Chapter 17

The sky overhead is dark when I finally penetrate the lab. I waited, watching from the shadows across the street, until the trickle of departing workers stopped, and then waited another hour before I circled to a side door and disabled the locking mechanism.

I swung by my dealer earlier in the afternoon to pick up a new blaster and also a lock disabling kit. The kit works perfectly, hacking the biometric scanner, and then I'm inside the building at the end of a long, dark corridor.

None of the camera feeds I monitored earlier in the day showed Aezok, so I know there's a secret room somewhere on the premises. I stand still, letting my senses expand. The building is quiet, the air smelling of antiseptic and cold metal.

My boots are silent against the floor as I creep down the corridor, my ears perked for any sounds.

After a few minutes of wandering, listening, and sniffing the air, I catch a faint hint of waterdyas.

I freeze, cocking my head. Another inhalation brings a thicker whiff of the scent, and I know without a doubt Mara's been here. Recently, too.

Aezok has her again. I can't suppress the growl rumbling in my chest.

I follow the scent to a closed door and press my ear to the paneling. A faint groan echoes from behind it.

My hands fumble the lock disabling kit, before I manage to press it in place, and the door opens with a silent whoosh.

The brightly lit room on the other side shocks my senses for a long moment. There's an empty metal lab table, straps dangling from it, and across the white tiled floor, a splash of blood.

The stench of it hits me a moment later. Mara's fear scent, sour waterdyas, and the heavy metallic tang of blood.

My breath rumbles into a roar as my Wrath erupts, stinging my veins with sharp edges. I leap forward, and on the other side of the table, I find the figure crumpled on the floor. It's Aezok, his arms curled around his head. The blood pooled under him is red and still spreading. He hasn't been down long.

He groans, and I rear back in startled surprise. His arms loosen, and I see a metal spike embedded in his right eye. He cradles his skull, moaning and muttering Kral curses.

Curious and appalled, I watch as, inch by inch, he crawls closer to the door. He's trying to drag himself to the hall, I realize. There's probably at least a medical pod on premises, if not a full medical unit.

I don't think so.

I pull the blaster from its holster and point it at him before I bark, "Stop."

Aezok stills. Then, moving very slowly, he presses his fist to his forehead and squints at me out of his uninjured eye. It widens in shock before he starts to laugh. It must be too painful, however, because he quickly reverts to another groan.

"What happened?" I ask. I can't believe Mara did this, but her scent is everywhere.

Keeping the blaster trained on Aezok, I lean over him and yank the tablet out from under his body. It's still live, and I start to scan the inputs on the screen.

A sick feeling churns through my stomach. It makes me lightheaded, and the blaster wavers.

"You forcefully impregnated her with my sperm?"

Before Aezok answers, I'm hit with a blindingly clear memory. Mara in the cell with me, the air fogged with the drenching, heavy scent of Kral mating pheromones. Though she's nude and touching my arm, her face is frightened. She cowers from me before someone yanks her from the cell, and then Inde is there, pinning me down and sliding a tube over my dick.

Bile rushes up my throat. I drop to my knees, vomiting onto the floor beside Aezok's body. I can still feel Inde's cold metal fingers on my skin.

Mara didn't rape me; Inde did. And then Inde raped her with my seed.

I rasp, "Where is she?"

Aezok giggles weakly again. "Mother's displeased. But it's okay. It will all be okay. I'll kill her again, after the baby's born."

Again?I almost ask before I remember my mother's news about her old neighbor. Aezok stabbed her. He killed his mother. And he's going to kill Mara after the baby is born.

My baby.

"What did you do to Radeel?" I ask, trying to focus on the remnants of my plan. I can't kill him until I know everything. But the urge to blast his face from his body is almost unbearable. My Wrath simmers and boils, demanding this male's immediate death by my hands.

"Who?" Aezok mutters, sliding his body closer to the door again. "Oh yes, the Haven male. Fed him to the Kryllians a few months ago."

My vision statics before, my fingers trembling, I detach the data from the tablet in my hands and send it to my personal account. Then I drop the screen to the floor and crush it under my boot. When it's nice and pulverized, I point the blaster at Aezok's head again.

He's not paying attention to me, his face slack and a little dreamy. The blood is still dripping from his ruined eye. I should say something profound, something about my revenge and promised pain, but I'm so sick to my stomach, I can't manage it. This male deserves death, and I'll deliver it without pageantry.

I fire, and his head vanishes in a red mist.

The silence that follows is absolute. I inhale a slow breath, waiting for my Wrath to ease. But, despite the righteousness of it, Aezok's death does nothing to diminish the raw pain radiating from my heart. Radeel is dead. Mara is lost. Was all of it my fault?

Ispend the next several hours searching every inch of the lab for Mara. But she's gone. In the camera feed, I finally find her small form slipping through the front doors of the lab and onto the street. I wipe the cameras before following her footsteps.

The city is waking around me as I stand on the street, scanning. Mara left hours ago, and there's no hint of her scent in the air. The tall buildings of Flex are like cage bars around me.

Where would a lone female, a female with no knowledge of this city, no Federal silvers, no ID . . . where would she go?

I have no answers.

My chest aches, and I rub it absently. I'm not giving up.

Over the course of the day, I check the shuttle port, the hospital, the unhoused shelter . . . I wander the streets around the lab, searching for the hint of waterdyas.

I set up a news alert on my comm for anything about an unusual or injured female in Flex, or a new classified Federal investigation, but don't get any pings.

I can't stand the idea that she's lost here, probably hurt. She's so alone.

And she has my baby in her belly. My skin itches with the need to flush with Wrath. My child.

Eventually, I return to my rented room. There, in a fit of insanity and desperate need, I read Aezok's notes. His plan was so wild, it's almost humorous. A brain transplant? It's like the plot of a daytime melodramatic show.

It's at the end of the file, in his rants about me, that I find the true source of his insanity. And it's so disturbing, it takes me a long time to sort through it. In a distorted rambling style, he talks about growing up with his abusive mother. A mother who punished him physically and verbally for not looking fully Kral. He talks about how his mother would point at me, the neighbor boy with dark red skin, full horns, and tusks, and degrade him, telling him he'd never be as strong as me. He would never be anything but a weak half-blood. He would never be worth her love.

My lip curls as I read. If these journal notes can be believed, his mother was truly a monster. It's not an excuse for Aezok's horrific actions, but it stirs pity in my heart.

Now he's dead, and I need to make up for my actions with Mara. Not only because she was innocent of any wrongs against me, but because she's the mother of my unborn child. I don't know if she will keep it. Most likely not, considering how she was forced against her will, and after what I did to her in the jungle.

But I have to help her. I've tried all of my adult life to be a good Kral male. To work for social justice, to be worthy, and I betrayed all of that when I didn't look below the surface in that lab. I let my anger and rage blind me to Mara's plight, and that knowledge disturbs me on a visceral level.

She suffered for over a year in that place. And I almost got her killed by a gnaar when she finally escaped.

She must hate me.

I drop my head, rubbing the back of my neck and staring at the floor of my rented room. She hates me, and part of me is inside of her.

The room around me hazes, and I'm suddenly by the riverbank again. Mara's in my arms, her lips brushing against mine. She kissed me back before I knocked her down. Maybe a part of her doesn't truly detest me.

Maybe I can find her again and show her I'm a good male. Maybe, if she knows I'm sorry for not believing her, for not helping her, she'll let me kiss her again.