Page 8 of Saved By the Servali

He hoped. He wanted to make her smile.

“SHE MADE IT PAST THEfirst twelve hours. She coughed up so much fluid. If I hadn’t been with her with the anti-aspiration mask ready, she would have choked to death.”

“The others are starting to come around. I checked the original data that I could pull from the craft. They wouldn’t have hit the Pantherite Provinces for two more weeks. This one would certainly have been dead.”

“We should call her Nessa, like it says on her badge. She can probably hear us.”

Nessa’s eyelids were sewn shut. Pinned down. Something made it impossible to open them and see the owners of the two voices speaking by her head.

“Well, the other two have nothing on them, no identification, no personal computers, nothing!” The female voice soundedfurious. “I feel so terrible that I can’t even call them by a name—and I shudder to think what would have happened if the Felids they were sent to weren’t the kind we met on Lynx-Nineteen!”

The other voice was soothing, male, and deep—deeper than any human voice she’d ever heard. Her tangled brain began to make hazy pictures, but there was no context. No sight. Her thoughts were dark and sour with unfamiliar smells butting in and demanding to be identified—but the surface she laid on was so soft. She tried to stretch her aching muscles and found her body wouldn’t obey.

“The hypersleep was supposed to go on for a good bit longer. We’re waking them in a gentle, gradual fashion. By tomorrow evening, I imagine they’ll be awake and able to talk, just groggy and disoriented. You need to get some rest, Layla. Kamau said he’d be by after supper. You stay with your cubs and let him do a bit of nursing.”

“But he’s got a full-time job already, just keeping all the mouths fed on theComet Stalker,” the lighter, higher female voice protested.

“It doesn’t fill the void like a family.”

“Oh, Marcus. I’m sorry. Surely he knows that we think ofallof you like family! The whole crew is like family to us!”

“I know, and that’s a blessing in this time and place. But still—let the fellow have his way. My paws are full with these three cosmic drifters, and trying to regulate vitals after accidental ejection from hypersleep is something I haven’t had to do since I was a resource doctor at Bastet Mercy—thirty years ago.”

Nessa lost herself in a whirl of words that sounded scary and unfamiliar. Hypersleep? Aspiration? Bastet Mercy?

Eff this.

Her brain shut back down.

LIGHTS.

Spots.

Golden, glinting lights. Dark black spots.

Am I in heaven?

Or did I get food poisoning? Don’t people see spots in their vision when they—

Hey, I can open my eyes!

But I can’t see a damn thing, apparently.

“Now, Wendy says if you don’t have balm applied to your skin, it will become dry and flaky, and this is a thing that many Queens with dark skin experience. Jade says all Queens must ‘moisturize,’ and I told her Felid Queens do not have this trouble except with the pads of their paws. So, Wendy has given me some of the balm we got on Lynx-Nineteen. Ardol and Jade are going to open a shop next year that’ll sell all sorts of clothes and imports from the Sapien System. Ardol’ll handle all the shipping—he’s our freight coordinator. I guess we’ll be needing a new one when he and Jade settle down on Lynx-Nineteen. You might like it there—on Lynx-Nineteen, I mean. There are lots of Felid-human couples there. Well... Twelve. But that’s more than there is anywhere else in the galaxy, as far as I know.”

Nessa felt her lips twitching upward and her skin tingled as something smooth and buttery was rubbed over her hands and forearms.

I’m sick. I’m in a hospital with a nurse with a motormouth... and I like it. He has some epic bedside manner.

Nessa had been talked over and about—not to. Not until now. That much she knew.

She just wished she could recall how she got here.

“Are your eyes opening?” The voice beside her quivered with excitement. “Oh! They are! My Queen! My Queen, you should— I mean, Miss Nessa, you should remain calm. Don’t try to move much. Just rest and lie still. Can you talk?”

Her mouth didn’t feel so dry anymore.

Wait, why was my mouth dry to begin with?

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