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“We need to land,” I ground out, pressing the command into the dash. “The shield isn’t going to last, but Crux won’t follow us there.”
Wes stared, wide-eyed, at the screen. “Can we land? The ship is—”
Screaming out its protest, yes, but I did not have the words to warn him. Instead, I took him by the hips, lifted him, and pushed him into the captain’s seat, locking him in.
“If the grav sim fails, this will keep you safe,” I promised as I locked him in, testing the straps across his slight chest. It was meant to keep a Thorzi safe, but he was much smaller. There was too much room to move.
It would have to be enough.
“What about you?”
I grinned, flashing my teeth at the little human as I squeezed his shoulders, willing him to stay safe with a silent prayer to Lyr. “I will die in battle, Wesley. Not in a crash landing. Not even on Zathkar.”
CHAPTER5
WES
Acrash landing?
Oh hell, I hadn’t done that bad, had I? Steering the ship had been hard, and I hadn’t managed to avoid all the fire coming at us, but it hadn’t been so much harder than your average game.
Just, you know, on an unfamiliar controller and with actual people shooting actual lasers at our actual asses.
And now we were crashing.
Fuck.
The ship rolled with an impact, and I was tossed hard to one side in the captain’s chair, smacking my head against the hard edge of the thing and scrambling my brains a little, and my glasses flew off, skittering across the floor and away.
Shit. I needed those glasses; I didn’t have another pair out here in freaking space, and I was as nearsighted as my neighbor’s twenty-year-old incontinent chihuahua, who used to bark at leaves in the fall like they were armed felons attacking the house.
My stomach lurched, threatening to expel the lovely meal the prince had given us, when the ship didn’t stop rolling. It did a complete three-sixty and then some, followed by the jarring sensation of—of impact.
No, not like they hit us with their lasers again, but like we crash-landed.
Hard.
Accompanied by a horrendous cracking noise, then a clang and a loud metallic squeal, as the feeling of motion slowed, and finally, after far too long, stopped.
The ship wasn’t quite upright, either, if the way the floor seemed to slant downward to the right was any indicator.
Jax stood from the navigator’s seat, stretching out his muscles as though the crash had been little more than a workout, or maybe even a nap, while I was still trying to remember where my fingers were so that I could make them work the buckle that had me held fast in my chair.
Instead, it was Jax who marched over and released me from my seatbelt prison, with just a finger to a hidden button on the side of the clasp.
He knelt down in front of me, inspecting me, his fingers instantly going to where I’d hit my temple. He touched it, and I had to work not to cringe away from the gentle brush of his skin, because freakingow. Maybe I’d smacked it harder than I thought. Jax’s fingers, when he brought them away, had blood on them, so yeah, maybe so.
He frowned at that, then looked back up and met my eye steadily before holding up two fingers and waving them back and forth in front of my face. “Can you follow my movement?”
It was odd how he asked it, rote, like he was asking “how many fingers am I holding up?” Maybe for a Thorzi, that was exactly what he was doing. And come to think of it, following the motion of his hand with my eyes was a little nauseating.
“I’d prefer not to?” I said, hoping it would be enough of an answer, and then I squeezed my eyes shut.
He huffed and mumbled something about not having a medic aboard, but after a moment, pushed the seatbelt aside and hefted me up like I was a child. Like, he didn’t even pause and strain for a moment at the weight of a full-grown man, just swung me up into his arms and marched off.
I wanted to protest being hefted around like a sack of potatoes, but the movement made my stomach lurch again, so instead I tucked my face into his ridiculous hard pecs and closed my eyes.
Things were a bit muzzy for a while after that.
