Her Alien Protector: A Sci-fi Romance

Part 21

Rigel

At long last, my Ava is in my arms. She wears a mask that fits over her nose and mouth. She has also been given some sort of medication. All of this should mean that Ava finally has everything she needs to breathe. Why then does it feel like something is wrong?

Keeping one hand on her mask, I press the back of my other hand on Ava's sweaty and hot forehead. I run my hand down the rest of her face, lightly resting my fingertips on her neck's pulsating artery. Her heartbeat skitters.

"Should her heart be racing?" I ask.

Kayla does not answer. She won't even look at me.

I need to know. "Kayla!"

"It's challenging to manage a case like this," she says.

"Why are you calling her a case? She is not a case. Her name is Ava."

Ava coughs, and Kayla's eyes flick to Tarak.

"Why did you give that to her? I didn't even have time to properly assess it," Kayla says to Tarak.

Tarak growls. "It was her only chance. We needed to open her airways."

"Not without first making calculations," says Kayla. "Tarak, this could—"

"Stop that," I tell them. "Kayla, what aren't you telling me?"

"Too much medicine and her heart might stop. Too little and her bronchioles won't open," says Kayla.

"We had to try," says Tarak. "It was the right thing to do."

Kayla waves her hand. The wall unit projects graphs, some of them red.

I hug Ava tighter. "Are you saying that after everything we did, she may not live? Is there anything else we can try?"

Kayla blinks and her eyelashes look wet. "Hope."

I gently rock Ava, wishing what Kayla is telling me with a simple word is true—if we love Ava enough, she will live.

I place my hand on Ava's chest, wishing she would open her eyes. Every part of my hand that touches Ava tingles. "Can you hear me, Ava? We are all around you, me, Kayla, and Tarak. We want you to get well. Do you think you can open your eyes for us, sweetheart?"

The tingling feeling shoots up my arm, through my spine, and then to the tip of my toes and wings. I feel like I'm floating, looking at us from above.

"I'm trying."

The voice in my mind sounds like Ava, but her eyes are closed.

"Oxygen saturation levels are improving," says the wall.

Ava's eyes flutter open. She reaches for the mask, the voice behind her mask squeaking.

I trap her hand in mine, pulling it away from the mask. "Leave that alone. It's there to help you."

The computer speaks to her in her strange tongue. Maybe Ava doesn't understand because she kicks out. I tighten my arms around her, but she keeps fighting, so I drape my wings over her. At first, she is still, but then she plunges her fingers into my feathers, running her fingers against the bristles, petting me, and...

Oh, my stars. Under other circumstances, I would stop her wandering fingers, but her playing with my feathers seems to calm her and it gets her to do what she needs to right now, sucking in oxygen from the life-giving machine. It's hard for me because every moment she plays with my feathers, it sends shivers down my spine and my entire body, including my now twitching cock.