Chapter 11
ELENA
“Well?” I prompted when Ardruc remained silent, his gaze fixed on the symbols burned into the floor.
“Why the hells are you suddenly talking to plasma like you knew it was going to respond? You said I was wasting my time and disparaging your life’s work to even suggest such a thing was possible. Or am I misremembering your words?”
Still nothing. His thunderous scowl, the way a muscle moved in his jaw, and his twitching tail indicated he was furious, but something about the way his eyes tightened also made me think his emotions were much more complicated that that.
Well, that made two of us.
My skin felt tight where the tendril had burned me and my chest ached.
While Ardruc gathered his thoughts, or whatever the hells he was doing, I stalked over to the emergency med pod and scrolled through the scans and diagnostics for information on my injuries.
Burns…assorted bruises and lacerations, probably from my fall off the ladder…
and most alarming of all, nearly fatal damage to my heart. What did that red tendril do to me?
I pressed my palm to my chest. A flare of pain made me suck in air and unwrap the blanket to see my skin between my breasts. I’d been too busy worrying about the sudden appearance of the plasma tendril and covering my nakedness to notice anything earlier.
Thanks to the medical bay equipment, the burn on my chest had healed somewhat. But in the center of the remaining redness was a red mark on my skin in the same shape as the first symbol the tendril had scorched into the floor.
I went cold all the way down to my core, and it had nothing to do with my lack of clothes or the temperature in the medical bay. What. The. Hells?
When I looked up, Ardruc was right in front of me, his gaze fixed on the mark on my chest. Despite his size, the man could move as fast as the electrical discharges he studied, and he did it silently.
“Hey.” I wrapped my blanket tightly again. “Keep your eyes to yourself.”
“My apologies for startling you.” His eyes darkened, but not from anger like usual. Instead, he appeared very concerned and even solicitous. “For the record, I only looked at the mark,” he added, his voice now so gentle that it unsettled me. “May I see it again?”
If he were almost anyone else, or this had been a different day, I might have thought he was trying to get another peep at my naked body.
But for some reason, I believed him when he said he’d focused on the strange symbol.
More to the point, I was struggling to hold back a rising wave of terror.
Maybe if we examined the mark in a scientific and clinical way—the way Ardruc looked at every damn thing—I could keep the panic at bay.
I gripped the top of my blanket and looked up to meet Ardruc’s golden gaze, hoping for the icy detachment I’d loathed for months. Instead, I saw anger, regret, and worry—the very emotions I did not want him to have.
Ardruc made a quiet rumbling sound in his chest I had never heard before, and I liked it.
“Elena,” he said softly. “Please sit.”
Trembling, I half sat, half fell onto the edge of the diagnostic bed.
The blanket slipped just enough to reveal the top part of the mark, which hadn’t disappeared or been a figment of my imagination.
Not that I’d expected it to be, but I struggled to grapple with what had happened to me on a night when I’d planned to relax by watching korae on the roof with Forux and then go to sleep in my creaky little bunk.
I’d gotten sick or been injured before a half-dozen times during field research—most recently, during my ill-fated final trip across the ice on Aloris—but never experienced this level of fear.
This wound had been made deliberately, and it was a symbol of something unknown.
I still hurt from my half-healed burns too. I took a ragged breath.
That sweet-peppery scent I’d caught in my lab days ago swirled again, filling my senses even over the lingering odor of ozone. Inexplicably, my unease and pain lessened. Ardruc hadn’t moved at all, but for some reason I thought he was the source of the scent.
“What’s that smell?” I asked, frowning at him. “It’s sweet, but with spices, like…” I tried to think of something comparable he might be familiar with. “Bacorian brandy,” I said finally. Not a good analogy, but the best I could do.
He tilted his head. “I do not smell anything but you.”
Suddenly, I was acutely aware of how close he stood, with one warm, pants-covered leg against my bare knee, and the way his beautiful wings blocked my view of most of the medical bay. The tip of his tail brushed my foot, almost like a caress.
