Page 31 of Resisting the Alien Rider

“Killian!” I cried, trying to hold back laughter. “Don’t talk to Garrek that way!”

“I already have some of her soap,” Garrek snapped, his claws a hair’s breadth from making contact with Killian’s tail. Killian snapped it back against his bare booty and kept on running.

“Use it, then!” Killian called, with the relentless, hilarious meanness only a child could be capable of. “You’re one hundred cycles old but you smell like you’re one thousand.”

“This coming from the child I have to move mountains to convince to bathe!” Garrek exclaimed. He stopped running and placed his hands upon his knees, breathing heavily as Killian ran literal circles around him. Garrek caught my eyes, no doubt noted the laughter in them, frowned, and told me, “I’m thirty-six cycles. Not one hundred.”

I wasn’t precisely certain how cycles measured against years, but if I had to compare Garrek to a human man, I’d probably place him in the mid-to-late-thirties range.

“Noted,” I replied, nodding encouragingly at him and forcing my expression into something I hoped looked kind, maybe even beatific, instead of a giddyOh God I am about to pee my pants from laughingsmile.

“You’re not thirty-six!” Killian scoffed. “You are one hundred and twenty, twenty-twenty thousand, eight billion, and four. You’d probably be dead by now if you didn’t have to stay alive to take care of me!”

“Is that… Is that how Zabrians say numbers?” I asked Garrek as he straightened up, chest working like bellows.

“No,” he seethed. “Clearly, Killian was pulled from the Zabrian Academy and sent here before he could finish the early-cycle mathematics portion.” Then, more loudly, he called to Killian, “Wearetrying to take care of you right now!”

Thewehit me kind of funny. Made my tummy go tight and my cheeks warm.

Garrek started running again, his words broken up by his heaving breaths. “So… stop… running… take your… medicine… and…letusdoit!” The last words came out in a half-desperate, half triumphant rush as his claws closed around Killian’s tail.

Not all the way, though. Killian darted his tail away, snapped it up to bop Garrek on the nose, and continued hauling ass with frankly admirable levels of energy.

Energy that Garrek no longer possessed.

“This isn’t working,” he growled, stopping to hook his hands into his belt and glaring so hard I was half-worried the man might break his own eyebrows.

I barely,barelystopped myself from saying, “No shit.” Instead, after taking a reflective moment and trying to be mindful of Garrek’s mood, I asked brightly, “Do you have any other ideas?”

He rubbed at his jaw, casting his gaze across the ground until it landed on my towel. It was in a heap on the ground, having come loose the moment Killian wiggled out of my hold and started his crazy fucking sprint around the camp.

Garrek picked it up.

“I’ll use this,” he said. He shook the towel in front of himself. If he was trying to demonstrate his strategy to me, it wasn’t working. All it did was make him look like a bright-eyed, blue-skinned matador.

“You’re going to… be a bull fighter?” I finally asked, giving up on trying to guess. Garrek looked at me like I’d just said something insane.

“Fight one of my bulls?” He gave me a withering,are-you-serious?sort of stare. “I prefer keeping my guts inside my body.”

“OK. Enlighten me, then,” I said, gesturing at the towel he still held.

“I’m going to use it-” he swished it around experimentally, “-like a net.”

“Like a net?” I asked in disbelief. “After that child just jumped clean over your arms like a cat spooked by a cucumber?”

“I don’t understand a single thing you just said,” Garrek grumped, clutching at his crappy towel-net defensively. “If you’re ready to give me any usefulsuggestions instead of saying nonsense words like cucumboner, I’m listening.”

“That isn’t even what I said!” I cried, face flaming. Cucumboner? Fucking really? “Who’s saying nonsense words now!”

I paused, rubbing my free hand against the bridge of my nose and sighing.

Cucumboner. I can’t with this man.

“Don’t you have anything useful for catching, like, runaway bracku?” I asked, raising my eyes to him again. “Can’t you lasso him or something?”

As soon as I said, “lasso him,” Killian froze.

And then, he changed tactics with the speed and adaptability that would impress even the most seasoned starfighter or shuttle pilot.

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