Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Evie couldn’t imagine a worse time for this particular visitor.
Durik filled the bathroom archway, his tail swishing.
Two hybrid females came with him, tall and expressionless.
His pale eyes moved over Jarran, taking in the bare chest, the damp face, the bare feet on the tile.
Then his gaze shifted to Evie, and she bristled at the calculation and cruelty she saw there. Not an ounce of empathy.
Jarran’s arm was rigid under her hand. Tension had locked every muscle. He hadn’t responded, but simply stood between her and Durik, saying nothing.
Durik leaned against the archway frame and crossed his arms, looking casual, almost amused. “The memories came back, then.” He cocked his head and sniffed. “Yes, I can smell they did. Good. That’s good.”
Evie’s stomach dropped.
“What do you mean, good?” she demanded.
Durik’s eyes glittered. He was enjoying this conversation way too much. It was as if he’d been rehearsing it. “I mean I’ve been waiting for this. I stimulated the implant remotely, then ramped up the signal in stages. The headaches, the nausea.” He waved a hand. “All me.”
A low growl came from Jarran, like a warning signal, but it didn’t seem like Durik was going to acknowledge it.
Evie’s mind was churning this new info. Stimulated remotely. The bastard had found a way to hack into the Baylan device and use it for himself.
“You caused the memory flood,” she said.
“I accelerated it.” Durik shrugged. “The memories were there. Walled off, as I’m sure you explained to him with your medical expertise. The implant broke the walls down. All I needed was a catalyst.”
He looked at Evie. Held her gaze.
“You, specifically, must have done it. He’s so very taken with you. The implant was primed and waiting for an emotional trigger. You walked right into it.”
She heard the words and cold fury settled into the base of her throat because she understood what he was saying: He’d used her to trigger Jarran’s memory flood. Her hands on his face in the dark bathroom. Her voice saying his name. Durik had set the trap and she had sprung it.
Jarran’s voice came out flat. “You left the implant in my head.”
“Yes, I changed my mind about that.” Durik sounded genuinely surprised by the statement.
“Why remove such a useful tool? Since you’re so resistant to my demands, the implant stays.
I’ve engineered a control device for it.
As long as that hardware sits at the base of your skull, I can activate it, suppress it, cause you pain with it.
” He cocked his head. “Think of it as a leash.”
Evie watched Jarran’s fists clench at his sides and his shoulders pull back. The cords of his neck stood out. He was furious. She’d never seen him look quite like this. It wasn’t Pella Rin surfacing. It was Jarran, fully present, fully aware, and enraged.
“You should be thanking me,” Durik continued. “You have your memories back. You know who you are. Granted, the delivery method was unpleasant, but results matter more than process. You taught me that, actually.”
“I taught you nothing,” Jarran said. “Pella Rin taught you.”
Durik waved this off. “Same brain.”
Evie’s grip on Jarran’s arm shifted. She pressed her fingers into his skin, a small signal. I’m here. Stay with me. He didn’t look back at her, but his arm moved a fraction, pressing closer to her hand.
“Now.” Durik uncrossed his arms and straightened. The amusement faded from his face and what replaced it was hard and businesslike. “There’s something else I want you both to understand.”
He gestured at the bathroom. The wide tub. The polished tile. The bedroom visible through the archway behind him, with its oversized bed and soft lighting and fine clothes hung in the wardrobe.
“This suite. The comfort, the privacy, the one bed.” His mouth curved. “Did you think I was being generous?”
Evie’s chest tightened. She knew exactly where this was going, and she hated him for it.
“I put her in here with you on purpose, Pella Rin.” Durik’s voice was conversational.
He might have been discussing supply logistics.
“A comfortable room. No guards watching. Time alone with a pretty female whom you were already besotted with. Someone warm and soft and sympathetic.” He spread his hands.
“All I had to do was create the right conditions and let nature do the rest.”
Jarran’s breathing changed. Evie could hear it. Shallow and tight through his nose.
“You fell for her.” Durik nodded toward Evie without looking at her. “Predictable. Useful. Because a male in love is a male with a pressure point.” He smiled. “I have two leashes now. The implant.” He tapped the back of his own head. “And her.”
