“No, Warlord. No. Her injury was not caused by transport.”
I dropped my helmet to the floor and lowered my head to hers, both beast and man eager to take her pain and make it our own.
“Megan,” I said, then repeated it louder. “Megan. Open eyes.”
She looked up at me, her dark eyes wild with pain, her skin almost a sickly gray.
“What wrong?”
“My…head. I need my helmet. Please. Put it back. Put it back—” She cried out in agony, her back bowing as I fought to hold her.
I searched for the technician, frustrated at my beast’s slow speech and limited vocabulary. “Helmet. Give helmet.”
The warrior, a young Prillon soldier barely old enough to have joined the Fleet, raced to my side, and to Megan’s. He lifted her helmet from the floor and I held Megan, lowering her head so the Prillon officer could put the helmet back on her head.
“It’s heavy. Too heavy.” The Prillon paused, the head protection in his hands. “It’ll hurt her neck. Are you sure?”
“Do it.” The beast growled the order. I would hold her damn head, cushion her body, help her. I could hold ten women her size and not begin to strain. For Megan, I began to suspect, I would do more than that. The beast’s chant of mine, mine, mine had not stopped. And fucking her in that cave, tasting her feminine heat, listening to her cries of pleasure, had not lessened his hunger for her. The opposite.
But that was my beast, and I knew I was suffering from Mating Fever. I might be too far gone to come back. And Megan knew. She knew in that cave. My beast didn’t care. He wanted her. But I would not condemn her to a life with me when she’d only fucked me to soothe the beast. I had too much pride, and too much respect for her, to force her into a mating. The beast would just have to let her go. But not now. I didn’t dare try to wrestle control from him now, not with the scent of Megan’s blood in his lungs and her soft cries of pain filling his ears.
The Prillon worked the helmet onto her head, slowly, watching me with narrowed eyes. He wasn’t small, not by Prillon standards, but I was in beast mode. I’d kill him before he could twitch if he hurt her.
When the helmet slid on and settled, she went limp in my arms. I could not tell if she simply wilted with relief or if she’d lost consciousness.
“Doctor,” I snarled, pulling her into my chest so I could hold her. My hand went to the top of her forehead, stroked her soft skin below the edge of the helmet.
“There are no doctors here,” one of the armed warriors said, eyes narrow. “Triage only. You’ll have to take her to the battleship.”
“Transport.” I narrowed my gaze and pointed to the control panel. If Megan didn’t need me to hold her, I would have ripped the entire transport room to pieces. “Med unit. Karter.”
“I have a ReGen wand.” The Prillon warrior offered, but I snarled. I had one, too. I’d used it on her last night. Her head had hurt then, too. I realized now that the woman in my arms had something more going on with her than just a concussion or a normal headache. Her helmet easily weighed three times that of a normal soldier’s, although it looked exactly like the thousands of other helmets on the battlefield. As she looked like the thousands of other soldiers in her armor. But that, too, was a lie. Megan was unique. And courageous. Strong and beautiful. Her lips were full, her skin soft. She smelled like orchids and metal, sweetness and steel. And blood. I could still smell her blood.
Mine. The beast practically shouted in my head and I let him growl again, just to shut him the fuck up.
“To Karter. Now!” I commanded the Prillon to send us off, and he hurried to do as I bid, running to the control panel. Only then did I notice I was surrounded, five men with full-sized ion cannons encircled the platform, every weapon armed and aimed…at me. Or rather, at my beast. And I didn’t blame them. I was hanging on to my control by a thread. I was hanging on for her.
I ignored them all and arched my back in a protective shelter over my ma—no. Over Megan. She wasn’t my mate. Not. Mine. I was not a pity fuck. My beast didn’t have an ounce of pride, the fever stealing what small amount the savage side of my nature once had, but I did.
Ever since the battle the day before, I had been taken over by my beast. He hadn’t stepped back and my body was still beast size. I loomed over Megan, over all of them. If she died in my arms, even those ion cannons wouldn’t be enough to save them. I was panting and almost snarling in frustration.
She’d bee
n fine on the damn planet, but here, where she should be safe, she was in anguish. Her pain reduced me to the beast’s one-word conversations.
I felt the tug and gray pull of the transport and was, within seconds, standing on the transport pad on the Karter. Fuck! I’d wanted to be sent to the med unit directly and stalked down the halls in the right direction. Everyone moved out of my way as I went and as soon as the doors to the med unit opened for me, I yelled, “Doctor.”
The word was a shout, so loud a tablet on one of the tables vibrated and fell off the table onto the floor with a loud clatter. Heads turned my way and a doctor approached.
“Head. Help.”
I lay Megan down on an examination table as I stood there, fists clenched, as she was tended. My beast knew it couldn’t help her, understood that the people here could. One doctor in green and several medical officers hovered over her, waving wands and assessing her. One reached for her helmet and I snarled, grabbing his wrist.
“No!”
Everyone in the medical unit froze, staring at me as I tried to communicate. “Need helmet. Helps.”
The doctor was new. I knew every medical officer in this battlegroup, all Atlans did. We fought hard and rough on the ground. We got hurt. A lot. And if it wasn’t me in here stuffing my huge body into the too small ReGen pod, I was watching over my fellow Warlords, my friends, as they did. This doctor was a man I’d never seen before, and I didn’t like the speculative look that came into his eye when he returned his attention to Megan, and to her helmet.