Chapter 11
Mine.
The word wasn't a thought so much as a biological imperative, rewriting Kirr’s DNA.
He lay on his back, staring up at the dim ceiling panels of his quarters—but the small, warm weight pressed against his side held him captive.
He didn't move. He barely dared to breathe too deeply, afraid the shift of his breathing might disturb her.
She was asleep. Her body limp and heavy in the aftermath of what they'd just done.
He swept a hand down the curve of her spine. Her skin was so soft. He was used to the rough texture of leather armor and the cold bite of metal. The roughness of his own skin. She was none of those things. She was delicate. Fragile, in a way that made his chest ache.
He shifted his grip, spanning her waist. His thumb and middle finger nearly met on the other side.
Draanth, she was small.
The contrast between them was ridiculous. He was seven feet of hardened muscle bred for violence, and the top of her head barely reached his chest. Yet she fit against him like she'd been made to. Made for him.
He traced the dip of her lower back as the last few hours played on loop in his head.
She hadn't fought him.
She'd surrendered. Looked him in the eye, accepted everything he gave her… everything he wanted from her, and given him everything in return.
Trust. She'd given him trust.
It settled deep in his soul. All lathar males grew up knowing the odds. There were no females of their own species left. Most warriors lived and died without ever holding a female, let alone managing to claim one. They found purpose in duty, in the clan, in war.
Kirr had accepted that. He was good at war. He understood duty.
But this? This quiet, still moment in the dark, with a female sleeping trustingly in his arms, her scent filling his lungs? He hadn't known he was starving until he'd tasted it.
Curling his arm tighter around her, he pulled her flush against him. His. His to keep. His to guard.
A sharp burn shot through his wrist.
He hissed through his teeth, flexing his fingers. The sensation was intense, like a frayed wire shorting out under his skin. It had started right after he'd poured himself into her, a low-level buzz that was quickly becoming a nuisance.
Lifting his arm, he squinted at his wrist in the dim light.
Nothing. Just his own skin, bronze and unblemished, the thick tendons shifting as he rotated his hand.
He rubbed at the spot with his thumb, grimacing. Probably just a strained nerve. Or adrenaline. He'd been wound tighter than a docking clamp for days, fueled by rage, jealousy, and lust. His body was finally coming down from the high, and his nerves were misfiring.
Letting his hand fall back to the mattress, he dismissed the irritation. He had more important things to focus on.
Harper shifted in her sleep, murmuring something unintelligible, and turned her head into his shoulder. Her arm draped across him, her fingers curling loosely against his pectoral muscle.
He stilled, letting her settle, then resumed his slow exploration of her skin. He wanted to memorize her. A map of every inch of her, stored for recall during boring command briefings.
So he ran his fingertips down her upper arm, over the gentle curve of her elbow, and along the inside of her forearm.
The texture changed.
He frowned, his fingers retracing the path. The skin wasn't smooth there. It was uneven. Ridged.
Slow so that he wouldn't wake her, he lifted her arm into the meager light filtering in from the corridor.
Pale, silvery lines crisscrossed the tender skin of her inner forearm. They were old, faded with time, but distinct against her delicate skin. Scars. And not just one or two. There were several, jagged and irregular, like glass had shattered and rained down on her.
His stomach twisted.
He’d read some of her file. He knew she'd been in a crash when she was a child… when her parents had died. But knowing it and seeing the physical evidence carved into her flesh were two different things.
He traced the largest scar with the pad of his thumb. It ran from her wrist halfway to her elbow.
Protective rage hit—cold and instant. It wasn't the hot, reactive anger of the docking bay when another male had looked at her. This was the calculating, lethal focus of a War-Commander assessing a threat.
Pain had touched her. Marked her.
But it would never touch her again. He would make sure of it.
He watched her face for a moment. She looked so peaceful there, her lips parted slightly, and the tension that usually tightened her jaw was gone. Like she knew she was safe.
He intended to keep her that way.
Slowly, he extracted himself from the bed. He slid out from under her arm, replacing his body with a heavy pillow so she wouldn't feel the absence of his heat. She murmured a protest but snuggled into the furs, clutching the pillow to her chest.
He stood by the side of the bed for a moment, watching her. He needed to know more. He needed to know everything about her.
Crossing to the desk, he picked up his wrist computer. He didn't put it on. Instead, he activated the display, the blue holographic light illuminating his harsh features.
