Chapter 14
Delilah moved first.
She came out of the cage on legs that didn’t want to hold her, hands shaking, but it didn’t matter anymore because Kellat was right there. Alive. Five minutes ago he’d been dying on the deck under a pile of machines, and now he was only three steps away, and she threw herself at him.
He caught her with a smile, arms closing around her. She was sobbing before she landed, big ugly sobs that tore up out of her chest and left her gasping. Her fists found his chest, his shoulders, anywhere she could reach, the blows weak and furious at the same time.
“You almost died.” The words came out broken and wet. “You almost died for me, you stupid, stupid—“
Her voice gave. Her fists uncurled and grabbed his torn leathers instead, dragging him closer.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was rough. “I’m sorry, kelarris. I’m so, so sorry.”
“If you ever do something that stupid again, I’ll kill you myself. I mean it. I’ll bring you back so that I can kill you again.”
“Something stupid like coming to the rescue?” His lips quirked. Then his hands came up and cupped her face, thumbs brushing the tears off her cheeks, and the way he was looking at her stopped her breath in her throat.
“I will always come for you,” he said. “I love you.”
The world went quiet.
“I should have said it long before now. I’ve loved you since the moment you opened your eyes in my medical bay and asked me where your cousin was.”
“Kellat.” His name came out half sob, half laugh. Reaching up on her toes, she kissed him. The embrace was trembling and desperate, and he kissed her back like he was trying to pour every unsaid word through the press of their lips.
When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers. Then he pulled in a breath, slow, as if it hurt. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Her stomach dropped. Pulling back, she searched his face. “What?”
“The Mate Program. Your genetic profile was flagged before you ever reached the station. Before I ever met you.”
She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“I knew about the match. I knew you were my mate.” His voice was raw. “And I said nothing. I was afraid that if you knew, you’d think I only wanted you because the program told me to.”
Her hands slid off his chest. She dropped back onto her heels, putting air between them, her chest so tight it hurt. There were too many words, all of them at once, so she started with the simple ones.
“You let me think I was just a medical case.”
“Yes.”
Her nails bit into her palms.
“You let me think I was just a fling… a bit of fun at the conference.”
His eyes closed as his hands dropped from her face. “Yes.”
“You called me petty. And you said human women are more trouble than we’re worth.” Her voice dropped quieter. “I heard you say it. Z’Saai said it to me in that cell and he said no… n-no one was coming. I believed him.” She was shaking again. She couldn’t make it stop.
Kellat dropped to his knees on the deck in front of her, his hands at his sides like he didn’t trust himself to touch her.
“There is no excuse,” he said, his expression wrecked. “I am an idiot, and that is the ugliest thing I have ever said.” His voice cracked. “I would give anything to take them back. There is nothing about you that is trouble, my love. The trouble was me. It always was.”
She looked at him. At the blood, and the bruises, kneeling on bloody deck plating.
“You’re an idiot,” she said at last.
His eyes came up to hers, the expression in them haunted. “I know, kelarris. But if you let me, I will spend the rest of my life making up for it. Proving that I want you, for you. Not as a patient—“
Cutting him off, she reached down and fisted her hands in his leathers.
“Kiss me,” she ordered, and hauled until he came up off his knees, until his mouth was a breath from hers. “Then tell me you love me again. Then kiss me some more. And then maybe, if you’re very lucky, I’ll forgive you.”
He kissed her.
It was different this time. Slower and deeper, the desperation still in it but gentled.
“I love you,” he murmured against her lips.
“Again.”
“I love you.” A kiss to the corner of her lips. “I love you, Delilah.”
She was crying again, but she didn’t care. She caught his wrists and lifted them so she could see the marks, dark raised lines in a pattern too deliberate to be scarring, glowing faintly with his pulse.
“When did these appear?”
“When the station told me you were gone.” His voice went rough again. “I stood in a corridor learning I’d lost you, and they burned into my skin like fire. Mating marks.”
Bending her head, she kissed them. One wrist, then the other, her lips against the lines, and his breath caught hard.
“Lord Healer… a moment of your time?” a male voice said behind them. They turned to find the Voors’tial warriors behind them. “We are not sure—“
Delilah followed their gaze.
Her drakeen was still there. It stood in the middle of the ruined bay, its optics on her. In the confession and the tears she’d almost forgotten it, and the moment she remembered, the link warmed at the back of her mind like a hand slipping into hers.
