Page 180 of Tamed By Her Touch

Maera hurried to her side and slipped an arm around her waist.

“And you, my dear, look as though you are about to collapse.”

“I’m all right,” Clair protested.

Kaelus made a low sound of disagreement and Clair glared up at him.

“You do not get to comment.”

Before he could argue, two medical attendants rushed from the transport carrying a hovering stretcher. They took one look at Kaelus’s shoulder and immediately began issuing orders.

Kaelus resisted being placed on the stretcher until Clair threatened to sit on him, at which point he gave her a dark look but finally submitted.

Meanwhile, Varell directed the guards to restrain Sendar, who was beginning to groan and stir. The instant Maera saw his face clearly, something changed in hers.

“Sendar?” she whispered.

The unconscious scientist was hauled upright between two guards and Clair felt Maera’s hand tighten around her waist.

“He killed Galandra,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.” She hated having to say it, but there was no kinder version of the truth.

“Kaelus found the records,” she went on. “Galandra discovered what Sendar was doing with the ancient viral strains and realized he was responsible for what happened on Glenvarren. Sendar admitted that she confronted him and he drowned her because she was going to expose him.”

Maera made a soft, broken sound.

“She was my friend,” she whispered. “How could he?”

“Don’t worry, my dear—he will be punished,” Varell snarled.

His face hardened with such cold fury that for the first time Clair understood how Titus Four had survived its violent past. These males might worship their wives, but there was nothing weak about them.

“Take him,” Varell ordered the guards. “Full restraint protocols. He is to have no access to communication, medical laboratories, biological samples, or data systems of any kind. Inform the Council that Doctor Sendar Rax is accused of murder, biological terrorism, unlawful experimentation, attempted murder, and deliberate contamination of an off-world population.”

One of the guards bowed his head.

“At once, Doctor-Magistrate.”

“And preserve everything recorded by the surveillance device,” Varell added.

“We already downloaded it,” Clair said. She lifted Kaelus’s battered data tablet. “Twice.”

Kaelus, now lying on the hovering stretcher, looked over at her.

“I want that back when you’re finished with it,” he rumbled. “It has all my data.”

Even Maera managed the faintest smile at that, though tears had gathered in her luminous eyes. Then the guards took Sendar away, and Clair watched Maera follow him with her gaze until he disappeared into another vehicle.

For all that Sendar had said about women enslaving the males of Titus Four, the grief on Maera’s face had nothing to do with power or control. She was grieving a woman she had known, perhaps loved as a friend, murdered by the very man who was supposed to cherish her above everything else.

“Galandra was such a beautiful woman,” Maera said softly once Sendar was gone. “She was brilliant.” She shook her head, smiling a little. “She came to one of my lectures years ago and argued with me through half of it.”

Clair gave a sad little smile.

“Sounds like my kind of woman.”

“She was.” Maera wiped quickly beneath one eye. “And we believed she died in an accident because the alternative was unthinkable.”

Clair looked toward the vehicle carrying Sendar.