Page 160 of Tamed By Her Touch

She followed the nearest transparent walkway around the circular chamber, glancing into several recessed laboratory areas as she passed. Everything was eerily quiet. Holographic displays drifted above crystal work surfaces, data streams scrolling silently across them, but Clair didn’t see a single scientist. That seemed odd. Surely a facility this enormous ought to have staff.

“Hello?” she called. “Anybody home?”

Nothing—nobody answered and no sounds besides her own disturbed the silence. Her footsteps sounded too loud against the crystalline walkway. The excitement she had felt on the way over began to fade.

Something here isn’t right, whispered a little voice in her head.

Clair picked up her pace.

“Kaelus?” she called again. But her response was still nothing but silence.

At last, she reached the research station he had described the night before. She recognized it immediately from the translucent crystal table and chairs Kaelus had told her about.

A holographic molecular display hovered above the table, showing the distinctive branching structure of the Love Virus alongside several historical viral sequences. And lying beside the display, left carelessly open, was Kaelus’s data tablet.

Clair stopped—she knew that tablet. The heavy black casing had a scratch across one corner from the time she accidentally knocked it off his workbench during their second week sharing the laboratory. Kaelus had glared at her for nearly ten minutes afterward and informed her that this was precisely why Rule Number Three existed.

She walked over and picked it up.

“Kaelus?” she asked, but the big Hybrid was nowhere to be found.

All this time, Clair had been trying to fight off the unease she felt in the big, empty building but now a cold knot began forming in her stomach. He would never leave his data tablet behind—never.

Kaelus treated scientific data with the same obsessive protectiveness other men reserved for expensive sports cars or treasured family heirlooms. He backed up everything twice, encrypted his files, and became personally offended whenever Clair left her own tablet lying somewhere unsecured.

So where the Hell was he?

Clair touched the screen and it opened immediately. That was strange too—Kaelus’s tablet should have been locked.

Unless he left it in a hurry and didn’t have time to lock it, whispered that same, foreboding voice in the back of her head.

Clair tried unsuccessfully to push it away as she scanned the tablet.

A series of files filled the display. Her unease sharpened as she began reading them. Ancient viral strain retrieval…genomic modification records…archived Savage Period samples…off-world transport authorizations.

Her eyes widened as she reached the final documents—every one of them connected to Sendar.

“Oh my God!” she whispered as the realization hit.

She enlarged one of the shipment records and noticed that, while the destination wasn’t explicitly listed as Glenvarren, the coordinates were unmistakably in the same sector.

Another document showed an ancient viral sample withdrawn from secure storage. And another showed altered genetic sequences. Yet another contained access credentials belonging to Sendar.

Clair’s heart began pounding.

“You found out,” she whispered. “Damn Kaelus—good job!”

The big Hybrid had been right—Sendar wasn’t merely creepy—he was involved in the tragedy of Glenvarren. Deeply involved—possibly responsible for everything.

And Kaelus had discovered it. So where the hell was he?

Clair turned in a slow circle, suddenly aware once again of just how empty the Archive was.

“Kaelus!” she shouted. Her voice traveled outward, bounced from the crystal walls, and returned faintly distorted. Kaelus…Kaelus…Kaelus…

Nothing and no one answered. But Clair wasn’t about to give up. She knew that the big Hybrid had been here not long ago—he couldn’t have gotten far. She grabbed his data tablet in one hand and her own in the other and started down the nearest corridor.

The main Archive gradually gave way to narrower passageways carved directly into the mountain. The beautiful translucent architecture remained, but the farther she went, the older everything seemed to become.