Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

35. Father of Mine

The tent seemed unbearably small for some reason. Bo hunched over, even though she had a few inches to spare between the top of her head and the canvas roof. The walls pressed in on either side in a way they hadn't done before. She, Felicia, and Aston all piled in around the cot where her dad lay, feeling cramped and uncomfortable around each other.

Bo dropped to her knees, digging in the orange-tinged blankets for her dad's hand. She tried to ignore how cold and frail it felt, and instead leaned forward with a smile on her face.

"Dad, hey, it's me. I came back," she whispered, brushing back a lock of his white hair.

As they waited for her words to sink in, Bo surveyed the still figure laying in the cot. The blankets were tossed over him as if he had a chill, though she knew with the temperature of the air and the closeness of the tent, he couldn't possibly be anything but boiling. Sweat stood out on his ashen skin, and his eyes sank into his skull. He was so much thinner than she remembered. Fear blossomed in her chest just at the sight of him, and the fact that he hadn't yet opened his eyes made her even more restless.

Aston stepped up behind her, resting a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off, rocking forward on her haunches so that she could rest her head on the pillow next to her dad's.

"It's Bo, Dad. I came all the way back to see you. You can't just leave me hanging, right? Don't you want to see me?" She stroked his temple in the way she remembered their mother doing to her and Felicia when they had caught a cold. It brought back such old memories of Mom and Dad sitting next to each other in the darkness after a long day's wandering, that Bo felt the tears coursing down her face before she could stop them.

In her hand, her dad's fingers twitched. Bo pulled back, squeezing his hand so he knew she'd felt his attempt.

"Dad?"

He slowly blinked his eyes open, searching the blank canvas roof for a moment before lowering his gaze to find Bo's face. At first his eyes looked like nothing more than two stones in the pits of his skull, but as they gazed on her face they slowly warmed, came into focus, and regained something of humanity. His mouth broke into a wavering smile, his hand tightening in hers.

"Am I dead?" His voice was hardly above a whisper, so hoarse from disuse. Bo shook her head.

"Totally alive."

"But you... he took you. That creature has you trapped."

"He let me go, so I came back to make sure that you weren't moping around about me. You haven't been, right? Because, see? It all turned out all right. No harm done."

Tears rolled down her dad's cheeks, catching in the folds of his wrinkles and soaking the pillow. He gasped clumsily for breath. "I am so glad. Oh, my child!" He gripped her hand so tightly that her knuckles hurt, but she didn't dare pull away. She was here, with her dad, and she didn't want to move an inch until his mind was put at ease.

--

In the early morning hours, Bo finally released her sleeping father's hand and walked with Felicia to Aston's tent where he had waited up for them. He offered Bo a slice of bread and some dried jerky, which Bo snatched from his hand and devoured in huge bites.

"Gah, I'm starving," she said, kicking off her boots and flopping down on Aston's bed. It might smell like a sweaty guy, but at least it was soft.

Aston leaned an arm against a chair, staring in his silent and brooding way. Felicia, though she had been weepy and clingy for the first few hours, was now a bit more back to her usual self. Her eyebrows crunched together as she paced the small area in front of Aston's cot and Bo.

"So," Felicia said through a clenched jaw. "You going to tell us just what is going on?"

Bo rubbed her eyes and managed to shrug at the same time. "There's not much to tell." She winced as she said it. Why didn't she want to tell her own family about the Beast? She'd meant to, had been waiting all these weeks to break free of his captivity and run home to spill all the indignities of the situation to Felicia and Aston. Yet, when it came to it, she'd given them a lame answer that wasn't an answer at all. She rolled onto her side, facing away.

"Well, your dad came back from wherever it was that you found him, ranting about some alien, so I highly doubt that, Bo," Aston said.

She felt the bed shift as someone sat down on the side. Felicia's hand tapped her side, wheedling her ribs until Bo turned back over with a heavy sigh. "Fine, look. There's one last alien on Earth. He has some weird... moving mansion place that Dad stumbled on. The alien made me promise to stay there in exchange for letting Dad go, so I did. That's all there is to know."

"So how are you out now?" Felicia asked.

"Dad was sick. The alien said he'd let me visit."

"Visit?"

"I'm supposed to go back in two weeks."

Aston growled and pushed away from the chair he'd been leaning on. "No way, Bo! You're not going back to be the slave of some alien who didn't have the common sense to leave this planet when the rest of its kind ran off with their tails between their legs."

She almost retorted that the Beast had been left behind, but stopped herself just in time. Why was she defending him? She shook her head and rubbed the back of her neck.

"Look, if I don't come back when he wanted me, I don't know what he'll do," she said. "He could send his robots after us, or come here himself."

"We've got more than enough guns to fend him off. Just let him try," Aston said.

Bo cocked an eyebrow at this, since the last time she'd checked there were barely enough firearms to give to the men and women who absolutely needed them, and they certainly didn't have the ammunition required to repel an attack. Paired with the strangely fortified gate, Bo had a feeling something was going on. But before she could ask him what he meant, Felicia stretched and jerked her chin in the direction of the tent opening.

"I'm going back to check on Dad. You coming?" she asked.

Bo sat up on Aston's cot and pulled her boots back on, every muscle in her body aching. She wanted nothing more than to just tumble into bed and fall asleep for days, and if she stayed behind with Aston she knew she wouldn't get that. Here she'd feel obligated to get a report on how everything was in her absence, and she couldn't handle that right now.

"See you around, Aston," she said, pressing up from the cot and brushing past him on her way out.

She and Felicia walked back to their tent, where Bo pulled her cot closer to her dad's and then collapsed on it. She pulled her knees to her chest, staring at the way Dad's chest slowly rose and fell. If she looked away she was afraid it would stop, so she kept her eyes pinned to him until she could keep them open no longer and fell into a deep sleep.