He was very much in my personal space, but it didn’t get my hackles up. And unlike every other interaction we’d had, he didn’t look like he wished he was anywhere else but in my presence. What the hells had happened to the disdain he’d heaped on me from my first moments on Hyderia?
Well, that was a mystery for another time. I had far, far more serious concerns at the moment than Ardruc’s personality change.
I moved the blanket so we could see the mark between my breasts again. It wasn’t raised like a brand, or cut into my skin—just a red swirling symbol that might have been tattooed into my flesh.
Ardruc bent to look at the mark more closely just as I took a deep breath to try to settle my nerves.
Suddenly that sweet peppery scent was everywhere, filling my nose and lungs and seemingly seeping into my skin.
It washed over me like a wave in the ocean, or as if I were standing under a waterfall.
I had the very strange thought that if I were an arval, I might have purred, which made no sense at all.
“It’s you,” I whispered. “It’s you I smell.”
Why did he smell so good? I didn’t even like Bacorian brandy. What was happening to me? Did it have something to do with the mark? Fear and confusion made my stomach clench.
Ardruc rumbled again. But this time, the rumbling didn’t stop. It grew deeper and became a low note that made me shiver, but not in a bad way.
He clenched his jaw and took a step back. Then he flinched, almost to the point of doubling over.
“Ardruc?” I started to get up. But before I could move, his mouth opened, and he…sang.
The single note, deep and resonant, rolled through me and filled the room. All my pain and fear and confusion evaporated, leaving me warm, secure, and relaxed.
A little too relaxed, in fact. My legs turned rubbery, and I started to slide off the side of the diagnostic bed.
In a flash, Ardruc was at my side, the last of the strange, magical note still reverberating in his throat.
He slid me gently back onto the bed so I was sitting rather than perched precariously and sat beside me.
I couldn’t help it; I rested my head against his bicep, which was far more comfortable than it had any right to be.
“What was that?” I murmured.
“It is…complicated,” he said, his voice thick with emotion in a way I’d never heard before.
I might have been irritated with him for trying to dodge my question if I weren’t so relaxed. Still, I wanted an answer. “Uncomplicate it, then,” I said.
His entire upper body moved as he inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.
“I am able to ease your discomfort and negative emotions with a unique sound my body instinctually creates.” His tone was a facsimile of the clinical detachment I’d wanted earlier, but not a very convincing one because his voice wasn’t steady.
“It would seem your presence triggered a physiological response within me.”
I thought about what I knew of Fortusian biology. Their extensive use of genetic engineering was the subject of entire courses at universities on more than one planet. I hadn’t taken any of those courses, but my astrobiology course had discussed their practices and physiology.
Suddenly, Ardruc’s abrupt attitude change began to make sense. Through the warm haze created by his song, shock, disbelief, and alarm made my stomach churn anew.
I sat up and turned on the bed to face him. His expression was guarded, but he didn’t move away.
“Are you telling me,” I said slowly, “that my injury tonight caused you to recognize me as your true mate?”
“No,” he said. But just as I was about to sigh in relief, he seemed to steel himself and added, “I recognized you as my true mate the moment you arrived at Nova Cal.”
“What?” I gaped. “But you’ve been so horrid—”
The shame in his eyes and his grim expression were the clues I needed to piece it all together.
I cut myself off and stood, though I had to brace myself against the bed controls. My hands trembled in rage.
“You…self…centered…bastard,” I ground out.
He rose too and took a step back to give me space.
“It was bad enough when I thought you were just an asshole,” I fumed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been treating me this way for entirely selfish reasons because you don’t want a mate so you tried to drive me off the planet I’ve wanted to study since I was seventeen years old.”
At first I thought he was going to assume that haughty pose he liked so much, with his hands clasped behind his back and chin raised. Instead he took another deep breath, fluttered his wings, and shook his head, his hands at his sides.
