Page 24 of There's an Elf in My Cockpit

The wet laugh that came from my own mouth was half sob, half happiness. “Oh, Stars! Oliver you nearly died!” I leaned down and pressed my mouth against his, uncaring of our audience. I heard happy exclamations, laughter, and relief pouring from Oliver’s friends as they surrounded us. What I was most keenly aware of was the presence of the host, the Master of the Moon. He was still standing right behind me and watching our happiness like it was a completely foreign thing to him.

Oliver eagerly let me kiss him from our strange, upside-down angle but when he opened his eyes and they went huge and wide, I knew he’d seen it. He’d spotted the creature standing right behind me, so close that I could almost feel the shadows that wrapped him brush against my back. “Oh fuck,” he muttered, pushing himself upright and turning to look. I didn’t let him get far, wrapping my arms around his neck and clinging. I’d never clung to a male before, but I wasn’t going to let Oliver go anywhere without me.

“You have seven minutes left,” the shadow said and the red eyes disappeared. The Master of the Moon walked away without a backward glance, his orb zapping after him. It was only when all of us were jumping to our feet and rushing for our respective shuttles that I realized that during that last interaction, the male had spoken to us directly instead of using the orb as his avatar. I didn’t miss the giant, cloven footprints he was leaving in the snow either. Whatever he was, he was a real, flesh and blood being and I owed him everything.

“Thank you!” I yelled after him as Oliver pulled me with him onto the still partially buried shuttle. The Master of the Moon didn’t respond, and then the horde of ice beasts started to throw back their heads, howling. The next moment the whole pack of them started running, leaving the remains of Elpherian’s ship and racing for the nearest crater wall. In giant leaps and bounds, they went up it, disappearing into the night.

The mechanic was with us as we jogged into the shuttle, and so were the other two gladiators but none of the teens. I assumed they weren’t trusting this shuttle as much as the other one, and then I gasped in shock when I realized Oliver just plunked himself down into the pilot chair. “Oliver! You nearly died, shouldn’t one of the others fly?” I turned to gaze at the three males who were casually strapping themselves into the jumpseats that lined the shuttle.

“I am fine! Good as new,” he assured me with a wicked grin. “I swear, but we’ve got like… five minutes left by now. We really need to get going. Sit down.” This felt a bit too much like a repeat of how we’d first met for me to disobey. If I did, I was going to end up in his lap, I knew it.

The shuttle was already lifting into the air and the hatch hadn’t even been closed. I threw myself into the navigator’s chair, wondering how he was the best man for the job and we didn’t even have a navigator on board, were going to follow Chloe’s shuttle?

A scrabbling sound followed by a shout made us all turn around to look at the hatch. Shocked, I leaned forward and slammed my hand on the ‘open’ button at the sight of a pair of blue claws. “Belal!” Oliver shouted and several gladiators leaped from their seats to yank the youngster inside.

A minute later I was cradling the young Hoxiam in my arms in the navigator seat, my heart still racing from the shock. Oliver was tensely warning the kid just how dangerous it was what he’d just done. I agreed but I could see the confusion on the kid’s face too, I knew what was going on. “He was told to guard me,” I said, “And that’s what he’s doing.”

Oliver was instantly quiet, his gaze going soft. “Fine, we’ll talk about this on the Vagabond. I need to concentrate. Chloe and Kitan are much better than me and our window is rapidly closing.” I wondered about that, would our host actually snap the shield shut on our noses if we didn’t make it out in the allotted time? I doubted it, he wanted to get rid of us as much as we wanted to leave.

Nonetheless, none of us breathed easy until we’d followed the thruster lights of the shuttle ahead of us out of the atmosphere.

Chapter 17

Vi

I was so happy I could almost weep when we had landed inside the hangar bay of the beautiful Star Class Cruiser waiting for us in orbit above the moon. Oliver’s second near-death had shaken me, and for the next while, I knew I wasn’t going to be looking for any kind of adventure at all. Then there was the crazy stunt Belal had pulled because he thought he still needed to keep me safe. I had yet to let go of his hand and from the grin on his softly furred face, he was pretty pleased about that.

