Mating Fever(25)

God, I fucking hated transport.

We were only halfway home, the transport pad we were sent to was a relay station of sorts, one stop on the way back to Battleship Karter. And home. My eyes were burning with salt and sweat and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating inside my helmet. I needed cold air. I was going to pass out if I didn’t get some on my face.

Reaching up, I unlocked the helmet from my shoulders and lifted it off. Gasping for breath, I dropped it at my feet. The heavy weight of it was the reminder that my helmet wasn’t standard issue.

But it was too late.

Pain lanced my mind with a thousand voices, buzzing. Humming. Burning. Like a group of starving vultures, the Hive minds that touched mine clung and picked at me, at my uniqueness, at my thoughts, calling the others until the pressure built, the weight of it crushing me beneath them.

I didn’t know I’d fallen to my knees until my head cracked on the hard floor. Nyko lifted me into his arms. I tasted blood in my mouth, felt the boiling heat of more blood leaking from my nose and eyes to run down my face like red tears.

And my head. God, my fucking head.

Nyko held me cradled to his chest and I clung to him, my only anchor to reality, as every Hive intellect within broadcast distance assaulted my mind.





Chapter Seven

Nyko, Transport Station 27-J, orbiting Planet Latiri 4



“Doctor! Now!” I growled, watching as Megan gripped her head as if it were going to explode. She was curled in on herself in my arms and an odd sound of pain and whimpering escaped her lips. I smelled blood. Megan’s blood. And her body trembled, clinging to me. My beast was raging, torn between the need to hold Megan and the urgent desire to tear whoever was hurting her in half. But there was no one for my beast to kill. I was helpless, and the sick twisting in my gut spiked my heart rate, made my vision begin to blur as the beast fought to the front, out of control.

“Helmet. Nyko. I need—” Her body shook, and my beast held her closer, her arms and legs pinned by my tight hold, trying to prevent her from hurting herself. She’d already fallen to the ground once, hitting her head on the ship’s transport pad. Her fingers tunneled into my hair, twisting and tugging as her body writhed and she buried her face in my neck. “Nyko.”

That one small, helpless word undid me. Megan Simmons was a Coalition captain, a warrior and a feisty, smart-talking pain in my ass. She did not cling, or beg, or ask for help, which only meant she was hurting and trusting me to take care of her.

“Doctor!” My roar shook the containers stacked near the edges of the transport platform.

We’d just transported from the extraction point on Planet Latiri 4 barely two minutes prior. Alone. I had no idea all the other Coalition fighters had withdrawn or escaped the hoard of Hive the day before. It didn’t matter. We’d come here, per protocol, stopping at this temporary transport station that made sure the Hive could not transport directly to our battleship. If they tracked our movement off the planet, they would follow only to this vacant ship—it orbited the planet for the sole purpose of extracting troops—but would not be able to monitor the next step of transport, thus keeping them from intercepting fighters midway. This worthless hunk of junk kept our battleships safe, but right now I didn’t care about the Karter, I cared about the woman in my arms.

I worried for Megan. My beast snarled and wanted to rip the head off the transport technician. His wide-eyed stare told me he knew it, too.

Megan was writhing and panting, then switching to moaning as she lifted her arms to cradle her head. I looked from Megan to the transport technician. “Why? You hurt her?”

“No, Warlord. No. Her injury was not caused by transport.”

I dropped my helmet to the floor and lowered my head to hers, both beast and man eager to take her pain and make it our own.

“Megan,” I said, then repeated it louder. “Megan. Open eyes.”

She looked up at me, her dark eyes wild with pain, her skin almost a sickly gray.

“What wrong?”

“My…head. I need my helmet. Please. Put it back. Put it back—” She cried out in agony, her back bowing as I fought to hold her.

I searched for the technician, frustrated at my beast’s slow speech and limited vocabulary. “Helmet. Give helmet.”

The warrior, a young Prillon soldier barely old enough to have joined the Fleet, raced to my side, and to Megan’s. He lifted her helmet from the floor and I held Megan, lowering her head so the Prillon officer could put the helmet back on her head.

“It’s heavy. Too heavy.” The Prillon paused, the head protection in his hands. “It’ll hurt her neck. Are you sure?”