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My eyes flash to Navik's sivot lying deathly still. He can't be dead. He just can't. I reach out to touch my fingers to his claws still sticking through the grate.
Have I imagined the slight twitch?
The sivot is blocking the grate with his enormous body so I can't push my way out to check his pulse.
"Navik," I whisper, my plea filled with the hope he still lives. "Navik, please be alive."
Ever so slowly, the sivot turns his head to cross a finger over his lips. A relieved breath rushes past my trembling lips, but he's not out of the woods. The bright white of his gaze dims with every second that passes. Dark blue blood is a growing pool beneath his crumbled body, and I can do nothing to help him.
Trapped inside this ducting, I have to find another way out, to stanch the flow of blood before he bleeds out and hope he heals fast.
"I'll be right back, Navik. Hold on."
I'm at the end of a run with only one direction to go, so I scramble on all fours as fast as I can. It's no use. The duct ends at a ninety degree angle with no way to climb up.
Releasing a soft curse, I turn myself around in the tight space, and rush back to Navik. Something bumps against my thigh as I travel. I could smack myself in the forehead. How could I have forgetten?
With hands that shake, I pull the beacon Qhix gave me from my pocket. To think, I hesitated about taking it with me. I almost left it on the bedside table in our room on Zeva.
Twisting the two halves in the opposite direction as Qhix showed me, the beacon activates with a pulsing, green light.
"Please, Qhix. Hurry."
ChapterThirteen
NAVIK
The thunderous boom rattles my bones, shaking me from the depths of unconsciousness. My eyelids fight against the weight of gravity to open, and what I see makes my heart skip a beat. Cora's worried face peers through the grate of the air vent where I forced her to hide.
Panic swirls in her gentle, gray gaze as she reaches out to me, her small fingers brushing lightly over my claws still jammed between the louvers. I remain in my sivot form, probably because of the severity of my injuries. Despite my fatigue, I muster all the strength I can find and drag myself off the floor. We have no time to waste. I must get my starfire off the Wetokian's ship.
My vision dims and I slump forward, fighting to remain conscious. I must keep my mate safe, but the darkness is encroaching. My life's blood spilling from the hole in the center of my chest.
"Navik, don't try to get up," Cora pleads with me. "I'm hopeful that explosion is Qhix coming to help us."
"Not know we're here," I rasp through a dry, sticky throat.
"Yes, he does." Cora holds a blinking disk up to the grate for me to see. "He gave me this beacon in case we ever needed his help again."
"Sly bliker," I wheeze.
The first sounds of fighting come from a great distance. The floor tilts under me, and I can barely keep my eyes open, but I must stay alert. I must protect my mate.
The shouts and roars of many familiar male voices must be my imagination. Star Maverick's don't congregate. Ever. It's too dangerous for us to convene in one place.
"Cora!" Qhix careens into the room from the hall and draws up short when wide eyes land on me. "And not a moment too soon. Huh, Navik?"
"In here, Qhix!" Cora bangs on the grate.
"You shouldn't have come, Qhix." I lift a hand only to have it flop to the ground. "Too dangerous."
"Maybe." Qhix rushes over unhooking a med kit from his belt. "Maybe not, but it looks like the two of you need all the help you can get. You all right in there, Cora?"
"I'm okay," she says. "Take care of Navik first. I can wait."
"Spoken like a true Maverick's mate," Qhix mumbles as he stanches the flow of blood with a cloterizer to the entry and exit points.
I grit my teeth through the sharp burn, my sivot flesh melting under the heat from the medical device to stop the blood flow before Qhix slaps a medical cuff on my arm.
