Page 60 of Xel: Broken Bond

I leapt up and shoved my feet into boots, sprinting the couple of hundred metres to the reception building, with Xel on my heels. I bolted through the back door and down the hall, then I skidded around the corner, finding Bo sitting on the floor with Bribie’s head in her lap. The front door was already locked and her bag was on the counter – it looked like she’d been packing up to go home.

She looked up at me with watery eyes. “He seemed fine. He’s been sitting on his bed all afternoon, like he usually does. He got up and had a drink of water at about three o’clock. Then I asked him to stand up so I could take him back to the cottage, and he just… lay down. And started breathing really weird.”

I knelt down beside Bribie, putting my hand lightly on his chest. Sure enough, his breathing was laboured, a rasping sound coming from his throat.

“I called the vet,” Bo went on, tears streaming freely from her face now. “He said he’ll come if we really want him to, but it’s probably his heart giving out. I told him not to come,” she admitted, on a choked sob. “He’s old, Cole. He’s so old, and he’s… Maybe we should just let him go?”

There were already tears gathering in my eyes, and my throat felt tight. I didn’t want him to go, but I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, as the tears spilled over. “Yeah, let’s just let him rest now.”

I sat down properly on the floor, legs crossed, and took Bribie’s paw in my hand. Bo was stroking his ears, and he wagged his tail a couple of times. But the rest of his energy was focused on trying to breathe, and I had the stray thought that I hoped he wasn’t in too much pain. Dying couldn’t be acomfortableexperience, but he was somewhere warm, with people who loved him, in the only home he’d known since his owner had died.

As my tears dripped all over my pants, I looked up to see Xel still standing by the door, seeming a little lost. “Come and sit with him,” I said. “He liked you. He liked sleeping on your bed.”

Xel came and sat down beside Bo, near Bribie’s head. He stroked him under his chin, and along the side of his face. And we all sat like that as the minutes slowly ticked by. Bribie didn’t move much, aside from his efforts to breathe, but at one point, his tongue came out to lick Xel’s hand and his tail gamely tried to wag again.

And then shortly after that, his mouth fell open and he made a gasping sound. It wouldn’t be long now. “You’re a good boy,” I told him, giving his paw a squeeze. “You’ve been such a good boy. But you’re going to go home and see your master now. You miss him, don’t you? It’s okay, boy. You can rest now.”

Bribie gave another two gasps, and I waited for a third… but it never came. His eyes went dull and his paw went limp in my hand.

Bo burst into noisy sobs and she leaned across Bribie’s body to cling onto me in a clumsy hug. I just held her, crying into her shirt while she sobbed into mine.

By the time I managed to pull myself together, the light was beginning to fade outside.

“We should put him in the fridge overnight,” I said, a purely pragmatic move. We had a cold storage facility for any of the animals who died on the property, before they were sent away to be disposed of. “We’ll find a nice spot in the garden to bury him tomorrow. It’ll be too dark to dig a hole tonight.”

Bo made an effort to pull herself together. “Yeah, good idea,” she said, into a handful of tissues. “Do you need me to help you…?”

“No, I can carry him,” I said, forcing myself to stand up. I gathered Bribie into my arms – he was a big animal, but quite skinny, given how old he was.

“Which way?” Xel asked, jumping to his feet, ever eager to be helpful. “I can open the doors for you.”

“Thank you. This way, out the back and to the left,” I directed him, following him down the hall into the rear of the building. We got Bribie safely stowed on one of the wide shelves. I couldn’t help giving his head one final pat before I shut the door.

Back in the reception room, Bo was trying to make herself look presentable – a challenge when new tears kept sneaking out to ruin her efforts.

“I’ll come back in the morning,” she said, dabbing at her eyes again. “Don’t bury him until I get here.”

“Of course,” I agreed. I reached out to hug her again, and she clutched me tightly for a long moment. “Drive safely.”

“See you tomorrow,” she said, then turned to hug Xel as well. “You look after Cole tonight, okay?” she said sternly to my dimari. “He’s going to be a bit of a mess.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Xel promised her seriously. “I’ll do my best.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

XEL

An hour later, I was sitting on the sofa in the living room, with my master slouched against my shoulder and Mr Beans curled up in his lap. I’d explained to Vonnie what had happened and asked her to tell the Ranzors. It would be better for my master if they didn’t try to bother him this evening.

I’d thrown some sandwiches together for dinner, not wanting to take the time to prepare anything more complicated, but my master had said he wasn’t hungry. And so I’d eaten mine quickly, standing over the sink, and left his in the fridge, in case he changed his mind later.

I heard the front door open, then close again softly. Vonnie peered through the living room door, and I craned my neck to look at her.

“The Ranzors have packed up for the evening and settled down inside their ship,” she reported. “They said they’ll be up early in the morning to keep working. And I have Borl’s details on my comm.” She tapped a few buttons and then both mineand my master’s comms beeped. “He said to contact him straight away if you have any worries at all about security, but they’re also going to have someone on shift all night patrolling the property.”

“Thank you,” I said, assuming that my master wasn’t going to answer her. “There’s a sandwich in the fridge, if you’re hungry. It’s nothing fancy, but…”

“No, that’s fine. That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you.” Vonnie retreated into the kitchen, and I heard the fridge open, then close.