“I have atoned for my mistakes. Will you?” S’samph asked, his voice revealed nothing, but Eleri noticed the slump of his frill and the drag of his tail.
“You and your human bitch walk around here thinking like you’re better than the rest of us!” Myla shrieked, claws unfurling. She was about to strike when Pyo hauled her back away from them. S’samph held his ground, unbothered by the aggression.
“Enough. Everyone, clear out.” Pyo started shooing the crowd apart with his wings flapping wide to disperse the rubberneckers. When the din of conversation had quieted enough for her to be heard, Eleri stepped forward toward S’samph.
“You shouldn’t be here. You’re supposed to be resting.” She knew he was mostly healed at this point, but she worried for his health all the same.
“And you are meant to practice relying on others, relying on me.” The front half of S’samph’s torn frill pulled taut against his spine. “I won’t allow your good nature to get you killed or maimed. This is unacceptable.Since you have no sense of self-preservation, I have no choice but to intervene on your behalf.”
Eleri wilted under his reproach. Mostly it stung because he was right.
“Stop it. You’re being horrible.” S’kasia hissed at her brother.
“This wouldn’t have happened if she was more careful with herself.”
S’kasia’s neck frill puffed dramatically. “This would not have happened if you weren’t such a ravik and you were doing your job as her mate to keep her safe. You know this is true. This is why you’re angry. Don’t push your anger onto your injured mate.”
Eleri felt tears welling against her eyelashes despite her best efforts to hold them back. S’samph was right after all. She’d fled across multiple galaxies to get away from people who would use her, and now she was back right where she’d started. There had been no forward progress in learning how to stand up for herself.
“You are leaking.” S’samph approached her. “Come, you’ll stay at my nest tonight. It is unwise to leave you alone. Myla has many friends in Laurus, and I don’t trust her.”
Eleri turned away from him, thinking back to the night she’d vomited on his boots. She wasn’t nauseous, but she felt like she might vomit again, all the same. Her head throbbed where the hair had been pulled out, and deep bruises were forming on her hands and knees where she’d fallen. Most of all, she was so bitterly disappointed with herself that she didn’t even know where to begin.
All the promises she’d made herself when she left home, she’d reneged on. Her family was still under the impression that they’d get their hands on her credits as soon as she had any to spare. Her life had become entangled with another iridescence addict. And now, even though all of that, she was still being cowed by other people and their demands.
“I want to sleep in my own bed tonight.” She wiped her snotty nose on the sleeve of her torn uniform in an inelegant motion. Her eyes were still damp as she stared up at S’samph, daring him to argue with her.
He did not. Instead, he bowed his head low and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Then I will stay with you at the clinic tonight. Does this compromise satisfy you?”
Eleri tried to hide her shiver of laughter. He was learning. Somehow, she would have to keep learning too. “You can stay at the clinic tonight.”
“I’ll bring whatever you need from your nest,” S’kasia volunteered. S’samph rattled off a list of items, and S’kasia nodded before hurrying off to retrieve them. Eleri’s eyes felt dry as the dust underfoot as she stared up at S’samph. His tail reachedout to her, coiling around her waist.
“Don’t leak, Eleri. I will make sure no one harms you at the clinic or anywhere else ever again.”
“That’s a big promise.”
“You’re my mate. It is more than a promise; it is my responsibility.” His tail remained secure around her waist as she picked her way back to the clinic. The pharmaceutical cabinet was smashed. More medicines would have to be ordered from Abwele, but treatment would be difficult until they could get in a new shipment of the essentials.
“How much longer is Aglao in hibernation?” S’samph asked as they picked their way around the broken glass. Eleri pressed the button on the far wall which brought down a contamination quarantine bubble on top of the smashed glass. It would keep things contained until the morning when she could bring herself to clean the mess. The automated cleaning bots were not always the most reliable for cleaning up without oversight.
“Until the flooding season starts, they said.”
“A few more weeks then.” He kept his pace slow at her side, and she knew his arm was mostly healed at this point, even if he humored her by playing patient. Eleri pressed another button, and a cot folded out from a nearby wall.
“For you,” she gestured. S’samph cocked his head, but if he was disappointed, he didn’t make it known. “I’m going to go shower and figure out what to do about this.” Eleri gestured to the missing patch of hair on her head.
“I will wait for you here.” S’samph’s tail uncurled from her waist, and she found herself saddened by its absence. Alone in the shower stall, Eleri scrubbed away the dirt and grit from under her fingernails. Her head throbbed as she scrubbed shampoo across her scalp, but the soap would help prevent infection.
After the shower, she stared down her wet hair in the washroom mirror. Long hair was always a hazard when working with agitated patients. She’d known it. Even when she was training as a nurse in the colonies, her instructors had warned her of the dangers of keeping long hair in reach of patients. Of course, she’d stubbornly ignored them, and now she felt the consequences. It was her own pride getting in the way again.
She braided her hair tightly and then lopped it off just below her chin. The result was a bit uneven, but it would do until she could figure out something more elegant. At least with it loose, she was able to comb it over the bald spot. Eleri dressed quickly, remembering S’samph was justoutside the door in the clinic.Stars and stones, she was in trouble. These feelings that left her feeling warm in all the wrong places weren’t going to be ignorable for much longer.
Steeling herself, she left the shower room with her newly shortened hair and a stiff upper lip. S’samph had been busy. In the interim, he’d managed to find a pair of gloves and was busy picking up the final glass remnants of the smashed pharmaceutical cabinet.
“You didn’t have to do that!” Eleri exclaimed. “I hope you were careful. Some of those medications are caustic.”
S’samph made a soft huffing noise as he wiggled the gloved fingers on his right hand. “I am always careful. This is something small I can do to help. One less thing for you to worry about.” He finished collecting the final remnants of glass bottle shards and syringes and disposed of them in the waste atomizer. “What happened to your hair?”
