Page 46 of Caldar
Caldar thought for a moment. “I doubt I could recognize him by sight. He stayed out of my line of sight, and the drugs skewed my perception. On the ship, I determined that this was a splintered group. They used older tech and their numbers were insufficient to be a proper crew and raiding party.”
Paax took in the information but did not comment on Caldar’s deductions. “And the planet you were taken to? Did you recognize it?”
That surprised Caldar. “Should I?”
“It was a nursery planet, now abandoned.”
Interesting. “I know the planet.”
“Yes, I believe you dragged the Council into a corruption investigation over unethical research using Suhlik eggs obtained from the nursery,” Paax said.
“Yes, that little scheme. So many threads to pull to finally get your attention.” Caldar sat at the center of his network of information, the threads spun from rumor, misinformation, and very occasionally, good intelligence.
His nose itched. Suspecting that it bled again, he pressed the filthy cleansing cloth to his face. He was tired, right down to his bones.
The warlord seemed to know this. “You have had little sleep over the last several days.”
“I am not as young as I once was.”
“Then I will be brief. Your mate was injected with the same substance as you. It was designed to trigger a mating heat. Initial scans suggest she suffered no long-term consequences, but she will follow up with the medics.”
Caldar disliked that Sonia had been used as a test subject. “That makes little sense. The entire situation makes little sense. The doctor told her to find me, yet put her in a maze with puzzles to solve and beasts to avoid. What is the purpose of that?”
“Cruelty, although I suspect the doctor wanted to test the effects of the compound on a female’s problem-solving ability. Putting a test subject in a maze with tasks to complete is a basic experiment.”
Caldar disliked everything about that statement but he could not disagree with the warlord’s conclusion.
“And the other passengers? Abductions have increased.”
“Yes, that is troubling,” Paax said. “Go to your mate. Rest. Your work will begin tomorrow. I have been waiting to recruit you for some time, Caldar Thorrick, formerly of no clan.”
Caldar disliked the calculating look in the warlord’s eyes, but there was little to be done about it. He needed to hold his mate in his arms.
SONIA
A warrior escorted Sonia to her—their—newly assigned quarters. The guy didn’t give her a name, and Sonia didn’t feel like asking. So much had happened in the last few days that her brain felt like it would explode if she tried shoving in one more thing.
The cabin was basic and had all the personality of a hotel room, which was fine. It was clean and, most importantly, not on fire. The guy linked her comm to the computer so she could open doors and access the network, then promised that someone would be there tomorrow for orientation.
“Sure, sure,” she said. His words were just background noise. At that moment, the prospect of a shower had all her attention.
The cleansing room had a water shower, not the sonic kind she’d been using for the last year. She stripped off the gray sweats and ran them through the cleansing unit to get rid of that medicinal smell, then enjoyed hot water and a lot of it.
The bottles that lined the shower stall were basic, smelling not of flowers or coconut, but industrial strength soap. She scrubbed a handful of liquid soap onto her skin, working it into a thick lather. In the medbay, she’d been scrubbed clean with a chemical cloth that left a sticky film on her skin. While she wasn’t filthy, she wasn’t clean, either. She desperately needed to wash away the last day. Two days? Time felt fragile and stretchy all at once.
So much had changed in just a handful of hours, really. Not just the big stuff— the raid, the explosion— but the squishy, personal stuff, too. Events kept rushing her forward, not allowing time for reflection, and Sonia loved to overthink things. She loved Caldar? That felt like it came out of nowhere, but it didn’t. Not really. Sure, she knew she had been attracted to him. He was handsome in a classic strong and masculine way, but it was more than that.
He bent rules, treating them more as suggestions than restrictions. That spoke to her subversive heart. He was a liar and a cheat. She accepted that. She couldn’t trust anything he said with words, but he said so much more with his actions. He fought a Suhlik raiding party on his own to keep her safe.
He could do better with communication, but they had time to work on that.
Everything she had said to him and the warlord had been true, she just hadn’t realized how deep the feelings went until that moment. It was overwhelming and a little terrifying, but she couldn’t stop smiling.
Properly clean, she dressed in the laundry fresh gray sweats. Out of the cleansing room, it was apparently someone had been in the apartment.
“Hello?” Sonia called.
No response.
