“Jaxin,” I started, rising quickly on my elbows. The soft sand made me sink, and it was a rather clumsy action that resulted in me clinging to his back and grabbing hold of his fin to steady myself. He laughed, and something unwound in the air and eased across my senses. Tension I hadn’t realized was there abruptly vanished. “He tried to hypnotize me the night before,” I tried to warn anyway.
The laughter abruptly cut off, and morphed into a fierce growl. “He did what? Now you tell me!” He reached for his laser cannon, as if he meant to incinerate the giant on the spot for the offense. I grabbed hold of his arm and clung, only barely managing to stop him from picking up the weapon.
“It didn’t work,” I assured him. “It was probably a self-defense mechanism, and clearly, it doesn’t work on you either.” Possibly because Jaxin had been wrapped in cold, emotionless Rummicaron conditioning before I woke. He’d only broken from it when I made my clumsy attempt to rise. “Let’s try introductions again, okay? Maybe saving his life means he finally leaves us alone, and we get to the extraction point safely.”
Jaxin huffed, but his hand dropped from the weapon. Then, he plucked me right out of the sandy blankets and pulled me into his lap. I did not miss the possessive glare he leveled at the giant as he curled me into his arm. I nestled there, allowing his warmth to surround me.
The giant hadn’t moved from where he sat through all of this, observing closely what we did. He had not even flinched when Jaxin had begun reaching for his laser cannon. With the stripes and savage swirls of red mud washed from his body and hair, it was interesting to discover that the giant was much more similar in body shape and features to an Aderian than I would have expected. He had sharply pointed ears rising through thick black and brown hair. His nose was very wide and flat, and he had black segmented ridges across his brow, similar in appearance to the black carapace that covered his barbed tail.
“Hi,” I said, and waved, daring to focus my senses on him. I braced myself for a wave of pain, gritted my teeth against the feelings that crashed into me, and focused on what was in his mind, not his body. “I am Danitalin,” I said, tapping my chest before pointing at him.
The giant tilted his head, black eyes briefly glowing golden before he lifted a massive hand and tapped his own chest. Something rumbled from his mouth, short and snappy, but impossible to parse. He repeated it three times, but the closest I could come to mimicking it was “Taktak.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Jaxin offered, not so helpfully. At least the giant did not appear to take offense at my mangled version of his name. He smiled at us with his mouth closed and touched one of the bandages stuck to his chest. Now I sensed a question from him, but he did not actually voice it. His head cocked, eyes locked on me, as a sense of expectation rose in him. Did he know I could sense his feelings? How would he? Or could he understand what we said after all? Did he have a translatorimplant or not?
“I am a healer,” I said, but I wasn’t sure how to explain that. Jaxin did not want to release me from his lap when I tried to rise. “Come on, I need to check his wounds, and I should check your chest.” I pointed to the tissue regenerator lying atop Jaxin’s medkit nearby. He handed it over, but that was it. I’d have to accept healing my stubborn protector; at least that might show the giant Taktak what I meant by healer.
When I slipped from Jaxin’s grasp a minute later, it was only because he answered a call on his comm. “We’ve got permission to land, Jaxin,” announced a voice I did not recognize. It was not the same male as last night, who had warned us of the attack. This one sounded sibilant, with a hiss in his tone, though my translator did a good job rendering his words.
“Captain!” Jaxin straightened. “That’s good news. We’re still at least a day’s travel out after last night’s mess. Can you hold that long?” I avoided a reaching hand and approached Taktak with the tissue regenerator in my hand. He did not move but went still as stone, something sliding through his mind and across my empathic senses that felt like hesitation, like worry. He couldn’t possibly fear me, could he?
“Of course we’ll hold. Just be there. Got that?” Jaxin’s captain said. I knew I wouldn’t have long to do what I wanted, because Jaxin was already rising as if he meant to snatch me away from the giant.
“This is to heal. Look,” I said, and I flicked it on and aimed it at my own arm to show that it was harmless. When the giant didn’t move and the landscape of his feelings didn’t change, I aimed the device toward his nearby leg. To showwhat it did, I aimed its beam at a tiny cut, and it began to almost instantly knit together and disappear.
Surprise flickered across my senses, along with more of that curiosity that had been his constant companion. “May I heal you, Taktak?” I asked formally, pointing from the device to one of the bigger gashes on his leg that I hadn’t been able to reach last night. He still said nothing, but his feelings shifted to a definite sense of “yes”—excitement, approval, eagerness.
“I can fly down right now and get you if you need me, Jaxin,” a different voice said eagerly on Jaxin’s comm. The voice sounded younger than the first, thrumming with a slightly manic excitement that made my spine tingle. At least Jaxin’s denial was immediate and vehement, as he warned an “Aramon” not to piss off the Kertinal government just to rescue his ass.
