30. Clair #2
Varell shook his head.
“That makes no sense,” he murmured.
“It does if our hypothesis was correct,” Kaelus said, all scientist again despite his injury. He leaned toward the display. “The veloria compound does not eliminate the virus. It inhibits its neurological effects.”
Maera nodded.
“Exactly. Your viral concentration is comparable to what we have seen in the severely affected Glenvarren males, but the markers associated with androgenic overload and neurological aggression have fallen almost completely back to baseline.”
Clair stared at the readings.
“So the virus is still there, but it can’t make him Savage anymore.”
“Correct.”
“And the compound?” she asked.
Maera changed the display and the number that appeared made Clair’s eyebrows rise.
“Oh, wow.”
Kaelus’s active veloria-metabolite concentration was enormous—not merely elevated but off the charts compared with the male samples they had tested earlier.
“That’s nearly twelve times the average concentration we saw in protected Titus Four males,” Clair said.
“Thirteen point four,” Kaelus corrected.
She gave him a look.
“Of course you did the math.”
He shrugged.
“I always do.”
Maera smiled faintly.
“There is more. Let me show you.”
She brought up Clair’s bloodwork beside Kaelus’s and Clair stared at the comparison.
Her own active-metabolite levels had dropped dramatically since the sample she had given that morning.
“Oh my God,” she murmured. “My levels are so much lower than they were this morning!”
Kaelus frowned.
“By how much?”
“Approximately seventy percent,” Maera said.
Clair looked from her own reading to his.
“So I really did transfer it to him,” she said. “Through sex.”
Maera gave her a little smile.
“Apparently you were determined to test your own hypothesis immediately.”
Clair felt her cheeks getting hot.
“She had no choice,” Kaelus said soberly and she felt a stab of guilt coming from his direction. “After Sendar injected me with the virus, she felt obligated to save me.”
“It wasn’t an obligation—I wanted to save you,” Clair said softly.
His face twisted.
“You risked yourself. I could have killed you.”
“But you didn’t,” Clair said lightly. “And that’s all we’re going to say about that.”
For now, anyway. She wanted to talk to him privately about what was going on between them, but now was not the time or the place.
“The important thing,” Maera said, “is that we now have the mechanism. veloria itself is not the cure. Female metabolism converts the plant precursor into the active neurological inhibitor, which can then be transferred to a male through bodily fluids.”
“Saliva works for maintenance,” Clair said. “But not for an acute infection.”
“Apparently not,” Varell said mildly.
“And sexual transfer delivers a much higher dose,” Clair went on.
Kaelus was studying the numbers intently.
“If the active metabolite can be isolated and synthesized, there may eventually be no need for direct transfer.”
Clair nodded eagerly.
“Exactly. We should be able to manufacture it once we know the final molecular structure.”
“And until then?” Varell asked.
Clair and Kaelus looked at each other.
“Well,” Clair said slowly, “there are going to be some interesting conversations with the wives on Glenvarren.”
Varell’s mouth twitched and Maera laughed outright. Only Kaelus didn’t smile.
Then one of the diagnostic displays chimed and Maera turned toward it. Her smile faded and became a look of uncertainty.
“What is it?” Clair asked, immediately alert.
Maera didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she studied the new data with a deepening frown, then looked from Clair to Kaelus and back again.
“What?” Clair demanded. “You can’t make that face and then say nothing!”
“I am seeing something I do not entirely understand,” she said slowly.
Kaelus rose from his bed despite another protest from the physician and came closer. Clair tried not to notice that he was still shirtless…but she couldn’t quite manage it. Even wounded, exhausted, and currently acting like the galaxy’s most irritatingly secretive male, he was mouthwatering.
“What are you seeing?” he asked Maera.
Maera enlarged two neurological scans. One belonged to Clair and the other belonged to Kaelus.
“Look,” she said simply.
At first Clair didn’t see anything unusual—then Maera overlaid them and several regions lit simultaneously.
Clair frowned in confusion.
“What does that mean?”
Maera shook her head.
“I am uncertain.”
Kaelus frowned.
“That is not reassuring,” he rumbled.
“The patterns are not dangerous,” Maera said quickly. “Quite the opposite—your autonomic responses appear unusually synchronized.”
Clair looked at Kaelus and saw that he was staring at the display with a worried frown on his face. It was as though he knew something—something he wasn’t sharing with her.
“What kind of synchronized?” Clair asked.
Maera enlarged another set of readings.
“Heart-rate variability…stress response…certain neurochemical cycles. There is also a pheromonal component I cannot fully interpret because Kindred physiology is not my specialty, but your bodies appear to be responding to each other in ways I would normally associate with a permanent mating connection.”
Silence filled the medical room and Clair looked slowly toward Kaelus.
The big Hybrid refused to meet her eyes, but she felt a deep feeling of guilt coming from him. How was she able to feel that?
Okay, enough was enough, Clair thought. She’d been trying to wait and have this conversation later, but the evidence that something had happened between them kept piling up and she wanted answers!
“Kaelus,” she said softly. “What does this mean, this ‘permanent mating connection?’”
He shrugged evasively.
“It may be nothing.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Clair snapped, losing her patience.
“Clair—” he began…
“No. You have been acting strange ever since we had sex!”
Her cheeks were hot, but she kept going.
“I keep feeling your feelings and hearing your thoughts when you very clearly are not speaking, but every time I ask what’s happening, you shut me out.
Now Maera is telling me our brains and bodies are doing some kind of alien synchronized mating dance, so I would very much appreciate it if you would stop treating me like an idiot and tell me what the hell happened. ”
Kaelus looked stricken—not angry or annoyed—more worried and afraid.
His expression and the feelings she was getting from him worried Clair more than anything else.
“I cannot talk about this here,” he said at last.
A faint sensation brushed against the inside of her mind again—grief so deep it made her chest hurt. Then it vanished behind that invisible wall.
She drew in a slow breath.
“You’re blocking me,” she accused silently.
Blocking her from what? She didn’t know but she knew it was happening.
“I don’t know exactly what you’re doing,” Clair continued, “but I can feel you in my head, and every time something slips through, you shove it away. So whatever this is, you know more than you’re telling me.”
His face tightened.