Page 54 of Alien Healer’s Mate

Through it all, she made sure to keep covering Kellat as he rolled to his feet. He had blood on his face, and his left arm looked wrong. Once look at his face, though, and she knew he was still the most dangerous thing in that bay. Turning, he found Z’Saai.

The researcher was backing toward a door in the far wall, horror on his face. He moved slowly, as if he were trying not to catch anyone’s attention. Fear twisted his expression as Kellat’s gaze found him and he opened his mouth. Whatever he was going to say, he never got the words out.

Kellat crossed the distance between them faster than she’d ever seen anyone move. His hand sliced out, hitting Z’Saai in the front of the throat. The other Latharian choked, scrabbling at his neck as he tried to breathe. Even from here, she could see the crushed mess where his neck went in far more than it should, blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

Kellat grabbed him and spun him around, wrapping thickly muscled arms around his neck and head. Z’Saai’s eyes widened in fear, and he tried to rip away from Kellat’s hold. But it was no good. Kellat was far stronger, and his face… she’d seen him stern, seen him furious. She’d never seen him like this. Calm. Absolutely calm, and that was so much worse.

With a savage jerk of his arms, he twisted, and the crack of Z’Saai’s neck snapping cut through the sounds of the battle in the room like a gunshot.

Kellat dropped Z’Saai’s body. It crumpled, unmoving, into a heap.

She waited to feel something about that. Horror, maybe, or guilt. But it didn’t come. The man had put her in a cage and had planned to turn both her and any daughters she had into broodmares for his sick fantasy. The only thing she felt, watching him fall, was satisfaction. He wouldn’t ever be able to do what he’d done to her to another woman.

Kellat stood over the body, his shoulders heaving. One breath. Two. Then he turned and looked at her, and everything else in the bay stopped mattering.

The fight was ending around them.

What was left of the bay barely qualified as a room anymore. There were machine parts everywhere, fluid pooling black under the emergency lights, and half the far wall was… gone. The other drakeen moved through the wreckage with their pilots, careful and deliberate, checking their kills. The noise pulled back. All that was left was the hiss of ruptured lines, and the hum of the link under her skin as she released her hold on it.

Her drakeen went still in the middle of the ruined bay, its eyes on Kellat as he crossed to her cage. He wrenched the lock free with a snarl and the bars slid open. Then he stood in the open doorway of the cage and looked down at her.

His face was a mess, blood and bruises already coming up under the skin.

Then he reached in and offered his hand.

14

Delilah moved first.

She came out of the cage on legs that didn’t want to hold her, hands shaking, but it didn’t matter anymore because Kellat was right there. Alive. Five minutes ago he’d been dying on the deck under a pile of machines, and now he was only three steps away, and she threw herself at him.

He caught her with a smile, arms closing around her. She was sobbing before she landed, big ugly sobs that tore up out of her chest and left her gasping. Her fists found his chest, his shoulders, anywhere she could reach, the blows weak and furious at the same time.

“You almost died.” The words came out broken and wet. “You almost died for me, you stupid, stupid⁠—“

Her voice gave. Her fists uncurled and grabbed his torn leathers instead, dragging him closer.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was rough. “I’m sorry, kelarris. I’m so, so sorry.”

“If you ever do something that stupid again, I’ll kill you myself. I mean it. I’ll bring you back so that I can kill you again.”

“Something stupid like coming to the rescue?” His lips quirked. Then his hands came up and cupped her face, thumbs brushing the tears off her cheeks, and the way he was looking at her stopped her breath in her throat.

“I will always come for you,” he said. “I love you.”

The world went quiet.

“I should have said it long before now. I’ve loved you since the moment you opened your eyes in my medical bay and asked me where your cousin was.”

“Kellat.” His name came out half sob, half laugh. Reaching up on her toes, she kissed him. The embrace was trembling and desperate, and he kissed her back like he was trying to pour every unsaid word through the press of their lips.

When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers. Then he pulled in a breath, slow, as if it hurt. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Her stomach dropped. Pulling back, she searched his face. “What?”

“The Mate Program. Your genetic profile was flagged before you ever reached the station. Before I ever met you.”

She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”