by Sarah Marsh
“Doctor, there’s been a report that your treatment of the patient isn’t working and you’ve been refusing alternate ideas.” She could hear that the Commander was trying to keep a neutral tone in his voice, but as he moved even closer, his face clearly showed that he was not happy with the state he found her in.
“I know what I’m doing,” was the man’s answer. “Take your complaint up with the board. I have work to do.”
The entire room went quiet for a moment, and she could see the shock on most of the faces of the medical staff and the guards. Commander Vaughn’s face was blank for a second at his dismissal, but then it quickly turned to anger.
“Get in there, and remove Doctor Gend immediately. Take him to a holding cell,” he said to the guards that had come with him before turning to the younger doctor. “Doctor Bard, can you help her?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve read all Doctor Drogan’s notes. If it’s contact dependency withdrawal she suffers from, then we’ll need an unmated male for her treatment.” The younger doctor ran up to the computer and began typing furiously as they all ignored the yelling rants of Doctor Gend as he was escorted out of the lab.
The Commander nodded towards the remaining guard that had arrived with him.
“Corporal Fenric will assist you. He is unmated,” Vaughn added as they all moved into her room. She wasn’t happy they were moving closer. Alison just wanted to be left alone, since Doctor Gend had been horrible to her after the nice younger doctor had left.
“Alison?” The young doctor moved to kneel next to her, trying to get her attention. “Alison, it’s Doctor Bard. We’re here to help you. Can you look at me?”Alison just squeezed her eyes tighter and started muttering to herself that the pain would stop soon. It had to. She couldn’t take anymore. .
“Corporal, remove your shirt and come here. She needs skin to skin contact.” Those words had her eyes snapping open in concern, and when the young guard moved forward, Doctor Bard nodded. “Yes, just hold her. We will hopefully see an improvement in her vitals quite quickly. Doctor Drogan’s notes said it was almost immediate.”
Corporal Fenric did as he was told and sat down next to her. He attempted to wrap his arms around her, but as soon as he leaned in close, Alison took a deep breath. Immediately after his skin touched hers, she began to flail and scream out, fighting his touch.
“No! Get away!” she screamed, her eyes once again tightly closed as she continued to hit the startled male who seemed to be frozen in confusion and shock. “He smells wrong. Don’t let him touch me!”
“By the gods, Bard, what’s happening?” Commander Vaughn yelled over the wailing woman’s voice. “Why is she fighting?”
“I don’t know, Commander,” the doctor answered in a panic, checking her vitals on the hand-held monitor. “Her heart rate is increasing. This is making her worse. I was so certain that this would help.”
“Someone find Clan Drogan and get them in here now!” Commander Vaughn yelled at the guards who’d just stepped out of the elevator from escorting Doctor Gend to his holding cell in the basement of the building.
****
“I do not care that Commander Vaughn is not picking up his comm.. It’s been too long! We must see Alison now.” Conn’s voice bellowed through the foyer of the medical building as he paced back and forth trying to contact their superior officer.
The receptionist had begun to panic when Conn started yelling at her, and now Kal was busy restraining the last of the medical security officers who’d tried to escort them off the premises. He almost felt bad for them since they were just doing their jobs, but no one was going to stand between them and Ali. He had a terrible feeling that she needed them. As the elevator opened, he prepared to fight with more guards, but the instant relief on the faces of the two men who exited was confusing.
“Thank the gods, Captain Drogan,” the guard said as all three of them turned towards him. “Commander Vaughn has urgently requested your clan’s presence upstairs. The Earth female is not responding to treatment.”
Kal’s stomach dropped as he looked over to Tannen and saw the worry on his mate's face. He didn’t like it one bit. They quickly entered the elevator, and it was torture how slow it felt going all the way up to the top.
“You said Alison isn’t responding to treatment? Did they try the contact therapy?” Tannen asked in a strained voice.
“When we arrived back in the lab from locking Doctor Gend down, one of the guards was trying to make contact, but the patient was resisting and fighting quite hard.”
“Why wouldn’t the therapy work now?” Conn turned to Tannen, and there was a worried tone in his voice they weren’t used to hearing from their leader. “Did that bastard do something to her?”
“I don’t know. It should be working,” Tannen answered, his face giving away the frantic calculations going on inside of his brain, trying to come up with the right answer. “Was she conscious?”
“Once the male moved away from her, she collapsed and passed out. Doctor Bard examined her and said she appeared to be in metabolic shock from her exertion when she fought the contact,” the guard answered carefully, finally noticing that their clan was personally invested in Alison’s condition.
“Tannen, what does that mean?” Conn barked. “Will she be okay?”
Kal looked once again to the doctor in their ranks, and was scared to death to see the tortured uncertainty in his eyes. “Tannen, please tell me Alison will be okay.”
“I can’t say for certain,” Tannen answered quietly. “If the contact therapy isn’t working and she falls into a metabolic coma, we may not be able to wake her.”
When the elevator doors opened, all three of them flew out towards where Commander Vaughn was standing with a grim look on his face.
“Doctor Bard is having an issue with the Earth female’s treatment,” the Commander said, looking into the room holding the woman. “She isn’t responding well, and the doctor doesn’t know what to do. We thought perhaps Tannen would be able to help her.”
