Page 179 of Tamed By Her Touch

“I would not squash you,” he growled.

“You weigh about three times what I do,” Clair pointed out.

“Not quite,” he grumbled, but he finally gave in enough to let her help.

Together, with Sendar dragging limply from one of Kaelus’s hands and the evidence secured beneath Clair’s arm, they started back toward the main Archive with the recorder-bee following obediently behind them.

They needed to get Kaelus’s arm checked and get Sendar locked up. But once that was done, she was going to get to the bottom of why she kept thinking she was hearing the big Hybrid’s voice in her head, she promised herself.

Because she was sure she wasn’t imagining it. Something had changed after they had sex—Clair wasn’t sure what it was, but she was determined to find out.

30

CLAIR

By the time Clair and Kaelus emerged from the Blood Archive, she was beginning to think that perhaps walking out under their own power had been overly ambitious.

Kaelus had insisted on dragging Sendar with one hand while allowing Clair to help support him with the other, which would have been ridiculous under ordinary circumstances considering he was nearly twice her height and probably three times her weight.

Unfortunately, ordinary circumstances had apparently left Titus Four sometime around the moment Sendar injected the big Hybrid with a murderous alien virus. By the time the massive crystalline doors slid open and the lavender sunlight spilled over them, Kaelus was leaning more heavily on her than he seemed willing to admit, his face had gone gray beneath his naturally warm complexion, and blood had soaked the entire left side of his shirt.

Clair wasn’t doing much better. Her legs trembled every few steps, every muscle between her thighs ached in ways she intended to complain about extensively later, and her neck was sore where his fangs had pierced her. She also had the deeply unsettling sensation that a second presence was lurking somewhere just beyond the edge of her thoughts, which was probably something she ought to be considerably more concerned about than she currently had the energy to manage.

“Oh, thank the stars!” Maera’s voice rang across the landing area.

Clair looked up and saw her racing toward them from a silver transport vehicle with Varell close behind her, along with four uniformed males carrying weapons.

Maera’s normally composed face was pale with worry, and Varell looked equally grim. Apparently when Clair had failed to return and neither she nor Kaelus answered their coms, somebody had finally decided there might be trouble.

“Maera,” Clair said with immense relief. “I am so glad to see you—we have had one hell of an afternoon.”

Maera’s eyes went first to Clair, then to Kaelus’s bleeding shoulder, and finally to Sendar hanging unconscious from Kaelus’s enormous hand.

“What happened?” she asked, her eyes wide and anxious.

“That is an extremely long story,” Clair said. “The short version is that Sendar created the Savage Syndrome outbreak on Glenvarren, murdered Galandra when she found out, infected Kaelus with the virus, tried to get him to kill me, admitted the whole thing while his own recorder-bee was filming him, and then tried to shoot us when his plan fell apart.”

Maera and Varell stared at her. Even the armed guards stared at her.

Clair sighed.

“I know, I know—it’s crazy but it’s all true. It just sounds worse when I say it all at once.”

Kaelus muttered something and swayed beside her—that immediately ended the questions.

“Physicians!” Varell barked, turning toward the transport. “Now!”

“I do not require—” Kaelus began.

“Yes, you do,” Clair snapped. “You’ve lost a lot of blood! And if you say you’re fine one more time, I’m going to let you fall over.”

“I was merely going to say that I do not require emergency transport.”

“You have a hole burned through your shoulder,” she pointed out. “Let them transport you!”

At last Kaelus nodded.

Clair nodded back, feeling justified but suddenly a wave of dizziness swept over her.