29. Clair
CLAIR
Clair didn’t even have time to wonder how she had heard Kaelus’s voice inside her head again.
One second Sendar’s blaster was pointing straight at her chest and the next Kaelus’s desperate command—Clair, move!
—seemed to explode inside her skull as the big Hybrid shoved her violently to one side and launched himself across the room.
The blaster discharged with a deafening crack and a streak of brilliant blue-white energy tore through the space where Clair had been standing less than a second before.
But Kaelus had already thrown himself between her and the weapon. The blast caught him high in the left shoulder and spun him half around, burning through the gray fabric of his tunic and filling the room with the sickening smell of scorched flesh.
“Kaelus!” Clair screamed, but the big Hybrid barely seemed to register the injury. He stumbled for only a fraction of a second before continuing his charge, hitting Sendar with enough force to send both of them crashing into one of the ancient containment chairs.
The blaster flew out of Sendar’s hand and skittered across the stone floor, far out of reach.
“Kaelus!” Clair shouted again, scrambling to her feet.
Her legs felt shaky and weak after everything that had happened—the virus…the mating…the unbelievable realization that somehow she could hear Kaelus inside her mind—but none of that mattered now.
Blood was already soaking the fabric around his shoulder and running down his arm, yet the big Hybrid had Sendar pinned against the heavy black chair with one massive hand wrapped around his throat.
“You murderous fucking bastard,” Kaelus growled, his voice so low and dangerous that Clair barely recognized it.
“You infected an entire Kindred colony and murdered your own wife, then you injected me with that filth and tried to make me kill the woman I love. Give me one reason—just one—why I shouldn’t crush your throat and send you straight to the Seven Hells! ”
Sendar clawed at his wrist, but he couldn’t possibly break Kaelus’s grip.
Despite the blaster wound and everything his body had endured, the huge Hybrid looked more powerful than ever.
His golden eyes had gone almost incandescent with fury, and his fangs were still fully extended, making him look terrifyingly close to the savage creature Sendar had tried to turn him into.
“You see?” Sendar choked out, somehow managing a twisted smile despite the hand around his throat.
“You see what you really are when all that Kindred discipline is stripped away? Nothing but an animal—a violent, primitive beast pretending to be civilized because some female has trained you to heel!”
“You fucker—I’m going to fucking kill you!”
Kaelus’s fingers tightened and Sendar made a strangled sound.
For one horrifying moment, Clair thought he really was going to kill him.
“Kaelus, don’t!” she exclaimed, moving toward them. “Don’t kill him!”
Kaelus turned his head to look at her.
“He made me hurt you, Lissa’ra,” he bit out. “He killed his own wife and he wanted to make me kill you!”
“I know,” Clair said desperately. “But you have to spare him—not because he deserves mercy, because God knows he doesn’t.
You have to spare him because he needs to answer for what he did to Galandra and to every woman who died on Glenvarren.
Don’t let that bastard turn you into the monster he keeps insisting you are! ” she begged.
Kaelus’s grip on the other male’s throat loosened somewhat and Clair felt something strange brush against her mind—a flash of rage, pain, and overwhelming protectiveness that wasn’t hers.
Then his grip loosened even more.
Sendar sucked in a ragged breath.
“You’re right,” Kaelus growled at last. “You’re absolutely right, Lissa’ra. He does not deserve the mercy of a quick death.” He let go of Sendar and stepped back.
Sendar sat up, coughed harshly and rubbed his throat.
“How touching. The obedient husband listens when his goddess speaks. You couldn’t have illustrated my point any more perfectly if you’d tried.”
“Oh, shut up,” Clair snapped. “Kaelus didn’t stop because I ordered him to—he stopped because unlike you, he has a conscience.
There’s a difference between loving a woman enough to listen to her and being enslaved by her—though apparently that distinction is a little too complicated for your tiny misogynistic brain. ”
Sendar’s metallic eyes flashed.
“I expected better from a scientist,” he snapped.
“And I expected better from a doctor,” Clair shot back. “Yet here we are.”
The recorder-bee buzzed overhead. Sendar looked up at it and his ugly smile returned.
“Well, fortunately, your opinions are irrelevant. I already have everything I need. That recorder has captured your husband savaging you like an animal, Doctor Donovan, and I assure you the Kindred High Council will find the footage most enlightening. A Beast/Blood Hybrid infected by his own experimental virus, murdering the colonists of Glenvarren and then assaulting his human wife when she discovered what he’d done—it makes an extremely convincing narrative. ”
Clair stared at him. For perhaps two seconds she was too astonished to speak—then she started laughing. Not because anything was funny but because Sendar was apparently even more arrogant than she had realized.