He could ask her. He dismissed it immediately. Asking meant making her relive it. Asking meant watching her walls go back up. Asking meant risking that she would minimize it, tell him she was fine, tell him it was nothing.
He didn't want the sanitized version. He wanted the raw data.
He pulled up the secure comm channel to Kellat, typing the command rather than speaking.
REQUEST: FULL MEDICAL AND INTAKE RECORDS FOR SUBJECT SAWYER, HARPER. FLAGS: ALL TRAUMA HISTORY, PHYSICAL SCANS, PSYCH EVALUATIONS. PRIORITY: IMMEDIATE.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. It was an invasion of privacy…
But she was under his protection.
That trumped everything. He'd told Kaarigan he would use anything to keep her safe, and he meant it.
He hit send.
A rustle from the bed drew his attention.
Harper rolled over, blinking, her hair a messy halo around her face. She looked disoriented as she reached out and found only sheets and the furs.
Her eyes snapped open.
"Kirr?" Her voice was rough with sleep, a husk that went straight to his groin.
He was back at the bedside in two strides. He sat on the edge of the mattress, leaning over her, boxing her in with his arms.
He caught her searching hand and pinned it to his chest. "Here."
She blinked up at him, her eyes struggling to focus. She looked soft. Pliable. "Where'd you go?"
"Just checking something." He leaned down, brushing a kiss against her forehead, then her temple. She smelled like sex and him. It was the best smell in the galaxy. "Go back to sleep, kelarris. You're exhausted."
"Don't tell me what to—" Her yawn cut it off; she frowned at herself more than him. "Are you coming back to bed?"
Gods, he wanted to. Wanted nothing more than to slide back in between the sheets with her and make her scream his name all over again.
"Soon," he promised. He ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it back. "I'm going to make breakfast. You need to eat."
"If it's alien sludge, I'm filing a complaint,” she mumbled, already drifting off.
"Noted." He smiled and tucked the blanket higher over her shoulder. He traced his thumb over her lower lip. "Rest. I'll wake you when it's ready."
She made a small noise of agreement and buried her face in the pillow he'd given her. Within seconds, her breathing evened out again.
Standing, he rechecked his comm unit. The confirmation blinked back at him: PROCESSING.
He deactivated the unit and set it back on the desk, satisfaction settling cold and certain in his gut. He had a plan. He had intel incoming and if Harper ever found out what he'd just done, she'd never forgive him.
He glanced back at the bed where she slept, soft and trusting. Worth the risk.
She was worth any risk.
* * *
"The brain activity is distinct." Kellat's fingers flew across the holographic console, and Harper leaned forward in the uncomfortable chair beside Delilah's bed, hardly daring to breathe.
Her hand rested over Delilah's limp fingers. Her cousin looked pale, fragile in a way she’d never seen before. Even unconscious, with tubes and sensors monitoring her every biological function, Delilah somehow managed to look like she was taking a very expensive nap.
"See here? Her numbers are stronger, and any residual swelling is down."
Kellat flicked his fingers, and the hologram zoomed out; blue lines flared under his fingers as he stood on the other side of the bed. The scanning rings over Delilah's chest pulsed, soft and rhythmic.
She leaned in until her knee bumped the bedframe, squinting at the blue web of lines—meaningless to her. Kellat knew what he was looking at, though, and that was all that mattered. "Does that mean...?"
Kellat looked up, his expression warm.
"It means the neural pathways are re-establishing connections faster than I projected." He tapped a final command, and the blue rings dimmed, settling into a standby mode. "If this trend continues for another cycle, I believe I can begin the protocol to bring her out of the coma."
"She's going to wake up?" Her voice cracked. "For real?"
"For real," the healer confirmed, a small smile touching his lips.
The crushing weight that had been sitting on Harper's chest for days lifted. It vanished, leaving her lightheaded and dizzy with relief.
Delilah wasn't going to die. She hadn't killed her cousin by failing to stop her reckless impulse.
Heat pressed behind her eyes. She blinked it back, squeezing Delilah's fingers.
"Did you hear that, Dee?" she whispered, thumb rubbing her cousin's knuckles. "You're going to be okay. You have to wake up because the healer says so, and he's scary smart."
The door to the medical hall hissed open. She didn't need to look up to know who it was. Her body already knew.
Kirr.