by Mikayla Lane
“Oh please!” Emily muttered, rolling her eyes at him. “I think everyone but the veterans know you have plans for them, and they’re probably hoping you do.”
“Oh come on,” he said as he pulled her into his arms and leaned them back in the chair. “I’m not that obvious. Am I?”
“Yeah, you are,” Emily admitted, then toyed with the hem of her shirt. “I’m kind of curious too. Grai said there’s no reason you can’t go right back to commanding your fleet.”
Koda sighed and sat up before pulling her to her feet and leading her over to a corner of the room where they had a sitting area. He fell into the over-stuffed leather couch and pulled her into his lap.
“I don’t doubt that I can return to the fleet, but I wonder if I want to. Joey loves school and the other light bringers, and you need to be able to help the spirits. Just listen,” Koda said when she was going to interrupt him.
“I was there. I was one of those spirits who needed you so badly. I became friends with Elmer and Tom just like you and Roo did. I can’t take you away from the others that need you as much as we did.”
Emily’s eyes misted with tears over his concern for her and Joey.
“Grai said that the portal on your ship is programmed for Dillon,” she said with a grin. “I don’t see why we couldn’t keep the schedule we’re already on. All that changes for Joey and I is where we sleep at night.”
“We still don’t know if you’ll find the peace in space that you have here at beta,” Koda cautioned, trying not to get too excited over being able to go back to his ships.
Emily laughed and squeezed his arms as he held her.
“There can’t possibly be the numbers in space that there are on the planet. Besides, I want to see it and find out for ourselves if anyone is there or not. If there are, maybe I’m meant to be there to help them,” she suggested, refusing to give up on going into space.
She’d learned real fast how important the ships and his engineering skills were to Koda, and she wouldn’t take it away from him. After everything they’d been through, she didn’t think a workable compromise would be too difficult for them to come up with.
“Maybe we’ll go up next week. I want to take the guys up a day earlier though,” Koda agreed, trying not to get too excited about it.
Emily laughed and turned to look up at him.
“Found some jobs they might like, huh?”
Koda blushed a deep color and kissed her nose.
“Rick’s burn scars are gone, and he’s doing great with the new leg. There’s no reason he can’t fly again.”
Emily chuckled at the thought of the risk-taking and fun-loving Rick flying around in a space ship.
“I can’t imagine he’d turn it down. What did you have in mind for the other guys?” she asked.
She’d noticed that since he’d come back to them, Koda had somehow stepped out of Grai’s shadow. He’d been making decisions about his own treatment and care and had even begun making plans for their future without discussing it with Grai at all, only her.
Emily couldn’t help but wonder what had brought about the drastic and sudden changes in him, but she suspected it had something to do with his mother forcing his spirit into his comatose form and locking him inside. Although Emily had hated it and had missed him terribly, she couldn’t deny that the changes in him were incredible.
“Jamal’s mind is still very much intact, and the guys nailed it when they called him Method Man. Part of our brain training exercises involve aerial battle tactics,” Koda explained.
“Gee, I wonder whose idea that was,” Emily teased.
“Anyway,” Koda said with a grin because it had been his idea, “he’s amazing at finding a freaking hole in the middle of the chaos. He’s the kind of guy you want helping you out of tight situations. Dagog may be quiet right now while he regroups, but Jamal’s skills will be invaluable when we get into space conflicts with the Relian fighters.”
“Kit and Bart?” Emily asked, knowing Koda had a plan for them as well.
“Kit wouldn’t be happy without a weapon in his hand. A big one. I think he’s going to be pretty impressed by the pulse cannons I have on our main battle cruiser and the other weapon systems he could command. Bart hasn’t decided what he wants to do yet, but I have a few options I think he’ll like when he gets that far,” Koda admitted, hoping like hell his new friends would want to go into space with him.
The human warriors had been right the first day they met him—no one would ever understand what it took for them to feel and move as normally as they do but another warrior who’d gone through the sweat, tears, pain and the humiliation of defeat after defeat, and the indescribable joy and triumph of success.
Koda had learned to judge success a lot differently than he did before the crash. He no longer compared himself to Grai when every stumbling step and every un-stuttered sentence was a miracle for him and the human warriors who’d faced a hell no one else would ever understand.
“I think the guys would love it,” Emily agreed.
She understood why Koda wanted to go up with the guys first and why it was so important to him to give his friends their lives back. It didn’t bother her at all that Koda wanted to take them into space before her. His sweet and kind nature only made Emily fall more in love with him.
“You don’t mind?” he asked, willing to change his plans in a moment if it bothered her.
“No,” Emily said sitting up so she could turn to face him. “Not at all. I think your first trip back needs to be with them. You’ve all earned it.”
Emily cupped his face and leaned in to kiss his cheek when he pulled her across his chest and tentatively brushed his lips across hers. When she gasped in surprise, Koda took the opportunity to run his tongue along the seam of her lips before slipping it inside her warm mouth.
Emily melted into Koda’s chest as she wrapped her arms around his neck and straddled his hips.
