by KD Jones
She reached over to take his hand in hers. “I’m here, honey. Just rest.”
She could feel her sister’s eyes on her. “What do you want to know?”
“How serious is this thing between you and Kyle?”
“Serious. I’m in love with him.”
“You know Dad’s going flip his lid?”
“Yep, but I’m not giving him up.”
“Okay, I’ll help you with Dad. What happened down in the subway with these creeps?”
“I...need to talk to Dad, Liam, and the commander about that. But I don’t want to leave Kyle.”
“I’ll call them and have them meet us here.” Maggie stepped away and picked up a communicator. Rachel turned back to Kyle.
“Please get better, baby. I miss your wiseass remarks and your constant flirting. I need you.” She leaned down and kissed his knuckles. He was the most amazing man she had ever met. Please God don’t let him die.
Chapter 17
Rachel watched as Liam, followed by her father and Great Commander Estro, came into the healing area. Liam bent to kiss Maggie’s cheek before turning in her direction. “Maggie said you needed to speak with us.”
She looked and saw two lieutenants come inside and stand by the doors. She motioned in their direction. “Alone. No one else is to be here.”
Liam turned to his lieutenants. “Wait outside in the hallway.” Both men left and the door shut behind them. He turned back to Rachel and waited.
“I need to tell you what happened to me. There is a bigger situation here than just me being kidnapped. The two prisoners you caught were the two that grabbed me. They told me that they took me in exchange for weapons and supply. The guy that paid them — his name is Dusty. He got away. Dusty has been trading with Leonard and his group of rebels for a while now. He hopes to get himself his own dome.”
“That’s crazy. You can’t buy yourself command of a dome. It doesn’t work that way,” her father claimed.
“That’s what I told him. But, evidently, the human way of wheeling and dealing is alive and well.”
“So this was all about him trying to get a dome? What was he going to do, blackmail me into giving him one?” her father asked.
She shook her head. “No, I was taken to be killed and to have my death blamed on the aliens. He wants the aliens off of Earth.”
“How would they blame your death on us?” the commander asked.
“They said they have an alien that they were going to...Oh God, they have one of your people!”
“Who? Who do they have?”
“I don’t know. Dusty said that they had just grabbed an alien they were keeping alive. That they were going to leave him next to my dead body in front of my father’s dome. He wanted my father to blame the Drastans and to use his influence to demand that the Drastans leave Earth for good.”
The commander turned to Liam. “I want a count on all Drastans that have been on Earth during the last week who have not reported in.”
Liam walked away to get on his communicator. He sent a message to all of his mission leaders. He came back to them. “They are checking now.”
“Dusty is dangerous and crazy. I hate that he got away.”
“Actually, we caught him,” Liam told her. “He is being brought up to the command ship now.”
She paused to look at Kyle and bit her bottom lip. There was more she needed to tell them but she knew they might react the way Kyle did. But it had to be done.
“There’s more.”
“Tell us,” Liam said.
“Leonard and his pal Ennis got past Kyle’s security. Dusty implied that they had help...Drastan help.”
“What? That is outrageous. My people are not traitors!” the commander bellowed.
“Then how do you explain how they got to Rachel? Where were the guards for that tunnel? It was conveniently left undefended.” Maggie came to stand next to Rachel as she spoke. She put her hand on her shoulder to show her support.
“I’ll look into it,” Liam promised Rachel.
“You will need to limit who has access to Maggie too. Only those you trust with her and the baby’s life should be around her.”
“Why?” Maggie asked, surprised.
“It wasn’t going to end with my death. Dusty and his followers want to kill Maggie and the baby to prove that we are not compatible. That was going to be their nail in the coffin.”
“Shit.” Maggie clutched her extended belly.
Liam walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her. “I will make sure to pick the most trusted individuals to guard you. I will also assign trusted guards for your parents and Rachel.”
“There’s no need. We’ll be traveling back to my dome immediately.” Rachel’s father crossed his arms over his chest and spoke with authority.
“What?” Rachel asked incredulously.
“You and your mother will be coming back to the dome with me. It is obviously too dangerous for us to have joint efforts together.”
“That is exactly what these assholes want ― they want to divide us,” Maggie told her father.
“Rachel, come. We are leaving.”
“No, absolutely not. I’m staying here with Kyle.”
“You don’t owe this man anything. He risked his life because it’s his job.”
“I am not going anywhere.”
Liam interrupted the argument and tried to give them space. “How about Rachel accompanies Maggie back to our place. I will personally escort them and there will be guards whom I trust there. I am sure once Kyle is awake and better, Rachel will be more willing to leave.”
Rachel was about to continue arguing that she wasn’t going anywhere, but Maggie bent down and whispered in her ear. “Just come with me. It will keep Dad’s focus where it should be — on catching these guys.”
“I’ll go with Maggie. But I want to know if and when Kyle wakes up.”
Liam nodded his head. “Jared is on his way now to stay with Kyle. He just needed to debrief with the other medikos.”
