Chapter 8
Kellat had performed more than a few mating claims in his time on Devan Station and trained all his staff on them, so he could have recited the protocol in his sleep if he needed to.
He sat in the small office nook in his quarters and did not look at the protocol.
He didn’t need to. That was the problem.
He’d ignored the protocol file. He knew what a claim was supposed to look like, what steps a warrior was supposed to complete to secure his human mate, yet he had followed none of them.
A warrior was supposed to court his mate.
That was the shape of it, old as the empire.
A warrior declared his intent, openly, so the female knew what he was and what he wanted.
Then he provided, proved himself… his clan, his rank, his worth, and laid all of it in front of her so that when she chose, she could make that decision with her eyes open.
The choice was the whole point. Everything else, the gifts and the formality and the endless draanthing ceremony, existed to protect that one thing. Her informed, uncoerced yes.
But he hadn’t done that. He hadn’t even told her that was what he was supposed to do. Then he’d taken all her choices away from her in a shower.
No. Before that. Dragging a hand down his face, he forced himself to admit the truth.
He’d taken her choices against a wall, with her hair fisted in his hand, less than an hour after another male had put his mouth on her.
He’d growled Mine at a female who had no idea the word carried legal weight in his culture.
At the female who had no idea they were already matched and there were things he should have done that he had not done.
She’d looked up at him with her heart in her eyes and begged him for his touch. She’d thought she was answering a lover in the heat of the moment.
She had no idea that by accepting him into her body, she’d accepted a mating claim. His claim.
The truth sat heavy in his gut, making him feel ill.
He’d built the whole thing on rationalizations, and he’d known they were rationalizations even as he stacked them up. One: she was recovering from catastrophic trauma. Two: her neural remapping was unexplained, and the stress of a claim could destabilize it. Three: telling her would be cruelty.
Fine words. Clinical words.
And then a boy pilot had leaned in too close at a wake, and every clinical word he owned had burned away.
He’d dragged her to his quarters and claimed her on the back of jealousy…
the cheapest, most common failing an unmated male could have.
The one he’d watched on the station countless times since they’d found humanity.
The failing that had put warriors into challenge circles for just looking at the wrong female, while he healed what was left of them.
He’d thought himself above it. He should be above it. He was Lead Healer for gods’ sake; he knew better than this.
But he wasn’t above it. Turned out he’d just never had anything he was afraid to lose.
He’d had all night and most of the morning to find the worst of it, lying in the dark with her small, warm weight against his chest. The worst of it wasn’t the claim.
It was that she’d been grateful. He’d seen it.
Every time he touched her as if she mattered, something in her face came apart with surprise.
He frowned. It was as if she were waiting for him to realize his mistake.
He groaned and dropped his head back. A female like that deserved a male who laid the truth at her feet and gave her all the time in the galaxy to decide what to do with it.
A male who gave her the galaxy if she wanted it.
Instead she’d gotten him.
A male who lied to her and gave the impression this thing between them was organic… had grown between them. When in fact, they’d been matched. And he’d kept that from her every day since she’d woken up.
He’d even called her kelarris. It had slipped out of him before he’d realized.
She’d been all soft and sleepy, so she hadn’t noticed.
Hadn’t asked what the word meant, but he did.
And he’d lain there holding her in his arms, listening to her breathing slow, and let her fall asleep not knowing what she’d been called.
If a junior healer had come to him with this—had withheld a diagnosis from a patient, taken what he wanted, and dressed the whole thing up as clinical caution—Kellat would have stripped the braids off him there and then.
His comm chirped. Laarn’s channel, a text-only update: the Vorrtan delegation had arrived ahead of schedule. Full medical contingent headed by an actual warlady. His eyebrow winged up. That was unprecedented.
He read it twice, and he straightened. The warlady.
He’d read what little the empire had on warladies…
Vorrtan command structure ran matriarchal, their elder council run by eleven senior warladies, and their word was law.