Koda could feel his excitement level rising quickly and no longer had any doubts that he could achieve an erection. Amun had told him that there’d been no damage to his sexual organs, and he could function normally, but there’d still been a little doubt in the back of his mind.
“Sorry! Oh my!” Tricia gasped, turning her back to them as she ran to Joey and picked her up. “I was just coming to make sure Joey had dinner.”
Koda and Emily had separated quickly and were both standing beside the couch, more than a little embarrassed at being caught making out in the middle of the medlab with Joey there.
“We . . . uh we were going to head that way too,” Emily muttered, following Tricia. She turned to send Koda a heated look before she went out of the door.
Koda took several deep breaths, trying to cool his raging hormones and his need to finally claim his mate. There was no way in hell he was going to even consider taking her in some crude fashion. After everything she’d done for him and how much she meant to him, Koda knew she deserved something much more spectacular and more like the man he became and not the man he was.
He began planning his mate’s perfect seduction as he headed out of the medlab and into the dining hall to eat with his family.
*****
Amun and Lauren were hidden away in a secure room of the MedLab on the Adaria, both staring at the other over the badly decomposed body on the table in front of them. Neither doctor had thought it would be a good idea to run the tests they needed to perform on the planet under the circumstances.
“Are you ready?” Amun asked.
Lauren looked down at the body and nodded her head.
“We don’t have a choice; we have to know,” she whispered.
“Then let’s get started. This will take some time.”
Amun wasn’t thrilled about what they had to do, but he knew that their choice was taken from them the moment they’d tested Mikey, Emily, and Joey. They had to know if it was an aberration or a new reality for their people—one that would send shockwaves throughout many w
orlds.
Having already decided which doctor would concentrate on the different tests, Lauren and Amun set about their tasks meticulously, knowing there was no room for error. Each doctor documented every step of the complicated processes they used to conduct the testing so there would be no doubt of the results.
Hours later, they stood in stunned disbelief in front of the screens showing the test results. They looked at one another, and Amun nodded his head.
“Oh yeah, we’re running them again. Same protocols, but recalibrate anything that requires calibration before running the tests again and document the calibration,” he suggested.
Lauren nodded in agreement. Even though they’d calibrated all of the equipment before they’d started the testing to begin with, they couldn’t leave any room for doubt. They had to cover every possibility before they brought it to the Alliance leaders.
“I think we need to switch tests as well. You do the ones I just did, and I’ll do the ones you just did,” Lauren suggested.
“That’s a great idea,” Amun readily agreed.
He moved to the other side of the table, switching places with Lauren so he could work on the other side of the decomposing corpse on the table in front of them. Neither of them expected the results to be any different just because they were going to run each other’s tests, but they felt the need to cover every possibility and probability.
Amun sighed as he looked at Lauren over the corpse.
“If we get the same results, we’re going to have to send it to Valendra for confirmation,” he warned.
“Will they tell anyone before we can warn the Alliance leaders?” Lauren asked worriedly.
She didn’t know what the response would be on the Valendran home world, but she couldn’t imagine they’d be any less shocked than she and Amun were.
Amun thought about it for a moment and shook his head.
“Not if we send it to the right person. Trust me, the last thing I want is for Ivint or Grai to find this out from someone else besides us, but we can’t disregard the need for Valendran confirmation either,” he argued.
“I’m glad I’m not the only one really nervous about this,” Lauren said with a chuckle, trying to quell her nerves.
“It’s a testament to the gravity of the situation,” Amun agreed before taking a deep breath. “Let’s get started. The quicker we do this and get it sent to Valendra, the faster we get it to Grai and Ivint.”
“Wait,” Lauren interrupted, holding up her hand. “Should we send it to Tezaria as well?”
Amun ran a trembling hand down his face as he thought about it, mentally kicking himself for not considering the Tezarians as well.
“I’ll talk to Dread and see if he can get me a contact on Tezaria,” Amun said. “We may want to go ahead and include the Zendarians since they are also similar in physiology. I’ll speak to Ratoka as well.”
Lauren sighed at the longer list and shook her head, trying to figure out what they were getting ready to do. To prove.
“Amun, are we really sure about this? Please tell me that we’re just being crazy . . . or over cautious,” she begged.
The ramifications of their findings boggled Lauren’s mind in their complexities.
“I wish I could,” Amun said with a shake of his head. “But this is real, and we need to face this head on and damn fast, or it could have devastating impacts on our people and the human race.”
“All right,” Lauren conceded. “I’m beginning calibrations now.”
Amun and Lauren spent the next several hours redoing all of the tests they’d already performed. When they reached the exact same conclusions they’d reached before, Lauren sat heavily in a chair while Amun went to the comm system and sent an urgent message to his friend and mentor on the Valendran home world.
“Don’t forget Dread and Ratoka,” Lauren cautioned, knowing it would be absolutely necessary to receive the results from those two planets as well.
Amun sighed and nodded his head, trying to think of how he could word the messages to the two leaders without sending up an alarm. The last thing they needed was panic to start before they could even confirm their findings.
