Chapter Seventeen
“That’s the heartbeat. Right now, it just shows up as an electrical pulse.
Soon it’ll be a whooshing sound. Not for another few weeks, but hey, it’s amazing how early we can detect it now.
” Marcus removed the probe from Sasha’s bare stomach and let Gideon wipe off the gel.
“That little guy or gal is the size of a citrine seed. Next week? A plumcotta pit. By the next cycle, it’ll be the size of a spice apple, and you’ll see the limbs and tail clearly. ”
“A tail.” Sasha sat up and looked over at Abigail, who was helping out in the clinic. She was carrying Mara on one hip. “The tails are so adorable and tiny,” she whispered, eyes fixed on the baby Leonid’s little tail as it poked through the back of a snuggly pink suit.
“I know you haven’t been wanting to hold the cubs too much, and I understood why,” Abigail said with a warm smile.
“But come to the nursery today? Wendy runs it with all of our help. She’s teaching Chance and Alana to write and pawpaint, recognize letters, and sing little songs.
Chandra is building with blocks and putting things together, and they have story time and play with dough and little instruments.
Our cubs are too young for that, but they can go there and be loved and snuggled by their aunties and uncles, whoever has the time.
It’s a wonderful feeling to hold a little cub in your arms,” Abi sighed. “And you two should practice.”
“And you two should also get out of my Queen’s way. Doctor, Nessa feels some of those early warning contractions!” Kamau hurried in, earning a startled snarl from Gideon, who hurriedly tugged Sasha’s shirt over her stomach.
“Honey, I told you that’s gonna happen starting in the fourth cycle!” Nessa protested, waddling in after him.
“Can I hold Mara?” Sasha whispered, holding out her arms as she hopped off the table.
“Me next?” Gideon asked.
“Come on, let’s go to the nursery. I’ll be right back to help, Marcus.” Abi kissed his cheek.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You stay and play with the little ones, help Sasha get settled in. Skyla can help me with Nessa.”
“I don’t need any help! I don’t even need a check-up!” Nessa complained.
“Gideon, Elio’s looking for you. Your shuttle full of stuff docked, and the airlock closed a few minutes ago. You can go down to the bay and open it up so he can sign off on the safe shipment.”
“Oh, yes. I’ll do that. My love, you go to the nursery and sit with the cubs. I’ll be along soon.”
GIDEON HURRIED DOWN to the lowest level of the ship, meeting Elio at the level where various transport and freight bays split off from an observation room near the docking area.
“Oh, Gideon!” The human with a strong jaw and glossy black hair seemed relieved to see him.
“I want you to sign off on the shipment, but I don’t know where the heck you can keep all of it. ”
“All of it?”
“It has return coordinates, so the shuttle is wanted on a return trajectory tomorrow.”
“All right. It’s a shuttle, not simply jettisoned freight?”
“Nope, it’s a nice, luxury model, a Felid Cross Stellar XL, Leonid Edition.”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “Well, that is Farhet for you. He has to flash his wealth even when only a ‘lowly servant’ will see it. If he thinks I’ll be jealous, he’s wrong.
Don’t worry about ‘all the stuff,’ Elio.
He may have sent an entire luxury shuttle, but there will probably only be a dozen boxes at most. I’ll use one of the hover carts and move them into our quarters so your bay isn’t cluttered and the shuttle can return. ”
“Want any help?” Elio offered.
“No, I’m going to see the cubs in the nursery after this, so I’ll just unload and get them out of the way.”
“Sounds good. Can you sign off on the form I sent you via comms? If there’s a lot of breakage or anything, you have to open the second file.”
“Will do. I’ve done this many, many times for the Imazi Pride, trust me,” Gideon said with a rueful grin.
With that, Elio departed, and Gideon looked at his comm for the right files as he cleared the bay and entered the shuttle with the code provided on the shipping status.
Inside, the shuttle was dark and cluttered. Several boxes were scattered and lay open on the floor, as if they had not been sealed properly and were strewn and chucked around during a bumpy hyperjump.
The servants would know better. Gideon began to wonder if Farhet had handled this out of spite and simply bundled up his things in a rage and tossed them into the shuttle.
The luxury shuttle was probably simply what he’d purchased in the last cycle, some new model to show off his status and better position himself in people’s minds as the next head of the Imazi Pride.
“What in the galaxy has he done? Where are Father’s books?
” Gideon muttered, groaning as he looked for the interior lights and wandered deeper into the spacious tube-like body of the shuttle, tripping over boxes and clothes.
