Page 36 of Resisting the Alien Rider

“Sorry,” he said, grimacing. “I got blood all over your pretty sleep clothes.”

I glanced down at myself, finding streaks of black contrasting with the pink silk.

“Oh, God, don’t worry about that,” I murmured, more than a little stunned that he’d used the word pretty to describe anything at all, least of all something to do with me. Not that I was allwoe is meabout my own looks. Because I wasn’t. I’d been told my whole life I was beautiful, by my parents and grandparents and patients and friends. I loved my face and my body, my eyes and my skin and my hair. It didn’t really matter that I was pretty, it wasn’t what was most important about me, but I’d always believed I was anyway.

And Garrek did, too. At least, he thought my pyjamas were.

I poked at the drying blood on my jammies, trying to figure out how Garrek had gotten blood there when his bleeding tail was behind him. I narrowed my eyes at him in the dark, then gasped when I saw the deep gash on his chest, oozing with black blood.

“Garrek!” I cried. “When the hell did that happen?!”

“What? Oh, this?” He looked down and probed the wound with the claw of his index finger. “It happened when I was trying to get my vest back.”

“Yeah, about that,” I replied, “what the heck was that all about? Why were you fighting for your freaking life over a vest, Garrek?! You should have let the spider-”

“The idra.”

“Whatever! You should have let the idra just eat it and then used that moment of distraction to figure out your next move. Or maybe even try to escape!”

“If I’d climbed down after Killian, it would have simply followed. It could have reached you. Or it could have gotten among the bracku and caused a stampede. None of those were acceptable outcomes.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you spent more time trying to save a piece of fabric than yourself,” I retorted. Anger was rising rapidly inside me now, and it surprised me.

But there was no denying it. I thought about Garrek putting himself in harm’s way to yank back a piece of clothing and I was suddenly, absolutely, planet-shakingly furious.

“Relax,” Garrek muttered, which was probably the worst possible thing he could have said to me in that moment. “I saved what I wanted.”

He stopped poking at his wound and raised his other hand, unfurling his fingers to reveal a torn square of leather that had been hidden in his fist.

“That’s it?” I croaked in disbelief. “You were playingtug-o’-war with a lethal predator to savethat? This tiny littlescrap?”

I stabbed my finger accusingly at Garrek’s hand as I spoke. I’d meant to only point at his palm, but I ended up poking him pretty hard. It jostled his hand, and the leather fell to the ground.

It fell faster and heavier than it should have.

I looked down to see that it wasn’t just a random scrap but the shredded remnants of the vest’s pocket. And from that ruined pocket tumbled a little pink half-moon.

Soap. It was soap.

The one I’d made for him.

“Like I said,” Garrek grunted, bending to retrieve it. He snatched up the soap and left the leather on the ground. “I saved what I wanted.”

The anger left me all at once. I didn’t want to confront what replaced it.

Luckily, I didn’t have to. Garrek’s gaze darkened back to purple and then shifted somewhere behind me. He walked around me, leaving me to stare after him.

“Well, Killian.” He approached his convict-ward and raised his hand. Killian tensed and scrunched his eyes shut, as if expecting pain. But when Garrek’s hand landed on the top of Killian’s head, the touch was gentle.

“Compared to all that,” Garrek said, a weary sort of irony colouring his voice, “the ear drops should be easy.”

14

GARREK

Iwas learning that there was very little that could make a child behave like guilt could. I needed only point at the wounds on my chest and tail, and Killian meekly submitted himself to the drops he’d caused this entire situation trying to avoid.

Magnolia’s administering of the medication was deftly gentle. Efficient. It was over so quickly Killian didn’t even realize it.

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