We were deep in the center of the Library and the white hallways were endless. I couldn’t risk dragging Kai onto one of the public commuter transports lest his face be seen in the cameras. So we took the back halls where the spheres surrounding us could disrupt the fewest sensors.

His arm was still around my shoulders, though he grew less and less heavy with each step. Shifters were renowned for the ability to recover from injuries.

“This robe itches,” he said. The spheres had been able to find an extra brown robe lying around in the laundry rooms. I had shorted out the circuitry within the robe and though it was much too small for him, it would draw less attention than walking through the station nude.

I focused on his words, rather than the heat of him so close to me. “I’ll be sure to choose something more appropriate for your sensitive skin next time.”

Kai snorted. He made me stop. His arm came off my shoulders.

“I can walk on my own,” he said, taking a stumbling step.

“But you don’t need to,” I said, catching him with my hand on his chest. His robe had fallen open and the touch of skin on skin was a shock that I was unprepared for.

Green eyes gazed at me for a moment.

A large hand closed around mine. “It’s better if I do,” he said.

I swallowed the bitterness in my mouth, and yanked my hand back.

I kept my face neutral, even as I felt a pain sharp in my chest. “Fine. Just stay behind and follow me.”

“Where are we headed?”

“Back to the docks. Our ship is still there.”

“The others?”

“Barricaded in the ship, waiting for us.” A sphere had returned after delivering the message.

He was a silent presence behind me.

He snarled behind me. “Everything in this place looks the same, smells the same to me.”

“The station is designed to make it hard for shifters to escape.”

He grimaced. “You don’t have to remind me.”

The spheres around us turned red and began spinning. “Incoming,” I said. “More spheres by the look of it.”

Kai brushed past me. “I’ll take care of them.”

A sphere flew in front of me, projecting a map.

“Come on,” I said, turning down another passageway. “The best way to win a fight to the death is to not be involved in one in the first place. The spheres will hold them off.”

I didn’t turn to see if he followed, but sensed he was behind me, his robe back on again.

“It can’t possibly be that easy to evade the spheres,” he said.

Escape sagas from the Library were practically their own genre of stories in tiger shifter literature. I had read enough of them as a student in the Library.

“Perhaps. But those trying to escape probably never had a trained Infoist at their side.”

"When we get out of here,” he said suddenly, “You need to seek refuge with your father. He'll be able to protect you."

"You don’t have a chance of finding the Dragonlords without me."

"I'm not going to let you sacrifice yourself."

“Are you trying to decide my future, for me again? After all that has happened, there is no way I’m going to let anyone take that choice from me. You need an Ealen code breaker. And who says I'm going to sacrifice anything? You heard Anna. As long as we have those organs, we can wake the Dragonlords without me having to sacrifice anything."

He made a visible show of looking around. "Yes, because you clearly have those organs with you."

"No. I sent spheres to retrieve them. They will be at the ship.”

Kai gave me an odd look, as if remembering what I truly was.

Ealen. The species that had enslaved his ancestors.

He turned his back to me.

After all that we had been through, after everything, that’s all that I was to him now? My eyes felt hot, and wet. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, glad he wasn’t looking at me. “My abilities as well as my heritage, make me more than uniquely qualified for your…quest, Tigerlord.”

Part of me still wanted him to tell me it didn’t matter. Even if I knew better.

We headed down another dark hallway. Lights flashed on.

Android guards lined our path, their lights flickering on and sighting us, interfacing with the network, receiving orders and undoubtedly sending out our location in a matter of nanoseconds.

I hadn’t directed the spheres to keep sleeping android guards asleep.

Stupid stupid me.

"Stand down, and you will not be harmed," came the order from one of the androids.

Before I could do anything, Kai moved in a blur, kicking off the wall.

The lights went out.

The electric hiss of an emergency light illuminated his form briefly in red. The lights shattered, and in moments, there was silence.

“Kai.”

There was a flash of light, a glimpse of a huge mouth filled with teeth.

“Lights NOW!” I yelled at the spheres.

Kai, stood amongst a heap of shredded torn sparking metallic android parts. His robe had fallen off, and he was now completely naked as he strode toward me with a feral determination in his face.

And stars, what they say about fighting? The adrenaline and testosterone rush makes a man hard?

Yea, he was quite hard.

