Liana nodded. “I see.” And she did see. All too well. She wondered who sold her out and for how much. How else would they have known exactly how to get to her lab and known when she would have been completely alone, without so much as a single assistant to aide her? Keeping her movements casual, she slipped her hands into her lab coat pockets and grasped the handle of the needle gun still loaded with adrenaline—adrenaline she used to keep herself awake on days she had too many tests to run and not enough hours in the day. “So, since it doesn’t really matter if I know now, who sold me out?”
“You’re right. I don’t see that it matters now. You’ll be dead soon. Your lab assistant, Victor, has been spying for us the past three years. There are a few others, too.”
Her shoulders slumped. This was something she hadn’t expected. Of all the people she had thought willing to sell her out, Victor’s name would not have been on the list. He above all others, she thought, worked the hardest at finding a cure for the disease causing the lack of female births among their population. Perhaps she’d seen only what she wanted to see. Perhaps what she had seen was his dedication to his true cause, rather than dedication to the salvation of their people. More than likely, he was the reason her experiments were failing—still—when by all accounts she should have found a cure by now. That line of thinking needed to be put off for another time. Now she had to rescue her male and get them the hell out of here.
“I take it you’re not just going to kill me outright? Or you would have done it already?” She needed to maneuver closer to her male so she could give him the injection. He had to be awake if they were to get out of here since she couldn’t fight physically.
If she could slip the needle gun to him, or somehow inject him herself when they attempted to rape her, she could perhaps revive him enough to give them a fighting chance to escape. A big risk when they didn’t know who their enemies in the palace were.
Instead of answering, the three men moved in on Liana, herding her toward her disheveled cot, toward the direction she wanted to go. Despite that, fear still threatened to paralyze her because she knew exactly what they planned to do to her when they got her there. What if her plan failed? Sweat broke out and slid down her spine as she contemplated the fate that awaited her if she failed to awaken her mate in time to prevent her own rape and death.
Slowly they backed her up sideways until her right knee hit the side of the cot. She toppled over, falling to the bed on top of the unconscious male. Using the momentum of her fall, she turned over to the left and quickly jabbed the tiny palm-sized needle gun into his arm, then quickly slipped it into his pants pocket while pretending to scramble off him. The entire injection and subsequent action took mere seconds. She could only pray that she’d done enough to save them.
She felt his body grow rigid beneath her and knew that he’d become aware of the situation. By the time they pried her off his body, she knew he had regained consciousness. She’d do nothing to give him away, no matter what it might cost her.
Chapter Two
Ryan Morgan became aware of several things at once. The first being his body hurt like a son of a bitch. The second, he had a raging hard on and the woman that landed on him had the most luscious scent he’d ever had the pleasure to smell. And third, despite the fact that every bone in his body hurt and that he wanted to have sex in the worst way, every instinct he had insisted that he was in dire trouble.
Keeping still, he feigned unconsciousness and let his senses tell him what he needed to know. It took only seconds to discover everything. There were four others in the room with him. Three men and the woman he’d scented earlier. One smelled of fear, the woman. The men were foul, as though they hadn’t bathed in weeks, and unfortunately, it was all too reminiscent of the years he’d spent as a prisoner of the Black Rose. He easily figured out what was going on. Now he had to come up with a plan…quickly.
Somehow, the Black Rose had captured him and the woman, or the men were in the process of trying to abduct them. Either way, he had to do something to get them out of this mess. He needed to wait until they were distracted and make his move if he were to get them out of there…hopefully in one piece. But time wasn’t on their side, not according to the struggle he could hear going on around him. The sickening smell of the men’s perverse arousal and eager malevolence even now had Ryan’s beast demanding freedom. No, they were definitely short of time.
When one of the men shoved him off the cot and on to the floor, he knew that would be the only opportunity he’d have to take the men unawares. He only hoped he could shift before too much damage happened to the female. Now that his senses were more aware, he could smell their strange weapons. If he could disarm at least one, they could perhaps fight their way out—maybe. Only time would tell. Half-hidden beneath the cot, Ryan palmed the injector the female had placed in his pants, before silently kicking off his shoes.
Above him, the bed squeaked and the men grunted, covering the sounds as he quickly out of his pants. When the woman’s pained cry ripped through the room, time abruptly ran out and Ryan allowed his beast free, embracing the change. He could do nothing about the shimmering light that heralded his change. He only hoped the men were too distracted to pay attention to the telltale flash. In mere seconds, a full-grown, enraged, Lionese male launched itself at the males attacking his mate, not giving them even a moment to fight back. It took but a second to rip out the throat of the man that had knocked the lady doctor to the cot, and still, a rage the likes of which Ryan had never felt before filled the Lionese male.
Ryan’s surprise assault on the men gave Liana a moment to get away. She scrambled off the bed and away from her three attackers, quickly crawling away from the tumbling mass of fighting bodies.
For just an instant, Ryan wondered why she didn’t just shift, but his mind quickly turned back to the fight. One of the men had managed to get to his feet and was approaching the woman, a strange weapon in his hand, his intent to kill her obvious. That he couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow.
