Chapter 3 #2
“Hand her to your second,” Laarn said. “This isn’t a request, Lead Healer. Bag packed, shuttle bay, one hour.”
And the line went dead.
“I like him,” Delilah said suddenly.
He slid her a sideways glance, certain he’d misheard. “You like him?”
“Yeah.” She popped the fry into her mouth. “He didn’t sugarcoat a damn thing. Just, boom, here’s the deal, get moving. I respect that.”
Kellat blinked. “He all but threatened my career in the space of a minute.”
“And you’re still standing here instead of packing.” She shrugged, gaze flicking up to his. “He calls a spade a spade. I like that. Most people talk in circles trying not to hurt your feelings. He just says the thing.”
Kellat studied her, the full lips and the stubborn set of her chin that hadn’t eased even a fraction since the concourse. Laarn’s brand of bluntness had made grown warriors flinch but not her. Somehow he knew she’d have said the same thing if Laarn had been here in front of her.
Ninety-nine point eight percent.
He shoved the thought down where it belonged, buried under years of professional discipline.
The only thing that mattered at the moment was that he was her healer and that she was less than a day out of a coma.
A coma that, while under it, her brain had remapped itself.
And he had no idea why or how. A patient like that did not belong alone on a station, under a second healer’s care, half a galaxy away from him.
Yeah… That was the only reason. The only one.
“Pack a bag,” he said abruptly. “We’re leaving.”
Delilah blinked, fry halfway to her mouth. “We’re what?”
“You heard him.” Kellat tipped his chin at the bracer comp. “I’m required off-station. You’re still my patient. I’m not leaving your care in someone else’s hands.”
“So I’m coming with you?”
“You are my patient. So, yes.”
“Road trip? Seriously?” She bounced on her toes, hair swinging loose over her shoulder.
“Oh my god. I’ve never been on a road trip.
Well—” she caught herself, waving the bag at him, “—space road trip, I guess! Or, honestly, even a regular road trip. Harper and I never had the money for gas, let alone—”
“This is not a road trip,” he said flatly. “This is a medical assignment.”
“Sure, sure.” She was already moving, practically skipping out the lift doors when they opened like he hadn’t spoken at all. “Road trip. I’m calling it a road trip.”
Delilah didn’t get a moment to breathe.
One second she was trailing Kellat out of the lift, still buzzing from the word road trip, and the next he pushed her through a side door into a smaller medical prep room where a junior healer thrust a bag into her hands.
She turned it over, murmuring her thanks, but the healer was already gone.
The bag was blue with the LMP logo on the side in big, bold letters.
She wrinkled her nose at it. The Latharian Mate Program.
The one she’d signed up for to escape a miserable life with Harper and then promptly torched via drunk flyer car.
“Really love their branding, don’t they?” she said, staring at the bag.
“Come on, we need to move,” Kellat said, shrugging a pack over his shoulder and walking out the door.
She hurried after him, with her new bag. It was heavier than it looked. She hoped there were some toiletries inside and perhaps a comb… she caught sight of herself in a reflective panel in one of the bays they passed. Yeah, she looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backward.
The junior healer didn’t look at her as they passed. He nodded at Kellat then backed away quickly. Everyone did that around Kellat. It was totally unfair. How did someone that good-looking also get to command that much space?
Then they were walking again.
Fast.
Shit. Latharian legs were way longer than human ones, so she had to half-jog to keep pace with him as he led her through the corridors.
There were fewer people now, and the walls weren’t all pale curves and metal artwork.
Instead, they were heavy-duty panels and reinforced deck plating.
The air had changed too. It was thinner and colder.
Her nose wrinkled again, assaulted by the smell of hot rubber and something that smelled a lot like jet fuel.
Then the corridor opened up, and she stopped short.
“Well, that’s a whole vibe,” she breathed.
The shuttlebay was nothing like the cramped little hangars in movies. It was cathedral-sized, with arched supports that disappeared into the darkness overhead.
Shuttles and ships of every shape crouched on the deck as lights blinked along wings and underbellies. Crews moved in efficient clusters, their voices echoing in the vast space.
It was awe-inspiring, and god, she felt small.
