11. Chapter Eleven

2days, 22 hours, 56 minutes EST remaining Crey startled. It was dark. How could it be dark?

Had he slept?

Crey lifted his arm, pulsing his databand on, using his neural implant. He had been asleep for five Earthen hours. Wait, where was Mari? He surged upward…and relaxed.

Mari sat by his feet. His mate was eating a granola bar with a blaster beside her left hand, as she watched the shield.

"Why did you not wake me?"

"You needed sleep." Mari smiled. He welcomed that smile. He had needed that smile.

"I am to protect you, which I cannot do while asleep."

Shoving the bar's wrapper into her bag, Mari crawled toward him, leaving the blaster behind. Earthens. "I was protecting you while you slept. It was my turn."

Crey opened his mouth to protest, but he could not argue with her. He closed it. Mari had proven her ability to identify and handle danger.

"Don't worry," she said. "I woke up when you stopped speaking, and I have been on watch since then. There has not been any time when one of us was not keeping watch. We are safe."

"This time, it was acceptable." He had needed the rest.

"It also gave me the chance to get clean and use the med-kit's evacuation bags." She made a face. "I didn't feel up to facing half the carnivores on Predator Planet just to pee."

He had used one for similar reasons. Crey had anticipated helping Mari with that. He had underestimated Mari's resilience—and her stubbornness. "Have you had more than one granola bar?"

"I had two. I'm entirely up to speed on my chocolate needs." Her expression changed, and she bit her lower lip.

"What is it?"

"I've lost track of time. How long have we been on this planet?"

Pulsing his band on again, Crey did the time calculations. "Approximately two Earthen days and eleven hours."

"How far to the relay station?"

"An additional two Earthen days, but you are not ready to traverse this particular terrain with its hostile flora and fauna, bayantar." Mari was still weakened and tired. "We will wait until you have recovered. I will not risk you."

Mari winced. "That doesn't bode well for what I wanted to talk to you about." His mate, as Crey had come to think of her, got closer and pushed him down onto their "bed." She pressed her top half across his. Instead of laying her head sideways as Mari did to sleep, she put one fist on top of the other and rested her chin on her stacked fists. Her gaze met his steadily.

This was an intriguing position.

"Hello, Mari." With her this close, his concentration was less than optimal.

"Hello, Crey."

"What is it that you, uh, wished to speak with me about?"

"I'm holding you back. This is a safe place—defensible. You need to leave me here and get to the relay station as fast as you can. You can return for me."

"No." He would not even consider it. This was not a plan he had formulated as it risked that which he valued more than life itself. No. Never.

"Crey." Mari's voice was chiding.

"No, I would rather rip out my heart and leave it behind than you."

"Crey, without me, the trip wouldn't take that long. You've slowed down for me. You'd have run there by now if I wasn't with you."

Twisting, he carefully set Mari on the bed and got to his feet.

"You know I'm making sense."

Crey strode to the other side of the cavern and leaned against the wall. His mate was finally awake, finally lucid, and she wanted him to leave. He had a counter-productive desire to throw items or, a more useful urge, to drop the shield and kill all the sifct creatures and plants on this cursed planet. As Mari had stated—he wanted to burn their house down.

Mari sighed. "Fine. Be mad at me, but I don't want your people's deaths on my conscience when I'm in a perfectly safe place."

Crey questioned her use of the term "perfectly safe place," but only said, "I am not mad at you."

"Then, what are you?"

"What am I?"

"Yes. What are you?"

"I am the one who has watched over you for two rotations, desperate for your survival. I have spoken until my voice is a rasping whisper as it helped you breathe easier. When your fever raged, I bathed your skin in water, and I consoled myself with the knowledge that you had accepted the bond and given me permission to touch you. I found hope, an Earthen emotion, in a future, a future with us together as mates. It was for this future that I made plans, nopha lau'nen, and none of them included leaving you alone after you nearly died in my arms. I would kill all the cursed creatures on this monster-plagued planet if that is what it takes to keep you safe, so, no, this is not an acceptable plan."

"Crey." Upon her lips, his name was an apology, a question, and a statement. Only an Earthen could imbue all that into his name.

"You stopped breathing, Mari. You stopped, and I felt…helpless. I have never felt that way. I hated it. I could do nothing. Yet, you expect me to leave you alone when our enemies are hunting you? They will not wait outside the barrier and throw themselves at the shield until they die. They will fire a missile into the rock, Mari, and I will be too far away, without a ship, unable to do anything. Helpless again." He rubbed both his hands down his face and groaned into them—so frustrated. He wanted to fix this, but he was unable to conceive a reasonable solution. This was not a courtship. He wanted to be courting her. "I am not certain what I am, but I am not mad at you."

A whisper of fabric alerted him that Mari had gotten to her feet. His aggravating, obstinate, wonderful Earthen was coming to argue with him.

Dropping his hands from his face, Crey immediately returned to her side. Picking her up, he cradled Mari to his chest. "That is not the way to recover and build strength—chasing after a mate who is being stubborn." He sat with her upon his lap.

Mari wrapped her arms around his neck. "You are only allowed to treat me like I'm fragile while I actually am fragile, just so we're clear."

He fought a smile. "Perhaps you are the stubborn one." She was. She certainly was. Upon brief reflection, it was a fact.

"Uh, we both are."

True. Also, he loved her tenacity.

Crey pulled her closer. "Are you saying you do not like being held?"

His Earthen snorted. "I remember ordering you to hold me, even while I was fighting off toxins."

