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"What were you thinking taking on an entire Wetokian Battle Cruiser?" Qhix asks, and points to the blade that skewered me. "Were you wounded with your own weapon?"
"Seems to be a reoccurring theme lately. For the record, we were hit with a concussion beam as I was trying to outrun them." Qhix helps me move away from the grate and remove the vent cover. "Come on out, starfire."
"Lie still," she fusses at me, easing me to the floor and laying my head in her lap. "Let Qhix help you. You've lost a lot of blood."
"I'm fine. It's just a scratch." My vision dims, belying my words as I try to remain conscious.
"Listen to your mate, Navik." Qhix makes adjustments to the medical cuff, but I try and shake off the lethargy that comes from the anesthetic effect the cuff provides.
"Turn down... the healing effects, Qhix. You'll... need my help... getting out of here." I fight to remain alert, but the cuff is dragging me toward a healing repose.
"Rest, Navik," Qhix commands as my eyes drift shut. "Behtu and Vytko are finishing off the ones you didn't rip to pieces."
I force my eyes open only to have them close again. Cora's soft words lull me into a trance, comforting and soothing my wounded sivot like only she can.
"It's going to be all right, Navik," she murmurs. "Rest so you can heal. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be here when you wake up."
I try to respond, to tell her I'll be here to protect her until we are someplace safe. The darkness is unforgiving, and I can feel myself fading away.
"That creature is Navik's sivot?" Behtu’s voice seems to come from someplace far away.
"The sivot is not a creature," my starfire defends. "He's still Navik, just in a different form."
"Guess she told you, Behtu." Vytko's bellowing laughter washes over me as if in a dream. "Fierce little thing, aren't you? No wonder Navik succumbed to your charms."
I fight the darkness, wanting to wake up and tell Cora how proud I am of her for standing up to Behtu. Sleep keeps me within its firm grasp.
I'm vaguely aware of being lifted from the floor and carried by many hands. Cora's fingers are entwined with mine. The warmth of her touch lets me know she is safe, thanks to my brothers.
* * *
CORA
"Are you sure that's right, Qhix?" I squint up at the monitor blinking over my head. "That can't be right."
Back inside the medic bay on Qhix's ship, it's a déjà vu I can do without, Navik wounded and being healed with a medical cuff from a near death injury.
Qhix has set a course for his hideout on a planet called Loken 1, located in the Juril Sector, where Navik can finish recovering. Wherever the hell that is. I'm just glad to be off the Wetokian Battle Cruiser and on the way to someplace safe.
"Positive." Qhix taps out a few adjustments on the monitor then points to what I'm having a difficult time believing. "That's your heartbeat. The other one belongs to the offspring you carry. Good thing you agreed to let me scan you for injuries. It might have been a few more days before you became aware of your condition."
Inside my mind, I count back the days since the first time Navik and I had sex. Despite my years spent with the warden, he was unable to do anything except with toys, so there's no question it's Navik’s. "How can there already be a heartbeat when I'm only a few days pregnant?"
"I don't know. I'm not a medic, and I've never had a mate that was pregnant." Qhix leaves me lying on the gurney to cross the room and roll over a machine that looks like a flatscreen tv on a stand. "Combat injuries are one thing. Pregnancy is another. I do know that gestation for Kaul females is approximately five months."
"Five months! That's all?" I look over at Navik's sleeping form and wish he were awake to share this moment with me.
Returned to his Kaul form, his color is back to the normal brilliant azure of health. No longer the pale pallor of death, his stab wound has already knitted together. Qhix expects him to be healed by the time we reach his home on Loken 1.
"How long is gestation for humans?"
"Nine months or so."
Qhix switches on the new machine and hovers a rectangular card over my belly. "According to the internal imager, you're two days along."
I shake my head at the strange writing typing out across the screen, wondering how it's even possible to detect pregnancy after only two days.
Qhix taps on the card and changes the view from a read out to a three-dimensional image of what's going on inside my abdomen. The machine works like a super high-tech ultrasound.