“Don’t stop,” Kellat said, his hand settling into the small of her back.
Heat rolled up her spine before her brain could catch up. His palm was huge and warm through her borrowed sweater, as he steered her between the nearest ships.
She glanced sideways at him.
“Is one of these spaceships yours?” she asked, because silence had always made her skin itch. “Please tell me it’s not the little one. Little spaceships make me nervous. They look like they’re begging to be stepped on.”
He didn’t answer.
“Big ones make me nervous too, actually,” she continued, the words tumbling out. “Anything that leaves a planet voluntarily is basically a flying coffin, but you know what? I’m committed now. Space road trip. Whee.”
“It’s not a road trip,” Kellat sighed.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s not.”
They turned a corner and headed for one of the shuttles.
Matte black and angular, it was the size of a small warehouse, bristling with more weapons than she could count…
turrets, barrels, stubby missile pods mounted along the flanks.
The nose was flat and brutal, like it was designed to punch through atmosphere.
“That’s the medical shuttle?” she asked, her voice climbing a little. “That is not a medical shuttle. That’s what happens when a medical shuttle joins a street gang or something.”
Kellat’s hand pressed more firmly against her back, urging her toward the ramp extending from its belly.
“It’s my private shuttle.”
She blinked. “Of course you have a private murder-shuttle.”
“Get on the ramp.”
She swallowed and started walking.
The ramp was wide enough for three of her, low and lit with red running lights.
Each step echoed back at her from the shuttle’s dark gut.
Kellat stayed right behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him at her back.
She had never felt so small and protected in her life.
He was right there, huge and watchful, one hand hovering now at the curve of her waist like he was ready to catch her if she stumbled. Like he thought she might.
She didn’t know what to do with that.
“You know, most guys at least buy me dinner before they drag me onto their murder-shuttle. I’m just saying, I had fries. That counts. That was pre-murder-shuttle fries.”
“Delilah.” His voice was a low growl.
“What?”
“Stop talking.”
“Absolutely not.” She glanced over her shoulder to catch the corner of his mouth twitching. Barely. Something in the center of her chest fluttered. Great, just bloody great. She was exhausted, and apparently her brain had decided the hottest alien in the galaxy growling at her was flirting.
They reached the top of the ramp.
The interior of the shuttle yawned before them, a corridor of dark panels. She stepped inside, her fingers tightening around the LMP bag.
They walked through the corridors, passing some of the crew. Her eyes widened. Like Kellat, they were all massive. They wore dark leathers and their faces were set in grim lines, eyes front, jaws like granite. None of them so much as cracked a smile.
She tried her best grin on a couple, the one that usually got her free drinks or at least a sympathetic ear, but it was like they looked right through her.
Kellat’s hand stayed at her back, warm and huge, as he steered her past them all. They saw him alright, straightening up and moving aside to let him pass. Gave him that weird deferential space that made her want to roll her eyes. Because of course even the scary alien warriors were scared of him.
Stopping at a door near the end of the corridor, he pressed his palm to the panel, and it hissed open.
“This is yours,” he said, nodding for her to go ahead of him.
She stepped in, looking around. The cabin was obviously meant for one person.
It had a bunk bolted to the wall opposite a porthole that looked out on the shuttlebay.
The door she’d come through was behind her, and there was another door to her left.
Probably a bathroom. It was sparse and military-neat. No personality at all.
Kellat didn’t follow her in. He filled the doorway instead, huge and stern, his violet-blue eyes pinning her in place like she might try to bolt again.
“I’ll be back to check on you shortly,” he said.
Then the door shut and the click echoed in the small space. She stood there a second, staring at the blank metal. Well. Okay then. Abandoned in the murder-shuttle. Awesome.
She turned around. The bed was huge, like everything else that was Latharian.
Hoisting herself up onto the edge, she let her legs dangle.
Actually dangle. She snorted. She might as well have been a kid at the grown-ups’ table, swinging her feet because they were too short to touch the floor. The mattress dipped under her weight.
She started as a low vibration rolled through the deck. Then another, deeper, thrumming up through her boots and into her bones. Her eyes widened. The ship was moving.