After several long minutes of drawing a blank in his mind, Amun turned to Lauren.
“How the hell am I supposed to ask?”
Lauren laughed and shook her head at him.
“I don’t have the faintest of ideas. Everything that’s going through my head sounds like someone should be ringing an alarm bell while everyone runs for the exits,” she only half teased.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Amun admitted.
Chapter Twenty
Emily looked around at her new accommodations and couldn’t help but wonder if Koda had healed enough that he’d decided that he didn’t want her anymore or if he wanted them to have more privacy than they had in the medlab.
By the time they’d finished dinner that evening and were walking to the medlab, Koda had dropped the bomb that they were changing rooms. At first she’d thought that he was going to put them all in the same room and was surprised when she saw that Joey was placed in a nursery room that connected to the beautiful bedroom she was standing in now.
Emily had thought she was going to share the room with Koda until he’d leaned down to give her a kiss and left, leaving her staring at the closed door.
What the fuck? she thought in irritation. If he thinks he can just shove me in a room, he can think again!
Emily stomped to the door and flung it open only to see Koda still standing on the other side of it, looking as if he’d been ready to knock.
“What the hell is going on?” Emily demanded, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared at him.
Koda sighed and looked down the hallway before he gently pushed Emily back into her room and closed the door behind them.
“I can’t do this,” Koda breathed out.
“What?” Emily whispered, noticing that Koda was refusing to meet her gaze.
“This . . .” Koda muttered as he ran a hand over his head in frustration. “The gods know I want to . . . my body and my beast are screaming for it. But . . . I can’t.”
“Koda, what are you saying?” Emily asked, terrified to know the answer.
Koda looked at Emily and took her hand to pull her towards the bed when he thought better of it and sat her in an overstuffed chair while he took the one next to her.
“You remember when we talked about mates, right?” Koda asked, unable to meet her gaze.
“Yes . . . why?” Emily asked, wondering if Koda had been wrong about them being mates.
“A beast goes off a primitive instinct to stay alive, to . . . live on through its progeny,” Koda said, then realized he was making no sense. “Wait, there’s a need . . . a . . . drive, an instinct to . . .”
Koda slapped a hand over his face and wondered why he was butchering the explanation so badly. All he’d wanted to do was tell her he wasn’t leaving her in that room because he wanted to, but because he had to.
Emily was completely baffled by what he was trying to tell her.
“Was that even spoken in English?” she asked, trying not to smile at how adorably flustered he appeared to be. She’d allow a smile when she knew what he was trying to tell her.
Koda burst out laughing and pulled her into his lap, cuddling her against him the way he liked it.
“I’m really killing it, huh?” he asked, leaning back to kiss her nose.
Emily looked at him closely before nodding.
“Did you make a mistake about us being mates?” she asked bluntly, unable to stand the awkwardness between them.
“Gods, no!” Koda whispered, pulling her back against his chest. “If that was the issue then leaving you in here would be damn easy to do.”
“Why do you have to leave me? What’s going on?” Emily asked, leaning her head back to look at him.
“Emily,” Koda began, “I’m not fully healed yet. I never will be, but, I mean .
. . wait. Not in that way! In that way, I am fully healed. But the rest of me just isn’t up to the task, wait . . . no, I am! But not . . . oh gods, this is a hell all its own.”
Koda buried his head in her shoulder to hide his flaming cheeks and tried to think through his next words. He prayed they would sound more literate.
Emily was thoroughly confused until he blushed a deep color and put his head on her shoulder. The shift in position allowed her to feel the hardness beneath her bottom, and she was thrilled and nervous at the same time.
Not because she was a virgin—she’d thought she’d fallen in love with a boy in town one time, but it really hadn’t worked out when his dead grandmother decided to start appearing. She was nervous that his body wasn’t ready for that kind of exertion, and it finally dawned on her that was what he was trying to tell her. But she wanted to make sure.
“So you’re really tempted, but not fully ready to try out that kind of exercise?” she asked, pulling away from him so she could see his face when he answered.
Koda nodded a little sheepishly.
“Yeah, that’s part of it. It’s final. We can’t turn back once we’ve bonded, and I just want to be stronger than I am. More like my old self,” he admitted.
“Koda,” Emily said, making sure he was looking in her eyes. “You are an amazing man. A few weeks ago you were in a coma and paralyzed. Today, you’re walking and talking. You may never be what you were before, but the man you are now is more than enough for me.”
Koda hugged her tightly, overcome with emotion.
“I don’t think I will ever deserve you, but I want to spend the rest of my life trying. So don’t take this wrong, but I need to do this. I need to know I can protect my mate and my child the way a warrior should. When I make you mine, I want to know I can keep you safe,” Koda whispered.
“Koda, nothing is going to change between us now or a year from now,” Emily countered. “My feelings for you aren’t dependent on whether or not you can fire a weapon or fight. I love the man you are, as you are.”
Koda grinned and leaned his forehead against hers.
“Please, just give me a few more weeks.”
