Page 26 of Alien Healer’s Mate

The little robot stopped a few inches from it and made a low, humming thrum, so heavy with loneliness she felt it in her back teeth.

‘Daae and his drakeen did not retreat.’

Kellat’s words at the ceremony came back to her. She’d assumed a drakeen was some kind of animal, a war-horse or whatever. Her eyes widened as she looked up at the folded machine. Was this a drakeen?

Shit, she’d been standing in a room full of them the whole time.

They’d shipped the warrior home to his clan today. Nobody had shipped his machine anywhere. It was just here, in the dark, holding itself. She looked at the little robot again and suddenly saw the similarities.

Was it… Her hand covered her mouth as she crept closer, seeing the opened hatch at the top of the bigger machine. Shit, her little robot was part of the bigger one? Its brain, maybe?

“Was he yours?” she whispered as she reached it. “The warrior they sent home today. Was he your person?”

The little bot pressed its head against the giant’s leg and made a lost clicking sound, and her eyes burned at the back with tears. Crouching down beside the pair, she didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t anything to say. She didn’t know anything about alien technology, but the silence where somebody used to be? Yeah. She was fluent in that.

She stayed there a long time, one hand resting lightly on the little bot’s back, keeping them both company.

Then the door hissed open behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

The little robot bolted behind her ankles as she stood and turned to find Nivaak, the smiling alien warrior she’d been talking to at the wake, behind her.

His smile had gone loose at the edges now, and he was swaying just a fraction as he came toward her. The smell hit her before he was even close, and her nose wrinkled. Sharp and fermented, the alien equivalent of a guy who’d been doing shots at a funeral, because that seemed to be universal.

“Hey,” he said, too loud, the word booming around the metal arches. “Found you.”

Great. Her stomach dipped, but she kept her voice light, the reflex worn smooth by years of talking drunk men back into their corners. “Nivaak. Hey. Everything okay?”

“Fine. Just… fine.” He stepped closer. And then closer than that, until his chest was nearly brushing her shoulder and she was looking up at a very large, very drunk alien with liquor-fumes rolling off him. “You looked… really something tonight. In that dress.”

“Thanks.” She eased back a step. All casual-like… no sudden movements. “It’s late. I should probably get back to my room.”

“Wait.” His hand landed on her waist, more a lean than a grab like he needed her to hold him up. “I just… I can’t stop thinking about it. You. About you.”

She winced. “I’m sorry, I really need to go⁠—“

He lunged, and his mouth crashed into hers. It was wrong, all of it wrong. It wasn’t even a kiss. It was a collision of lips. For one horrible second she froze, shock locking every joint she owned. Then her hands found his chest, and she shoved. Hard.

“No!” She scrubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, her heart slamming. “Nivaak, no! Stop!”

“What?” He blinked at her, glassy and confused.

The only warning they got was a rush of displaced air. Then a snarling wall of muscle and leather slammed into the space between them, so big it blotted out the light. She didn’t need to see his face to know exactly who it was.

Kellat.

He yanked Nivaak away from her, then planted himself in front of her, shoulders blocking out the entire bay.

“What the draanth are you doing?” His voice had dropped low and dangerous.

“I was just⁠—“

“Get. Out.”

It didn’t stay quiet. Of course it didn’t. Two more crew came running in, drawn by the shouting, and then the bay was a wall of noise… Nivaak trying to splutter explanations, all the huge angry aliens shouting over each other, at least one of them suggesting that the only answer was to send Nivaak out of the airlock.

“He didn’t hurt me!” She stepped around Kellat, waving her arms at the lot of them. “He’s just drunk! It was a stupid mistake, okay? Leave him alone!”

But nobody was listening. She was a tiny human trying to out-shout a room full of warriors the size of barns. So she turned, planting herself in front of Kellat and glaring up at him.