Nokx (The Sraibur Crew #3) - Layla Nash Page 0,101
the next thing that crossed his path, and wanted to sleep for a standard month. Nokx lay in a high-tech medical bay, unguarded. It was a good sign he wasn’t shackled. That boded well for him not being on the Slasu ship.
It definitely wasn’t the Sraibur, though. He sat up slowly, swaying as his balance shifted, and surveyed the rest of the room. He remembered lasers flashing and a bright lightning strike before everything went dark. Large splotches floated in his vision, no matter how he rubbed his eyes and blinked.
Nokx tested his muscles, stretching, as he continued the slow survey of the room. No weapons that he could see, but that didn’t mean something couldn’t be used as a weapon. His bones ached. He needed to find EJ. The Xaravian he vaguely remembered had said something about EJ being there, being safe. She wouldn’t be safe until he was with her, though.
He found his tattered robes thrown across the foot of the bed and slowly shrugged into them after examining the holes burned through the fabric that aligned with the marks on his scales. He frowned as he tallied up the tears riddling his favorite robes. He definitely should have died. Absolutely, without a doubt.
His side ached and he slowly sat on the edge of the bed as the universe reordered itself. How had he survived? He vaguely remembered EJ putting med packs on him and calling him an idiot, but everything after that blurred into gray fog. His toes curled against the smooth composite floor. Violet had once made a joke about Xaravians having nine lives, something to do with a small furry animal on Earth that found trouble frequently and yet managed to avoid the consequences, and he felt as though he’d used up at least seven.
Well, he had a second chance. He had an opportunity to make things right with EJ. He just had to find her first.
Nokx limped out of the medical bay, unnerved that no one waited in the hall to prevent him from leaving. No guards. Nothing. He fiddled with the wrist comms unit that had remained in the pocket of his robes and tried to get a link with the Sraibur. No telling where Faros and the rest of the crew was. Perhaps they’d abandoned him and EJ, or maybe Faros managed to board and seize a nicer ship and intended to start a pirate fleet.
He snorted and shook his head, though he held his side as his ribs ached. It would definitely be like Faros’s ego to decide he wanted to be a commodore or something instead of just a captain.
Nokx would have wandered forever in that massive ship if he hadn’t caught a hint of EJ’s scent in the air. He hoped she stayed near the medical bay so she could be close to him. He closed his eyes and inhaled, searching for the perfume that had worked into his brain and seized up his hearts. She was close. He could sense it.
He heard her voice next and some of the tension in his chest eased. She didn’t sound upset or injured, but he wouldn’t be sure until he saw her. Nokx considered lingering in the corridor to eavesdrop and get a sense of who she spoke to, but it was not the Xaravian way. His mate was within reach and there was nothing that would keep him from her — not even himself.
Nokx walked into an intense meeting around a table: EJ, three aliens of a type he couldn’t identify, another Earther, and a Xaravian. All silenced immediately when he appeared, though EJ’s voice trailed off. “We can’t turn back unless...”
He kept only a sliver of his attention on the potential threats in the room — particularly the three aliens with iridescent feather-like covers and bright black eyes — but the rest of him belonged to EJ. Her eyes widened and she launched out of her chair at him. “You’re not supposed to be up!”
He grunted as she collided with him and immediately locked her arms around his back, holding on tightly. Nokx braced one hand on the wall so he didn’t collapse under the force of her relief. And then he held her, too, and didn’t care who saw as he squeezed her and breathed in from her hair until he could almost convince himself that everything would be all right.
EJ muttered a curse and untangled them. “You need to sit down; you’re not supposed to be up.”