Chapter 11
The dismissive remark was out of Kellat’s mouth before he could think better of it.
Lady Amaelii went still next to him.
“You are an absolute fucking idiot,” she said.
His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
But Amaelii didn’t wait for him to recover his wits. Instead, she stepped closer, crowding him.
“That woman,” she said, her voice tight with anger and disdain.
For him. “Just squared up to me in front of half the delegation. Me! A warlady from a species twice her size. A being with a combat form that could snap a Lathar warrior in half without breaking a sweat. She had no weapon, no backup, but she still walked across that floor and challenged a predator. For you, you bloody idiot!”
His memory replayed Delilah walking away from him with her chin up and her hands shaking. He’d seen the tremor. He’d seen the flush on her cheeks and the way she’d pressed her palms flat against her thighs, and he’d read it as hysterics.
He’d read it wrong.
“You called her petty,” Amaelii hissed. “That woman risked her life for you, and you humiliated her in front of witnesses.”
His chest went cold. Delilah with her chin up and her eyes too bright, the smile snapping into place so fast it had to hurt. He’d watched her do it and called it petty.
The silence that followed was thick enough to feel on his skin, his pulse loud in his ears, and the warlady next to him tilted her head, the scar along her jaw catching the light.
“So what does that make you?”
Nothing. It made him the kind of male who let a female… his mate who didn’t even know she was his, fight for him alone.
Delilah, a tiny human female with more courage than most of the warriors he’d fought alongside and treated, had walked across that floor and challenged a female who could kill her. And he’d stood there and called her an embarrassment.
Draanth.
“I need to find her.” His voice came out scraped raw, but he was already moving, taking the same path as Delilah had across the hall.
The warlady’s voice followed him, cool and measured. “Go after her. Before you lose her for good.”
The side door swung shut behind him, and the air was cooler and staler. The corridor was narrow, the walls unfinished composite under flickering amber striplight. Definitely not part of the public areas.
“Delilah?”
Her name bounced off the walls and came back thin. No answer.
She was furious with him. Of course she wouldn’t answer. She was probably holed up in some corner somewhere. He just had to find her.
He rounded the first corner and the corridor narrowed more. The conference had taken over the main hall and the diplomatic suites, which were luxurious and polished, but the service corridors back here were a different matter. They were older and rougher, built for function rather than aesthetics.
“Delilah!” He called out, louder this time, but there was nothing but an echo.
He kept walking. She’d walked out of the hall ten minutes ago, fifteen at most, so she couldn’t have gotten far. He should have caught her by now.
He rounded the second corner and was confronted by a door, the panel beside it dark. He stopped in front of it and pressed his palm flat against the metal.
Turning around, he frowned. She’d come this way, but then what? She couldn’t have gone through the door; it was dead. But she hadn’t come back, and there were no other turns or doors off this corridor.
A furious female didn’t walk into a service corridor and just vanish. She turned around, found another way, or sat down on a crate in some corner and waited for him to find her so she could refuse to speak to him.
He turned, walking back the way he’d come. As he walked, he checked every recess and alcove in case he’d missed a door, but nothing.
She wasn’t here.
Keying his comms, he raised the station’s command center. The channel clicked open, but he didn’t give them a chance to talk.
“This is Lead Healer V’Raav. I need a location lock on a member of my party.”
“Of course, please go ahead, Lead Healer.”
“I need a trace on a human female… Delilah Sawyer of Earth. Last seen exiting the conference hall through the east side door around twenty-five minutes ago. I need her current position. I think she’s wandered off and gotten herself lost. She’s not familiar with non-terran installations.”
“Stand by, commencing trace.”
Kellat tipped his head back as he waited, looking up at the chandelier above him. It was designed to resemble the moons of the planet below. His lips quirked into a small smile as he remembered her amazement when she’d first seen it.
“Lead Healer.” The voice had changed, and ice raced down Kellat’s spine. “There are no human biological signatures on the station at this time.”
He froze.
“I’m sorry,” Kellat said, keeping his voice calm. “I thought you said that there are no human biological signatures on the station at the moment. Confirm?”
“I’ve checked the grid three times, Lead Healer. There are no human signs anywhere on the platform. No humans at all.”
“That’s impossible. She was here thirty minutes ago.”
There was another pause. “The grid doesn’t lie, Healer. If the female was here, she’s not here now.”
The comm went silent.
Kellat stood in the corridor with his back against the cold wall, the recycled air tasting of metal and his heart too loud in his ears.
No human biological signatures. She wasn’t on the station.
He was a healer. He’d been trained for bad news. He’d delivered it a hundred times… Your son isn’t coming home… the damage was too extensive. He knew how to hold steady through it. He knew how to put the mask on and keep it there. But this was Delilah.
Which meant there were only two possibilities.
She’d left. She’d walked to the docking bay, found a shuttle, and left because he’d humiliated her. She had form. She’d run from the LMP office on Earth, and she’d run from his med bay when she’d woken up.
He frowned. Or…
Someone had taken her.
Heat seared across his wrists.
Kellat jerked his arms up, eyes widening as dark lines spread under his skin. The pigment thickened and swirled, settling into the jagged pattern every Latharian male knew on sight.
Mating marks.
The bond had chosen now to claim him? She was gone, and his body had picked this exact moment to declare what he should have told her days ago?
Closing his eyes, he groaned, the sound one of pure despair. He’d earned that. He’d treated her like a specimen, a puzzle of neural pathways to study. He’d let her believe she was nothing more than a project… a patient.
Shoving the panic down hard, he made himself think. Then he re-opened the comm to station command.
“Command, this is Lead Healer V’Raav. I need a full bio-sweep of the platform. Now. Do not filter for species. Give me every living signature here.”
