Page 11 of Alien Healer’s Mate

“Careful,” she added, hopping to keep pace with his stride, “or I’m telling everyone the big scary healer manhandled a coma patient over some fries.”

The lift doors hissed open on a car already packed with warriors, three of them, all in the black leathers of the security division.

Kellat bared his teeth and snarled. “Out.”

They took one look at his face and evacuated without a word, boots clearing the threshold before the doors had even finished opening properly. He hauled Delilah into the lift with him, and the doors slid shut, sealing the two of them in the sudden, ringing quiet.

“Wow.” She wrenched her arm free and clutched her bag of fries to her chest like a shield. “Do you get off on that? Scaring the crap out of people smaller than you?”

“They were not smaller than me.”

“Oh, forgive me, your majesty.” She rolled her eyes so hard he was surprised they didn’t get stuck. “Bullying people your own size, then. Much better.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t, really, not with the way his brain had snagged on the word smaller and dragged his gaze down her the way water found the lowest point in a room.

She barely cleared his chest. If he reached out now, one hand would span the whole curve of her waist. Her hair had come loose from whatever knot she’d twisted it into back in medical, honey-blonde strands stuck to her cheek with sweat and grease. There was the tiniest smear of sauce at the corner of her mouth, and she was glaring up at him like she thought she could win this.

The anger in his chest didn’t leave. It just changed shape, turned into something lower and hungrier, something that had no business existing between a healer and his patient.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, to that smear of sauce, to the stubborn tilt of her chin beneath it, and for one long, stupid heartbeat he thought about exactly what he’d do about it if he were any other male on this station.

He hauled his eyes back up, but it was too late. She’d seen it. Her breath caught on a gasp and her chin shot up another degree as she glared at him.

Neither of them moved. The air between them went tight enough to hum, close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her skin, and he still hadn’t stepped back⁠—

His bracer comp chimed. Jerking back, he put the whole width of the lift between them in one stride. He pressed two fingers to the comp, and the priority code flashed red across the readout, the kind of red that meant answer this or explain yourself to someone with more braids than you.

“V’Raav,” he said.

“Lead Healer.” Laarn’s voice was dry and precise, the way it always was. “I need you off-station within the hour. Hand your caseload to your second and get yourself to the shuttle bay.”

Kellat’s gaze cut sideways to Delilah. She’d gone still on the other side of the lift car, staring at the readout panel like she was memorizing the layout.

“Where am I going?” he asked, because you didn’t say no to the Lord Healer of the Latharian Empire.

“Itash-Vetan-4. The medical conference.”

He frowned. “That conference has three healers senior to me within a day’s flight of the system. T’Rass alone outranks me by four decades. Why am I the one packing a bag?”

There was a pause on the line, just long enough that it wasn’t lag. No, the Lord Healer was choosing his words, which was interesting.

“Because you’re the only one I trust with this.”

Kellat’s mouth quirked at the corners. Laarn wasn’t a male who handed out trust or respect like sweets at a mating ceremony. Kellat had earned every scrap of either from Laarn the hard way, elbow-deep in a battlefield triage tent at nineteen while Laarn stood over his shoulder testing him. He rolled his shoulder where the worst of his scars were.

“Flattery,” Kellat said. “From you. I’m almost concerned.”

“Take it as flattery if it gets you on the draanthing shuttle faster.” There was a rustle on the other end of the line, as if Laarn was pulling up files as they spoke. “The Vorrtan delegation is attending. First official medical-level contact since they came out of hiding.”

Kellat’s eyebrow winged up. The Vorrtan… He’d been obsessed with stories of them when he was a child. A race of genetically engineered, shape-shifting supersoldiers from an ancient war, they were supposed to have regenerative abilities that had long since been lost from the main Latharian genome.

“The Vorrtan have healers?”

“Indeed.” Laarn’s voice held the edge of a smile. “It came as a surprise to me too. From what’s crossed my desk, their medicine has moved somewhere none of the rest of us have gone. Regenerative work. Genetic repair at a level that shouldn’t be possible.”

Kellat’s pulse ticked up, a professional itch under his sternum that he rubbed at absently. Regenerative work. Genetic repair.

“You want me finding out what they know,” he said slowly, “for our other patient.”