Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Four days passed with impossible speed, hastened by a flurry of potential clients that required thorough background checks and careful planning.
Drakkal had been afforded almost no time to spend with Shay—a frustrating issue he couldn’t solve even though he ran this whole operation alongside Arcanthus—and each day his hunger for her deepened and grew more insistent.
Every moment he spent separated from her had been its own unique bit of agony, all of them coming together to create a mosaic of suffering that shouldn’t have been possible considering the female he so desired was in the same damned building as him the entire time.
The days had passed quickly, but the seconds had dragged on forever.
He’d long known that the passage of time was relative, but he’d never experienced it as so terribly fast and brutally slow simultaneously.
Kraasz ka’val, I’m losing my mind.
By all accounts, Shay was settling in well. The crew’s initial assessment of her hadn’t changed; they all liked her, and that admiration had only grown. She fit in perfectly, and part of Drakkal hated that—because everyone else had spent hours and hours of time with her.
Drakkal had known his share of hardships, had faced injustices and been wronged more times than he cared to count, but this was the first time in all those years that he ever felt the universe was unfair.
Why the hell had business suddenly picked up the morning after he brought his mate home?
Why was he being kept apart from his female when he’d only just brought her close?
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on Arcanthus when he was trying to win over Samantha…
Now Drakkal stalked along the corridors, breathing deeply through his nose to pick up every scent on the air and filtering them all out of his awareness until only that sundrinker perfume with its exotic flair remained.
This was it—he was making time with her, taking it if necessary, and he wouldn’t let anything stop him.
He’d waged a ceaseless, internal war against his instincts over the last four days.
Having his mate so close and knowing he’d yet to claim her was a torture unlike any he could’ve imagined.
He’d resisted his urges to focus on work, telling himself repeatedly that said work was necessary to maintain everyone’s safety.
But right now, his only concern was Shay. The others were adults; they could take care of themselves for a few hours. Mama Drakkal needed some personal time.
His search was complicated by the fact that her scent was everywhere in this building by now.
After he’d checked her room—she wasn’t there—he should’ve just pulled up the surveillance feeds on his holocom to find her, but something inside him had railed against the idea.
He couldn’t tell if it was a deep opposition to violating her privacy, which was an almost comical thought after he’d spent a day stalking her through the Undercity, or a more primal, instinctual need to track her.
There was a drive in him to learn her scent so intimately that he could find her even were he stricken deaf and blind.
His skin prickled, his fur bristled, and his tail lashed as he searched the likeliest places.
He opened the break room door, pressed his hands against the door frame, and leaned through the doorway, sniffing the air and scanning the room.
Like everywhere else, her scent was there—but she wasn’t.
Only Razi, watching two teary-eyed volturians profess their love for one another on the entertainment screen.
Snarling, Drakkal shoved away from the doorway and continued the hunt. He needed to claim her, yes, but she wasn’t likely ready for that yet. Just being near her would be enough for now. It had to be enough.
Vrek’osh, I hope it’s enough.
He stopped at the gym next. The air smelled like sweat and greased tristeel, but it was the scent of Shay’s sweat that stood out the strongest to him—not just because he was actively seeking it, but because it was the freshest. She’d been here recently.
Ears flattening, Drakkal clenched his fists and continued to the only other place she might’ve gone while off duty.
Her scent strengthened as he descended into the lower level and approached the building’s training facilities, one of the only areas that had required little remodeling when the forgery operation had been relocated here.
The stairs let him out in a short corridor with the door to the shooting range directly ahead and the control room for the simulation chambers to his right.
He entered the shooting range first.
The range ran almost the full length of the building—nearly one hundred and fifty meters from one end to the other—though it was only fifteen meters wide.
Its dark gray walls were constructed of a material similar to that found in most combat armor, meaning they would absorb and disperse energy from plasma bolts and physical projectiles rather than deflect them.
The stalls lined up on this end of the range were empty, their control panels switched off, and the chamber was so quiet that Drakkal could hear the faint rustling of his fur against his clothing.
For some reason, this room had always seemed lonely to him.
Perhaps it was its size—it suggested wide open space without truly providing any, and that tease was enough to rouse Drakkal’s old desires for fields and forests, for fresh, warm breezes and endless skies.
But none of that mattered now; Shay wasn’t here, which only left one other likely place. If she wasn’t there, he’d have to tear through the entire building one room at a time, disregarding the quiet, rational part of his mind that insisted such a search was impractical and inefficient.
He exited the range and turned left, settling his gaze on the entrance to the simulation control room.
There was a sign near the entrance that indicated the individual simulation chambers with a square and a number in Universal Speech for each one.
All twelve of the squares were red except for chamber one, which glowed green, meaning it was in use.
Drakkal walked forward and turned into the long corridor than ran along the shooting range’s outside wall. The doors and view windows to the simulation chambers were lined up along the right side. He stopped at the first chamber and turned to look through the wide, one-way viewing window.
Shay was at the center of the chamber, standing on an omnidirectional moving floor that was currently hidden by the holographic simulation she was running—a simulation which, for her, was fully immersive and surrounded her completely on all sides.
The window allowed Drakkal a clear view, cutting out the hologram that would’ve run along that wall from her perspective.
It was almost like watching a movie, though no movie had ever drawn Drakkal in as quickly and thoroughly as this.
His attention, not surprisingly, was consumed by her.
Her blond hair was pulled up in a messy bun that barely kept the numerous dangling, rogue strands out of her face.
Her skin glistened with perspiration, and her tank top—which revealed her graceful, faintly toned arms and shoulders—was damp with sweat.
Its fabric hugged her body, molding to her breasts and her rounded belly. Her pants were just as form fitting.
Drakkal couldn’t help but notice there were no lines denoting the presence of undergarments beneath those leggings—the generous, natural curve of her ass was his to devour with his eyes. He groaned low, and his cock throbbed, suddenly straining against his pants.
How many times had he imagined taking Shay by her hips as he pushed inside her hot, welcoming body? How many times had he imagined her skin sweat-slickened like this as their bodies joined and their breaths mingled?
Fuck, how have I focused on anything else since I brought her here?
The answer to that was in his heart, nestled deep but not hidden—he hadn’t focused on anything apart from her for a month now.
Since the moment he’d first locked eyes with her, Shay had been his only concern, his only goal, his only drive, and everything else he’d done since that night at Foltham’s manor was lost in a fuzzy haze of memory.
He knew he’d worked, knew he’d handled business, but he’d retained none of the details.
Oh, but I can recall every detail of her body beneath those clothes, right down to the tiniest blemish.
He’d seen Shay fight during her brief scuffle with the sedhi on the street corner days ago, but that had offered only a hint of her training and discipline.
She’d said her father had taught her, that he’d been a military man.
Drakkal believed it as he finally forced himself to watch not just her body but the way she moved.
She held a training auto-blaster at the ready, its stock tucked against her shoulder.
The weapon couldn’t fire live plasma bolts, but it operated like the real thing within the simulation—and it could be modified both physically and functionally to mimic the feel and characteristics of real weapons.
The auto-blaster looked natural in her hands, especially paired with her confident stride.
Though she remained in place at the room’s center as she walked, the holographic corridor moved around her—and now that he was paying attention, he realized that corridor bore a striking resemblance to the halls of this building.