“Come on, sweet little elf,” Oliver said as he guided me from the shuttle with his arm slung around my shoulders. “I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell am ready for a good hot shower and a real bed.” He waggled his eyebrows at me with a cheeky grin and I felt heat steal up my neck and all the way to the tips of my ears. Trust Oliver to be in such good spirits after all of that, the male was completely unflappable.

When we left the shuttle it was only because the male was holding a grinning Chloe beneath one arm that I recognized the Sune male. Kitan, the pilot, was a redhead with an interesting stripe slashing across his face when in his skin-form. He almost looked like a human, except his eyes glowed a fervent gold. “Here’s the brave female that vanquished her enemy with my poor shuttle!” he said.

I winced, remembering how I’d steered the vessel directly into Elpherian. Not that the shuttle had jolted with so much as a thud from the force, its shielding was far too good for that. “Oh no, I’m sorry.” I winced at the thought but offered, “I’ll clean it up.”

That caused the Sune to throw back his head and laugh, a wide grin splitting his face in a wholly canine fashion. “Ah don’t worry, our exit out of the moon’s atmosphere took care of that.” I was pretty sure he was about to add a more graphic description of how that was the case but Chloe silenced him with a well-placed jab of her elbow.

“This way, you can greet the rest of the ship and then get some rest,” she said gently and I was only too happy to follow the couple. Food, shower, and rest sounded absolutely divine. I was going to make sure I had all of those things without ever losing sight of Oliver, I could already vividly imagine what it would look like to see him standing beneath the water.

At a crossing, Oliver halted me, “Yo, we’re heading for the med bay first, we’ll catch up with you later.” Good idea. While I was pretty sure that Oliver had been fully healed by the Master of the Moon, I would definitely feel better if an actual doctor confirmed that. He was still covered in blood-splattered clothing, and so was I. Then my eyes drifted down to Belal who was still at my side too, trudging along on his pawed feet. His leg had been broken only days ago, he too should get a medical check.

The doctor was an Aderian male which was very reassuring to see, and it was extra cute to discover he was being visited by his human mate and their small toddler. He was quick and professional as he scanned each of us with his scanner, granting Oliver and me a clean bill of health in just five minutes. “You’ll have to stay Belal,” he said kindly to the kid, and my heart started pounding in worry. Was there a complication with his broken leg?

“I can see that you are suffering from some lack of nutrients, I want to give you some supplements okay? Healing that leg must have been tough on your system and current diet. Why don’t we work on that?” Oh, okay, not nearly as bad. I forced myself to breathe out my tension so I could smile for the young teen as I fussed to get him situated on the cot. I ignored the smiling face of the doctor’s mate, and the amused expression on Belal’s furred face as I did so.

Then Darth and the others that were with us on the moon clattered into the med bay with a lot of noise, talking animatedly one over the other as they surrounded Belal on his bed. He wasn’t going to be alone in here when Oliver and I went to get that shower, good.

When we were walking through the hallways, the sound of loud voices and laughter still chasing us, Oliver leaned down to whisper in my ear. “So, you do realize that kid has totally imprinted on you? How do you feel about being a mom?”

A couple days ago that thought would have sent me running screaming. I wasn’t the same person as I was last week when I was trying to find a shuttle just to deliver a sack of packages. I was running then, hiding, but I was done with all of that. I’d finally found the place where I belonged, with the male at my side.

Yesterday I would have thought that I would mess something as big as that up, that I wouldn’t be good enough, loyal enough. But I’d learned that wasn’t true either. I was good, I was worthy of love, and I was loyal when that loyalty was earned. Oliver had earned that kind of love and devotion simply by being him, and I was pretty sure I’d been lost to little Belal from the moment he’d clung to me for strength.

I was not usually the person that people leaned on but this week had shown to me that they could. I’d done things I hadn’t possibly thought I was capable of and I was better for it, even if it was the toughest thing I’d ever done.

I wasn’t filled with fear at Oliver’s words, I was filled with a sense of wonder instead. Me, Vi the failure of the family, I was wanted by not one but two beautiful males. I touched the family sigil dangling from my Caratan chain and suddenly I realized that they didn’t deserve to be represented there. I didn’t owe them anything. My family was here, with Oliver, with Belal and I would go wherever they wanted to go.

“Yeah,” I said, emotion filling my voice. “I’m pretty good with that, mate.”

*

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