Rachel paused at the doorway and looked back at Kyle. She did not want to leave him, but arguing with her father was not going to help matters either. She and Maggie waited for Liam and then all three of them left.
“Dad is really mad at me, isn’t he?” Rachel asked Maggie.
“He’ll deal with it. You just have to stand your ground with him. He’ll come around eventually.”
“Am I missing something?” Liam asked.
“Yes, Rachel is in love with Kyle and she wants to stay here with him.”
“Is it serious? How far has it gone?”
Rachel almost laughed at the glare that her sister gave her husband. “All the way far.”
“Oh. Yeah, your father is going to pitch a fit about this. But Kyle has been in love with Rachel for a while now. He’ll fight to keep her here with him. He’s a persistent fellow.”
“He’s wanted me for a while?” Rachel asked, feeling shocked.
Liam laughed. “He’s wanted you since the first time he saw you. I thought he was going to kick my ass when your father asked about setting us up on a date.”
“I only did that because Kyle pissed me off by flirting with my friends. Sorry.” She apologized to Maggie.
“It all worked out. I have Liam and you have Kyle.”
“I hope so,” Rachel whispered as they entered Liam’s family suite. Both women turned when Liam got a call on his communicator.
“This is Captain Estro. Quinn? Are you sure? Fuck. Yeah I’ll meet in the commander’s room to discuss another rescue search.”
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
“The Drastan that they took was Quinn. He is missing from Kyle’s detail.”
“Quinn? Oh no.” Rachel felt her stomach drop. Kyle’s cousin Quinn, the sweet quiet one, was taken.
“Are they sending anyone out to look for him?” Maggie asked.
“They finally captured that Dusty guy. He was trying to make his way back to h
is dome. He will be boarding as a prisoner in a few minutes. Father wants to interrogate him in hopes of getting a direct answer to Quinn’s whereabouts. He also wants to question him about the man’s Drastan connections. The other two, Leonard and Ennis, didn’t know that much.”
“So he believes me now?” Rachel asked feeling relieved.
“Yes and no. He believes you are telling the truth that you know of. But he is having a hard time believing any of our people would conspire to betray us this way.”
“Maybe to them, they weren’t betraying the Drastan nation. Maybe they truly don’t believe our species should mingle,” Rachel said as she sat down on the couch and sighed in relief. She was really tired still.
“I guess they could feel that way,” Liam admitted begrudgingly.
“Thanks for taking me in. The couch is fine. I don’t want to put you out or anything,” Rachel said, yawning from exhaustion.
Maggie pulled on Rachel’s hand to make her stand back up. “Come on, you. I will get you to bed and get some rest.” They walked down the hallway to the last bedroom on the left. “In you go.”
“Whose bedroom is this?”
“Kyle’s, of course.”
Kyle’s room? Kyle’s bed? She walked in and turned around, looking at his personal space. She almost didn’t hear Maggie say goodbye.
“Get some rest. We’ll come and get you if there is news about Kyle or Quinn.”
“Thanks, Maggie.” Maggie shut the door and Rachel walked around the room. She looked at pictures of Kyle with his brothers and father. There was a digital picture globe that held a picture of a beautiful woman who looked so much like Kyle that it had to be his mother. She reached his closet, opened it, and smiled at the clothes hanging up haphazardly. She found one of Kyle’s shirts and changed into it. It still contained his scent. She walked out of the closet and headed for his bed. Kyle wasn’t as messy as she had assumed. But his bed wasn’t completely made. She knelt down and stretched out on her side. She pulled the pillow to her face and inhaled deeply. Oh yes, that was Kyle’s scent. It filled her and comforted her. She fell into a peaceful sleep.
*****
Kyle groaned as he woke up, feeling foggy. Only one clear thought raced through his head. “Rachel.”
“Easy, brother. Rachel is fine. She is with her sister. You gave us quite a scare.” Jared took his vitals.
“I feel awful.”
“And you look it. You need more sleep before you go seeking your woman.”
Kyle smiled. “She is, you know. Mine.”
Jared laughed. “Yes, well, you might want to go easy on the possession if I were you. Her father is not happy with the situation. If it weren’t for him being busy questioning the prisoners, and the fact that her sister stepped in, he might have carted her off to his dome already. That is one scary father to deal with.”
“She’s safe and okay? You promise?”
“Yes, I promise. She is determined not to leave you. So you need to rest and get better so that you have the strength to fight to keep her here.”
“What have you found out about the prisoners?”
“Nothing much from the prisoners themselves. Rachel gave us more information. Did you know that these guys had kidnapped a Drastan that they planned to use?”
“Rachel said something like that and that she also believed that a Drastan was helping them. But I didn’t believe her at first. I hadn’t had a lot of time to discuss it with Rachel while we were on the run.”
“Not a lot of talking ― but you did a whole lot of something else, though, didn’t you, brother?” Jared looked down at him like he used to when he was little and he had broken something of Jared’s.
“What are you getting at?”
“You shared sex with Rachel James without thinking of using precautions to keep from getting her pregnant.”
