She glanced down at her side, placing a hand beside the shard of metal. “It’s okay, Dax. It’s better now. It doesn’t hurt anymore.” She grinned like a little girl, silly and carefree and I knew she was even worse off than I’d imagined.
“Seth, take the controls. Now! Meers!” I shouted down the corridor, undoing her restraints. Holy fuck, she was badly injured and she’d lied to me about it. She was bleeding to death and still flying a fucking Hive ship. Sacrificing herself to buy us a few more minutes. Dying for these men. For me.
“Stop yelling at me,” she replied, resting her head against the pilot seat.
“You lied to me.” I was frantic and my beast was raging. Not in need, but in fear. It was anxious, worried about our mate. It paced within me, alternately whining and roaring to be free, to tear this ship, and everyone on it, into pieces.
“Had to get you out of there.”
“You are the most stubborn, difficult, annoying, frustrating female I’ve ever come across. You should have fucking told me how badly you were injured. When did this happen, Sarah? When?”
“Sonar detonator, when we were running onto the ship,” she breathed. “It’s all better though. It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she repeated, her hand on my forearm. She left a bloody handprint. If it didn’t hurt, that meant…
“Sarah, you will not leave me,” I whispered the command and pressed my lips to hers as Meers rushed into the small room.
“Yes, warlord?” Meers stuck his head into the cockpit as I pulled Sarah into my arms. Seth slipped into the pilot’s seat, making sure to hold the control exactly where Sarah had been holding it.
“Sarah is gravely injured. Get the Karter’s transport team on comms and get us off this fucking ship. Now. She dies, you all die with her.” The threat was not an idle one. If I lost her before we got back to the battleship, the beast would tear every living being onboard this ship into tiny little pieces, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do to stop him.
* * *
“Damn suicide mission. The captain put your lives in danger with her reckless behavior,” the ship’s commander spouted.
“She saved twelve coalition fighters from the Hive and got you the Hive comms from the ship she stole.” I straightened to my full height, towering over the Prillon warrior who dared insult my injured mate. “More than one man on this ship owes her his life.”
The commander crossed his arms and shook his head. “I know. I’ll take the men and the comms.” The commander muttered his last words under his breath, but I had Atlan hearing, and the beast missed nothing. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t reckless.”
If I wasn’t guarding my unconscious mate’s body, I would have taken issue, beaten his face bloody. I was getting really tired of annoying commanders. First my own, who’d shoved me into the matching program so I didn’t die, then Sarah’s who’d refused to help her find Seth. Now, this one. I stood beside Sarah’s emergency pod, watching as the doctors waved their wands over her wounds. I knew that the technology on this ship would heal her quickly, but my beast didn’t care for logic or reason. I struggled with every breath to keep that darker side under control, for my mate had been injured gravely and there was nothing I could do. The doctors, yes, but me? I couldn’t protect her in this moment. Now I had to stand by idly as the she was healed by the med control systems.
Seth and his men had worked comms and gotten us transported to a different ship, not the Karter, one that wasn’t in direct line of the magnetic field. It had happened in all of five minutes, the men proficient in gaining assistance, but it had been that way my entire life. In the coalition fleet, everything had a reason and a purpose. Things made sense. Orders were given and followed. Every warrior was strong and knew exactly what was expected. We expected to fight, to bleed, to die. Every warrior knew his or her role, as did my Sarah.
I looked down at my mate and she appeared to be so fragile lying there, so weak and definitely not immortal. She was not a fierce female from one of the warrior races. No, she was just a delicate Earth woman who was my mate, my heart, my life. It didn’t matter to me that she was a warrior now, so skilled she could organize a ground attack or fly an enemy ship through a magnetic field. She was braver than anyone I knew, smarter than any military strategist, and yet her body was so fragile. I actually ached to take her in my arms and carry her away from this place, from the men, the noise, the constant danger of an enemy attack. For years none of that ha
d bothered me, I’d taken it as my due. We were at war with the Hive, had been since before my birth, and would likely be long after I was gone. Yet I did not want any of this to touch Sarah. No more. She was too beautiful, too perfect for the ugliness that surrounded her now.
I learned in those five minutes that I wasn’t nearly as strong as I’d once believed. Muscles didn’t protect me from the heartbreak of nearly losing Sarah. Where I was weak, she was strong. Her two brothers and father had died, her last remaining family transported by the enemy right before her eyes. Her response had been determination to save Seth. Her love, once given, was relentless in its strength, courageous and full of stubborn hope. Her love was the one thing I desperately wanted, and yet she guarded her heart so well.
It took those five minutes to make me see that we were a pair who had to compromise. She gave and gave and I took. It was time I gave as well, that I let her be herself, not force her to be the weak woman the commander painted her, and, admittedly, I’d first thought her.
I wanted to reach down and touch her, to feel her skin to ensure it was still warm, to feel her pulse, to watch her breathe, but the doctor had pushed me out of the way often enough already. When I threatened to rip his arms off if he had me removed from the medical center, he allowed me to stay as long as I didn’t get in his way. It was a reasonable compromise, but I didn’t take my eyes off her.
I wanted to spank her ass a fiery shade of pink for getting herself hurt, but she’d done nothing reckless to warrant it. I didn’t want her in any kind of danger whatsoever, but I’d been right beside her when it had happened. There was no way I could have protected her, shielded her from the display console breaking or from the piece of that console now embedded in her side. Other than tying her to my bed, there was no way to completely protect her from harm. While I would ensure she enjoyed her time tied up, she would soon grow to hate the confinement and me. She could not be kept from her passion, her fighting, any more than I could. She was a warrior, and nothing I could do would change the heart of her. It was a harsh lesson I was learning, and unfortunately it had taken her being gravely injured to realize it.
How I would control the beast within as she put herself in harm’s way, I had no idea. The doctor checked the display and moved to her opposite side. “I heard the captain saved the day.”
I searched his face for insincerity, but found none. “She flew a damaged enemy craft off a Hive prison ship, evaded a triad of Hive recon fighters, and took us safely through a magnetic field. It wasn’t reckless, it was a rescue.”
“I agree with the warlord.” Seth joined me beside Sarah and watched with a clenched jaw as she was tended. “And so will the other eleven rescued men whose lives she saved.”
“She is going to be fine,” the doctor told Seth. He’d met her brother already, but Seth had been sent to debriefing and had finally returned. “A sleep status will help heal the puncture wound. The computer says two hours and she will awaken. At that time, I will do a full medical exam to ensure she is completely recovered, but I have no concerns.”
Seth gave one last look at his sister, clearly satisfied with her status, and turned to the head of the ship we’d transported to.
“Commander, with all due respect,” Seth said. He faced the Prillon leader like the captain he was. Proud, tall. “All the coalition leaders chose to leave me and the others for dead. I’d be a Hive soldier right now if not for her. So you can fuck off if you’re going to court-martial her. She had to deal with bullshit commands, then deal with this big beast and take care of me, too. She’s Wonder Woman.”
I frowned and so did the commander. “Who?”
Seth rolled his eyes. “A woman who can do it all.”