Born of Blood
Hadrian came awake to a massive headache. At first, he thought he was at home, until he heard the hum of his engines and remembered what had happened.
He sat up fast and banged his head against the fighter’s canopy. Cursing, he realized too late that he’d crawled into the backseat where it was much lower.
“You okay?”
“Not really.” He was pretty sure he’d just given himself a concussion. “Where are we?”
“No idea.”
Hadrian yawned at Jayne’s overly calm words. “What?”
“I said I could fly it. Never said I could navigate an alphabet you didn’t forewarn me about, punk’n.”
Oh. That had been done intentionally to keep others from stealing is ship. And to prevent her from taking him in to the League. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Guess I should have switched it over.”
“That would have been nice.”
“How long was I out?”
“Long enough that I need a bathroom. And I’m really hoping this red light isn’t your fuel gauge.”
That made his heart stop as he scrambled to see past her seat.
Jayne enjoyed the panic on Hadrian’s face as he quickly went over their settings. She knew it wasn’t the fuel, but it was nice to get a little payback on him for the discomfort she felt.
He let out a sigh of relief. “It’s the dampeners.”
“What I figured. Just messing with you.”
Growling at her, he flipped a switch near her hand that turned her instruments into Universal. “There’s a planet an hour away with an outpost. Can you make it that far?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not unless you want me to jettison you.”
She gave him an arch stare. “Be kind of hard since you’d go with me.”
He snorted. “You seriously overestimate my survival instincts when up against my aversion to bodily fluids.”
Jayne laughed at his unexpected retort. “You’re seriously not right, are you?”
“No. I’m not. I’m completely fucked in the head. I have a death warrant I don’t deserve. An overprotective brother who is insane on his best day. A woman I don’t know about to piss in the only thing I own, and everything else I can claim fits into a backpack I have to carry with me everywhere I go because I never know when I have to hit the ground running. In what world would any of that make someone normal?”
He was right. And she couldn’t blame him.
She smiled sadly. “Sorry.”
“No worries. Could be worse.”
“Yeah. We could both be lying on the floor of your diner.”
“Or much worse. You could have ordered Izak’s steak.”
Jayne snorted. How pathetic that that was what it really came down to. A good day was one where she didn’t bleed. A better one was a day where she didn’t make someone else bleed more.
And the best days were when her sister came home alive and unharmed.
Sad, truly. It seemed like there should be more to life. A better reward for trying to be a good person.
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