Page 47 of Alien Healer’s Mate

“I’ve checked the grid three times, Lead Healer. There are no human signs anywhere on the platform. No humans at all.”

“That’s impossible. She was here thirty minutes ago.”

There was another pause. “The grid doesn’t lie, Healer. If the female was here, she’s not here now.”

The comm went silent.

Kellat stood in the corridor with his back against the cold wall, the recycled air tasting of metal and his heart too loud in his ears.

No human biological signatures. She wasn’t on the station.

He was a healer. He’d been trained for bad news. He’d delivered it a hundred times… Your son isn’t coming home… the damage was too extensive. He knew how to hold steady through it. He knew how to put the mask on and keep it there. But this was Delilah.

Which meant there were only two possibilities.

She’d left. She’d walked to the docking bay, found a shuttle, and left because he’d humiliated her. She had form. She’d run from the LMP office on Earth, and she’d run from his med bay when she’d woken up.

He frowned. Or…

Someone had taken her.

Heat seared across his wrists.

Kellat jerked his arms up, eyes widening as dark lines spread under his skin. The pigment thickened and swirled, settling into the jagged pattern every Latharian male knew on sight.

Mating marks.

The bond had chosen now to claim him? She was gone, and his body had picked this exact moment to declare what he should have told her days ago?

Closing his eyes, he groaned, the sound one of pure despair. He’d earned that. He’d treated her like a specimen, a puzzle of neural pathways to study. He’d let her believe she was nothing more than a project… a patient.

Shoving the panic down hard, he made himself think. Then he re-opened the comm to station command.

“Command, this is Lead Healer V’Raav. I need a full bio-sweep of the platform. Now. Do not filter for species. Give me every living signature here.”

“Lead Healer V’Raav?” The duty warrior sounded confused. “I just ran the filter for you. The grid is clear.”

“I didn’t ask for a filter,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “I asked for a full sweep. Any signature, all of them. Run the wide-band and tell me if there is anything anomalous in the service sectors.”

He waited, the marks on his wrists throbbing in time with his pulse. The seconds stretched… and then he resisted the need to tear the station apart plate by plate until he found her.

“I’ve got something.” The warrior’s tone had shifted to curiosity. “It’s strange. There’s a cluster of shared markers in the docking bay’s secondary sublevel. Not human, but shares markers with the records we have for Delilah Sawyer. That has to be a mistake. A corrupt record.”

“Check that out later. Location?” He barked.

“Sector four, bay twelve. But the read is flickering, Lead Healer. It looks like a dampener field, but there shouldn’t be one active on the station. That technology is restricted. Should I alert security? I can seal the sector and lock down the bay doors.”

“Do not alert security,” He ordered. A noisy security team would warn whoever had Delilah. Because someone did have her, he was sure of it. She might have run, but she never ran far. He had to believe that. Had to believe that she hadn’t meant to leave him. And if someone was running a dampener…

“Give me the registry match on those markers.”

“Running it against the databases now,” The warrior said quickly. Kellat nodded in approval; whoever this was, he was efficient. “It’s cross-referencing the old-clan lines now, just to be sure… wait. I have a match. Rivaan Z’Saai?”

The cold swept from Kellat’s chest to his fingertips. Draanth, it all made sense now. Z’Saai had been obsessed with that draanthing paper on Delilah. And he’d known she was the patient in the paper when there was no way he should have. Kellat closed his eyes, raking his hair back off his face. Why hadn’t he seen it?

And the Z’Saai line was dying. It was nothing more than the failing ghost of a clan who had been trading on past glories for generations.

“Lead Healer? Do you copy? I’m still waiting on your order regarding lockdown.”