Mating Fever(46)
I hadn’t processed his words, too focused on the farthest Hive Soldier. He struggled to stand near the wall where I’d thrown him like garbage. Gaining his feet, he turned and lifted his weapon, but the twisting pain of cold space pulled us away before he could fire.
When we came out of transport, I expected to see the unfamiliar surroundings of Doctor Helion’s secret base. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of Medical Station Three, and the shocked gazes of Doctor Mersan and two of his medical officers.
My beast roared at the small human next to me. “Karter?” We were back on the Battleship Karter?
The man shrugged. “The coordinates were already in the system. And I don’t have clearance for arrival at I.C. Command.”
Going. To. Kill. Him. The cuffs fired, their sting more powerful now that the fight was over. But even that wasn’t enough to calm me. “Where? Mate?”
Doctor Mersan stepped closer as the human backed away from me. Perhaps he was an ally, someone who could be trusted. Perhaps not. My beast was rapidly losing interest in anything but forcing the man to take me to Megan.
“Transport. Now!” My bellow should have scared the bastard, but he stared straight at me and shook his head.
“No, can do. Sorry. You’ll have to get clearance from your commander.”
I stepped toward him, barely able to resist tearing him in half. I couldn’t kill him—he was the only one who knew where the Prillon doctor had taken my mate—but I could hurt him. I could force him to talk.
Doctor Mersan stepped between us. Not too smart, after all.
“What happened?” The doctor spoke, but not to me. Tomar answered.
“The captain’s implant triggered a roving Hive Soldier squadron. They transported in right on top of us. Beast boy here had to fight them while I transported Doc Helion and Captain Simmons to command. Then I set the self-destruct and transported us here.”
My beast’s growl became a low, steady rumble that filled the room and Doctor Mersan cursed me, Helion, the Hive, and everyone in the room. “Get out! All of you.”
The lower-ranking officers hurried from the room until it was just me, the doctor, and the traitor who’d taken my mate from me. My hands were in fists and I couldn’t tear my gaze from him, thoughts of ripping his head from his puny little body filling my beast’s primitive mind.
But that wouldn’t get me to Megan.
The cuffs fired continually now, the pain a constant edge that helped me hang onto my control. I hoped that idiot Helion knew enough to take Megan’s cuffs off. If not, she’d be hurting, too. Like my mate needed any more pain inside her beautiful, perfect body.
That thought made the beast rage.
And just that fast, I was back to thinking that tearing this idiot’s head from his shoulders sounded pretty damn good.
Mersan looked from me to Tomar. “Get the hell out of here.”
Tomar saluted, a strange placement of his hand to his forehead, and walked out of the room. I would have followed, but Doctor Mersan seemed to have a death wish because he stepped in my path. “Get your fucking beast under control and meet me in the Commander’s office in twelve hours.”
“No.”
He raised his brow and crossed his arms. “Look, assuming Doctor Helion has Megan, she’s probably in surgery already. The surgery will take several hours, and then she’ll have to spend additional time in a ReGen Pod. You can’t get to her right now, no matter what planet you’re on. So calm the fuck down. She’s being taken care of. We’ll go talk to the commander and arrange for you to get off this ship. You need to let Warlord Wulf know you’re going home, and I’m sure Megan has some personal items she’d like to have with her on Atlan. You are taking your new mate to Atlan, are you not?”
I grunted my assent, more because I didn’t want to talk than because I couldn’t. He was making a lot of sense. But my beast didn’t want sense. It wanted our mate.
The beast receded and I felt my body becoming smaller. My head cleared, the constant sting of my mating cuffs grounded me in a strange way. Pain kept me in the moment, focused. “I need access to her private quarters.”
The doctor took a deep breath, most likely in relief that I was a man again, and capable of speaking in complete sentences. “I’ll have Captain Mills take you to her quarters. You can get her stuff, and yours, and take it to Transport Five. It’s the only transport on the ship strong enough to reach Atlan.”
“I know.” Every Atlan knew that. But I was realizing there were some things I wasn’t aware of. I had no idea where Megan lived. I didn’t know if she slept in Coalition gear, or naked, like me. I had no idea what her family was like, her past. Did she have things in her room that she treasured? Things that she held in her perfect hands and caressed with fondness? I knew next to nothing about Earth. I knew it was considered very beautiful, a bright, brilliant blue, and primitive—the humans there too savage for full membership in the Coalition.