She smiled at it.
It lifted one enormous forelimb and waved.
The laugh burst out of her, bright and surprised. She waved back, and something came down the link that felt like happiness.
“That is not possible,” Amaelii said, the vorrtan warlady joining them. She wore blood like a second skin. “No one links a drakeen without a band. No one.”
“Apparently someone does,” Delilah said.
“We will unpick it later.” Amaelii shook her head once, a short, soldier’s motion, and was already turning toward the smoke. “Right now, get off this ship. Both of you. I’ll deal with what’s left here.”
Kellat didn’t argue. Instead, he bent and scooped Delilah up into his arms.
“Kellat, you’re hurt!” She squeaked. “Put me down. I can walk.”
“No.” He was already moving. “No warrior worth his braids lets his mate walk after a battle she helped win.”
“I… I don’t think that’s a thing.”
He gave her a flat look. “It’s a Latharian thing.”
“Are you sure?” She frowned.
He arched an eyebrow. “Who is the Latharian here?”
She opened her mouth to argue, but then just wrapped her arms around his neck and let him carry her.
The drakeen followed.
Kellat carried her off the ship and through the station corridors, and the sounds of the aftermath faded behind them. He pressed his lips into her hair.
“I love you,” he murmured. “I’m never letting you go.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She pressed her face into the curve of his neck and stayed there, all the way back to the Voors’tial.
The drakeen followed them all the way to his quarters and stopped at the door, folding itself down into a crouch that filled the corridor wall to wall. She reached for it through the link and found contentment and patience. A steady devotion that asked for nothing back.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and it chirped softly as its optics dimmed to a low, watchful glow.
Kellat carried her inside, and the door slid shut behind them.
Kellat set her down on the bed with a gentleness that belied the dangerous warrior she knew that he was.
His leathers were torn and bloodied in places, and some of his braids had come loose, the silver strands falling against his bruised jaw. She winced as she looked at them, but they were already yellowing at the edges… Latharian healing was obviously much faster than humanity’s.
He was alive.
She grabbed his wrist to pull him down with her. His pulse hammered hot and frantic beneath her fingers, matching the wild rhythm in the center of her chest.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t leave me now.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, violet-blue eyes darkening to midnight. A groan escaped him as he let her pull him down.
Then he kissed her.
The collision of lips was desperate, relieved, edged with deep, dark need. His tongue swept into her mouth the instant she opened for him, rough and claiming. She moaned into the kiss, her fingers tangling his hair to drag him closer.
He tasted like copper and adrenaline and home, and she shuddered. She’d been terrified that she’d lost him… that she’d never get the chance to kiss him again.
His hands slid down her sides, huge palms spanning her ribs through the thin gown. Even battered and bleeding, he touched her as though she might break. As though she was something precious.
Her breath caught as he found the fastening at her shoulder and eased it loose. Drawing the gown down, he bared one shoulder, then the other. The fabric whispered over her skin, dragging lightly across her nipples until they tightened into hard points. His breath came rougher against her lips.
“Kellat,” she murmured.
He broke the kiss long enough to look down at her. His expression had gone raw, the bruising on his jaw and the blood at his temple making him look even more like the dangerous alien warrior he was. But his hands stayed gentle as he pushed the gown down her arms and over her breasts.
His thumbs brushed the undersides of them, barely there, and her hips jerked beneath him.
“Oh,” she breathed.
His lips quirked, though his eyes stayed dark. “Sensitive, kelarris?”
“Don’t be smug,” she managed. A deep chuckle rumbled out of him, vibrating against her skin. Then he bent his head and closed his lips around one aching nipple through the gown.
She gasped, her back arching. Heat poured low and heavy between her thighs, soaking the flimsy fabric bunched around her hips. His tongue circled the tight peak before he sucked gently, and her fingers clenched harder in his hair.
“Kellat,” she gasped, tugging him back up for another kiss. “Please.”
“Kelarris,” he rasped against her.
She pulled back, breathing hard. “What does that mean?”
His lips quirked as he looked at her. “You don’t know?”
“If I knew, you enormous genius, I wouldn’t be asking.”
His thumb traced her swollen lower lip, his touch gentle and his expression raw. “It means beloved.”
Oh.