Harper. Protecting Harper.
I'd failed her.
Shame cut through the fog in my mind, clearing my consciousness with brutal clarity. The beach house swam into recollection, then the men, the ones who'd attacked. We'd escaped those who followed, taking shelter from the hurricane in the store.
Harper.
Wanting her with an intensity that burned through my veins... loving her with every fiber of my being... claiming her as mine.
The others came next. Junkies with hollow eyes who spilled my blood, forcing me to spill my secrets. Harper's understanding and acceptance.
Then men in uniform, their badges gleaming even in the dim light, men that Harper seemed to trust, then...
A violent scream of pain tore through my skull.
A gunshot. Close range. The slam of a projectile into my skull. Harper's whimper as I fell.
Horror ripped through me like claws shredding my gut, tearing through muscle and organ until nothing remained but raw, bleeding panic.
Where. Was. Harper?
I pushed to my feet, the world tilting dangerously as I swayed and clutched at the metal racks and shelves, my fingers leaving smears of blood on the surfaces as I dragged myself toward the bathing room. The reflection that greeted me in the grimy mirror wasn't my own. Human. Perfectly, deceptively human. Of course. The cuddwisg device was still engaged. I'd witnessed a warrior getting his head sliced clean off once in battle, and because the severed head landed close enough to the body, the cuddwisg had maintained its camouflage even in death.
I turned, craning my neck to examine the damage. The back of my shirt was completely drenched, the fabric stiff and heavy with congealing blood. After wiping carefully at the wound with a handful of wet paper towels, I could finally see it clearly—a small crater of destroyed tissue surrounded by burned and blackened skin.
One of the men had shot me.
And my mate was gone.
I splashed my face with water, the shocking chill cutting through the fog and settling my fractured senses. The bullet hadn't penetrated my skull—few human projectiles could—but at such close range, the impact had been sufficient to rattle my brain, rendering me unconscious.
"Harper!" I bellowed her name, the sound tearing from my throat, echoing off the walls. Silence was still my only answer, thick and mocking.
I had to find her.
I cleaned up the wound as best I could. I needed to make it to my shuttle. Until then, I needed to avoid the notice of other humans as much as possible. I would trust no one—not their peacekeepers, not their healers—until my mate was safe in my arms once more.
I stumbled toward the door, rage and determination keeping me upright when my body wanted to collapse. The scents were a chaotic mixture that my nose struggled to parse. Human males. Dust and mildew. Blood—mine, metallic and thick—and the faint sweet whiff of my mate. Harper's delicate floral, spicy scent, now almost completely faded save for the sharp, acrid tang of fear that clung to the edges.
I could tell from the way the sunlight filtered through the boarded windows that hours had passed. Too many hours. I wouldn't be able to track her by scent through the storm-riddled landscape.
Another memory hit me then, piercing through the pain with bittersweet clarity. The precious moments after we'd given ourselves to each other completely, and the soul-deep realization that I would never be able to let her go.
I tapped the comm unit on my wrist. With the storm over, I should have had no issues contacting the ship. It took a few minutes—not surprising, given that theHistoriawas orbiting several million miles away—before a voice I recognizedcrackled through, the familiar tones confirming the connection had established.
"Xabat?" Adtovar's voice held a thread of tension, sharp and taut as a wire pulled to its breaking point. "Are you well? George indicated there were fluctuations in your biometric readings." All crew members of theHistoriahad implanted biometric scanners that were monitored from the ship.
"I got shot," I muttered through gritted teeth, wincing as the words themselves seemed to send fresh agony shooting through my skull.
"Shot?" I couldn't tell whether my captain sounded alarmed or angry, his tone hovering somewhere between the two.
"Humans posing as peacekeepers," I muttered, each word an effort. "They took Harper."
"You found her?" Maddie's voice joined our conversation, warm even through the comm's static interference.
"Yes," I muttered, my gut twisting with a combination of pride and shame. "I made contact before the storm, but wasn't able to get her to safety before it became unsafe to travel. We'd been sheltering in a small market."
"I've been following the hurricane," Maddie said, her voice taking on an analytical tone. "It looked like a doozy, category five at some landfall locations."