I focused the healing device on the wound on the giant’s leg, working to ease the pain and knit the edges back together. He was so calm beneath the curiosity that I wondered if I had let him hypnotize me after all. Perhaps we were both, also, curiously listening in on the conversation Jaxin was having as he paced anxiously behind me.
“Tell me what happened to that attack party. Any sign of the shuttles? I’m pretty sure we took both out,” Jaxin asked, pacing back to the laser cannon to touch it with one hand. When his captain indicated all was quiet on that front, he knelt to pack our supplies back into his pouches. I appreciated very much that he double-checked the much larger pouch with my new batch of samples.
I circled around the giant’s leg to check his back next, worried something bad was hidden there fromsight. He still radiated a certain amount of pain, but it was definitely much easier for me to handle compared to last night. To my relief, the wounds here all looked okay, nothing was infected, and the tissue regenerator could do a lot of the work. I was halfway through treating him when Jaxin finally ended the call with his ship.
“We should get moving while we can. I don’t doubt Koratalin’s goons know where we are. Downstream is the only option.” I muffled a sound of dismay in a hurry and ducked my head toward one last injury. More traveling? I hated it, my legs ached, my body was tired, and even though I was sleeping better than normal, I hardly felt rested. It felt extremely unjust that my family could haunt me this way, and that Koratalin, my own sister, would do this to me.
Jaxin didn’t say more, but Taktak suddenly rumbled with a deep, low sound. His calm, curious mood shifted to sharp alertness, then morphed into alarm that hit me hard. My ears picked up what he must have noticed before I did: the sounds of footsteps in the jungle. “We’ve gotta go,” Jaxin announced, and for the first time since approaching the giant, he swept around the massive male to pick me up.
He began moving toward the trees that surrounded this small beach alcove, and I clung to him and to the tissue regenerator I still held. Taktak’s feelings were still bright and loud in my head. They told me he didn’t want us to go that way—alarm, a sharp denial, worry. He flung his massive, black, segmented tail in Jaxin’s path, then pointed at the water. “I think he wants us to go that way,” I said, just as I caught hold of several more emotional signatures approaching through the trees. Aggression, battle-readiness,adrenaline pulsing through their veins, and some of them filled with killing intent. They wanted Jaxin and Taktak dead.
The giant rose to his feet, ushering us toward the river and blocking us from view of the approaching mercenaries with his massive body. Jaxin had slid back into his own cool state, not allowing any emotion as he prepared for battle. “Go,” he agreed, and then surprised me by pushing me toward Taktak, his head jerking toward the water so the native male understood what he wanted. He dropped to his knees, swung the massive laser cannon around on its strap, and aimed it at the approaching threat.
I had barely any time to process the change in direction, or the way my own deadly mercenary had been entrusted with my life. Taktak seemed to know exactly what task he had been charged with. Being snatched up by a giant hand was nothing like having Jaxin carry me in his brawny arms. Taktak’s hand was big enough to circle my waist. He lifted me terrifyingly high into the air, my legs dangling at least twelve feet off the ground. Then he leaped into the water.
Blinded by the sudden dive, struggling to breathe, I nearly missed Jaxin’s parting gift as he lunged into the water after us. A massive blow reverberated through the trees, lightning-blue and yellow scorching across sand, bark, and leaf. He’d fired the cannon and forced the approaching mercenaries to scatter and dive for cover.
We’d escaped again, but by the skin of our teeth. They were so close I could still feel their minds—their feelings—as they gave chase along the bank on our left. How were we going to escape Koratalin’s men?
Chapter 17
Jaxin
The cold river water felt good against my body as I raced through it to keep pace with the massive Radin giant. To my surprise, awake, the giant male was both fast and agile in the water. He was a challenge to keep up with as he kicked his feet and used his long tail almost like a rudder. He held Dani to his chest with one arm, in such a way that her body was nearly invisible behind his bulk, but her head could lift beyond his shoulder to breathe. It was not lost on me that she was completely protected from possible enemy laser fire this way.
I thought he would not surrender my female to me when I caught up and kept pace, but he uncurled his hand without protest and pressedher into my embrace. So he was not curious about Dani for himself; he was not competing against me for the affections of my mate.
“Jaxin, you’re unhurt?” Dani asked, her arms curling around my neck and her legs doing the same around my waist. It was made awkward by Bex and the big pouch of samples, but she made do. Testing her spine with my hands, I assured myself that she was fine. The early morning sun had not yet heated the water much, but she wasn’t struggling with the cool temperatures yet.
