Page 11 of Sheltered in the Storm

With a knife, I cut away her uniform, hissing as I saw the extent of her external injuries firsthand. She had many deep lacerations and bruises from her head to her shins, some of which I thought might have occurred as a result of the way the raiders had extracted her from the fighter’s cockpit and their carelessness aboard their boat. Her left arm was broken, as were her right hand and both lower legs. Someone on the raider boat had left the distinct impression of a boot print on her right hand. Judging by how badly it was crushed and scraped, they had stomped on her hand and ground it into the metal deck.

I recalled the pain-filled wail I had heard just before I leapt into the boat. This injury might have been the cause of that cry, which had filled me with such rage that I barely recalled killing the first two raiders.

Now, seeing how badly they had hurt her, I wished I could go back and kill them again—this time, much more slowly. My tentacles lashed the air, and I let out a long hiss.

Poe clacked her claws nervously. She knew I was no threat to her, but her instincts ran deep. I reined in my rage for her sake.

As bad as Calla’s lacerations and broken bones were, her internal injuries might be worse. My hands and tentacles, normally very deft and skilled, turned unexpectedly and quite uncharacteristically clumsy in my rush to take my medical scanner from the kit, calibrate it for a human, and pass it over Calla’s body.

The grim results left me nearly unable to breathe.

The list of broken bones, damaged organs, and sources of internal bleeding filled the scanner’s screen, along with triage instructions on which to treat first.

I leaned against the table, my human hands gripping the wood so tightly that it creaked, while my tentacles ran over Calla’s body. Their suckers plucked at her skin in worry, leaving small red marks as they moved.

“Poe,” Poe murmured. She could not read the scanner’s screen, but she did not have to. Perhaps she had already discerned the extent of Calla’s injuries, or maybe my body language and the way I stilled told her all she needed to know.

Then my Anomuran companion did something completely unexpected: she clamped her claw onto my human hand and pinched my fingers hard. The pain jolted me out of my despair.

“Poe,” she snapped, her antennae waving rapidly. She tapped one of the medical kits and then shoved the case at me across the table. “Poe.”

Her directive was clear:You have a mission. Get to work.

And so I did.

CHAPTER 5

CALLA

I driftedin and out of consciousness for what felt like a very, very long time. Everything around me was blurry, in slow motion and fragments.

Whenever my eyes opened, the beautiful sea monster was at my side, eyes glowing softly and voice kind. Despite the horrors I’d witnessed on the boat, I didn’t fear him. I was only grateful that though I suffered terribly, I wasn’t alone.

Sometimes fever left me floating in a delirium. Icy cloths cooled my forehead and wrists.

At other times, heated blankets covered me from chin to toes as I shivered from cold that seemed so deep and profound that it had turned my bones to ice.

Often, he held my hand and told me stories—first of his homeworld and his childhood in the sea, and then adventures on planets and outposts and aboard deep-space vessels traveling in parts of the galaxy I’d never seen, or even dreamed of seeing.

Sometimes I couldn’t understand a word he said, but themurmur of his voice and a strange but beautiful coo soothed me, even when waves of agony crested so intensely that I screamed. I might have threatened that if he ever told anyone I’d cried, I would feed him appendages-first to a Hardanian bogworm, but I might have imagined that part. I lost track of what was a dream and what wasn’t.

Drops of some sweet liquid passed my lips a few times, always accompanied by a coo that eased my pain and fear and then soft darkness.

At some point the agony faded into milder pain and discomfort. Someone carried me in their arms and then lowered me into wonderfully hot water, where soft caresses cleaned my aching body. I shivered as they hummed quietly. Eventually, I fell asleep in the water with my head resting on someone’s warm chest.

The next time I became aware of my surroundings, I was no longer in the water or lying on a hard surface. Instead, I was wrapped in something warm and soft and curled up on my side on what felt like a bed. It had been so long since I’d known such comfort that I cried again—but this time, in relief instead of misery.

Gentle fingertips wiped my tears away, and a soft coo made me sigh and snuggle deeper into the warmth of the bed.

I slept.

By all the gods,every part of my bodyreallyfucking hurt.

But also by all the gods, I was glad to be hurting, because that meant I was alive.

I woke up warm and secure, wrapped in strong arms, with my back pressed against a very muscular, distinctly male, and entirely unfamiliar body.

Wait…

---