Page 22 of Claimed By the Alien Mercenary

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 show what 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 from sight. 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?