Tannen was already in the room, kneeling beside Alison examining her while drilling the young doctor who had been in charge of her care. It was all Kal could do to restrain himself from going directly to the female who had come to mean so much to them, but with the Commander’s scrutinizing gaze looking at Tannen, then back between both Kal and Conn, he knew it was only a short matter of time before the male figured out their affection towards Alison.
“Sir, with all due respect towards Shara and your family,” Conn began in a quiet voice so the guards didn’t overhear him, “we intend to withdraw our bond contract negotiations with your daughter. If Alison’s health was not at risk, we would be resolving this with your daughter right now, but we care a great deal for her and our hope is to make her our bond mate.”
Commander Vaughn didn’t speak for a moment, and then he sighed and patted Conn on the shoulder.
“I’ve known for many years that my daughter was too much like her mother, and that she did not deserve the three of you for mates,” he finally said. “You’re fine males, Conn, and I release you to care for your intended. I hope she can recover from this.”
“Thank you, Commander,” Conn answered in a relieved voice, smiling back at Kal as well. “We will give our regrets to Shara formally as soon as Alison is taken care of.”
Kal did not like the thought of how that particular conversation would go. He was certain that the female would make it as difficult as possible to get out of their negotiations. He was almost glad that she never seemed to acknowledge his presence if it meant he didn’t have to deal with her directly like Conn would have to.
“Why don’t you let me deal with Shara on this? Consider it a bonding gift to your clan,” the older man said as he stepped back and motioned them into the room where Alison was on the bed unconscious.
“Thank you, sir,” Kal said, before crossing the room to kneel beside Tannen next to the bed where he was holding Alison’s hand. “Tannen, how is sh
e?”
“I can’t believe it.” Doctor Bard was looking at his handheld in amazement. “Her vitals are actually improving just from your touch. This is remarkable.”
“Kal, remove your shirt and pants and get onto the bed with Alison,” Tannen said as he grabbed a blanket to cover her, and carefully removed the gown she’d been in. “We need maximum skin to skin contact if this is going to work.”
Chapter Nineteen
It was almost a full twenty-four hours later and Alison still hadn’t woken, but her vital signs were getting steadier, which made Tannen hopeful that she would come back to them. Kal and Conn had been taking shifts holding her as she slept.
“Doctor Drogan, I’ve been going over your notes, and I think I may have a theory on what has been happening with Alison,” the young but capable doctor interrupted him as he reviewed the latest lab results. “You’d begun a comparison on the patient's DNA with that of the original Seria 9 species, noting that they had many similarities. I’ve done some research, and it seems as though their species identifies their mates though pheromone detection, and once mated it was for life. Since the virus appears to have made Alison contact dependant, I believe her body developed a pheromone lock onto the three of you when you began treatment on your ship and that is why the contact therapy failed with other males. She kept screaming that he ‘smelled wrong’ when we tried it. I’m not certain how advanced the Earth species’ olfactory senses are, but her brain could just have been picking up on a pheromone match and that was its way of translating the information into something she could identify.”
Tannen thought back to the time they'd spent with Alison when she’d first come on board their ship. There had been a few times that she’d mentioned how good they had smelled to her. He hadn’t given it much thought, but that would explain it, perhaps.
“I think that may be exactly what has happened, Doctor Bard, well done.” Tannen grinned up at the younger man.
“Tannen, Commander Vaughn has confirmed that he’s extended our regrets to Shara about the contract.” Conn came to sit down beside him, looking exhausted.
“I certainly wouldn’t have envied him that job,” Tannen said with a small smile before he yawned and rubbed his eyes.
“You haven’t rested for more than a day, love.” Conn looked at him with concern. “You take the next shift resting with Ali and try to get some sleep. You can’t do her any good if you fall ill yourself.”
“Is that an order, Captain?” Tannen teased his mate, even though he was exhausted beyond thought.
“Yes,” his mate answered, as he leaned in to give him a gentle kiss before he rose, pulling Tannen’s hand. “Now come, I’ll tuck you both in.”
It was the middle of the night, and the only other staff remaining in the area was there to care for other patients so it was very quiet. He stripped down to his underwear and climbed into the spot still warm from where Kal had been sleeping beside Alison. Conn had asked for cots to be brought in as well, so none of them had to leave or sleep in chairs for the evening. Tannen wrapped his arms tight around Ali and finally closed his eyes, letting his body rest.
****
Alison slowly came awake to the most glorious scent of warm male and sandalwood teasing her nose as she rubbed it against the soft skin.
“Mmm, Tannen,” she whispered sleepily, as she let her hands wander down the length of his naked back, but when he tensed under her fingers, she reluctantly opened her eyes.
“Am I still in the hospital?” she asked, realizing that she was naked under the thin blanket as young Doctor Bard came barreling into the room.
“You’re awake,” Tannen said with a smile, as he hugged her so tight she couldn’t breathe for a moment.
“Doctor Drogan! Alison’s vitals are almost completely normal. You’ve done it.” The young doctor was almost jumping up and down in his excitement.
