Dante
There is chaos when we arrive at the lab area.
Or more chaos than usual. Three of my crew are on the floor, foaming at the mouth, smoke issuing from their nostrils and their wings shifted to almost full Sarkarnii proportions.
I gently put Rosalie on her feet, and my crew who are not affected make a break for the nearest exit.
“Nobody move,” I snarl. “Everyone is to stay right where they are.” They all stop dead in their tracks.
My crew have never disobeyed a direct order, and they’re not about to start, even if I might have done some damage earlier today when my mate was injured.
“Shut off the alarms,” I snap at the nearest warrior.
“We need to think.” I drop down next to one of the warriors and check him over.
He’s hot to the touch, and by the smell coming from him, the foam is unused accelerant.
“You’re going to be okay,” I say quietly.
“Nothing a dose of paraxio can’t sort out, eh, warrior? ”
He groans, his eyes rolling in his head. “Yes, boss.”
I resolve once more to find both a cure and another way of testing it if not on ourselves. This process cannot go on, even if my crew are as desperate to find it as I am.
I look around for Rosalie, but she’s already next to the closest prone warrior, her hand on his head as she speaks rapidly to the warrior next to him.
With another deep growl, I’m by her side.
“Decix says this warrior was trialling a new batch,” Rosalie says to me. “A new batch of what?”
“What we’ve been trying to perfect in order to keep our mutation under control.” I grab the unaffected warrior by his shoulder. “What’s different about this batch?” I snarl.
“It has more LX-Ninety in it than the others, but that’s all I know,” he says, his voice shaking as he looks down at his colleague.
“Give him paraxio. Give them all paraxio,” I order.
“What’s paraxio?” Rosalie asks me.
I wish she would stop touching the other warrior, although the way she handles him reminds me of how Dailiah used to treat us.
“It’s a powerful narcotic for most Sarkarnii, but we have a resistance to it, and generally it reverses the effects of anything we’re testing.”
“So, you test on live subjects and then bring them back from the brink if it all goes wrong?” Rosalie fires at me. “That’s wrong on so many levels.”
“All my warriors are willing subjects,” I say as one of them comes running back with vials of paraxio and they’re administered to the prone Sarkarnii who stop their frothing, and slowly their bodies relax with the dose of the narcotic.
“Take them to their quarters,” I say to the warrior surrounding them. “Nova hourly checks. If they don’t recover, take them to the med bay.”
One by one, the affected warriors are picked up and carried off, their wings trailing behind them.
“They’ll be fine,” I say as Rosalie watches them go. “It happens all the time. Their colleagues will persuade them to shift and they’ll make a complete recovery by the morning.”
She folds her arms, and my stomach does a flip over.
“Look, I might not know much about Sarkarnii, but on my planet, I did some medical training,” she hesitates briefly, “as a nurse, but I ended up giving it up.” She flaps her hand at me.
“That bit doesn’t matter but what I do know is if humans were conducting medical research, it would be in a proper, controlled environment.
” She looks around at the warriors who are now all trying to keep their distance from her and also get on with their work. “Not by way of mayhem.”
“It doesn’t hurt them,” I say with a lash of my tail. “They’ll recover, and all my crew are as keen on a cure as I am.”
“It doesn’t matter if they want to do it or not. You’re the one in charge, Dante.” She glares at me.
Yet again, the little female makes my cock throb within my pouch, its sensitive head pressing to get out. I hate that there are Sarkarnii all around us. I want her to myself.
But here, in the middle of the lab section, I can’t do what I want. Not while there is work to do, given the most recent batch obviously didn’t work.
“Aquium!” I exclaim and lift her from her feet again.
Rosalie squeaks deliciously, her little hands slapping at my chest which only makes my cock harder. If I can get her and me into an aquium, maybe I can control myself.
Admittedly, the chances of any self control left a long time ago, but then who knows? Maybe this time.
I thunder through my ship, warriors scattering ahead of me and in my wake until we get to the aquiums where I roar out my dominance, and the place is filled with escaping, slippery, scaly bodies.
“Aquium,” I growl into my mate’s neck, inhaling her sweet scent and luxuriating in the proximity to her.
Then I drop her into the water.