The droid instructed her on care and protocol while he healed, as it finished up.
“Are you going to be alright?” Adryel asked, touching Janae’s shoulder.
She nodded as she stood up, and looked around. “As long as the guards are here, I suppose I will be.”
“I will make sure there is an extra detail outside,” Stron said. “There is much that needs to be done.” Securing the safety of the off-worlders was paramount. He had to make sure they all were protected, for their own good.
Adryel nodded, and she turned to look at him. “How can I help?”
“By staying safe,” Stron said. “Back at your?—”
Adryel waved her hand in the air again. “Don’t tell me to go back to my room and wait for someone to come kill me.”
Stron was about to say something, when Janae cut in.
“She needs to be taken care of as well,” she said.
Stron nodded. “I am working on it.”
“You’d better,” Adryel said. “Because I’m not sitting around and doing nothing.”
“Come on, let me get you back?—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, big guy,” Adryel said.
He raised his eyebrow, and couldn’t help smirking as she put one hand on her hip, looking ready to fight.
“Listen,” she started.
He raised his hand. “One moment,” he said and turned to one of the senior guards. “We need to increase the security on this entire building where the visitors are.” He was already two steps ahead, planning the next move in the plan of protecting not just Adryel but all the visitors, to keep them all secure before their rescue vessel arrived.
“Security has been raised to a more urgent level,” the guard replied.
“Regardless, I think this is bigger. It needs to be doubled and possibly tripled. Someone is out there, trying to kill these visitors. We are obligated to keep them safe until the Galactic Alliance arrives with a new transport and takes them away.”
Adryel’s expression hardened.
“I’ll get to it,” the guard replied.
“Now,” Stron said, turning back to her. He touched her arm, and started to escort her out of Khalzin’s apartment and back to the lifts, where he could return her to her residence.
“So that’s it. You’re just going to send us away now that we’re here?”
“Does it not seem the safest thing to do, to protect your people?”
“What about Janae? She’s already mated with Khalzin. You going to send her away too?”
“I don’t know. If keeping her here causes more problems, then she, like the rest of you, need to get off Kantenan as soon as possible.”
She stopped walking, pulling out of his arm as she did.
He got a full stride away before he turned back to her.
She glared at him and crossed her arms.
Why was she so stubborn?
16
