Page 47 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss

He reached for her, but she pushed the kit into his hand. She kept the blue booster ampule. She should be careful with that; the chemical cocktail was calibrated for big Thorkon soldiers who needed a burst of strength. Who knew what it might do to a fragile littleEarther female.

Eyes narrowing, he tried to speak, but between the dull thudding in his head and the way his ears seemed full of mud, he wasn’t surprised when she pulled back.

Everyone pulled back from him. Because he failed.

She crouched in a three-point stance, one hand braced beside the expanding pool of his blood. Ignoring his garbled protest, she slapped the booster against her neck. Inone heartbeat, her pupils shrank to dots, and she huffed out a collapsing breath that rounded her shoulders.

But then she straightened. She gave him one last searing look, pushed away from the deck, and ran.

If he made an imploring sound, he couldn’t hear it through his stunned ears. Or his own desolation.

Framed through the fractured rubble of the hauler, Blackworm’s squad broke from theirposition behind the baffle and swept across the bay. Not toward the hauler where he sprawled with the med kit falling from his slackening hand.

Like all evil raiders—as he himself had—they pursued what ran from them.

They went after his little mishkeet.

They were hunting Trixie, and with his blood seeping across the cold plasteel like a cruel reminder, there was nothing he could do to saveher.