Tears streamed silently from her eyes to race down her cheeks. The rage drained from me and left me emptied of everything but love for her and for Thomar. Fear. I placed both hands on her cheeks and wiped the tears away with my thumbs. Gave her the truth I knew she needed. “I would change nothing.”
With a sigh she pressed forward and wrapped her arms around me. I held her tightly as Thomar shuddered with the power of the emotions drowning all three of us. He looked at Helion and once more I admired his strength of will. His power. His control. He was truly an exceptional warrior and the most skilled I’d ever seen. I hadn’t chosen to be his second because he was from an ancient bloodline. Nor because we had grown up together, trained together and were closer than brothers. I’d chosen him because no other warrior measured up, including myself.
“How long do we have?” Thomar asked.
“You, maybe a week. Varin,” Doctor Surnen looked at me. “Two at most.”
“And Danika?” I asked.
This time it was Helion who replied. “We don’t know. The integrations continue to infiltrate, duplicate and merge with her brain cells. At the current rate? A few days. Four at most.”
“Oh my God.” Rachel looked like she was going to faint, her face a pale, sickly yellow.
Four days? We would lose our mate in four days? Helion interrupted before I could fully process what the doctor had just told us. “The adaptations to your mating collars are unique and something we have never seen before. The Hive does not do anything without a purpose. We need to capture the Nexus unit and find out what they are doing. How to reverse it.”
It was that moment, staring at his face, that I knew the truth.
“You don’t care about the women or the babies, or us. You just want to get your hands on that Nexus unit.”
Danika’s soft gasp was a blend of disgust and shock but my mind filled with ice cold rage. Not mine. Not Thomar’s.
Hers.
* * *
Danika
A fierce protectivenessfilled me with rage unlike anything I’d felt since the day—
No. My mates were not helpless, scared little boys like Josh had been. They were warriors. Strong. Scarred. They had survived things I couldn’t imagine. Still, the need to make sure my mates were well and cared for had become my new obsession.
And that meant making sure they would be okay even if I wasn’t around to see it.
If getting this Nexus thing was their only chance, so be it. But I knew they would not be able to live with themselves if they left defenseless woman and children behind.
Hell, I couldn’t live with that, either. I’d proven that once. Killed to protect my brother. I could do it again for babies. Chubby, adorable, helpless babies.
I had no intention of ever having one of my own, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love the little mess makers. When other people had them, but still. Babies. Who experimented on babies? Abandoned them?
Apparently, Helion had already made the choice to do exactly that if necessary.
If I could have, I would have walked over to Helion and slapped that frigid, unfeeling face until it was bloody. Unfortunately, Varin held me in his arms, refused to let go when I tried to pull away and pounce. Thomar must have felt my intention as well. He caught my eye and shook his head, the movement so small I barely caught it. But I did, so I tried to calm down, despite the fact that I’d just been handed a death sentence by the single largest asshole I’d ever had the displeasure of meeting.
This situation left me no choice. Thomar and Varin were mine and I wasn’t giving them up. Not to the Hive implants and not to this Prillon, James Bond wannabe and his less than honorable agenda.
“We save the women and babies first.” I turned in Varin’s arms and wrapped his arms around my body for comfort, his heat and his strength at my back. I covered his hands with mine so he’d feel me on his flesh as well as in his mind. I was determined. I didn’t care if I ended up dying because we didn’t go after the Nexus unit first. Babies were babies. What kind of emotionless troll was this guy?
“Capturing this Nexus unit may very well save millions of females and their children on hundreds of worlds.” His gaze was certain. Unmoving. “Would you sacrifice millions to save a few?”
That kind of troll. The rational, pragmatic, ice cold analysis kind. When he put it that way, he made me sound like an irresponsible child.
Gathering my thoughts, I took a moment to answer him. “You do not know what the outcome would be. You are not certain that you cannot do both.”
“The odds of a successful mission decrease with additional objectives.”
“I don’t care. I can’t do it. I will not leave women and babies behind. I refuse. You’ll just have to find a way to do both.”
“I agree.” Rachel’s frown was severe, her face pink with anger.