Page 4 of Alien Healer’s Mate

Signing up for the Mate Program. Running out of the LMP office when she’d panicked, because she’d looked at the paperwork and the stern-faced officials and the reality of what they’d signed up for had hit her hard enough to steal her breath. She’d persuaded Harper that they needed one last night of freedom before they shackled themselves to Alien husbands for life. And then she’d hired the flyer, and she’d been drinking, and she’d…

Oh god.

Biting her lip, she looked up at the alien doctor. “How much trouble am I in?”

He blinked. “I don’t understand the question. “Trouble? Why would you be in trouble?”

“For running.” Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. “From the LMP office. I was supposed to stay there, and I didn’t. And then the crash, I hired the flyer, and I’d been drinking and I—“ Forcing herself to stop, she took a breath. “I made a mess. A really big mess. So how much trouble am I in?”

The doctor’s expression softened a little. If she hadn’t been staring at his face, she wouldn’t have caught it.

“Neither situation requires your concern,” he said. “Your cousin’s new mate resolved both. A war-commander’s authority covers a… considerable amount of territory.”

She winced. “Harper’s husband cleaned up my mess?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…” She shook her head, a laugh bubbling up that had more to do with hysteria than humor. “That’s so Harper. She finds the one guy in the universe who can fix everything and marries him before I even wake up.”

“I need to run some tests,” the doctor said, his voice calm. But there was an edge of something underneath. Interest. But not in her. Why would a guy who looked like sex on legs be interested in her? Come on, Delilah, you know better than that. No, this wasn’t the man-woman kind of interest; it was the clinical kind. “To test your neurological function. You sustained significant injuries in the crash. The fact that you’re awake and coherent this soon is…”

He stopped, like he’d cut himself off.

“A good thing?” She raised an eyebrow. Please let it be a good thing.

The corner of his lips quirked. “Yes. A remarkable thing.”

Okay, we are not going to read into that. He’s a doctor. He’s doing doctor things. The fact that he’s the most gorgeous man in the known universe is irrelevant.

He moved around the bed, and she tracked him without meaning to as he came to stand in front of her. He was huge, but his movements were precise and careful.

“Follow the light.” He held up a small light, and she forced herself to follow it with her eyes instead of staring at the way the room’s lighting caught the silver in his hair.

“Good. Any dizziness?”

“No more than usual.” The answer came out before she could stop it, and his eyebrow rose a fraction.

“Usual?”

“I’m a disaster,” she said, and it came out brighter than she felt. “Dizziness is sort of my baseline. You should have seen me before the head trauma.”

He didn’t laugh. Didn’t even crack a smile. Just made a note on a floppy piece of plastic he produced from somewhere and moved on to the next test.

Tough crowd.

But she kept doing as she was told because what else was she going to do? Every test he ran, a tracking exercise or a memory quiz, bought her a few more seconds where she didn’t have to think about the fact that Harper wasn’t here and that everything had changed while she’d been lying in this bed.

“Is Harper okay?” The question slipped out between a finger-tracking exercise and a verbal memory test. “Like, actually okay? Not just not-injured, okay?”

The doctor paused. “She’s in good health. The bonding with her mate was successful. By all reports, she’s adjusting well to life among us.”

She nodded quickly, like one of those little nodding dog ornaments.

“And her husband… is he nice? Because Harper deserves someone nice. Like, really nice. Someone who will look after her. She’s been looking after everyone else—“ Me. “—her whole life, and she deserves someone who’s good to her.”

He looked away from his data-flex thingie and right at her. Then he gave a small smile, speaking while she was stunned. God, he was so handsome.

“Kirr M’Aab is a war-commander of the Latharian forces,” he said. “He is not, by most definitions, ‘nice.’” He paused, then inclined his head. “But he would die for her without a thought, and she is his whole world now. She is well looked after.”