Oh God. He hadn’t thought about that at all. That wasn’t like him. He was always careful. The thought of Rachel having his baby was scary and exciting all at once. But her father was going to give him hell for it. “Fuck.”
“Exactly. Congrats, little brother, you not only got the girl you’ve always wanted, but you got the girl pregnant to boot.”
Chapter 18
“Are you sure? It’s really early to tell.”
“We have advanced detection and now that I have human physiology programmed into our systems, we can detect diseases, ailments, and even pregnancies immediately. She is definitely newly conceived.”
After the shock wore off, Kyle found himself smiling like an idiot. “Does she know?”
Jared shook his head. “I didn’t have time to share the good news before she was whisked away by Maggie and Liam. I would stop smiling if I were you. This may not come as welcome news to her.”
“She will be happy. I know it.”
“Maybe, but she is young, Kyle. She has been protected her whole life by a family that is as different from ours as night and day. From what Liam said, she openly defied her father, which was the first time she had done so. He is not thrilled with her staying and he is even less thrilled that she is involved with you.”
“She’s upset. I need to go to her.” He tried to stand up, but his brother pushed him back down in his seat.
“Easy, you need to rest and get some of your strength back. I barely touched you and you went down. You’ll be more help to her when you are stronger. You can start with some solid foods, so I’ll go talk to the ship’s chef and order you something.”
“I’m not hungry.” Kyle crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly.
“Too bad, you’re going to eat.” Jared gave him a stern look before leaving the medical facility.
“This bullshit.” He threw the covers off and was relieved to see that he was at least wearing pants. He used his hands on either side to lift himself up. Damn. His body felt like dead weight and his legs were extremely wobbly. He took a step forward, then a second step, where he had to then release the bed that he was holding.
He immediately realized this was a mistake. He tried to take another step, but was having the hardest time lifting his leg and he broke out into a sweat. Fuck! He was going to go down and had to wait for Jared to come back and pick up his sorry ass.
Desperate and determined to get to his woman, he searched the room and his eyes found one of the floating chairs that the medikos used to transport patients back to their suites after treatment. If he could just make it over there, he could sit in the chair and use it to take him to Rachel. He had to at least try. He lifted his other leg and moved it. Three steps to go. Just as he was a foot away, he went down to his knees. His legs just couldn’t hold him.
The combination of blood loss, immobility, and the muscle relaxants and pain meds he was on were weighing him down. But he did manage to drag himself that last foot to the chair. He pulled up and maneuvered himself into the seat. It had been sitting flat on the floor while not in use, but as soon as he sat in it, the chair automatically levitated into the air.
“Now, how the hell do you operate this thing?”
*****
Liam watched as his father took charge of the interrogation. Usually, the commander left this kind of work to someone else. But family was involved. Quinn was missing, and they had to get him back before he was hurt or worse...killed.
How did the humans get their hands on Quinn to begin with? Was Rachel right? Did one of their own people betray them? And was there real danger to his wife and baby? He would tear apart, limb by limb, anyone who attempted to hurt his family. And his family included Quinn.
Sure, Quinn was young and cocky and never took anything seriously. But he was Liam’s cousin, and Liam loved him despite their differences. Whoever was behind this, human or Drastan, would pay. His father was thinking the same thing, too.
They had questioned the two unconscious men, Leonard and Ennis, who had originally kidnapped Rachel. All they would admit to or all they really knew was that the man named Dusty was behind it. Th
ey didn’t know who Dusty’s Drastan connections were and they did not know how many people were involved with Dusty’s plans, and they had no idea where Quinn was. Basically, they were useless. So now everything hinged on getting information from the man named Dusty.
“I want an answer now!” Great Commander Estro demanded, confronting Dusty directly.
“I’m not telling you jack shit!”
“Let me.” Lieutenant Colonel James stepped forward. As soon as he was close enough to the prisoner, he punched Dusty in the gut. Liam winced, knowing that had to have hurt. “Now, answer the commander’s question. Where is the Drastan that you kidnapped?”
Dusty was restrained to the wall of the holding cell by strong cuffs. He leaned over, favoring his stomach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s not the answer we want.” Lieutenant Colonel James punched the man’s face hard enough that blood began dripping out of his mouth.
“Ease up there, Lieutenant Colonel. We want him to be able to answer the questions,” the commander reminded him.
Dusty spit blood out. “Is that all you got?”
Liam’s father-in-law motioned to him. He whispered in Liam’s ear and Liam’s eyebrows rose. “All right.” His father-in-law turned his attention back to the prisoner.
“You know, I am going easy on you. The fact that you had my daughter kidnapped and planned to kill her makes me furious. But she is safe now and I am holding back. But see, what you don’t understand is that the Drastan you took is family to the Great Commander and to Captain Estro. They do not know if their family member is safe or dead. They may not hold back, like me.” With that, Lieutenant Colonel James stepped back so that Liam could step forward.
Dusty looked up at Liam worriedly. Liam was big for a Drastan, and if he threw a blow, it would definitely hurt. But the lieutenant colonel wanted Liam to do something else. It was extreme, but, then again, the circumstances were extreme.