“You are right, Elena. Everything you say is true. I—” Whatever he was about to say, he seemed to change his mind.
After a beat, he said, “I cannot offer any explanation that would excuse my behavior, or even begin to earn your forgiveness. I can only say from my…hearts…that I am truly and deeply sorry.”
For a long time, I didn’t know what to say, or even where to start.
At least some of the plasma bolts on Hyderia were sentient. One had damn near killed me after marking me with a symbol we didn’t understand. Another had scorched what I was certain were words into the floor before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
And on top of that, Dr. Ardruc Husiorithae had just admitted he’d been an utter asshole to me for four straight months not because of anything I’d said or done, but because his blood and apparently other parts of his body sizzled in my presence.
Great gods above and below, what the hells was I supposed to do now? About any of these things?
I glanced at Forux to see what he thought of the situation—or maybe because I was sorely tempted to ask him to bite Ardruc. To my surprise, despite the tension in the room, he’d curled up on a chair to watch us with his head on his paws.
“I suspect your companion has known the truth for as long as I have,” Ardruc said, his voice mild. “He is very sensitive to emotions. He encouraged me to hold your hand while you were undergoing emergency care.”
Ardruc held my hand? I stared at my hand, and then at my traitorous arval companion, eyes narrowed.
“I deserve all your ire,” Ardruc continued, either oblivious to my rising fury or trying to defuse it somehow by talking. “I also deserve any professional repercussions that may come from complaints you file with the Ministry or your own university—”
“Shut up, Ardruc.” Gods, that felt good to say.
He blinked. His mouth snapped shut.
I thought back to those first moments on the landing pad the day I’d arrived, when he’d greeted me from a distance with a very neutral expression—and then physically recoiled when I came down the ramp and gave him a Fortusian-style bow of greeting.
I’d replayed that moment more than once but never had a clue what the real reason had been for his reaction to my arrival.
It was no small challenge, but I tried to put myself in his shoes and imagine how I might feel if one day, out of the clear cobalt sky, a complete stranger appeared in my life my body and soul recognized as a true mate.
I’d fallen in love a few times in relationships that ultimately couldn’t survive the demands of my work or theirs.
That feeling was nothing compared to what I imagined the draw of a true mate might be, and it hadn’t involved any complete strangers.
Yes, I would have experienced a lot of emotions if our situation were reversed, and not all of them would have been good.
But would I have reacted like Ardruc? Would I have been rude and cruel to force that person to abandon their dreams of working on Hyderia, especially once I knew how much being here meant to them?
Hells no, because I was many things, but I wasn’t an…well, asshole was no longer an adequate descriptor.
I wanted to call him every name I could think of, and maybe take a swing at him too. And judging by his look of resignation, not only did he expect both, he thought he deserved them too.
Maybe his wretched expression held back my tirade, or maybe it was the gentleness he’d shown when terror overtook me.
Maybe it was because while I wouldn’t have made the same choices, I understood how thoroughly this had upended his world.
Or maybe, just maybe, it was that song that washed away my pain and fear, and the fact it was irrefutable proof of what he’d said.
Maybe it was all of the above, plus my exhaustion and a few more reasons I was too overwhelmed to process right now.
Whatever the cause, I didn’t call him a Barmian wood slug, as much as I wanted to, and I didn’t throw a punch…for now.
“I am too tired and in too much pain and too worried about sentient plasma tendrils and this weird mark to yell at you right now,” I said instead.
His obvious astonishment very nearly made me smile despite everything. I’d seen more emotion from him in the past five minutes than in four whole months. That would be more disconcerting if my brain weren’t already spinning in a dozen other directions.
“You are absolutely going to get one hundred percent of my ire as soon as I have the energy for it,” I continued, and his expression turned wary again. “In the meantime, what the hells is this on my chest, and how can plasma be alive?”