“I meant what I said. Every word. Whatever happens, I will protect you and your son. Even from my own people, if I must.”
Then he was gone, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft hiss, and she was alone again.
Robbie squirmed against her chest, making hungry sounds as he began to wake up, and she adjusted him automatically, bringing him to her breast. He latched on with the single-minded focus of a hungry infant and she breathed a sigh of relief that he was feeding properly this time.
He’s gone. Robbie’s eating. Everything’s fine.
But the cell felt different now. Emptier. The silence felt lonely in a way it hadn’t before.
She tried to summon her anger, her outrage at everything that had been done to her. And it was still there—the fear, the fury, the desperate need to escape. But layered over it now was something more complicated.
When I look at you…
He hadn’t finished the sentence, but he hadn’t needed to. She had seen it in his eyes, in the way his tail kept reaching for her, and in the tenderness with which he’d held her son.
This is insane,she told herself again.He’s part of the system that kidnapped me. He’s complicit in everything.
But he had also been honest with her when he didn’t have to be. He had promised to protect her when he had nothing to gain. He had held Robbie with more gentleness than she’d seen from anyone since her capture. And for a moment, standing there in the middle of her cell, the three of them together, it had felt almost like…
No. Don’t think it. Don’t even let yourself imagine it.
She closed her eyes and focused on the sensation of Robbie nursing, on the solid reality of his small body against hers. Her son. Her responsibility. The only thing that mattered. But even as she told herself that, she couldn’t shake the image of Becsul’s face as he’d talked about his dying people. The grief in his voice. The desperate hope.
We’re not so different,she thought unwillingly.Both of us fighting for the people we love. Both of us trapped by circumstances we didn’t choose.
Robbie unlatched with a satisfied sigh, and she lifted him to her shoulder, rubbing his back in slow circles.
“It’s just you and me, baby,” she murmured against his soft hair. “That’s all that matters. You and me.”
But even as she said it, she was listening for footsteps in the corridor outside. Waiting, despite everything, for the door to open again.
CHAPTER SIX
The question had lodged itself in Becsul’s mind like a splinter beneath his skin, impossible to ignore.
How did they plan to impregnate her?
He had walked the corridors of the facility for an hour after leaving Melissa’s cell, unable to sleep, unable to think of anything else. Her face haunted him—the way her eyes had hardened when she’d asked, and the bitter twist of her mouth when she’d mentioned breeding livestock. He had seen warriors break under torture who showed less courage than this small human female facing the unknown.
And he had no answers for her.
The laboratory wing was quiet at this hour, the harsh overhead lights dimmed to a pale glow that cast long shadows across the ancient stone walls. The contrast of the sleek equipment humming against walls that had stood for a thousand years, since long before the Red Death had swept their world clean of hope, still jarred him.
Dr. Veyalor’s office was at the end of the corridor, and he paused outside it, gathering himself. He had dealt with scientists before, but they had been Cire scientists, with their careful methodologies and their respect for warrior protocols. Veyalor was Manigan, and the Manigans had a reputation for viewing other species as little more than interesting specimens.
For Melissa. I need to know. For her.
He pressed his palm against the control, and the door slid open.
Veyalor looked up from his workstation with an expression of mild irritation. The Manigan scientist’s white scales gleamed under the artificial light, and his fluffy orange hair was pulled back from his face in a severe knot.
“Captain Becsul.” His voice was flat, clinical. “I was not expecting visitors at this hour.”
“I have questions about the project.”
“Security questions, I assume?”
“Questions about the procedure.”