Something inside Ryan snapped. With a roar of rage, he launched himself across the distance between himself and the man. In one lunge, Ryan tore the man’s back open from shoulder to ass with his claws, leaving mortal furrows down the entire length of the man’s spine. Turning, he roared a challenge to the one remaining Chantrean who was injured but still alive, halting the male in its tracks. He had no desire to let this male live either, but first they needed answers. They needed to know who had let him into the palace grounds. Who had turned Ryan and the woman scientist over to the traitors? Once he learned that, he’d have no trouble dispatching the male to the hell he deserved. No trouble at all.
Sensing the female’s terror, Ryan couldn’t remain in his Lionese form—not if he wanted to calm her fears. And for some reason, calming the little female had become just as necessary to him as discovering who had set them up. Keeping a wary eye on the Chantrean traitor, who even now looked to have at least a broken leg and two broken arms, Ryan headed toward the cot where he’d left his pants before he shifted into his Lionese form. Once there, he took a deep breath, centered himself, then reached for his human self, letting the magic simmer and pulse through him. Pleasure and heat whipped through his body, bathing his every nerve ending in a blanket of tingling electricity as the change took him from Lionese to human.
Never taking his gaze off the traitor, he reached for his pants and slid them on, then reached over for one of the weapons he’d knocked out of the men’s hands during his initial attack. Turning the weapon over in his hands, he examined the remarkable little gun. He had never seen anything like it. No wonder it hadn’t set off their weapons detectors in the palace. The material alone was like nothing he’d ever seen before, almost gel like in substance but firm to the touch. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what type of bullet it fired, but he couldn’t wait to find out. He imagined his King and their people would be very interested in finding out for themselves.
Pointing the w
eapon at the traitor, Ryan eased over toward the woman, needing to be close to her, instinctively understanding the reason behind his actions. His people dreamed of finding their one, their other half. After the atrocities he’d committed, he’d never dared dreamed of finding his, never dared hoped. Now that he had, he found it difficult to put space between them, even though he had yet to even learn her name. When he’d positioned himself in front of his mate to better to protect her, Ryan began his interrogation of the traitor. “What’s your name?”
The foul smelling Chantrean sneered, then spit on the floor at Ryan’s feet.
A savage growl ripped up and out of Ryan’s throat in response to the traitor’s disrespect. “What were you planning on doing with us? What were your orders?”
The traitor laughed cruelly. “To drug you, of course. Then use you to kill the Chantrean’s lead scientist. She was getting too close for comfort to finding a cure, and you were doing too much damage to the Black Rose’s profit margin. Her spies would have stumbled upon you after the bitch’s death and you wouldn’t have lived through the night.” The bastard shrugged, his attitude surly but carefree, as though he weren’t about to die at Ryan’s hands. “You should have left well enough alone once you escaped. You brought this on yourself. Even if you kill me, others will come after you. You and the bitch will never be safe…if you make it out of the palace alive, something I doubt you can pull off, not with that one’s weaknesses,” he sneered, his chin jutting at the trembling scientist.
Knowing he wouldn’t get any more answers from the traitor, Ryan lunged forward and quickly snapped the man’s neck. Behind him, the woman cried out and collapsed to her knees, her arms wrapped around her torso as though holding herself together. Ryan could feel her pain wafting off her, but a quick scan of her body showed no obvious injury. “Where are you hurt?”
When she only shook her head and continued to whimper, Ryan knelt down in front of her, unsure what to do for her, but desperate to comfort her somehow. Gently, he ran a hand down her long brown hair, trying to comfort her in the best way he could. “What’s your name?” Seconds passed. He didn’t think she’d answer but eventually she spoke, her voice breaking twice as she forced her name out through clenched teeth.
“Liana Peterson.”
“Well, Liana, I’m Ryan Morgan and we need to get out of here as soon as possible, but if you’re hurt I can carry you.”
Liana shook her head. “I’m an Empath. I feel whatever anyone nearby me feels. Pain, anger, joy, hatred… If you touch me now,” she shook her head, not bothering to finish her sentence.
He understood all too well. “That’s why you were trembling and holding yourself just a moment ago? You were feeling the attack, the fight, as well as our emotions?”
She nodded, struggling back to her feet. She kept her hands fisted at her sides, the knuckles white with tension. Her entire body seemed to be swaying as she tried to stand straight, but she was unable to manage it with the continual assault on her emotional senses. “Yes. On top of that, if I try to fight or attack another it, comes back tenfold on me. I cannot harm another without harming myself. Unfortunately, it makes me the Omega because I can’t defend myself, no matter what I might want to do. I’m going to be a liability if you take me with you. You’re better off leaving me here. Get away while you can.”
“I can’t leave you here. You know why I can’t leave you here, Liana.” No way would his beast allow him to leave his mate behind, especially knowing that she would be defenseless without him. How had she been able to survive all these years? What must she have endured while she waited for a mate—for him?
He shuddered, just thinking about all the torment she probably suffered at the hands of others. No. She would no longer standalone. She’d have someone to fight her battles for her, a champion to stand by her side and defend her. He just hoped that as an Empath, she could help him heal from his own trauma at the hands of the Black Rose without suffering right alongside him when the nightmares seemed all too real.
