The door flew open, and Salvi and Cesaro, another of Lukan’s pack-mates, rushed in. They held laser guns – the cowards! Fighting with a weapon, against another Vulfan? Lukan bristled with rage at the sight.
Several of Lukan’s men were bearing down on Salvi, he realized. They did not hold weapons. Fangor and Kaspar were with them. Salvi’s face went white with fear. He turned and fired at Kaspar, and Kaspar’s arm burst into flames.
Kaspar let out a howl of anguish, as Fangor and his Vulfans dove at Salvi, shifting into their animal form, and took him down. Salvi disappeared under a pile of snarling, snapping fur, and his screams of agony tore through the air.
A male, metal serv-bot rushed through the doorway.
“It’s a trick!” he cried, pointing at Alexandra. “She wiped your mind with the memory—” Alexandra grabbed a –laser gun from a counter-top, pointed it at the serv-bot, and shot him. He froze in place. The female serv-bot clanged harder and made a terrible wailing noise behind her gag.
Lukan lunged through the air and knocked the gun from Alexandra’s hand. She fell to the ground with a shriek, cowering.
“You are not my mate!” he shouted at her as rage flowed through his body. He didn’t even know where the words had come from, but he knew they were true. And now he had other memories, of him and the beautiful woman who was tied up. Which memories were real?
“Say it! You are not my true mate!” he yelled, and his words ended on a snarl as fur covered his body. He was about to turn animal. He’d probably kill Alexandra when he did – that was how furious he was.
“I’m not…I’m not your true mate.” That came out on a furious wail.
He rushed past her, and quickly started untying the woman whose name he did not know. The woman he loved.
Chapter Seventeen
“You promise you forgive me?” Lukan asked Talia for the dozenth time.
“Of course I forgive you. She wiped out your memory.” Talia squeezed Lukan’s hand for reassurance, and leaned against him.
If anything, this had strengthened her love for him. Lukan’s love for her was so powerful that even the memory machine could not destroy it.
Alexandra now lay strapped on a bed in the memory chamber, and an attendant was preparing the machine. Salvi’s accomplices had all been killed. Treason was an offense punishable by death, on Ilyria.
Mar-ee had managed to summon help once they got into the memory chamber. She and Farex had apparently set up a special internal messaging function to speak to each other when they were apart. As soon as Farex got Mar-ee’s message, he had sought out Kaspar and Fangor.
Kaspar was using a mechanical arm now, while he waited for a new vat-grown flesh arm to replace the limb that Salvi had destroyed in his final act of cowardice.
Fortunately, Salvi had been defeated, they’d been able to restore Lukan’s memories. Talia shuddered to think about life without Lukan…without him remembering her at all.
She got up and stalked over to glare at Alexandra. Lukan joined her.
“If you had destroyed Lukan’s mind, I swear I would have killed you, you pathetic, evil witch,” Talia spat at her.
“How did this happen?” Alexandra wailed. “How? The memory machine never fails!”
Lukan scoffed at that. “There is no memory machine that can overcome the bond between true mates once they have met. And the memory machine cannot make a Vulfan want another woman once he has met the woman that he is destined to love.”
“So now…you’re going to murder me?” Alexandra’s eyes went wide with terror, and she strangled on a sob.
“I am going to erase your memory, completely,” Lukan said coldly. “And then, you will be placed in a Federation prison, for life. And now,” he added, “I am going to claim my true mate.”
“First we should check on Farex,” Talia said, ignoring Alexandra’s shrieks of rage and protest “Much as I look forward to the claiming.”
Farex was in the robot repair facility in Donnelle, with Mar-ee by his side. Thankfully, it appeared as if Alexandra hadn’t been able to destroy his central hard drive, so he would survive with his personality and memories intact. She’d shot him in the head, but the serv-bots’ hard drives were actually located in their abdomens.
A short while later, after they called the repair facility to check on Farex, they returned to Lukan’s bed chamber.
“You will never leave me again,” he told Talia as he carried her over the threshold into the room. “When you go to Earth, I will go with you. And our ceremony will be held in thirty solar cycles.” He nipped at her neck. “But I hope you are already bearing my cubs by then.”
He set her on her feet and turned her so her back was pressed against his chest and stomach. He ran his palm around to cup her belly. He nuzzled her ear. “I want lots of cubs,” he told her in a low growl. “All as brave and beautiful as their mother. You are my life, Talia.”
Talia felt a little thrill run through her at the thought of carrying his babies. She turned and wrapped her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoes to press her lips against his.