The silence in the bathroom was total. Evie could hear her pulse in her ears.
Fact: Durik had engineered their intimacy as a weapon.
Fact: Of course, it had worked. She was Jarran’s vulnerability. She’d known that since the cell. She’d known it when he kissed her and when he told her she was worth everything to him. She’d known it was dangerous and she’d let it happen anyway.
Fact: Knowing this didn’t change how she felt.
Jarran nodded. “Pella Rin would have done the same thing.” His voice was quiet and controlled and it scared her more than shouting would have.
“You’re starting to get it.” Durik grinned. “You can feel him close to the surface, can’t you? Knocking to get in. To take control again.”
Even though her view of Jarran’s face wasn’t full, she could see his expression change. It was quick, and masked before she could name it. Disgust, maybe. Or worse, worry.
“Enough.” Durik clapped his hands together once. A sharp, decisive sound. “We’ve had our little talk. Time to move things along.” He looked at the two females flanking him. “Take the human female. Put her in holding cell four. Separate quarters from now on.”
Evie’s stomach lurched.
Jarran shifted his weight. His body squared toward the doorway and his hands came up. “No.”
“It’s not a request,” Durik said, bored.
The first female moved. She stepped around Durik and reached for Evie. Jarran blocked her arm with his forearm, knocking it sideways.
Evie felt the heat coming from him. It was sudden and unmistakable. His skin had gone from warm to burning in the space of a heartbeat. She yanked her hand away from him.
“Jarran.” She said his name and he didn’t respond. He was staring at the female, whose face had shifted for the first time from blank composure to startled. She stepped backward.
Evie looked at Jarran’s arms. Beneath the dark lines of Sifter tattoos, his veins turned dark red and bulged prominently, like thick rivulets of lava. The air around him wavered and distorted.
God, no. She’d read every file, every case study, every firsthand account from the other human women.
She knew what this was: the primal form.
It was a transformation that happened when a Virilian male was pushed to his breaking point, when the person he would give his life for was being threatened.
But Jarran wasn’t transforming. The heat flared and held. The red lines glowed faintly along his tattoos. His breathing was harsh and fast. And then the glow faded. The heat pulled back a degree. The shimmer around him settled.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t ready. Something inside him had reached for the shift and couldn’t quite get there.
Durik’s eyes had gone wide. For the first time since Evie had met him, he looked genuinely caught off guard. He recovered fast, but she saw it. The flash of surprise, followed by a hard calculation behind his pale eyes.
“Interesting,” Durik said quietly.
The second female moved. She came from Durik’s left side, circling toward Evie while Jarran was squared off against the first. Evie saw her coming. The female’s face was blank, professional, and she moved with the smooth mechanical precision that all the hybrids shared.
Evie didn’t think. She lunged sideways toward the steam shower.
The walk-in steam shower had a wide nozzle head on a flexible hose and a temperature dial that went high enough to fill the room with dense, scalding vapor.
Evie had used it yesterday. She’d cranked the temperature up because the ship ran cold and the steam felt good after days in a freezing cell.
She turned the heat and pressure up to maximum, grabbed the nozzle, and blasted the female in the face.
A jet of pressurized steam, hot enough to burn.
The female staggered backward, hands coming up too late.
She hit the bathroom wall and her eyes squeezed shut, temporarily blinded, and a raw sound tore out of her throat.
The first female lunged.
Evie’s hands closed a heavy glass container of mineral bathing salts sitting on the tub ledge.
She tossed the contents in the direction of the first female’s face and floral-scented crystals landed in a direct hit.
The female reeled sideways, clutching her eyes, with salt and glitter bits sparkling in her hair.
Evie was already moving. She’d used up her element of surprise and now she had to get somewhere safe.
The tube shower was close and the clear unit went floor to ceiling, with a thick plexiglass wall and a locking mechanism on the inside.
She threw herself inside, grabbed the door, and hauled it shut.
Her fingers fumbled over the lock, but she found the latch, shoved it home, and heard it click.
She pressed her hands against the curved plexiglass, shaking with adrenaline. Her heart hammered so hard she could feel it in her jaw.
Through the plexiglass, the bathroom was chaos.