Page 159 of Tamed By Her Touch

“Run to the place where you can secure yourself. You must be restrained if you do not wish to hurt the woman you love!”

Suddenly, Kaelus understood—the old Containment Center…the rows of black restraint chairs with their heavy cuffs to hold down savage males.

Sendar himself had shown it to him. The bastard had led Kaelus straight to the one place in the Blood Archive where he could make himself harmless.

For the first time since the needle had entered his neck, hope broke through the terror.

Thank you, Goddess! he thought.

Then he turned and ran as though the Seven Hells were behind him.

He ran because Clair was coming. He ran because he loved her.

And if saving her meant chaining himself down like a savage beast before she arrived, then that was exactly what he would do.

26

CLAIR

The automated transport deposited Clair in front of the Blood Archive less than fifteen minutes after she left Maera’s house, and she climbed out clutching her data tablet with a ridiculous amount of excitement bubbling inside her. She couldn’t wait to tell Kaelus what they had discovered about the veloria metabolite showing up in saliva—especially the dramatic increase in the male samples after kissing their wives. He was going to love it.

Well, maybe love was too strong a word for Kaelus, who generally greeted exciting scientific discoveries with a thoughtful frown followed by approximately seventeen questions designed to poke holes in them. But Clair knew him well enough by now to recognize that particular light that came into his golden eyes when something genuinely fascinated him.

She wanted to see that look. More than that, she wanted to see him, which was considerably more troubling and something she preferred not to examine too closely.

The Blood Archive rose before her out of the base of the silver-gray mountain, looking even more imposing than Kaelus had described it. Enormous crystal columns resembling twisted vines flanked the entrance, their translucent surfaces shot through with veins of pale violet light that pulsed slowly from the ground upward as though the entire building had a heartbeat.

The mountainside itself had been carved into a sweeping arch around the doors, and strange flowing symbols were etched into the stone, glowing faintly whenever the twin suns touched them.

Clair craned her neck to look up at the massive structure and felt a little thrill go through her. She loved places like this—ancient repositories of knowledge where centuries of science waited to be uncovered. Under different circumstances, she could happily have spent weeks exploring it with Kaelus.

“Okay, big guy,” she murmured as she climbed the shallow steps toward the entrance. “Let’s see what you’ve been up to without me.”

She expected the doors to remain closed until she announced herself or entered some kind of authorization code, since Kaelus had told her the Archive was highly secure. Instead, the moment she approached, the enormous crystalline panels slid silently apart.

Clair slowed.

“Huh,” she muttered.

There was no guard waiting inside and no computerized voice asking her identity. Nothing scanned her that she could detect, though knowing Titus Four technology, she supposed the entire entrance might have analyzed her down to the molecular level before she ever reached the top step. Maybe Maera had added her to the authorized visitor list. Well, if so, that was convenient. She would have to thank the other woman later.

She stepped inside and the doors closed behind her with a deep, resonant thoom that echoed through the cavernous entrance chamber. Clair jumped nervously. For some reason, the sound made the little hairs rise on the back of her neck.

“Oh, stop it,” she told herself. “You’re in a library, not a haunted house.”

Though calling the Blood Archive a library was like calling the Mother Ship a bus—it was that big and impressive.

The main chamber was enormous—far larger than she had imagined from Kaelus’s description. The cylindrical space plunged downward into the mountain farther than she could see, crossed by transparent spiral walkways which appeared to float unsupported in the air.

Thousands upon thousands of crystalline spheres hovered in orderly patterns throughout the vast chamber, each one glowing softly with its own color—ruby, sapphire, amber, violet, emerald, and dozens of shades Clair couldn’t name.

Threads of light connected some of the spheres into branching patterns which reminded her of family trees, except these represented generations of biological history rather than names on a genealogy chart. Every blood sample, tissue sample, genetic sequence, immune profile, viral exposure, medical event, and reproductive history of generations upon generations of Titus Four citizens was preserved somewhere inside this impossible place. “

Wow,” Clair whispered. Her scientist brain immediately wanted to forget Kaelus entirely and start examining and exploring. Luckily, the rest of her was far more interested in finding her oversized, grouchy lab partner.

“Kaelus?” she called. Her voice echoed strangely through the enormous chamber.

But there was no answer. After a moment, Clair frowned and walked farther inside. Maybe he was in one of the deeper research areas and couldn’t hear her. The Archive was certainly big enough to hide dozens of people—even if they were as huge as Kaelus.