My head slams into the floor and my vision dissolves. When I come to, it’s because my head is screaming with pain. Something is jostling me so bad, it feels like my brain is slamming against the inside of my skull, sending a sharp dart of alarm throughout my body.
The rank scent hits me next and jolts me fully to consciousness. I lift the aching weight of my head up and see the backs of legs and bare feet pounding against the floor at a quick jog. The guard. He’d escaped somehow and we’d fought.
And he’s kidnapping me.
“Help!” I scream. “I’m right here! Please help me!”
My voice echoes throughout the hall, but with no answer. I don’t recognize the part of the prison we’re in and the siren is but a distant scream.
“They won’t find you, you stupid bitch.” His breath is a panting huff.
Once his words sink in, I realize how right he is. We’re deep in the bowels of the prison. No one will know what happened to me or where we’ve gone. I have to think, but the pounding in my brain makes figuring out what to do next nearly impossible.
“Where are we going?” I demand.
I don’t expect him to answer, so I’m not surprised when he merely keeps running. The farther we go, the less likely it is I’ll ever be able to get back again. He has no reason to keep me alive once we do get wherever we’re going.
I think of Theron’s handsome face and wonder if I’ll ever see it again.
I shouldn’t have let him go.
I should have loved him when I had the chance.
12
Theron
“Stop yawning,” Calix says, shaking his head in exasperation. “You do not even have a mortling. There is no way you could be as tired as me right now.”
Testy.
“Should have thought about that before you stole a female and put your seed in her,” I taunt, spinning around in my chair at the comms area, trying to wake myself up. “What does Molly call it? Karma?”
“Rekking focus,” Calix growls. “You are supposed to be reading me the data.”
I sigh and flip through the paper filled with Avrell’s scrawlings beside Zoe’s foreign ones. “Everyone has been exposed. Several never got sick.”
“And the common denominator of those?”
“Not much considering Hadrian and I are both ones who didn’t get sick. Neither did Willow. So it’s not isolated to either species. There’s an older woman with white hair here and she did not get sick. Additionally, there is a girl who is younger than Hadrian. Fourteen resolutions it says here.” I thump the paper. “Never got sick.”
While Avrell and Zoe treat the patients and run the blood samples, Calix has been working on more complicated aspects from his end. Interpreting the data and using some of what he’d learned about the toxica properties and Emery’s health to try and utilize it for The Rades.
“Hmm,” he says. “Right. So I want you to focus and write everything down exactly as I say. No room for error, Theron.”
I roll my eyes, but nod. “Go on.”
We spend what feels like an eternity as I jot down some formulas he wants Zoe and Avrell to use. I’m about to start snoozing when I hear the word “seed.”
“What?” I demand, popping my eyes open to meet his.
“Gather a warm sample for them to use. Hadrian will need to do the same, as will Avrell. I want to run them as three different variables in a series of tests. Avrell will make sense of what you have written. Now go make a sample.”
“You’re a sick mortarekker.”
“Like collecting a sample of your seed is a hardship. I of all morts know how it feels to be alone.” He smirks. “My sample is all for Emery now. For making more mortlings.”
I groan. I don’t want to think about him and Emery mating. That makes me think about Willow. And I can’t think about her. I can’t.
Red hair.
Supple lips.
Throaty laugh.
Delicate touch.
Rekk, how can I not think about her? It’s maddening. I miss her so much.
“Everything okay?” Calix asks, his voice soft and no longer taunting.
“Perfect,” I lie. “I will take this straight to them.”
I end the comms and gather all my notes. As soon as I pass on all this information, I’m going to find her. Sit my beautiful mate down and explain to her why we need to be together. We’re more than a space-fling, we’re everything. I must convince her. I will convince her. I have to. I’ll go mad if I don’t.
I stroll through Exilium and when I don’t find either Avrell or Zoe in the medical bay, I hunt for them in the nutrition bay. Several women are eating, but recoil when they see me. They may be getting used to having Hadrian as basically co-leader around here with Lyric, but they’re still wary of our kind. I offer them an easy smile, hoping to calm their fears. The white-haired lady and the young girl smile, but a dark-haired woman who’s pale and recovering from The Rades glares at me.