by Eva Priest
Tal was a great worker, too. When we had arrived at the medical bay, he immediately switched to work mode. He’d taken quick direction from the crew, and had been especially gentle when Raina, still unconscious, had needed to be moved into a healing pod. I’d left him to talk to Coop about his wife’s condition and in general, lift Coop’s spirits the way he had lifted mine.
Tal’s future mate wouldn’t stand a chance against him. He’d be unstoppably loving.
My stomach had felt a little off, ever since I’d awakened and Cade had rescued me. I’d assumed it was a stress reaction, but it hadn’t gone a way. The ache felt a little sharper, growing more pronounced. The radiating back pain starting in the small of my back concerned me, too. I didn’t want to waste the doctor’s time, but since I was here and all…
A melodic voice called out to me as my gaze searched the med bay. “You want to ask me something don’t you?”
The familiar face of the ship’s medic lit up when I saw her. She seemed so young, almost like a teenager, but I’d heard that she had served with Silar Praxis in a war that had ended before I was even born. She reminded me of a fireball with her yellow-orange skin, golden eyes, and flaming red hair. Intricate swirls of gold bordered her hair line. Aside from her coloration, she seemed like she could have been a fresh-faced college student on Earth.
She was at what I considered the sanitation station. Waves of blue light pulsed around her for two seconds and the computer deemed she was clean. When I reached her, I decided to stand in it as well. Why not?
After exchanging pleasantries, I let her know what was on my mind. “I didn’t want to be a bother, especially compared to the needs of your other patients. But I was wondering if you had anything to treat headaches or body aches? I think I might have overtaxed myself.”
Zanna’s demeanor immediately shifted to being the concerned medic. “We have suppressors. Come on.”
I shot a glance at Tal who was nodding along at Coop’s story. He seemed engrossed, but met my gaze and gave a short nod before turning back to the engineering officer.
Zann giggled. “Here’s a tip. Always assume a Rodinian can hear you, smell you, see you.”
“You better believe it,” Tal said across the room.
I smiled despite myself. “Well, there goes my idea of privacy.”
With a conspiratorial wink, Zann motioned to me to get behind a curtain. It was a flimsy little covering that went around a small bed and side table. It gave the illusion of privacy so I felt less self-conscious at least. “So how’s your captain doing?” I asked.
“Just knocked out, nothing more. He should be waking up any time. He’ll have a shiny knock on his head, and a dented ego, but nothing he hasn’t endured before.” She indicated for me to sit on the bed, and I obliged her. When I was going to ask more, she put her finger to her lips, the universal sign to be quiet. She flipped a switch on a medical instrument by the bed.
“There,” she said. “Now you can speak freely without Striped and Sexy hearing you.”
I didn’t know what threw me off more: the fact that she was a mischievous imp underneath her innocent, matter-of-fact facade, or that she found Talus sexy. I said as much, and she giggled in response.
“I prefer females, but I’ve always been curious about the Legion. Rodinians in particular. Is it true what they say about their tongues?”
Even though it was just a dream, the time shared with Cade seared my soul. It was more real to me than my in-person encounters. I remembered every detail that was for damn sure. My face burned with the memories; my skin was probably a flaming red as Zann’s hair.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “We’ll get back to that. So what do you need?” Just like that, Zann went from gal pal to medic. She sprayed a sealant around her hands that made it look like she wore extremely thin gloves.
“I didn’t want to make a big deal out of nothing, but I felt kind of…off. Given the circumstances, I just thought it was part of the whole ‘abduction and experimentation’ handbook. Anyway, I didn’t know if it was possible to see if there was anything wrong with me?”
Before I had even finished posing my request, Zann had been on the move, sliding open drawers, taking instruments from their charging stations, and placing them all in a neat line. “Don’t downplay any of your aches. You did the right thing coming here. Aside from superficial reasons, it would make sense to see if there were other side effects from your confinement.”
“Thank you for understanding,” I said. “And for validating my concerns.”
“Of course. As soon as I was able to, I stepped into an analyzer just to make sure those creeps didn’t leave any lasting damage.” She held a scanner, which looked to me like a mobile phone, and waved it in front of my face. “This scan will get a general impression of your overall health. I won’t suggest a full body scan unless I see an anomaly. There won’t be hiding that procedure from the Rodinians.” She passed the scanner over the general shape of my body. “I’m assuming your newfound mate doesn’t know you are feeling discomfort?”
“No, and I don’t really want him to know. He’s anxious enough to have me out of his sight. Hence the babysitter.” I nodded toward Talus’s general direction as if I could be talking about someone else. “Anyway, I didn’t really start to notice anything wrong until now. Even so, it’s only a small ache, but I’d rather know what’s bothering me and fix it.”
“And preferably without a fuzzball smothering you with his good intentions?”
I cringed a little. Agreeing with her felt disloyal. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful, it’s just that this is all so surreal. Yesterday, I woke up on Earth, pissed off at my expedition team, and wondered if I could file a complaint with the university about my studies. Fast forward to now, I’d been taken off world, experimented on, attacked numerous times, discovered I’m a fated mate. It’s just all so…fast.”
