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A surprised huff of amusement burst from my lips. “Me? Military? No. I’m a mining engineer.”
“That makes it all the more impressive.” His purple eyes held admiration as he looked at me. “A grunlar is no easy predator to take down.”
“Is it… Is it passed out?” Now that the immediate threat was over, I didn’t like the thought of killing anything, even something dangerous. It was just a mindless beast doing what it needed to survive, after all.
“It is.” He shot it a few more times in the head. “It should be out for a while, but I don’t want to take any risks. We should head out.”
“Yeah. It’s not like I’m getting back to sleep anytime soon, anyway. Not after all of that.” Dawn lightened the jungle. I’d gotten a few good hours in, but Raxnor… “Did you sleep?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, pulling the stealth fabric from the top of the tent.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. That was clearly guy-speak for “no.” Even halfway across the galaxy, some things held true.
He fashioned my cloak around me and put on his own, which had fallen off during the fight. It was a stark reminder that our real foes were still after us.
The tent collapsed into a little ball, and we headed out, eating as we walked. I carried two of the fruity protein bars, breaking off chunks of one and tossing them to Lila.
She leaped to snap them out of the air, and we ended up making a game of it. Little flashes of delight brushed my mind as she chewed.
The jungle slowly came alive around us as we left behind the scene of the fight. The little lizard birds cheeped and flew overhead as the sky brightened.
Back at the house, Prurg and Prarr would be getting up. I wondered what their day looked like without a “pet” to play with. I hope they gave their mother hell.
“Thank you,” I said again to Raxnor.
He grunted and kept walking, probably thinking I meant for fighting off the alligator thing.
But it was more than that. It was everything he’d done to save me.
I could have a life again—a real one.
All because of him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Raxnor
The jungle slowly altered around us, and by mid-afternoon, the reva trees stood further apart. More and more sunlight reached the ground, and the orange underbrush grew taller, sending out longer fronds that curled at the end.
“The big carnivorous flowers have disappeared,” Zo-Fee said.
I grunted an affirmative. It was nice to no longer need to step around them.
“Are they gone because there’s more light here or because it’s been a couple of days since the rains?” she asked.
I pulled out my comp and ran a search, but the results proved frustratingly vague. “I don’t know. Ask me again when we can tap into a better database.” I couldn’t risk connecting to a satellite from here, where the senator’s people could pick up the signal.
My left hand could make a partial fist now, and as I walked, I flexed the muscles of that arm, trying to speed the process of recovery along. I’d need both hands for what we faced next.
A new kind of lizard appeared, one about the size of a kreecat that could climb trees. Their scales matched the golden color of the tree trunks they clung to, and they’d stand on the vertical surface as easily as if on flat ground, their heads pointed down. Their quick eyes watched everything, and when a large insect or small lizard crossed below them, they leaped.
Lila pounced on one while it was busy eating and had her own successful hunt.
“She’s so happy,” Zo-Fee said. “She was so upset that she couldn’t catch anything of a decent size back near the house.” My mate waved a hand behind us.
We left Lila to her lunch and made our way to a spot under the cover of a reva tree’s bright-green canopy.
The faint strain in my thigh muscles told me we’d actually been gradually climbing for the past several hours, and with her shorter legs, this kind of hike was harder on my mate. She didn’t complain, but her flushed face and quick breaths spoke volumes.
