“And they get dia—the sugar sickness as well?”
He nodded. “It is a common ailment with them. Simply fixed.”
“Okay. Do it," she said.
He nodded and stepped closer. Barnaby tensed, growled a warning, and then relaxed into her because she was the warmth and the smell he trusted. Reaching out, Thyaar moved Barnaby's fur aside at the back of his neck carefully and pressed the silver instrument into the skin. It made a small sound, less a click than a sigh, and he lifted it away.
She blinked in surprise. "That was it?"
"That was it."
She looked down at Barnaby and he yawned at her, blinking sleepily. He looked exactly the same. Her throat hurt, and she dropped a kiss on the top of his fuzzy head.
"Fine," she said. "Good. What about you?"
Thyaar looked at her, eyebrow raised in a way that was, she was going to have to admit, unfairly attractive.
"Your face," she motioned toward his nose. "I broke it. We should — I don't know. Doesn't it need fixing?"
"It will keep."
"It's bleeding."
"It has stopped bleeding."
"You said your nose was broken."
"It will heal," he said, and shrugged. "It is not currently a priority."
Rigggght. What did she say to that?
Barnaby purred again, rattling brokenly, and she rubbed under his chin.
Then Thyaar held two small gray discs between his fingers and said, "Hold out your arm."
She obeyed without thinking. Then she registered what she'd done, jerked it back, and held Barnaby in front of her like a shield. "Wait… no. What the fuck is that?"
"It is?—"
"No. Words first. Weird discs second. What. The. Fuck. Are. They?"
He paused. She watched him reset, as if he were running a calculation about what tone to take and which version of the truth would land. She'd seen Emily do the same thing on call with her mother. It had pissed her off then as well. With Emily because she’d had to do that in the first place, and now because this asshole was trying the same trick on her.
"Two things," he said finally. "One is a translator matrix, so you understand languages other than your own when you encounter them. The other is a general immune patch. There are bugs out here your body has never met. I don’t want you to die of a sneeze."
"And you were just going to slap them on me."
"I asked." He sounded disgruntled, his brows snapping together. Still cute, she decided. But still an asshole.
“No,” she shook her head. “You said hold out your arm."
His lips quirked a little at the corner. "In my language, little kelarris, that is a question."
“Uh-uh… In mine, that's an order, asshole."
He inclined his head, and amusement warmed his eyes. "Then I am asking. May I? I have already given the cat a similar immunity booster.”
She looked at him for a long second. Then at Barnaby, who had begun to knead her thigh with his claws out, because he believed in tactile affection. She sighed and held out her arm.