Zann stopped her scans. “You know, if you don’t want to go with the Reapers, you can tell me. I know the captain is a bit out of sorts at the moment, but he will make sure they won’t find you, Rodinian or not.”
The thought of being separated from Cade left me cold inside. “No, I don’t want that.” I said it so fast, I surprised myself. “I mean, despite all of that, I feel a connection with Cade that’s beyond reason. It’s like it’s not quite real. I don’t know, I must sound so flaky and weird.” I buried my face in my hands.
Zann clicked off her scanner. “Not weird. That actually makes sense, what with the bonding and all.”
“Bonding?”
“Yeah, the unity bonding, or whatever they call it between mates. The Themysians—where Raina is from—calls it hand-fasting. But whatever you call it, the results are the same. The two are bonded together forever, down to life force energy. It’s the same with omegas and their alphas. Let’s see what your chart says.” Zann picked up a tablet on the side table and flipped it on.
I was still trying to catch up with all the terminology. “What do you mean by an omega? I’m a human. We don’t have omegas.”
“Maybe not that you know of,” she said as she flipped through the information in front of her. “But the potential for being one was likely in your genes just waiting to be awakened.” She hugged the tablet to her body. “Had you met the Reaper before he rescued you?”
I shook my head. Then I thought of it. “Not in person, but technically I did meet him before. In my dream.” I couldn’t help but flush again.
“Ah, the very sexy shared dream, I take it.”
I nodded.
“That’s your answer. Cade’s presence activated that dormant trait inside of you. Here, put these on.” She picked up a pair of fancy looking rimless glasses. “Make sure to keep your eyes open. In about four seconds, you’ll get a direct download of basic alpha and omega morphology to your learning centers. These texts are more scientific in nature, versus cultural.”
“Scientific is good. I prefer to deal with cold hard facts,
anyway.” In four seconds, I felt like I caught a glimpse of the sun at midday. My head felt like it would burst open with knowledge.
I took off the glasses, still sifting through what I’d absorbed. It was like a million voices whispered inside my head, each one trying to find space in my brain.
Zann waved her scanner over my head, and the intense pressure disappeared again. “You’re so good. Thank you,” I said. The information was finally settling in, and though it felt as if my head was wrapped in gauze, it was better than sharp, stabbing pain.
“I hoped that would work out for you. I’m not an expert, and the Legion is a very secretive group of aliens, and are very protective of their mates. The Eridani usually choose omegas, but that’s the extent of my knowledge.” She took out another tablet. “I haven’t had a chance to read about them, but here are some compiled histories and firsthand accounts that I was able to scrounge up on known databases. Anything written would be biased, of course. I caution that you don’t believe everything in here, or at least read with an open mind. I would probably ask your mate about the rest, before you read these histories. As someone who has fought a losing side of a war, I know that there is often a difference between official reports and how things truly are.”
I took the tablet from her. “On Earth, we say that history is written by the victors.”
She dipped her head. “Then you understand that there can be bias. On either side.”
“I feel like there’s a lot you’re not telling me, but want to.”
“See, I knew you were a smarty when I saw you. Knowing what I know, I’m supposed to hate the Legion. They are the ones that are supposed to be invading our territory, cutting off supply chains, and crippling production of needed resources. They are the enemy. But you know what I see?”
I shook my head.
“I see a Reaper unit who saved my life and the lives of my captain and crew.”
“Silar basically said the same to Cade. He’s very protective of his crew. Is that why you’re helping me? A stranger?”
Zann leaned back, arms crossed over her torso. “Yeah and more. It sucks that we were attacked, but you’re from a world that doesn’t even believe that there is life off Earth. You’ve been sheltered and protected from this probability. And, I kind of want to see if I could borrow you so I might know what they were doing with Raina. Of all of us, they seemed the most interested in her. And then it seemed they found success in you, if Raymy’s story is true.” She handed me the tablet. “A stranger who has no business being mixed up with this mess. Earth is supposed to be off limits, which I know sounds hypocritical because we purposefully went there for some choice contraband. But trust me when I say, the only thing we were taken were plants, nothing more.”
My heart warmed. There were good people out in the universe. Not just Cade and his unit, but this crew as well. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with him. It’s more that I’m trying to process, well, everything.”
“Abducted from your home planet, tortured by the Kridrin, and being mated to a growly furball. What’s there to process?”
I laughed hard. It felt good to have someone else be a sounding board. “Well, if you put it that way, I feel proud that I’m not tearing my hair out and crying for home. Come to think of it, is it weird that I don’t miss home?”
“No. That seems to be the case with fate-mates. They’re your home. Speaking of which, all of your discomfort will dissipate, but the pain suppression is not permanent. You will need to make a decision about what you want to do before too long, because your changing biology won’t stop until it’s satisfied.”
“Satisfied?” I asked.
Zann looked at my meaningfully. “From what I can see, you’re perfectly healthy, all things considered. The discomfort you’re feeling? You’re going into heat.”
With the information that was newly downloaded into my head, I realized what “heat” meant. “Uhm, like heat-heat? As in what animals go through?”