"You did, and I did." Crey had been happy to follow that command.

Her fingers threaded through his hair. "Crey." There was a stubborn resolution in her voice. She would make another attempt to convince him to see her plan's wisdom. He did see the wisdom. He did not care. Crey would sacrifice the entire universe if it kept her safe.

"Not now, melayfah. When the sun rises, you can scold me as much as you desire, but not right now."

"Hmm. What are we doing right now?" Mari ruined her suggestive tone by yawning. His mate was still fighting her way back to health.

Crey eased down onto his back, pulling her across him. "Sleeping." Mari would sleep, and he would hold her, listening to the perfect sound of her breathing. Furthermore, he would attempt to find a plan his Earthen might agree with.

"For being an aggressive race, you're not big on taking advantage of invitations. Priscilla has had sooooo much sex, without having to repeatedly throw herself at Lord Charles."

"Priscilla is not very discriminate, and Earthens are more lascivious than any other race." Though, he was dealing with his own lasciviousness. Telling the story of Priscilla and this Lord's bland encounters had certainly not left Crey unaffected, not when he was holding his mate in his arms. However, his arousal had been manageable since his sweet Earthen was still recovering. His passion for her was no longer as easy to suppress.

"You just want Priscilla to be with the baron."

"She should be."

"Is that why you fell asleep before the epilogue? I guess it no longer mattered because there was no hope for the true star-crossed lovers of the piece."

He had fallen asleep due to complete exhaustion dragging him under. Crey could no longer keep his eyes open. "Mm."

"I figured. We made it through that dramatic ending where Priscilla realizes she's in love. She rides across the moors to tell Charles, but he's chased the highwayman baron back to his place. Priscilla runs out on the parapets to stop the swordfight. She slips, nearly falls." Mari exhaled a huffed breath. "Wait, I know. She yells at the baron, ‘I could never love the highwayman of the dark moors.' And, he gives her that nod and salute, accepting defeat. That's where you were done. Your hero had finally not kept his woman."

"Do you need to hear this epilogue or not?"

"Only if you feel like telling it."

"Moreover, the baron was not defeated. He respected Priscilla's final word on the matter. That is very Gaiian. Additionally, you will remember Charles did not win the swordfight." Charles would not have. The author was wise to end the fight, prematurely, before the baron killed that wemfset Charles and threw him off the parapet. "Priscilla stepped between them, pushing them apart."

"Because she'd made her choice." Mari yawned.

"She had." It was a disappointing and stookt choice.

"Epilogue?"

"Lord Charles does not deserve this ending," Crey warned her. "In all ways, he was the lesser male."

"Because he does not keep and protect what is his?"Mari asked in a deepened voice. Crey supposed that was meant to be a mimicry of his voice. He loved her despite how terrible her mimicry was.

"He does not. Lord Charles is this Earthen magistrate, yet he does not understand how to protect. He is a fool who deserves to lose that which he does not hold close." This was why leaving Mari behind was not an option.

What were his options? Crey would devise a great many plans, as his mate would reject most of them.

Half a shift later, Mari asked, "Are you really not finishing it? Crey, you're being ornery. Finish my story."

"Is that an order?"

"Mm-hm. Also, move your hand down. I like your hand farther down. Farther than that. Farther!"

Crey moved his hand as requested. This was not helping contain his arousal.

"Mm." Mari was determined to torture him. "Now. Epilogue."

Torture.

Crey mimicked one of Mari's false sighs, which he could tell amused her. "Epilogue. The carriage rolled across the moors, but this time, there was no call to ‘stand and deliver.' The baron and his mighty company of thieves had been disbanded. After that fateful night when the two men had fought upon the parapets for her heart, the highwayman had ridden no more.

"Of course Lord Charles had ordered the baron's arrest—in this, he'd been disappointed. Some foolish misguided lass, whom the wicked, wicked man had seduced to his side, had tipped Ulric off, and the baron had escaped. He would have to rebuild his empire all over. Something he'd done before. His days as a dangerous leader of thieves were over.

"And she'd never again find herself bound to a bed with silken cords in the baron's drafty old castle. It'd been taken by the Crown at the behest of Charles. If he couldn't have what he wanted, Lord Charles seemed satisfied with making his nemesis pay in other ways. She wished that Charles would forget the baron entirely, but possibly that was too much to ask. After all, the dastardly baron had stolen away the woman Charles wanted again and again and again…

"Perhaps this return to their picturesque escape in Cornwall would cheer her dearest love. It was far from the demands of the polite world and Charles' jurisdiction as a magistrate—though, there was a band of smugglers eluding local authorities. Their little family could enjoy simple quiet days, and she and her love could have the nights. Priscilla reached across to tousle the curly, flaxen hair of her son, as his father dandled the babe on his knee. She had never been so content."

Crey paused. "Contentment. What a weak ending."

"Mm."

"They are about to fornicate again. That may not be restful for you, though, this scene is unlike the others—less inventive. Dull even. Possibly their actions are less boisterous because their offspring is in this horse-drawn land vehicle with them, even if he is sleeping in a basket."

Mari's breathing was relaxed and measured. Already asleep.

His mate would not be kept awake by the couple's conventional fornication. Crey would still finish her story. She had asked, and Crey would do anything for her, aside from leaving her. He could work on a plan while Priscilla convinced her Lord Charles he was the mate she wanted, and that contentment was better than a lifetime of adventure.

The author had even described the wrong color of eyes Priscilla saw during climax, and the baron was the one with the curly, flaxen hair, which her child shared.