Shit.
“He went beast, didn’t he?” My question was asked softly. It was the voice I used right before I killed my enemies. And right now, the Vice Admiral was dangerously close to making that list. That was why her room was destroyed. That was the only reason why he’d have taken off the cuffs. If he’d given up. Shit.
“Don’t look at me like I’ve betrayed you, Kira,” she countered. “I did not force him to remove the cuffs.”
I believed her, but that wasn’t the whole story. The destroyed room said a whole lot more. “But you did do something. What did you say to him?”
She gave a slight shrug, took a sip of her drink. “I merely offered him a position, as you well know I had planned to do after speaking with Commander Phan on the last mission. The rest?” She motioned with her drink at the mess that remained in her office. “The rest was his way of refusing the offer.”
He wouldn’t have destroyed the room just because he didn’t want to join the I.C.
“I call bullshit. You can do better than that.” Something else had to have happened. There was no way the Atlan warrior I knew would lose his mind like this over a stupid job offer. No. Way.
She slammed back the rest of her vodka and refilled the glass. She held the bottle out to me, offering me a drink. “Vodka? It’s from my mother’s home country on Earth. There is nothing else like it.”
The Vice Admiral was half human? And Russian? She’d be able to drink me under the table…if it still had legs.
“I had plenty of that shit when I was on Earth. I don’t want a drink. I want the truth.”
She tilted her head toward the door. “Go ask him yourself, Kira. I did nothing. Merely—” She set the vodka back on the shelf and pointed to the cuffs, then to me. “—helped things along.”
I stacked the cuffs, heard their clink, felt them warm in my palm as I watched her drink her damn vodka. “If anything happens to him, I’m going to kill you.”
Her smile was not friendly. “Are you threatening a superior officer, Captain?”
I shook my head slowly, took the vodka from her hand and slammed back the drink in one motion. The sharp bite of it made me wince and I felt the searing burn work its way down my throat to warm my belly. “No. I’m telling the truth to a woman I thought was my friend.”
I held out the glass and she took it, then I turned on my heel and walked away before I did something reallystupid.
The brig wasn’t designed to hold an Atlan in beast mode, and especially not if he was angry.
The best I could hope for was that he wasn’t so out of his mind that he wouldn’t listen. The worst?
No. I couldn’t think about the worst. I just had to hope I got there in time.
* * *
Kira, The Brig, Coalition Academy, Zioria
The soundsof the beast’s rage reached me before I was halfway to his cell. It stopped me in my tracks, then spurred me on. He was angry, hurt, upset. Fierce. Whatever the word, the beast was pissed. And I ached for him, and Angh. The energy fields might hold, but the walls and anchors they were built into were not meant to contain a beast.
If Angh was still in there, it was because he wanted to be. And there was only one reason for that, because he saw no reason to escape. To fight. God, it was as if I’d gotten an ion blast to the heart. That hurt almost as much as seeing what they’d done to him.
He was strapped down to a table, the bands around his body so thick they looked like they were preparing to mummify a corpse, not hold down a living being. Somehow, when they’d stunned him and dragged him down here they’d changed him into the light green material of the medical unit. He looked healthy, considering. Thank god. But that meant he was full strength and dangerous.
I’d never seen him like this. Mindless. Roaring. Totally out of control. The sight made my heart break all over again. Last night had been the most painful conversation I’d ever had. To say I wouldn’t wear the cuffs or be his had been horrible, but when he’d told me he wouldn’t have me, that our love wasn’t worth the lives that would be lost… Last night had broken me into a million pieces. We’d both been wrong, for I wasn’t the only one to fight. It wasn’t up to me to save the world…the universe. I was a mere cog…a good one, but a cog nonetheless. I’d be replaced if I died on a mission. They’ve have another warrior stepping in to fill my shoes in a matter of hours. But I could do my work and be Angh’s mate. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t seen it sooner, and now, seeing him like this in the brig, was my fault.
The rejection, our agreement, it had broken him, too. And that, too, was my fault. I wasn’t the only one who could run the missions and save the world. Save the galaxy.
Hell, I couldn’t even save him. My mate. The only man I’d ever loved.
All the things I’d said to him, the reasons I’d thought we couldn’t be together were all bullshit. And ego. And me being a fucking coward. I’d done this to him. Not the Vice Admiral. Not the Hive. He’d survived all of them. But he hadn’t survived me.
God, I was a bitch.
I might have broken him, brought Angh so low that he lay strapped to a table in the brig, but I could save him. Now. Now that I’d gotten my head out of my ass.
“Open it and get out,” I hissed, pointing at the barrier.