There would be no dying monologue. No clever quips. The blue man didn’t so much as sputter. He merely dropped to the ground, a marionette with his strings cut, the storage container toppling harmlessly away as he fell.
The beast looked at her, pure love in his gaze. “Margot…Safe,” he said softly, then collapsed to the ground.
“No!”
She rushed to his side, not even aware of the freed prisoners swarming through the camp, making sure none of their captors were still alive with great ferocity. They hurried to the woman crouched over the beast.
“Gromm’s dead,” a wiry man holding an improvised spear noted.
“Good,” Floxxia said, kicking dirt on the man’s corpse. “This one’s still alive though. Finish him.”
Margot spun and leapt to her feet, her Infala blazing so bright it was clear to see even through her shirt. “Back the fuck off! You will not lay a finger on him, or I’ll kill you myself, is that clear?”
She was terribly outnumbered, but the ferocity of her reaction made everyone now gathering stop in their tracks out of sheer surprise. This woman had fed them. She’d freed them. But this?
Floxxia dropped her own weapon along with the small pouch she’d found and claimed for her own in all the carnage, and stepped forward, hands empty in front of her. “What’s going on, Margot? You need to get away from that thing.”
“I won’t. Don’t you get it?He’sthe one who saved you.”
“But you?—”
“I just grabbed the keys.Hetook out the guards. He’s a good man, Floxxia. And he’s my mate.”
The others looked at one another in doubt but Floxxia nodded to them subtly. They lowered their weapons and carried on with their grisly task, finishing off anyone they found. Anyone but this one, it seemed.
Margot crouched over her man once again, pressing on his wound, tears running down her cheeks. “He’s hurt.Bad. You’ve got to help him.”
Floxxia took a deep breath, then squatted beside her. “Let me see, girl.”
Margot hesitated.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him, I promise.”
The human grudgingly moved aside, allowing the Skrizzit better access. “Ah, this is bad. The blade seems to have—” her words fell short. “Impossible,” she gasped as she watched the smaller of his wounds close up right before her eyes. “I’ve never thought this ability was real.”
“It’s real, trust me.”
The woman nodded once, simply accepting the impossible was no such thing and moving forward. “Hand me that pouch.”
“What’s in it.”
“It can help. You’ve got to trust me.”
Margot had no choice. She handed the old woman the pouch, her spindly fingers digging through it in a hurry. “There they are.” She pulled out a series of slender pieces of sharp metal, like needles only flexible. She moved to stick one into his wound.
“Stop!”
“I’m not hurting him. The wound is too big. His flesh needs to be held together to mend. I told you; you must trust me!”
Margot didn’t say a word but merely backed up, letting the woman do her work. It was bloody and messy, and the end result was far from pretty, but the makeshift wire ties she used to pullhis wound closed actually seemed to be doing the trick. The bleeding had already stopped, and even the farthest edges had begun to knit together.
“Well, that was certainly something new,” Floxxia said with a shell-shocked chuckle. She took a cloth and some water from the debris nearby and wiped his body clean for a better look. What she saw shocked her even more. “So,thisis your mate?” she asked, gently touching his Infala.
“He is.”
“Show me.”
Margot lifted her top revealing her matching Infala rune. The old woman touched Margot’s as well, acting as a living circuit between them both. Margot felt an odd tingle, her Infala growing brighter. The beast’s did too, and something else started happening. He began to change, the tufts of hair falling from his back and shoulders, his body slimming down to his normal form.
