AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Zathki flinched back, his hands raising to cover his thin face. His cheeks were hollow, his bone structure frail.
Not a warrior, then. Unable to protect himself. But still, he was my enemy. I would have hit him, dug my claws into him by summoning the full force of the spikes of plasma that hopped from my fingertips at a thought, but a shrill sound stopped me. My distraction shifted, light flashing from my palm instead. The Zathki hissed at the brightness of it, but it blinded him long enough for me to turn.
“Jax!” It was Wesley, calling to me from the open door of the ship. Another Zathki stood close behind him, a proprietary hand on his shoulder that had me seeing red.
I was not close enough to keep him from hurting Wesley. No matter how fast I ran, I would not get there in time.
“If you wish to survive Zathkar, that blow will not fall,” the Zatkhi in my grip growled between his teeth, eyeing my raised hand.
And what choice did I have then?
My tensed muscles sprang, my fingers curled, and my fist crashed into the center of his face. “I do not take orders from my enemy, worm.”
CHAPTER15
WES
What the actual fuck was Jax doing? Attacking one of the people who had come to help us?
“Jax!” I shouted again, but this time I shrugged off Marex’s retaining hand and launched myself at him, throwing myself between him and the engineer who had come to look at the ship, my arms wrapping around his neck. “What the heck are you doing? He’s trying to assess the damage so they can fix it!”
“Fix it,” he scoffed, trying to pull me off his neck, then thinking better of it and turning so that his body was between me and Marex’s friend, the engineer who had been short with me, but not an outright jerk.
His nose was dripping blood, and he glared at Jax, ignoring me entirely. He turned to Marex. “I warned you the Thorzi were nothing but trouble. Nothing but violent impulses wrapped in meaty shells, with more claw than brain.”
Wait, what? The Thorzi?
I leaned around Jax’s shoulder to get a better look at him, but he seemed deadly serious, so I turned to Marex.
Marex, who was frowning at Jax, eyebrows drawn together in thought.
“I’m missing something here,” I said, letting go of Jax and turning to him. Jax tried to keep me behind him, so I frowned up at him and reiterated my earlier question. “What are you doing? They’re trying to help us, and you just run in and attack?”
For a second, Jax looked between me and Marex, then he swiped a palm down his face. “They are dangerous. All they do is ravage and take. They have not come to help. It is not their way.”
“They?” I let silence fall, and no one jumped in to fill it. “Jax, what the hell? Did you know there were Thorzi on this planet? Why didn’t we just ask them for help?”
Both Jax and the bleeding engineer gave horrified gasps, and when I turned to Marex for answers, he was covering his mouth with one hand, amusement dancing in his eyes.
“Do not compare us to these brutish Thorzi monsters,” the engineer growled, glaring at me with the same cold blue eyes as any Thorzi warrior. “None of our people would ever rush up to a stranger and attack them.”
“You did threaten him,” Marex pointed out, and I hadn’t heard that, but it didn’t surprise me. “You might have hit him for the threat as much as he did the opposite.”
The engineer scoffed and waved a hand in Jax’s direction. “What would that have gotten me? His arms are as big around as my thighs.” He glanced back and gave Jax an assessing twice over, and suddenly I was the one who wanted to punch him. I mean, fine, maybe Jax wasn’tmine-mine, but here in this frozen wasteland, he was all I had. Hewasmine.
In a way.
When the engineer spoke up again, though, it wasn’t appreciative. It was even more weird. “He is small for a Thorzi, though, isn’t he? Just as mindless and muscle-driven, but sort of a runt. And not very blue.”
“He’s as tall as you,” I pointed out. “Taller.”
“Precisely,” the engineer agreed. “And this lot are supposed to be much taller than us. All of that cushy jungle living and plentiful resources.”
Marex made that noise Jax did sometimes, the same one he’d used to cut off the guy on the phone, but suddenly I understood that the sound wasn’t usually a threat—because this time? It was louder and deeper and aggressive enough to make even Jax flinch back, rolling so his body was between me and both other men. Aliens? Thorzi? Whatever. Point was, this was Marex telling the engineer to shut the hell up.
And as I’d already gathered, Marex was someone with at least a little power, because shut up the engineer did.
“Our ancestors chose Zathkar for a reason,” was all he said to the guy, though, before motioning back to the ship. “I will speak to Wes and the... and Jax. You may return to your assessment.”