“Thank Bastet, I at least took all the old media viewers with my family pictures on them. But if he hurt Father’s books, I swear, I’ll—”
Whatever Gideon was about to say never passed his lips. One of the internal storage compartments in the luxury shuttle swung open, and something hard hit his head and sent him sprawling to the floor.
“THIS LITTLE KITTY FLEW the shuttle. This little kitty went home. This little kitty had a farm, and this little kitty left to roam. But this big kitty,” Sasha wiggled Chandra’s little thumb and kissed her pretty striped nose, “went purr, purr, purr and got a big kiss on the nose.”
Chandra let out a gurgling giggle.
“She’s so happy with you,” Wendy said, watching Sasha play with her daughter. “You’re a natural with her, and Chandra can be really clingy. I blame her father.” Wendy gave the enormous Tigerite in the corner a pointed look.
“I am the ship’s security officer. If I were not entirely too protective, I would be failing at my job,” Talos shrugged his wide shoulders. He managed a smile. “But you are doing fine, Sasha. Chandra likes you. I hear congratulations are in order for you and Gideon.”
“Yes! Oh, he’s so happy, I— I wonder what’s keeping him. His belongings from Leonid-One arrived.”
“I guess there were more than he thought.”
Sasha rose and handed Chandra to her mother. “Thank you, Wendy. I’ll keep coming back to visit. Next, I need diapering lessons.”
“My pleasure. We have plenty of those between Chandra, Mara, and Val.”
“I bet he had a lot of stuff to carry,” Talos mused. “I’ll come help.”
“Oh, you don’t have to. He didn’t have much, he said.
” Sasha felt a sudden worry in her middle.
She and Gideon were largely inseparable.
What should have taken maybe an hour at the very most had taken close to two, and she’d been so enchanted with the cubs and asking so many questions of Abi and Wendy that she hadn't noticed the time flying until just then.
“I would still like to help. You shouldn’t be carrying much in your condition.”
“Her condition. How old-fashioned,” Abi chuckled.
“I adore it,” Wendy squealed, hugging her husband’s arm, then kissing Chandra’s forehead as the baby Tigerite flexed her paws towards her daddy. “It makes me want to go start on baby number two.”
Talos coughed, and his tail whipped wildly behind him. Sasha smothered a giggle at his flustered stammering. “See, Talos, you’d better stay with your wife.”
“No, you’d better go help Sasha. If anything happens to her, Gideon will eviscerate you,” Abi urged.
Talos and Sasha shrugged at each other. “All right, let’s go find out what’s keeping him. I wouldn't put it past Farhet to have just tossed everything into the shuttle so Gideon would have to clean up his mess one more time,” Sasha fumed, marching away, hands on her hips.
Talos shook his head and followed. “Some people have more money than sense.”
GIDEON’S EYES OPENED, but all he could see was darkness. He could move his arms—barely. Something was tangled around him, and the space he was in was small and cramped.
His eyes slowly focused, and the predatory ability to see in low light gradually allowed him to make out yellow cords. Masses of them. Emergency tow cables for a crash-landed shuttle.
I’m in the emergency storage compartment in the rear of the shuttle.
Why?
How?
And who? Who had hit him and stuffed him in here?
“Where the hell is your ugly little Queen, Gideon? I can see she isn’t quite the catch you claimed.”
Gideon’s mouth dried out as his head kept throbbing.
Farhet’s voice.
Farhet was on this shuttle. Farhet had hit him, and he was looking for Sasha. Why?
He can’t stand to touch her. Or look at her. So why...
His mind was always sharp enough to deal with the business issues Farhet deigned too cumbersome, a mind sharp enough to deal with hundreds of issues that made the Imazi Pride run smoothly. Now, Gideon put his brain power to work.
He hit me and stuffed me in the shuttle.
Why? I certainly wouldn’t work for him ever again, not after this.
And why Sasha? He has to know that I wouldn’t sleep with her to produce a child for him.
Even if he threatened us, it wouldn’t matter.
Without the injections and protocol that only two doctors in the entire galaxy are using, there couldn’t be an heir.
Gideon’s throat closed up, and not just because there was little air in this cramped space.
The long list of people Dax and Skyla had sent Sasha’s blood test results to must have included Farhet, as he was the original partner.
There were names, too many, and he hadn’t looked at them all.
It was probably an innocent mistake of Dax’s, but...
But it tracked. The same day the blood test results confirmed her pregnancy was the same day that a shipping notice was received.
He wants the baby. He wants my cub for his own—he paid for it, and can’t accept that we changed our minds, that he never even slept with Sasha, that he ran from this chance.
That she is mine.