Renegade Runner by Nicole Conway (ebook reader with highlight function .txt) 📗

I hissed and flinched, slamming a fist down onto the seat.

“Antibiotic auto-injector,” he explained, almost like he could read my mind. “And a cocktail of pain suppressants. You’re fast, I’ll grant you that, but you still took a lot of the impact from the blast. I’m betting that didn’t feel so great.”

I couldn’t stop shaking long enough to even come up with a snappy reply. I sat before him, my head down and hands clenched at my sides, while Phox finished dressing my wound. Whatever he’d injected me with worked fast. My leg went numb and I barely felt it at all as he used a series of sprays to clean the puncture and then close it with a big syringe filled with clear gel that solidified to form a clear, scab-like seal. Judging by how fast he worked, I could only assume he’d done this a few times. But to whom? Himself? I couldn’t see any obvious scars on him thanks to the black bodysuit that shaped tightly over the contours of his heavily muscled frame.

The minutes ticked by slowly. The longer I sat there, the harder it was to focus on, well, anything. Something in that cocktail of medicines lulled me into a strange, loopy sense of delirious calm. I slumped back, staring at him and blinking owlishly while he packed the supplies back into the kit.

He was … pretty. For a weird, huge alien anyway. Sure, his features were a little strange. His eyes seemed a bit too big, and his skin was that odd bluish-gray color mottled in blurred dark leopard spots. He had long, pointed, elf-like ears that he could move and wiggle around, sort of like a fox or a cat. And, well, he was a giant.

But still, something about him was primally beautiful, and I couldn’t deny it. He had a chiseled profile and sharp, strangely handsome features. Part of me wondered if he’d snap my hand off if I tried touching one of his ears. Or seeing if his hair was as silky as it looked.

Mmm. Yeah. Probably a bad idea.

“Thank you,” I slurred instead.

His strange eyes darted up to steal a quick glance. “Save the gratitude. It’s just a basic medical dressing. Not a big deal.”

“N-No, I mean … thanks for not letting that freak kill me.”

He hesitated. Slowly, his gaze drifted up to stare back at me more steadily. Some of his lengthy, blackish-silver hair fell from where he’d tucked it behind his ears. I could’ve sworn his cheeks were a little flushed under those leopard spots as he frowned. “You think I’d just stand there and let him gut you?”

My mouth twitched as I fought a smile. “Maybe. I’m nothing but trouble, right?”

He pulled a face and nodded like he agreed. “True. But it was your half-baked plan that saved our asses and got us this ship, after all. Figured I owed you that much.”

“It was a freaking brilliant plan and you know it.” I laughed groggily, only vaguely aware that I was sliding sideways and about to topple over. I couldn’t force myself to care enough to try to stop it, though.

Phox chuckled and gave my shoulder a push, knocking me the rest of the way over so I was lying on my side. “Just pass out already, would you? This is ridiculous.” Standing up, he gave me one more long stare before he began to turn away.

“S-Sorry.” I groaned as I pulled my legs in close to my body and curled my arms around my middle. My eyelids fluttered, so heavy I could barely keep them open.

Phox lurched to a halt, his broad shoulders tensing up. “Sorry? For what?”

“Lashing out before. I just … I don’t like it.”

“Don’t like what?”

“When people try to act like I can’t take care of myself,” I blurted, too out of it to even try to stop.

Phox didn’t move, keeping himself angled away as he replied, “It’s okay. I get it. But for the record, needing someone to close up a gaping hole in your leg doesn’t make you helpless.”

My heart twisted, like someone was reaching right into my chest and squeezing it as hard as they could. I shut my eyes tightly. He didn’t get it. He couldn’t. He had no idea what kind of hell I’d been through.

He was right, though. I didn’t know about his past, either. Maybe he could relate. Maybe not. None of it mattered now, really. We were stuck here, in this death race, for better or worse.

And whether I liked it or not, he had saved my life several times now.

That realization made me want to draw up into a tiny ball and scream. I didn’t want to be like that. I needed to—had to—be able to stand on my own. Because sooner or later, either from being killed by another one of my crazy plans or just finally having a good opportunity to walk away, Phox was going to leave.

People always did.

Why would alien people be any different?

“What’s it like?” I asked quietly. “Your homeworld, I mean. It’s not like this, right?”

A thud nearby made me open my eyes again. Phox was sitting back on the floor right next to where I lay, his elbows resting on his knees and his expression creased with fatigue. Right. He was probably exhausted, too. We’d been going nonstop for over a day now. Maybe even longer for him.

“No, not like this,” he replied.

“What’s it called?”

“Olset.”

“And it’s in the same solar system as mine?”

Phox sighed and hung his head a little. “Yeah. Although technically, it’s not a planet like yours. It’s actually a big moon orbiting a gas giant. You probably have a different name for it in your human culture.”

I pondered that, my hazy, drug-addled brain wishing I remembered more from middle school science class. Which planets had big moons around them? And how did we not know there was intelligent life there?

“Jupiter?” I guessed. It was the only