Liana nodded. “I know, but I had to try. I don’t want you hurt because of me.”
Ryan looked around the lab, knowing their time was quickly running out. “Is there anything you need to bring with you from here? Anything you have to have to continue your research while we’re on the run?”
Liana’s eyes widened. Obviously, she hadn’t thought about her research. But if the Black Rose was desperate to stop it now, before she could finish the tests she was currently running, then there must be a damned good reason. That meant she had all the more motivation to keep working on it. “I need that box,” she said pointing toward the box of slides on the lab table. “My research notes which are in an encrypted file on my personal compu-pad, and we need a ship with a fully functional medical unit or lab.”
“If we can get through the palace undetected by the palace spies, a ship won’t be a problem. Gather what you need. We’ll leave here in two minutes. Are there any clean uniforms in here? As it stands, what I’m wearing definitely doesn’t blend in with everyone else—not with all the blood it anyway.”
While gathering the materials needed to complete her research, Liana pointed toward the wall of cabinets to her right. “Over there. There should be several uniforms in a variety of sizes. One of them should fit you. There’s even an ion shower in the bathroom if you want to clean up, if you think there’s time.”
Ryan thought it over, but they were pushing things it as it was. Staying even five minutes longer so he could shower would put them in more danger than he could justify. Changing clothes would have to be enough for now. While his mate finished packing up, he headed over to the appropriate cabinet, searched through the shelves and found a uniform that would fit him.
It took only a minute to switch out his torn and dirty uniform for a clean one. When he turned around, Liana was ready to go, her research stored in a backpack sitting at her feet. Her gaze settled somewhere to the left of his shoulder and her cheeks were bright pink. If their situation weren’t so dire, he’d laugh at his mate’s apparent embarrassment. She must have peeked while he’d stripped or she wouldn’t be looking as though she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have—not that looking at your mate’s body without permission was wrong. He had major plans of his own once he and Liana were alone and safe—or as safe as he could make them anyway.
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
Shouldering the backpack, Ryan reached for his mate’s hand and pulled her toward the door. After making sure the hallway was clear, they eased out, all of his senses alert for danger. He’d take no chances with his mate’s life—not now that he’d finally found her, not when they were surrounded by possible enemies. Until they knew whom they could trust, they could trust no one. With a weapon in one hand and his mate’s hand in the other, Ryan left the lab. They were all too aware that they were a long way from the landing pad and safety.
Chapter Three
With her hand firmly clasped in Ryan’s, Liana concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other so she wouldn’t slow them down. All the while, she tried to shield her exhausted mind from the hundreds of minds battering against hers, screaming at her, their emotions seeking a way in, Ryan’s most of all. It took all her strength to keep Ryan from knowing how sick and weak she’d become, what the emotions of the others in the palace were doing to her even though they weren’t nearby. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to hide the signs of trouble from her mate no matter how desperately she might want to.
She didn’t know how much longer she could go on before she’d collapse from the strain. Once again she swallowed bile, sweat beaded up on her skin. Her stomach twisted and cramped. She would not get sick. She would keep going, keep moving. Keep vertical until they reached the ship. She just had to keep telling herself that. Once they were off the planet and safe, well, then she could collapse. Then it would be safe to let the emotions have her, but not until then. Not. Until. Then.
Biting her bottom li
p to keep from whimpering, Liana trudged forward down the long, seemingly endless hallway. Her knees trembled, making it more difficult to support her weight. Soon she wouldn’t even be able to stand, never mind walk. What had she come close to discovering that the Black Rose desperately wanted kept quiet? What was so critical that she’d tried to have Liana and Ryan kidnapped in the middle of the afternoon right from the Chantrean palace? Whatever it was was so crucial that the Black Rose needed to keep it hidden, so vital that she would try to use Liana’s Empathic abilities against her by overwhelming her with the pain of an attack—a brutal and vicious gang rape—to wipe out her mind completely. She had no idea what it was, and she couldn’t wait to find out. But first, she had to find some way to survive getting off this planet, before she ended up getting them both killed.
When her vision blurred and her knees buckled, Liana knew that she’d have to take her stand here. There was one person she knew she could trust to help her mate get out of the palace safely, Ryan’s sister, Amy Shi’Lan, the next High Queen of Chantrea and Liana’s only true and trusted friend. Using the last of her Empathic energy, she reached out to the next High Queen.
Staggering, Liana dropped to her knees as she connected mentally to Ryan’s sister. She needed to get help to them fast. Even if she had to sacrifice herself, she’d do it. Ryan had to survive. Her research had to survive. It could already be too late for her. Her mind had grown more and more sluggish just in the last few seconds, still she had to keep her mind focused long enough to connect with Amy. She had no other choice if Ryan were to survive. When she felt positive she’d done what she could, she allowed the darkness to overtake her, collapsing onto the cold marble floors. She didn’t even have the energy to keep up a mental wall between her mind and Ryan’s any longer, allowing him to feel every excruciating moment of her imminent death—something her every protective instinct toward her mate protested.
Worlds Apart 4: Ryan's Hope Page 2