't come by, not even to say hello. My mood grows more sour by the minute.
If she wants to hide away from me, that's fine. I'll tell her this food is ready and it's the last time I leave scraps for her. She can feed herself in the future. Irritated, I rub my twitching arm as I storm down the halls toward her quarters.
Her room is empty, though. The bed is neatly made, the floors gleaming, and the book is on the corner of the bed, face down and open, as if she's been reading it again. I think about her disappointment with the book in the hotel room back on the station. She must like reading a lot.
There's no sign of the carinoux either, so I go room by room, opening doors and looking for the troublemaking duo. Am I going to find Sophie digging through stored parts in the crowded rooms? Or is she in hiding again, like she did when Bethiah showed up?
That…did not occur to me, and my steps quicken. I don't like the thought of her being scared. What if I've been grumbling about her being missing all day long and she's been quivering in fear, hiding? My gut clenches. My steps pick up, and even though my prosthetics are heavy, I race through the other hall, looking for signs of Sophie in distress. She'd been so happy earlier, so thrilled to be back with her pet, that I'd been resentful of it—and her.
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