“Lead Healer V’Raav?” The duty warrior sounded confused. “I just ran the filter for you. The grid is clear.”
“I didn’t ask for a filter,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “I asked for a full sweep. Any signature, all of them. Run the wide-band and tell me if there is anything anomalous in the service sectors.”
He waited, the marks on his wrists throbbing in time with his pulse. The seconds stretched… and then he resisted the need to tear the station apart plate by plate until he found her.
“I’ve got something.” The warrior’s tone had shifted to curiosity. “It’s strange. There’s a cluster of shared markers in the docking bay’s secondary sublevel. Not human, but shares markers with the records we have for Delilah Sawyer. That has to be a mistake. A corrupt record.”
“Check that out later. Location?” He barked.
“Sector four, bay twelve. But the read is flickering, Lead Healer. It looks like a dampener field, but there shouldn’t be one active on the station. That technology is restricted. Should I alert security? I can seal the sector and lock down the bay doors.”
“Do not alert security,” He ordered. A noisy security team would warn whoever had Delilah. Because someone did have her, he was sure of it. She might have run, but she never ran far. He had to believe that. Had to believe that she hadn’t meant to leave him. And if someone was running a dampener…
“Give me the registry match on those markers.”
“Running it against the databases now,” The warrior said quickly. Kellat nodded in approval; whoever this was, he was efficient. “It’s cross-referencing the old-clan lines now, just to be sure… wait. I have a match. Rivaan Z’Saai?”
The cold swept from Kellat’s chest to his fingertips.
Draanth, it all made sense now. Z’Saai had been obsessed with that draanthing paper on Delilah.
And he’d known she was the patient in the paper when there was no way he should have.
Kellat closed his eyes, raking his hair back off his face. Why hadn’t he seen it?
And the Z’Saai line was dying. It was nothing more than the failing ghost of a clan who had been trading on past glories for generations.
“Lead Healer? Do you copy? I’m still waiting on your order regarding lockdown.”
“Don’t seal the doors,” he growled. “If they’re running a dampener, a lockdown only tells them we’re coming. Keep monitoring the situation and keep this line clear. I’m headed down there now.”
The nausea hit hard enough that Kellat had to put his shoulder against the wall. He’d written the paper and put his own mate in the crosshairs.
“You look like a male who has just discovered he is a fucking idiot.”
He spun, muscles coiling, and found the Vorrtan warlady leaning against the opposite wall. Her eyes glowed in the shadows, the pale scar from temple to jaw lit by the flickering strip overhead.
“She’s gone,” he said. His voice sounded like it had been dragged over gravel. “Z’Saai took her.”
The warlady didn’t look surprised. She didn’t even blink. Pushing off the wall, she took a slow, unhurried step toward him. Her gaze dropped to the marks on his wrists and back up to meet his.
“I suspected as much. The male is a scavenger in a healer’s robe.”
“You knew?”
“I didn’t know he had the nerve.” She shrugged. “Latharian behavior is difficult for me to work out. But I saw the look in his eyes when he looked at her. He didn’t see a female; he saw a resource.”
The words hit like a punch. Draanth, that was close to what Delilah had said. She’d told him that Z’Saai had given her the creeps, that he looked at her like a lab rat.
She’d seen it, she’d told him, and he hadn’t listened.
“I have to find her,” he blurted out. “I don’t know where he’s taken her, but I’ll burn this draanthing station down to get her back.”
The warlady tilted her head, amusement crossing her face.
“You are a healer, V’Raav. You are good with a scalpel and a diagnostic bed, but you are a clumsy hunter.
I heard the conversation with command. Z’Saai is running a dampener, which means that you’ll chase ghosts through these corridors only to find out he left hours ago with your female. ”
His jaw tightened. “Then what do you suggest?”
“I am Vorrtan.” She grinned, a flash of sharp teeth.
“We do not rely on grids and digital readings. We hunt by scent. Give me something she has worn, something that holds the salt and sweat of her skin. I will follow her across this station, onto whatever ship holds her, and across the galaxy if I have to.”
He stared at her. “Why? Why would you help me?”
The amusement vanished, and what replaced it was old and hard as she stood in front of him.
“Because I was a fool in love once. Someone should have hit me upside the head with a heavy object and knocked some sense into me.” She held his gaze without blinking. “I am simply paying back a debt to the universe. Now, are we doing this, or are you going to let Z’Saai steal what is yours?”
“Draanth no,” he growled, turning to lead her through the corridors at a pace that scattered delegates out of their path, his boots hammering the deck plating.
Neither of them spoke. The marks burned on his wrists with every stride, and every time he blinked he saw her face…
the way she’d looked in the gown he’d give her.
The Voors’tial’s airlock was cycled open, two guards at their stations. They stepped aside as he and Lady Amaelii swept through the airlock.
He punched his override into the door of Delilah’s quarters, and the panel hissed open. The room was small and neat, smelling of sterile ship air, but underneath it… faint and fading, was the lingering sweetness of her scent. His jaw tightened. The little room felt so empty it hurt.
The warlady moved through the small space, her nostrils flaring as she sampled the air, and drifted toward the luggage rack where an LMP-issued bag sat half-zipped.
She drew out one of the soft grey jumpers Delilah had lived in those first days aboard. Bringing the fabric to her face, her eyes closed as she inhaled, slow and deep.
He stood with his pulse slamming and the air gone thick in the little room, his fists clenching and unclenching. All he wanted was the throat of the male who had touched her under his hands. He forced himself to stay still and waited.
The warlady opened her eyes. They were dark, pupils blown wide.
“I have it,” she said. “Let’s go.”