Chapter 13
Xabat
My head throbbed. Memories slugged through my brain like thick syrup, fragmented images that refused to coalesce into anything coherent.
Xytol.
The Storm.
Danger.
Harper!
Her image fought through the fog, beautiful and bright. The thought of her settled in my brain. The organ felt like it rattled violently in my skull, shaken until everything inside had come loose.
I opened my eyes to find my vision tinged with red and edged with creeping black at the periphery, like I was looking through a tunnel of human blood.
Harper? Where was Harper?
I opened my mouth to call her name, but nothing came except bile exploding from my lips as a brutal wave of nausea claimed me, my stomach heaving violently.
Grit alone pushed me to my hands and knees, the room swimming sickeningly around me.
The store.
Potato Chips.
Claiming my mate.
Where was she?
I managed to sit upright, my head swimming, fragmented memories attacking my senses in sharp, jagged pieces.
Something had happened. Something very wrong.
My hand trembled as my fingers found their way to the agonizing throb at the back of my head. The skin was torn, ragged edges of flesh that shouldn't be there. Blood soaked my hair, matting it into sticky clumps, and the back of my shirt clung to my skin, drenched and heavy with it.
I remembered the sound. Loud and violent, a sharp crack that had cut through everything, louder than the hurricane.
"Harper?" My voice came out raspy, barely a whisper, my throat raw and dry. Only silence answered, thick and suffocating.
I blinked my eyes, forcing them to focus. The red tinge thinned gradually, and the dim grey light sharpened into clarity. The shards of sunlight streaming through the boarded windows fell at different angles than before, telling me time had passed—too much time.
Harper.
I swayed, my equilibrium completely shattered and vomited again as the spinning in my head intensified into a vicious cyclone. Memories whirled through my consciousness with chaotic force, each one striking like debris in a windstorm.
Harper. Protecting Harper.
I'd failed her.
Shame cut through the fog in my mind, clearing my consciousness with brutal clarity. The beach house swam into recollection, then the men, the ones who'd attacked. We'd escaped those who followed, taking shelter from the hurricane in the store.
Harper.
Wanting her with an intensity that burned through my veins... loving her with every fiber of my being... claiming her as mine.
The others came next. Junkies with hollow eyes who spilled my blood, forcing me to spill my secrets. Harper's understanding and acceptance.
Then men in uniform, their badges gleaming even in the dim light, men that Harper seemed to trust, then...
A violent scream of pain tore through my skull.
A gunshot. Close range. The slam of a projectile into my skull. Harper's whimper as I fell.
Horror ripped through me like claws shredding my gut, tearing through muscle and organ until nothing remained but raw, bleeding panic.
Where. Was. Harper?
I pushed to my feet, the world tilting dangerously as I swayed and clutched at the metal racks and shelves, my fingers leaving smears of blood on the surfaces as I dragged myself toward the bathing room.
The reflection that greeted me in the grimy mirror wasn't my own.
Human. Perfectly, deceptively human. Of course.
The cuddwisg device was still engaged. I'd witnessed a warrior getting his head sliced clean off once in battle, and because the severed head landed close enough to the body, the cuddwisg had maintained its camouflage even in death.
I turned, craning my neck to examine the damage.
The back of my shirt was completely drenched, the fabric stiff and heavy with congealing blood.
After wiping carefully at the wound with a handful of wet paper towels, I could finally see it clearly—a small crater of destroyed tissue surrounded by burned and blackened skin.
One of the men had shot me.
And my mate was gone.
I splashed my face with water, the shocking chill cutting through the fog and settling my fractured senses. The bullet hadn't penetrated my skull—few human projectiles could—but at such close range, the impact had been sufficient to rattle my brain, rendering me unconscious.
"Harper!" I bellowed her name, the sound tearing from my throat, echoing off the walls. Silence was still my only answer, thick and mocking.
I had to find her.
I cleaned up the wound as best I could. I needed to make it to my shuttle. Until then, I needed to avoid the notice of other humans as much as possible. I would trust no one—not their peacekeepers, not their healers—until my mate was safe in my arms once more.
I stumbled toward the door, rage and determination keeping me upright when my body wanted to collapse.
The scents were a chaotic mixture that my nose struggled to parse.
Human males. Dust and mildew. Blood—mine, metallic and thick—and the faint sweet whiff of my mate.
Harper's delicate floral, spicy scent, now almost completely faded save for the sharp, acrid tang of fear that clung to the edges.
I could tell from the way the sunlight filtered through the boarded windows that hours had passed. Too many hours. I wouldn't be able to track her by scent through the storm-riddled landscape.
Another memory hit me then, piercing through the pain with bittersweet clarity. The precious moments after we'd given ourselves to each other completely, and the soul-deep realization that I would never be able to let her go.
I tapped the comm unit on my wrist. With the storm over, I should have had no issues contacting the ship.
It took a few minutes—not surprising, given that the Historia was orbiting several million miles away—before a voice I recognized crackled through, the familiar tones confirming the connection had established.
"Xabat?" Adtovar's voice held a thread of tension, sharp and taut as a wire pulled to its breaking point. "Are you well? George indicated there were fluctuations in your biometric readings." All crew members of the Historia had implanted biometric scanners that were monitored from the ship.
"I got shot," I muttered through gritted teeth, wincing as the words themselves seemed to send fresh agony shooting through my skull.
"Shot?" I couldn't tell whether my captain sounded alarmed or angry, his tone hovering somewhere between the two.
"Humans posing as peacekeepers," I muttered, each word an effort. "They took Harper."
