Page 5 of Alien Healer’s Mate

He would die for her. Well looked after.

Delilah let out a breath. “Okay. Okay, that’s… That’s good. That’s the important thing.”

She looked down at her hands in her lap. The sheets were some kind of pale material she didn’t recognize, impossibly soft. Alien sheets. Shit… the reality hit her hard and fast. She was in an alien hospital, on an alien space station, being examined by an alien doctor who looked like a god and had the bedside manner of a brick wall. A polite brick wall, but a brick wall all the same.

And Harper had moved on without her. Not just moved on… but she’d gone and gotten married, moved on.

“I’m sorry, I never asked your name,” she said, looking up.

“Kellat V’Raav.” He didn’t look up from his notes. “I’m the Lead Healer on the station.”

“Kellat.” She tried the word out. The word sat foreign on her tongue. “I’m Delilah Sawyer. But you probably already knew that.”

“I did.”

“Right. Coma patient. You’ve probably got a whole file.” She laughed, and the sound came out hollow. “Bet it makes for exciting reading.”

He looked at her then. Actually looked, his gaze settling on her face instead of tracking through whatever medical checklist was running behind his eyes.

“Your file,” he said, “is considerably more interesting than most.”

And there it was again. That little flicker of interest. But not the kind she was used to. Not the kind that meant someone thought she was pretty, fun, or just a good time. This was sharper, harder, as if she were a puzzle he was trying to solve.

Don’t read into it. He’s a doctor, and you’re a patient. This is not a romance novel.

But the way he was looking at her made it really, really hard to remember that.

2

Delilah settled into sleep between one breath and the next.

Kellat stood at the side of her bed and watched the monitors. Heartrate. Oxygen. Neural activity. It was all smoothing out into the slow, steady patter of deep rest. Twenty minutes ago, she’d woken screaming, clawing at the sheets, her eyes wide and unseeing, and now she was curled on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek like a child.

He shook his head. He hadn’t managed to run anything but the most basic tests until she’d run out of energy, her incessant chatter slowing enough that he realized she’d tired herself out, but it didn’t matter. She needed her rest. Murmuring something in her sleep, she burrowed deeper under the covers. The sheets were twisted around her legs, and he reached out to untangle them.

She was so tiny.

And utterly beautiful. Her hair tangled against the pillow, dark and messy, and her lips were parted. He ached to taste them. All he wanted to do was gather her up, feel her slight weight against his larger, harder body… wake her with his hands and his mouth. His cock throbbed, heat slamming straight down to the root. She was his patient, and she was injured, but that didn’t stop him wanting her.

Ninety-nine point eight percent.

“Resume standard monitoring,” he said, turning from the bed. “If she wakes again, notify me directly. Do not attempt to manage it yourself.”

“Yes, Lead Healer.”

The junior healer at the side of the bay stepped aside as he passed, and Kellat walked the short corridor to his office without looking back. He didn’t need to; her bay readouts were all routed direct to his console.

He closed the door behind him and let the quiet of his office settle around his shoulders. The observation pane looked down into the main bay, and from here he could see the door to her room. Closed. Monitors blinking their steady green on the panel beside it. The junior had already retreated to the duty station.

Good.

He sat at his desk.

Ninety-nine point eight percent.

The Mate Program notification was still sitting in his private files where he’d buried it the day it arrived. He hadn’t looked at it since. He didn’t need to. The number was burned into the back of his mind, four digits that were there every time he closed his eyes.

His match. His kelarris. And she had no idea.