His expression soured.
“What is so amusing?”
Clair wiped at her eyes.
“Oh, you really are a special kind of stupid, aren’t you?”
Sendar’s face tightened.
“Explain yourself.”
Clair pointed at the recorder-bee hovering above them.
“You said that thing has been recording the whole time?”
“Of course.” He nodded.
“Which means it recorded everything you just said about deliberately infecting the Glenvarren colony?”
Sendar’s expression changed slightly.
“Also everything you said about murdering your wife after she discovered the truth,” Kaelus put in.
“And the part where you admitted you injected Kaelus with the Savage Syndrome virus because you wanted to record him killing me?” Clair went on. “And let’s not forget the really charming speech about creating a strain that can’t be cured by veloria so you can wipe out every woman on Titus Four.”
Sendar’s eyes narrowed.
“I was going to edit those things out before I released the recording! I still will—you can’t stop me.”
Clair smiled sweetly.
“Right. Except we already have. Congratulations, Doctor. You just recorded your own confession.”
For the first time since he entered the room, Sendar appeared genuinely alarmed. His gaze snapped toward the hovering recorder-bee. Then he lunged for it.
“Oh no you don’t!” Clair exclaimed.
She didn’t know exactly what possessed her, but she hurled Kaelus’s data tablet straight at Sendar’s head.
It struck him squarely in the temple and Sendar staggered sideways with a curse.
“Clair!” Kaelus barked.
“What?”
“That tablet contains all the evidence!”
“Oh shit! I just got so mad!” she exclaimed.
Luckily, it had survived worse. Well, probably.
But she didn’t have time to check the tablet because Sendar lunged at her.
“Interfering bitch!” he snarled, reaching for her.
Clair barely had time to throw up her hands before Kaelus was suddenly there.
The big Hybrid caught Sendar by the back of his collar and hauled him away from her as though he weighed no more than a child. Sendar kicked and twisted, trying to break free, but Kaelus swung him around and slammed him face-first against the side of the containment chair.
There was a horrible clang and Sendar crumpled to the floor.
For several seconds nobody moved, then Clair cautiously peered around Kaelus’s broad body.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“No,” Kaelus growled.
“Are you sure?”
Kaelus nudged Sendar with one boot and the unconscious male groaned.
“Unfortunately,” he said, scowling.
Clair let out a shaky breath.
“Good.”
Kaelus looked down at her.
“Good? He deserves death.”
“Yes, but now he gets to explain to the entire Council why his recorder contains a full confession to murder, bioterrorism, medical experimentation, and whatever the alien equivalent is of being the biggest asshole on the planet.”
Despite the pain etched around his mouth, one corner of Kaelus’s lips lifted.
“I do not believe that last offense is technically criminal.”
“It should be,” Clair said.
He nodded.
“On that point, we agree.”
Relief swept through Clair so suddenly her knees nearly gave way. It was over. Sendar was unconscious. The blaster was out of reach. Kaelus was himself again. They had the Archive records and Sendar’s own confession.
They had won! Then she saw the blood.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, putting a hand to her mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
Kaelus looked down. The entire left side of his shirt was soaked through.
“You’re hurt!” Clair exclaimed, pointing.
He frowned.
“That is inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient?” Clair stared at him. “You’ve been shot!”
He shrugged.
“I noticed.”
“Kaelus!” she exclaimed.
“Please be calm, Clair. I am not going to die,” he said calmly.
“How the hell do you know?” she demanded.
“I am a physician,” he reminded her.
His calm tone really pushed her buttons.
“You’re also a stubborn idiot!” she snapped.
“That is not a medical diagnosis,” Kaelus said blandly.
Clair frowned.
“It is now.”
She stepped toward him and immediately had to grab the edge of the restraint chair when the room tilted.
Kaelus’s expression changed and anxiety filled his golden eyes.
“Clair?”
She waved him off.
“I’m fine.”
“You are not—you nearly collapsed.”
“Give me a break—I’ve had a busy afternoon!”
She had meant the words to sound sarcastic, but her voice came out shaky instead.
“Gods, Clair.”
He reached for her, then abruptly stopped himself and stepped back.
His hesitation hurt more than she expected. Only a few minutes ago he had been inside her, holding her. And now he looked almost afraid to touch her.
Then Clair heard it—a thought that wasn’t her own.
“I don’t deserve to touch her. I hurt her.”
The words were faint, as though coming through several walls, but they were unmistakably Kaelus’s voice.