Page 98 of Owned By Two

Could Qeyel have missed somehow?

I doubted it.

Achildcouldn’t miss at point-blank range.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw the criminal on the floor before me, slumped over, cradling his chest in his hands.

His blade lay just outside his reach and, as he began to come awake, he reached toward it…

But his hand never made it.

A boot crushed his fingers and he screamed in agony.

I followed the boot up and found Blor crouched under my horn.

He was breathing heavily through his bloody nostrils, his eyes blazing raw and violent.

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and a great deal of meaning passed between us.

Blor had saved my life.

It didn’t change anything about his being Lizzy’s fated mate and he being hers, but it meant on some level, at least, there was some respect.

“This doesn’t mean we’re married or anything,” he grunted.

He turned his head to one side and ducked under my horn.

He braced the door with his weight and together, we pushed it back.

Metal shrieked loudly, something within he machine’s complex workings made a loudclunknoise and then it finally gave up and slid back easily.

I stumbled from my pinned position and felt at my horns and found a few chips and dents but no permanent damage.

“You must take good care of your horns,” Blor said. “Anyone else, and the door would have snapped them in two.”

“I varnish them every night,” I said proudly.

Blor rolled his eyes. “Of course you do.”

He turned to the whimpering figure on the floor, who clutched one crushed hand close and the other to his chest to whatever injury Blor had inflicted upon him to forestall his earlier attack on me.

I glanced back through the doorway and saw two matching lumps that had to be the twin guards’ unconscious bodies.

I didn’t like to think what harm Blor had done to them to make them move as little as they did.

I was even more surprised to find how little I cared.

They had gotten in the way of us finding Lizzy, and so they got what they had coming to them.

Blor grabbed the criminal by the collar, dragged him up with a single arm, and carried him over to the door that had, until a moment earlier, held me pinned in place.

“Please, don’t hurt me!” Qeyel said. “I’m just doing my job! That’s all! I have to protect the identities of my clients! The same way I protect yours!”

“We don’t care about their protection,” Blor snapped. “We want to know who bought that ship from you! We asked nicely. Now, we’re going to do it my way…”

He grabbed hold of the security door and drew it toward Qeyel’s head that lay on the track it ran on.

“I wonder how well your skull will do against the door,” Blor said. “As well as Uhti’s horns? I doubt it. But let’s see. I’ve always been a big fan of science.”

---