"You found her?" Maddie's voice joined our conversation, warm even through the comm's static interference.
"Yes," I muttered, my gut twisting with a combination of pride and shame. "I made contact before the storm, but wasn't able to get her to safety before it became unsafe to travel. We'd been sheltering in a small market."
"I've been following the hurricane," Maddie said, her voice taking on an analytical tone. "It looked like a doozy, category five at some landfall locations."
"We made it through the storm without injury," I explained, leaning heavily against a shelf for support. "I was waiting until dark before making our way to the shuttle. But human males arrived pretending to be Earth police... they took Harper."
"Human?" Shock was evident in Maddie's voice, her pitch rising with disbelief. "Humans took her?"
"Yes," I told her, my tone shaking with barely contained rage. "We encountered other human males as well at her beach house. These weren't ordinary males. They were disciplined... trained... warriors."
"Fuck!" Maddie breathed, the expletive sharp and vehement.
"They shot me in the head," I continued, my free hand unconsciously moving to touch the wound at the back of my skull. "The projectile wasn't strong enough to do lasting damage, but it rattled me enough to allow their escape."
"Of course it did," Maddie huffed, her tone mixing exasperation with concern.
"Do you have any idea where they took her?" Adtovar demanded, his voice snapping with military precision.
"No," I growled, frustration and fury bleeding into the single word, "but I planted a tracker on her clothes."
"Good move," Adtovar said, and I heard the sound of devices clicking, the familiar hum of the Historia's bridge equipment activating. "I'll have a location for you shortly."
"I need to get to my shuttle," I announced, moving through the store, stopping to change back into my jeans that had long since dried, and retrieving my rain jacket from where I'd discarded it.
I left on the pale peach t-shirt with palm trees on it despite the dried blood decorating the back. Harper had picked it out for me.
"How close is it?" Maddie asked, her voice taking on the efficient quality that made her an excellent captain's mate.
"Ten or so clicks—miles—away," I told her, remembering to use the Earth measure of distance she understood.
Normally, I could have covered that distance in minutes, my body built for speed and endurance.
However, in my current condition, with my equilibrium shattered and my head pounding with each heartbeat, it would take considerably longer.
By sheer force of will, I would move. They'd taken Harper. Nothing would stop me from finding her.
"When you get to the shuttle, make sure you treat your injury with the medi-unit," Adtovar ordered, his tone brooking no argument. "I'll locate the tracker's coordinates and send Rickon and Cristox to assist."
"I don't need help," I muttered, my pride bristling at the suggestion. Rescuing Harper, killing those that took her—it was my right, my responsibility as her mate.
"With humans involved, we don't know the numbers you might face. You'll wait on backup," Adtovar ordered, his voice holding the unmistakable edge of command.
I grunted my assent, knowing better than to argue with my captain.
"Take care of yourself, Xabat," Maddie insisted, her voice softening with worry. "Harper needs you well and strong."
The comm cut off with a shimmer of blue light, the holographic display fading into nothing.
I donned the rain jacket, hoping the dark material would conceal the evidence of my injury.
Stumbling outside, the brightness of the overcast sky made my eyes burn and water as if acid had been poured into them.
Each movement, each step, each turn of my head sent my brain sloshing around inside my skull like liquid in a half-filled container, the sensation nauseating and disorienting.
I ignored it all, pushing past the pain through sheer determination.
Harper needed me. My mate was out there somewhere, frightened and alone with dangerous men, and I would find her or die trying.
Thankfully, the terrain here lay elevated above sea level, the ground sloping upward from the coast, so I avoided most of the flooding that claimed the lower-lying areas.
Still, the hurricane had utterly ravaged the landscape, transforming it into something almost unrecognizable.
Tall trees lay uprooted and broken like discarded matchsticks, enormous root systems torn from the earth and clawing at the sky like skeletal hands.
The path—what remained of it—was no longer covered in the carpet of multicolored autumn leaves, but submerged beneath several inches of murky standing water that reflected the clouds above in shades of brown and grey.
Debris lay everywhere. Branches as thick as my arm, twisted sheets of metal roofing, shattered wood planks, vegetation ripped wholesale from the earth and scattered like discarded thoughts across the devastated landscape.
The air hung thick and oppressive, heavy with humidity that made each breath feel like inhaling warm soup, saturated with the briny smell of salt water and the rich, loamy scent of wet vegetation.
But amid all the devastation, life persisted with stubborn determination.
Wildlife emerged cautiously from hiding spots, a graceful white bird with long legs picked delicately through the flooded undergrowth.
Something small and furry rustled in the debris, seeking food in the wreckage.
The resilience struck me with unexpected force.
One thing I'd learned about humans: they were resilient, adaptable, refusing to surrender even when the universe crumbled around them.
Harper possessed the same stubborn strength. I'd witnessed it in her eyes, in the set of her jaw, in every word she'd spoken. She would survive this. She had to.
And when I found her—not if, when—I would kill those that took her, slowly, methodically, savoring their screams as they paid for every moment of fear they'd caused her.
Then I would fall to my knees before her, begging forgiveness for not being a better warrior, for failing in my most sacred duty to protect her, for letting her get taken in the first place, and I would vow never to part from her again.
If she wanted to return to the Historia with me, I would take her there gladly and show her wonders beyond Earth's sky.
But if she wanted to stay here, rooted to this world of storms and chaos, I would stay as well without hesitation or regret.
I would help her rebuild her beach house, board by board if necessary.
I would learn the ways of this world, adapt to its customs, and become whatever she needed me to be.
My place was with Harper. My home was with my mate.
But first, I had to find her.