She was still enjoying her hug from Tannen while trying to keep the sheet at a decent level when Conn and Kal came running in the room. Seeing their faces light up when they saw her made her heart skip a tiny beat as she smiled back shyly.
“Alison!” Kal exclaimed, as he scooped her out of Tannen’s arms and held her tight while Conn came up behind her and sandwiched her between them. “We were so worried.”
Ali squealed a bit as she felt the sheet drop to the floor, and she realized she was now naked in their embrace in front of the rest of the staff in the room.
“Doctor, avert your gaze from our mate,” Tannen growled from behind them, which had her looking over her shoulder at the young doctor, who was now staring at the ground with a mortified expression on his face.
“My apologies, Clan Drogan,” he stammered. “Her skin is just so luminous, it’s almost hypnotizing. I’ll leave you alone and go update her charts.”
Alison almost laughed at such an aggressive tone coming from the usually calm and collected doctor, and then suddenly she realized that Tannen had referred to her as their mate. Her head snapped up to look at Kal in front of her, and he smiled, raising his eyebrows as if to dare her to object to their claiming.
“Really?” she whispered. “But what about Shara?”
“All of our ties to Shara have now been dissolved and we will be contracting with you, Alison,” Conn growled from behind her, making a shiver of awareness run down her spine at the dominance in his tone.
“Are you sure?” she started as excitement began to bubble up inside at the thought of spending her life with these men. “What about—your jobs?”
“Of course, we’re sure, Ali. You are the mate of our hearts, and we will never let you go again,” Kal interrupted her, right before he took her mouth in a gentle but thorough kiss that left her breathless and squirming in his arms.
When both Conn and Tannen confirmed their agreement, it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever heard in her entire life.
Chapter Twenty
Alison was excited that she’d be getting released today and she could finally go home with her new clan mates. The kind, young Doctor Bard had insisted that she stay at least a full twenty-four hours after her vitals had become normal once again, just to assure that her condition was stable.
“I wish you all well in your new bond, and it was most exciting to meet you, Alison.” Doctor Bard gently clasped her hand and then froze as Ali went in for a quick hug that had her new mates grumbling unhappily.
“Sheesh, you guys are so weird about hugs here.” She laughed and then looked at the four men standing as a loud voice drew her attention to outside their room.
“I will speak to Conn Drogan immediately.” a shrill voice echoed down the hallway causing all the men in the vicinity to cringe. “Conn!”
Alison looked towards Conn just as he and his male clan mates exchanged a look of sheer panic. Good grief, she thought, trying not to roll her eyes, what is it about this woman that scares them so badly?
She had figured out after having contact with a few other females working here that in Dolak society females were supposed to be soft-spoken and polite, which of course had her thinking back to the first time she’d seen Shara. The woman had been such a complete bitch that Ali could only assume she was an anomaly of bad breeding and no discipline growing up.
When Shara did finally step into the room, her formerly beautiful face was now a twisted mask of rage, and her eyes locked first on Alison, then moved to settle on Conn as she strode up to him.
“Conn Drogan.” She was seething as she began. “My father has just told me the most absurd information. He told me that you and your clan mates have withdrawn your offer of contract due to this—this primitive!”
“Shara, you have no right…” Kal began to confront the horrid woman, and she looked as though he’d slapped her right in the face.
“How dare you even speak to me!” she yelled, her fists balling in anger as she stared at Kal with utter hatred. “You’re nothing but an unclaimed mongrel. Conn should never have even considered claiming yo
u to begin with, and now look at the ruin you have led him to!”
The entire floor of the medical center seemed to stop with her ugly words. Alison’s anger began to fill her to an uncontrollable level. It was one thing for this bitch to say nasty things about her—that she could handle. But to say such awful things about one of the most caring and wonderful men she’d ever met? I don’t fucking think so.
“Listen up, bitch.” Ali stepped closer to the woman and tried to control her rage. “Don’t you ever even speak to Kal again, or so help me God I will rip your fucking face off! You’re not even worthy of touching the same ground he walks on, let alone worthy of being with any of these men.”
Ali took a few seconds to breathe so she didn’t launch herself at the now gaping Shara, her eyes getting wider as she realized that Alison would protect what was hers.
“They are mine, so you can just take your skinny, bitch ass back out the door.” Alison finished with a threatening step towards her, causing the other woman to stumble back and catch herself before she turned tail and fled the room.
Alison watched her run with a deep sense of satisfaction, giving herself a mental high-five. This was the first time in her entire life that Ali had stood up for herself or anyone else to an awful, cruel bully. And she had to admit to herself that she fucking loved the way it felt. She turned back around to face the men and stopped cold when she saw the expressions of shock on their faces.
Oh, crap. Have I just caused an interstellar incident or something?
****
Kal just stood there in utter shock and stared at the goddess in front of him. Had Ali really just threatened Shara with physical harm if she ever spoke to him again? No one, not even Conn or Tannen, had ever put Shara in her place for her treatment of Kal. He understood why. Their society was a precarious dance of manners and protocol, and Shara’s family was high up with their influence. It had never been worth the potential fallout to confront her before, especially with Conn’s mother being close family friends with Shara’s mother.