Zann cocked her head, as if trying to process my words better. “As in what omegas go through to signal they are fertile.”
Images were creating context for me in my head. Heats could last days. A week, even. An omega would be in such need that she—or he, since there were male omegas, too—would forego basic needs like hunger and thirst in favor of a sex marathon with her chosen alpha. Sometimes, she had more than one.
I shuddered at the thought. Cade was more than enough for me to handle, and that was just in a shared dream. Two or more of him? In real life? I wouldn’t be able to walk for days after.
Zann had been pulling out more equipment, and loading pellets into a device that looked like a mini-flashlight. “From your reaction, I assume you don’t want to experience that. So. I’ll offer you this suppressant. It’ll go directly into your neural centers, and control your hormones for a time. I will warn you, though. Using this now will make the heat come on even stronger later. I need to know that you understand your choice.”
I looked at the tool in her hand. I hated taking drugs of any kind. It felt like a weakness to me, despite how much help and relief they bring to others.
But, I wanted to be able to choose Cade, choose my fate, rather than feel like I was a hunted prey reacting out of fear. I pointed to the suppressant she held. “This gizmo would buy me time?”
Zann nodded.
“Delay the heat now, but the next time it comes, it’ll be way worse?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then do it. I’d rather have a clear mind now.”
She didn’t waste time. Zann gave me the shot right on my shoulder. After a minute, the dull aches and radiating pain subsided. My low-grade headache finally calmed. It was like I had placed bubble wrap around my entire body. I was conscious that pain was lying underneath the surface, but I couldn’t feel it.
“Oh my goodness, it’s gone. The headache and throbbing and whatever else are all gone. Well, maybe not one hundred percent but much better than before.” I hopped onto my feet as if to prove my words.
Zann giggled. “No sense forgoing pain relief. There’s no honor in feeling pain when you don’t need to. If you’re around warrior types long enough, you start to think that every hangnail is like a badge of glory.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I was surprised that Cade would let me walk. He seemed perfectly content to carry me everywhere. I had to ask him to put me down.”
“They do have a lot of stamina, don’t they? Which reminds me.” Zann took the tablet and tapped in a few words before handing it back to me. “Whenever you do decide to bond with your Reaper, you have got to tell me about this knotting.”
It was at that moment that Talus walked in on us, laughing so hard we had trouble breathing.
12 CADE
“Secure channel.”
I ordered the comm and waited for my request to be answered by Commander Batair. I already debriefed with my Reaper unit and Legion command. All the official records have been reported, filed, and witnessed.
This part of the operation, however, had been deemed cloaked, and communications were to go directly to Aros Batair, one of the twelve consuls that led the Legion’s vast armada. The youngest, he was also the most ambitious.
The Eridani alpha appeared onscreen. He was one of the largest fuckers I’d seen in real life. “Report, Reaper Lonza. Have you acquired your target?”
“Yes.”
“And he has yet to be presented before Legion command, why?”
His tone made the hackles at the back of my neck rise. It was the natural reaction to being in the presence of these alphas. “There was an interruption.”
His facial features hardened ever so slightly, the planes of his face growing sharper, more pronounced. “What kind of interruption would excuse a dereliction of duties, Reaper Lonza?”
“My fate-mate.”
The silence that followed showed how big of a surprise the news actually was. “In the Savage Lands? Where in that sector would there have
been a habitable world?”
“On Terra Prime. Earth.”
The alpha seemed to process the word, his eyes growing distant and unfocused. “The Tuatha’s old territory?”
“Among others, yes.”
“Is she or he—?”
“—She,” I supplied.
Batair nodded. “I assume she is an omega?”
I didn’t like this line of questioning. “Yes.” There might have been an extra bite in my answer.
Commander Batair raised an eyebrow.“Is she with you now?”
“Yes.”
“I would meet her. Kindly send for her.”
The change in his demeanor was startling. These Eridani could be as surprising as a Rodinian.
I found Solana waiting in the lounge just outside of the comm. She looked cozy; I hated to disrupt her seat. Her feet were tucked beneath her, reading something on her borrowed tablet that made pink spots bloom on her cheeks. I wondered what she was reading. It was so engrossing, she didn’t respond to my presence until I laid a hand on her shoulder.
Her eyes had a distant quality to them, her pupils large and dark. Arousal and curiosity surrounded her in a heady perfume. No wonder my team were positioned respectfully away from her, guarding the door as if there was a direct threat just beyond this room.
What in the world was she reading? And better yet: Would I be able to read it with her tonight?
“My mate. The consul asked to speak to you. He is curious about Earth.” I quickly added the last part when Solana’s eyes grew wide. Her fear constricted my heart. I didn’t like her afraid. If she didn’t want to speak to him, then he could fuck himself.
I made sure to say it just like that, too, so she would know she had a choice.
Solana growled like an angry kit as she rose to her feet. “I’m a grown adult. I can handle a virtual meeting.” She took a deep breath and brushed the imaginary wrinkles away from her borrowed suit before hiding her face behind her hands. “Oh God, what if I say something stupid?”