Page 60 of Resisting the Alien Rider

My body shuddered violently as relief hit my bloodstream like a drug. I lowered my forehead to Magnolia’s and simply breathed with her, hoping for something that mere moments ago had not seemed possible.

That she might live.

“I’m just so glad that I could help,” Oaken was saying now. “I’ve missed you, cousin. And I’ve always wanted to repay you for what you’ve done for me.”

“Repay me?” I asked, lifting my head to regard him with startled scepticism. “I ruined your life.”

Oaken’s eyes flashed briefly white. A gentle smile pulled at his mouth.

“I always thought that you had saved it.”

“I got you exiled!” I said in disbelief. “You were convicted for a crime you did not commit!Mycrime!”

Oaken regarded me with his head cocked. His expression was smooth, no hint of the confusedturmoil I was now feeling. Mildly, he asked, “Did you know I have not had an attack since coming here?”

“What?”

“My lungs. I think the air is different here. Or maybe I am different here.”

Oaken had always had weak lungs as a child. He was prone to the same attacks of breathlessness that had contributed to his mother’s death. It was after her death that he had been sent to live with my father and me.

“And you and I both know that I was smaller and weaker than you were. I was ill, Garrek. The beatings that you survived could very well have killed me.” He gazed at me steadily. “I think it’s very likely I would have died that day if you had not intervened.”

And all at once, I was a child again. A child coming home to find Oaken’s small body curled up on the floor while my father’s rage rained down upon him.

And then I was hauling my father away, fighting back for my younger cousin the way I’d never fought back for myself. And then I was hitting him. And then he was falling. The sound of his head hitting the stone mantel was as sickeningly clear now as it had been that day.

“You saved me,” Oaken said again. Simply. Bluntly. As if it were a fact he’d known and accepted all his life and not something that should upend my entire reality. “And really, Garrek, do you not think that we are safer here, even among the dangers of this world? So much better off than we would have been in that house with him?”

This, I could not argue with. Even as a prisoner under the watch of the wardens of Zabria Prinar One, I was more free than I’d ever been in my own home.

“I am content, Garrek. And now that I know that I will meet my bride soon, I do not think any life could make me happier than this one.”

Blast. Blast it all. He did not know.

“And if I can repay you now by saving your bride’s life, then-”

“She’s not my bride,” I cut him off. Even as I said the words, I pulled her possessively against my chest, as if he might try to drag her from me. “She’s yours.”

23

GARREK

Oaken blinked at me. Then he frowned.

“Sorry,” he said, rubbing at his ears. “I must have misheard you.”

“You did not mishear me,” I said. “This is Magnolia.”

Saying her name seemed to convince him. His whole body jolted, and he tried to rise from his chair. Unfortunately, he forgot about his broken foot on the crate, and he toppled to one side, sending his chair over sideways and the crate crashing into a wall. From the wreckage of his fall, he stared up at Magnolia and me in confusion.

“But… Magnolia is with the warden. I was supposed to go and meet her.”

“The warden sent her with us. There was a fire at my ranch. We had to travel to feed the bracku. When Warden Tenn heard that we’d be coming your way, he asked us to bring her to you.”

Oaken righted his chair with his tail, then grasped his heavy, solid wood table as support to drag himselfup into a standing position. He leaned against it, putting no weight on his right foot.

“But…” His face showed no evidence of anger or betrayal. Only bewilderment. “But you love her.”

---