The Bonding
Page 26
“AY-SHOCKS. I didn’t know who else to call—I need your help.”
The line went dead. It was a waste of time, but he tried anyway. “Feola?” Nothing. “Feola.”
He dropped his comm to the glossy black surface of his desk. He hadn’t seen her face or heard her say his name in four-and-a-half months. A single spoken word, and his heart went arrhythmic and skipped about five beats.
Ay-shocks. Nobody else said his name like that. Like a song, a perfect melody that sucked him right back to the day she’d first opened her eyes.
He inhaled sharply against the memory of her slim body draped in the white sheets of his healing bay, the soft rise of her breasts with every breath, the delicate scent that filled the air around her. After they’d brought her aboard Sierra-Six, she’d slept for five days. She’d slept through the warming of the cryo pod in which they’d found her, slept as they bathed her body, slept as every machine at his disposal had monitored her vitals, tracked her health.
And after five days of waiting, there had finally been a change in her sleep cycles. He waited, curious to see her eyes, hoping to reassure an alien woman as she awoke after five hundred years aboard a foreign space station.
A soft murmur had sounded from the back of her throat, and she’d tossed her head, sending a lock of pink-orange hair across her forehead. When he’d brushed it back, she’d turned her cheek into his palm and smiled in her sleep.
Those lids had snapped open, revealing the most arresting set of eyes he’d ever seen. Yellow as the Argenti sun in the center of the irises and emerald at the edges, with thick black lashes. She’d slept for half a millennium in cryo-freeze, opened her eyes, and looked at him.
That’s all it had taken. She’d owned him after that one look. Body and soul.
She’d squealed and lurched upright, clutching the sheets.
It had taken a few minutes for her to calm down. He’d spoken to her softly, knowing she couldn’t understand. “Ajax,” he’d said, pointing at his chest. “My name is Ajax.”
After a long moment, speaking in a voice as soft and fluid as flowing water, she’d said his name. “Ay-shocks.”
It sounded a hell of lot better her way. Like a song.
Now, sitting at his desk, he remembered another time, the day he’d gotten approval for his request for a Bonding, when she’d chosen to Bond with another man. He dropped his head back, clamping his jaw tight.
Help. What the hell did she need?
She’d chosen Utto. She’d Bonded with Utto.
She doesn’t belong to me.
The thought burned like acid in his throat.
He traced his hands over the clear surface of his comm’s screen, tempted to return-contact the device. She’d hung up for a reason.
She’d spoken fast, a little breathy. Fear?
Was he fabricating? Finding excuses to think about her? For sure.
Thick, curling magenta hair and wide eyes. Hot, wet skin, and the sounds she’d made, breathy moans as she’d writhed on his fingers the one time he’d let himself touch her—really touch her.
For four days, he’d lived in the blind, idiotic haze of happiness, certain that she felt the same way about him, knowing she’d accept his offer of a Bonding once he’d cleared the proper channels.
Then she’d announced her impending Bond with Utto.
He couldn’t stop a wry laugh from the back of his throat. This was too perfect. Today the papers had arrived requesting he accept permanent Healing detail on Feola’s home planet. Triannon. And today of all days, Feola had called. Fate, the mysterious termagant, had thrown her back into the tangle of his thoughts.
He pulled his larger digi open and entered in the access codes for the Tribe’s medical mainframe onto the screen, narrowing in on Romeo-Two, and finally located Feola Upranimus, mate of Utto Upranimus.
He scrolled down the screen, past her medical information, glad to see she was still in good health. So it wasn’t medical help she needed.
She’d made three visits to the healers in Romeo-Two’s Healing bay. Once to request information regarding fertility, once to set a fracture of the radius, and once to acquire contraceptives.
Fertility drugs and contraceptives.
That made no sense.
Feeling like the saddest, stupidest bastard in the universe, he contacted Romeo-Two’s healers.
“Healing Bay, Romeo-Two. Captain Rashard Wells speaking.”
“Wells, this is Commander Ajax Willo from Sierra-Six. Requesting information on one of your female residents, mate of Utto Upranimus.”
The other man paused. There was no set protocol for relaying private information about a woman to a strange male. “Shall I connect you with her mate, sir?”
“Negative, Wells. I’d like to know the details of her three visits. This is a confidential request for information. From Commander of Sierra-Six Healing Bay to you. Just following up on her health after cryo.”
Wells paused again. He could refuse the order, insist on putting the Romeo-Two Medical Commander on the comm, which would cause delays and could cause trouble for Feola.
He held his breath.
Wells sighed. “What do you need?”
“She’s made three visits to Medical. I don’t have access to the healer’s notes. Was she alone when she came in?”
The line was silent for a moment; Wells had to be accessing the system’s data. “She was alone once. Her mate came in twice.”
“Which time was she alone?”
“When she asked for contraceptives.”
He didn’t want Wells to spend too long thinking about what that meant. “Are there notes about her injury?”
Another pause. “It just says she had her arm set after a fall. Fractured radius. There’s a note about extensive bruising of the other arm. Mate apparently injured her attempting to stop the fall.”
A thick weight settled on his shoulders. Primal rage coiled in the small of his back. He could actually feel his blood pressure spike.
“Is there anything else you need, sir?”
The silence stretched. He’d stopped breathing. “No, that’s all. Thank you.”
He disconnected and sat for a long moment, staring at his desk.
His fate had been sealed the first time she’d said his name like a siren’s song. Ay-shocks.
With a curse, he shook his head and tapped out a message to the admiral, accepting the new position as Chief of Healing on Triannon. The political movement would make his father happy, at any rate, since it would help him in his machinations back on Argentus.
On the way, he’d stop at Romeo-Two, the nearest colony of mated warriors and their women, Feola’s new home. He’d make sure she was fine.
No doubt she was fine, and he was insane, chasing ghosts, windmills, and the blood-red skirts she’d worn during the month she’d spent at Sierra-Six.
And no doubt he’d humiliate himself, and break his own heart again. Maybe she and Utto had decided to wait on procreating. Maybe she truly had fallen. Maybe she’d been calling for Healing help.
Don’t ask me to help you get pregnant with his baby.
She’d better have godsdamned tripped.
As soon as he confirmed that she was okay, he’d get as far away from her as he could. Maybe he’d find a mate on Triannon who could block out the image of those gorgeous, haunting, lingering eyes, and the big, beautiful, happy, flashing smile. Ay-shocks.
A thrill rippled through his bloodstream at the thought of seeing her one last time.
If Utto had hurt her, he was a dead man.
Read THE BREAKING now.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
&nbs
p; CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
EPILOGUE
Author’s Note
Sample from THE BREAKING