Page 58 of Alien Barbarian's Little Human

“Wait, you’re seriously going to operate? Here?”

“The patient will not survive if otherwise. I calculate an 89% survival chance if I perform the operation. Otherwise, his chances are much lower.”

I swallow the lump in my throat.

“How low is low?”

“Single percentile.”

“All right, I guess that’s an easy choice.” I sigh and rub my tired eyes. I can’t remember the last time I got a decent amount of sleep. Even before the invasion I’d been pushing myself hard.

Magog operates with an efficiency so smooth it’s hard to believe I’m actually seeing it. He removes the shrapnel and despite his worries, there’s very little blood.

He doesn’t stop with one patient, either. All of the stopgap treatments I’ve done in the last several weeks kept the patients alive, but that was about it. Magog actually takes care of them, like a real medical doctor.

“I’m beginning to think that my years of training were wasted,” I gripe as he finishes the sutures on a Kilgari’s back. “I should have just stuck myself in a cryopod.”

His lavender eyes flash over to me and he grins.

“You always did have a sharp tongue, my love.”

I feel as if I’ve been slapped, followed by that pins and needles feeling you get when you’re well and truly shocked. It feels weird to hear him say he loves me when we’ve only just met. It feels even weirder for him to talk about my supposed past lives.

“Ugh, can you not say things like that? It weirds me out.”

His smile fades. I think I’ve hurt his feelings, but he nods regardless.

“Very well, Nerita. I will avoid mentioning our past lives together.”

He says it so matter of factly. Like it’s a given that his reincarnation theory is correct. Maybe it is. I’ve seen enough things in this galaxy to know better than to think I’ve got it all figured out. But most of the wonders I’ve seen can be explained by science. No scientific inquiry has ever produced discernible proof of past lives and reincarnation.

Magog is damn handsome, though. There’s an attraction here even if it’s not mystical. And given that he’s just saved a dozen patients I thought for certain would be dead in the next week, I feel like marrying the guy.

Or at least, having the wedding night portion of the marriage.

“Thank you, Magog. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. You saved them. You saved us all.”

I sigh when the sound of artillery fire penetrates the thick walls of the bunker.

“But it might all be for nothing. We’re still trapped on a planet that’s become the closest incarnation of Hell in the entire history of the galaxy.”

Magog’s brow ridges climb high on his ridged face.

“We are not trapped on this world.”

“What? Why do you say that?”

“Because,” he says, in a voice as confident as a god “I can get us off the planet.”

CHAPTER 17

MAGOG

“Hush your mouth!”

Nerita grabs my arm and drags me around the corner into a darkened chamber. She pulls a metal blast door shut behind us.

“Do you want to give these people false hope? Don’t say things like that.”

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