Page 19 of Lorran
“I found no such chip. Is she one of the rescued females from the stasis pods?”
“No, they left months ago, and we do not have unassigned females wandering theJudgment.”
“And yet—”
“She must be your match,” Mylomon said.
“No.” The word hung in the air. “I do not have a match.”
“And yet.” Mylomon grinned, and the menace shook Lorran down to the quick of his horns.
“If she were my match, I would have received notification. That is protocol.” He lifted his chin, triumphant. There. He proved it without a doubt. This female, luscious and tempting, was not for him. “The hangar was very hectic. It would be easy to climb aboard the wrong vessel. This is obviously a mistake.”
His comm unit chimed with an incoming message.
Fregging hell.
He read aloud from the message, “I have been matched to a Terran female called Bronwyn Davies. She is expected to arrive in…three weeks? Fregging freg. How long did this take to be delivered?” Lorran angrily punched at the comm’s screen.
This was pointless. He couldn’t keep a mate. He wasn’t responsible enough to have messages delivered in a timely manner.
Images of Gavran, splayed out on his back, helmet askew, and staring up with blank eyes haunted him.
Lorran attempted to move to the helm. Mylomon blocked the way. “Explain why you flee from a sleeping female.”
“We have to return the female. The mission is too dangerous,” Lorran said. He couldn’t keep a child from injuring himself with protective gear. How was he meant to keep a female safe on a rescue and recovery mission?
Mylomon glanced at the sleeping female.
Lorran instinctively positioned himself to block Bronwyn from view. When Mylomon raised a brow, Lorran lifted his chin in stubborn defiance. So what if he acted protective? He’d do the same for any slumbering, defenseless female.
“We do not have the luxury of time. Our mission is a priority. We remain on course,” Mylomon said.
“The warlord does not expect survivors. We are to recover the crew if possible. A brief delay will not be significant.”
“The warlord informed you of that?”
“The shuttle tells me. The basic supplies tell me. If the warlord expected to find a living crew, we would be able to accommodate a crew. We are not prepared, nor do we have the skills for significant injuries.” Lorran waved a hand at the supplies stack in storage. “And keep your voice down. You will wake my—thefemale.”
Mylomon retreated to the helm. Lorran followed. “We cannot delay. There could be survivors in need of assistance. Any delay could cost lives,” Mylomon said.
“Then I will send a message. We can stop at the nearest station and have her picked up.”
“What part of covert and urgent mission confuses you?”
“What is this attitude? I do not wish to bring a female into a covert, urgent, and potentially dangerous situation. We have no idea what we will find.” Though Lorran suspected. The best-case scenario was a disabled ship needing enough repairs to limp into the nearest station. The worst-case would be debris from the destroyed ship floating in the deep black. No, that was not the worst-case scenario.
“The distress call could be a trap,” he said.
“The probability is high.”
And yet the male seemed unconcerned that they were hauling an unknown female—his mate—into a trap. “That probability as high as system-wide communications being down?”
“Are you questioning your mission? Me? Or perhaps the warlord?”
Stars help him, he was. “I’m questioning the need the warlord has to charge into situations without adequate preparation. This is why the Council does not support him. This is why communications went unrepaired for so long. They punish all of us as retaliation against him. We both agree that whatever is waiting on the other end of that distress call is not good and perhaps requires more than two warriors and a standard medical field kit to fix!”
Lorran’s voice echoed in the confines of the helm.