Which meant that if anyone could open a door to Vorrtan regenerative data, it was her.
Charlotte Mason’s file was still sitting in his encrypted queue, the Scorperio damage carved deep through her nervous system, and the answer to it might be standing on Itash-Vetan-4.
That was the mission. That was why Laarn had put him on a shuttle, not so he could ruin one small human female’s trust in him, and that mission had to come before anything he owed Delilah.
Even if she was his mate.
Through the bulkhead he heard her laugh—bright and unguarded—and the sound hit him low in the gut, the same way her scent did, straight past every defense he had. He closed his eyes.
He had to tell her. He would tell her. But after the conference, when the mission was done, and he had no duty left to hide behind.
He would do things the way he was supposed to do them.
He would court her properly, and he would tell her about all of it.
About the match and the fact he’d already called her his kelarris.
His beloved. He would tell her everything and offer her the courtship he should have started with, done properly, every step of the way.
The docking clamps engaged with a shudder he felt through the deck, and he rose, settling his sash across his chest and adjusting it until it hung correctly. He was Lead Healer of Devan Station. He could hold himself together until after the conference. Just a few days more.
Squaring his shoulders, he went to collect the one person in the galaxy with the power to take him apart if she so wished, even if she didn’t know it yet.
The ramp was still lowering when Delilah got her first look at the station, and her mouth fell open before she could stop it.
It was nothing like Devan Station, not at all.
Devan was all pale metal and arches, at least in the areas she’d seen, built for function by a warlike species.
This place was something else entirely. A vast crystal dome rose overhead, light bending and reflecting through it, and walkways spiraled up through the center of the space, suspended in thin air.
Something must be holding them up, but she couldn’t for the life of her see them.
Figures moved along them in robes, leathers, some in colors she didn’t have names for.
“Holy shit,” she breathed, her hand tightening on Kellat’s arm. “Is that a chandelier or a small moon? I can’t tell.”
His lips quirked, and he covered her hand with his. “It’s a structural support. The conference center was designed to impress.”
“Yeah, well… Mission accomplished.” She leaned into him, letting his larger form block some of the crowd noise.
It was almost deafening, the dozens of conversations in languages the natty translator thingie they’d given her caught but couldn’t untangle quick enough.
“I feel very small and human right now.”
“You are very small and human.” He guided her down the ramp, his pace shortened to match hers. “That’s not a liability.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’s going to trip over this dress in front of the entire galaxy.”
“You won’t trip.”
“You sound very sure about that.”
“I am.”
She slid a glance up at him, and her stomach did a flip. He wasn’t watching the crowd or the chandelier. He was watching her, then he smiled and she almost melted on the spot.
Okay. We are not making heart-eyes at the alien in public. Be cool. Be normal.
So she faced forward, chin up, and tried to walk like she belonged.
The main hall was bigger than anything she’d ever seen, but she didn’t get chance to see everything.
Kellat walked fast, moving through it all like this was just…
Tuesday. To be fair, for him it probably was.
People seemed to know him anyway, nodding as they passed.
Other delegates approached him in clusters, their expressions and greetings warm.
She stayed on his arm and smiled through the introductions, nodding at names she forgot the second she heard them.
“—and this is Healer M’Rell, who trained with me under Lord Healer Laarn,” Kellat said, his voice warmer than she’d ever heard from him. “M’Rell, this is Delilah Sawyer, of Earth.”
The healer was older, his braids shot through with grey, and his eyes crinkled at the corners as he inclined his head. “A human. We’ve heard much about your people. Welcome.”
“Thank you,” she said brightly, instantly liking the older healer. “I’d curtsey, but I’m pretty sure I’d fall over, and then someone would have to explain why the conference started with a human-shaped dent in the floor.”
M’Rell blinked. Then he laughed, a low, deep rumble. “She’s charming, Kellat. Make sure you don’t let this one get away.”
Kellat’s hand settled at the small of her back, warm and possessive. Her heart did another flip. Seriously, she really was going to have to get that under control.