Terri glanced away to hide her guilt. “I haven’t been unhappy… just… unable to find where I fit in. You’re so determined to protect me that you keep me away from everything, and suddenly it feels like I’m no longer living. This is the most living I’ve really done since the incident on the space station. This wasn’t how I thought it was going to be… but I also understand. Azan made me realize that you’ve had to protect me. I’m not strong enough.”
His eyes closed, his expression pained before he opened them again. “Anastha, you are strong. Too strong. It makes me worry that others will attempt to hurt you and take you away from me.”
“And physically too weak to defend myself. You can say it, Veral. I know it’s the truth.”
“I dislike this truth more than any other,” he muttered, his tone laced with resentment. “I do not wish my mate to fear or experience pain. But I do not wish to snuff out your joy.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “This human stuff kinda sucks when it comes to playing out in the universe.”
“I will protect you,” he growled.
“And I love that, but I need to protect me too. Especially when we have our baby. I have to be able to protect them and myself if, for whatever reason, you’re not there. I can’t be helpless when we have a baby to care for.”
A long, ragged sigh escaped him, and he nodded. “We will find an answer.”
16
Veral did not want to let her go, but as the hour grew later, he knew he had no choice. His civix retreated back into his sheath, and eventually he forced his arms to release his mate. Sitting on the bed, he watched sadly as she also sat up.
She had used a scrap of cloth she found to wipe between her legs and was now bending to pick up her armor. Soon they would return to the other room, where danger would constantly surround her once more. He would have to sneak her by the males on guard and leave her with nothing more for protection than the fierce female Blaithari.
He hated to give that up to her. Everything in him protested.
He should be the one protecting and caring for his mate, not watching from afar while another did it. It made him feel dishonored and the mate bond distressed, though he knew that much was largely within his mind. To his instincts, Azan was an unwelcome intruder.
“Oww! What the fuck?” Terri shrieked as she jerked her right hand up to her chest, her left clamped tightly over it.
He rose to his feet and leaped over the bed, his sensors scanning as he searched for the threat. “What is it?”
Something scurried among the debris, circling around. Veral yanked Terri into his arms, a snarl vibrating in his chest as he tracked the movement. The energy signature coming from it was not organic. It was similar to that of the Elshavan uplinks.
He froze in surprise. What could possibly still be operational after all that time?
“Something under the bed clawed me,” she hissed out in pain. “What the hell was it?”
She pulled away her left hand to look at the blood beading on the cut and dripping down her wrist. Veral growled and pulled her toward him, his senses extended as his systems collected the surrounding information and his vibrissae twisted anxiously around him.
It was slipping through the rubble, drawing closer. Veral’s vibrissae rattled, a low hiss rising in his throat as the thing zigzagged. It moved almost as if it had a sort of program designed to mimic intelligence as it stalked closer. He watched it warily, tracking its every movement. It seemed to move farther away, but at the last minute it turned and rushed toward Terri. As it leaped in the air, its long metallic fibers extending wide from a brilliantly green body, Veral whipped his hand through the air, the small horn on his wrist catching it and dashing it to the ground.
Terri hopped back with a squeak of alarm as the spindly fibers whipped through the air. The ends were needle sharp, more than effective for piercing through vulnerable tissue. Especially on a species such as a human whose skin had no natural defenses against it. It would have a harder time against his scales.
“Fuck!” she cursed as she crawled back away from it. “What the hell is it?”
Veral’s eyes narrowed on the tech before he brought his boot down sharply upon it, the loud crunch of components snapping filling the silence of the room. Lifting his foot away, he cocked his head and looked down at the crushed red body of tech. Tiny sparks lit across it as its “legs” twitched uselessly.
Terri scooted forward as he lifted his eyes and scanned for any signs of more of the things. He couldn’t detect anything, but he was disturbed to acknowledge the fact that not sensing meant nothing if he had a difficult time connecting with the unfamiliar energy signature.
It had felt oddly like bio-tech. There had been a few attempts to make something like that among his species with the idea to upgrade and eventually replace their current tech with something more fully integrated, but nothing successful.
“It’s like some sort of mechanical bug… but not,” Terri marveled as she stared at it. “I wonder what it was trying to do.”
Veral shook his head, his fingers curling around her arm as he pulled her away. The thing had intentionally drawn her blood, but he could not understand for what purpose. There wasn’t a trace of it within the mechanisms when he crushed it, so it did not appear to be attempting to store it. His eyes inspected the room, his vibrissae rattling as they vibrated while he attempted to get another read on the environment.
The room that had seemed as a welcome sanctuary only moments before, he could only now see as hostile.
The upended table with components strewn around it made him tug his mate further back. There were parts that looked similar to the bio-tech he just terminated. The medic was working on something—an experiment perhaps. He would not remain in this room with his mate for a moment longer. Dropping down, he retrieved her armor and searched it thoroughly for any other signs of bio-tech. Only when he was satisfied that it was clean did he hand it back to her.
Terri was silent as she slipped the armor back on and said nothing further when he lifted her up into his arms and carried her from the room. He would go back and investigate later, to see if there was anything worth discovering about the tech, and in case there was something she had been exposed to. But now, he would get his mate to safety.