I took an involuntary step backward. I still don’t know what the Ealen had done to him, what the ramifications of being forced into his more primitive shape would be.

“Kai?” I said, almost taking another involuntary step backward before I realized how much ground I was ceding to him.

His eyes glowed, more tiger than man. He kept coming.

Nostrils flared.

I could feel my cheeks growing hot, my body’s response so irritatingly inappropriate I stood my ground. “Kai.”

I tried to place my palms against his chest.

He grabbed my wrist before I could even exhale. “I want you to know that I don’t care if you’re Ealen. I don’t care if you’re wolf. I have known you were mine since the moment I scented you.”

His words broke something in me, and my eyes welled with tears. I closed them and felt the tears trickling down my cheek.

He kissed away each tear.

I wished that the moment could last forever, and knew I’d remember it until the end of my days.

In the background, I heard a distant alarm. “This isn’t the time.”

Nostrils flared again. His voice was rough. “I can smell your…irritation.”

He lowered his nose to my neck. Stupid shifters and their sense of smell.

“Fucking adrenaline,” I muttered, pulling my wrists back. He let them go.

“Fucking adrenaline,” he repeated with a suggestive grin.

And there we were, so close to each other. His cock completely unashamed and demanding attention than I knew better than to give.

He grinned, his eyes wild, almost drunk. “Physical exertion tinged with aggression helps heal shifters.”

I ducked under his arm, grabbing a sphere and reconfigured the alerts so that we wouldn’t be ambushed next time. “So all I have to do is piss you off and have you fight someone. I’ll remember that next time.”

“There are other ways you can help,” he said with a familiar gleam in his eyes.

Anger flushed me. “This is not the time.”

He let out a long-suffering sigh as if there really was a choice between near instant death and hot crazy sex.

He was positively feral. And stars helped me, I liked it.

I followed him, and the wake of his scent trail. No man that sweaty and dirty had a right to smell so good. It had to be tiger shifter pheromones, because I wanted nothing more than to rub my scent all over his naked skin,

He turned and flashed another grin at me.

And by that gleam in his eye, he knew it.

* * *

A vambrace. The spheres had actually found and brought me back a vambrace

It was sweaty, slightly too big, and had a sour reek to it but it would do.

I logged into the interface.

Cool relief spread through me.

With the vambrace I was able to see the movements of spheres, even recognized the ghost spheres added to the software to foil hackers.

But I had coded those ghost spheres. I had coded many things in the Library’s network, particularly the many mundane tasks Annatu had delegated to me and told me to design to be maintenance free. Some were the little silly things of a child. A holo of a long eared feline projected when a certain sequence was typed in a specific place. Bots that ferreted out tiny bits of deleted remainder data and ate them.

I wondered if they were still there.

I looked. They were.

Hmm.

With a few more taps and swipes, I made a few modifications and unleashed a series of bots scrambling through the networks. Whatever upgrades they had made to the security algorithms would most likely destroy what I had created, but they should at least cause a few problems.

“Are you coming?”

“Just a moment.”

To Kai’s apparent dismay, we arrived at the hangar bay without much more trouble.

And it seemingly empty of living beings, save for a few ships. Kai pushed me back, stepping in front of me. The quiet was unnatural, compared to the teeming great unwashed chaos of before.

I caught sight of our ship behind a pillar. The bay doors to the ship were open, and I caught the glimpses of spheres disappearing into the ship with a black metal box.

I felt the barest touch of relief. At the very least, the Library would not be able to use those organs to force the Dragonlords to do their bidding.

“This is a trap,” I said, hearing our footsteps in the eerily silent cavernous space.

Kai made a show of inhaling deeply. He smiled. “Yes.”

“Red,” I said into my vambrace. “Is the ship ready?”

There was a burst of light and something exploded into tiny fragments on the right side of the ship.

The illusion dropped, revealing a squadron of Infoists in Smart Armor between us and the ship.

There was a buzz of static, then Red’s voice squawking into my vambrace. “ -- a trap! I’m going to need a few minutes to redirect power to the shielding.” she said, as I watched several black and green exo-armor clad soldiers filter around us, their black helms and visors making them all look like human insectoids.

“Stand down. We don’t want to hurt you,” said the first leader

My hand flew to Kai’s forearm. He was all deadly coiled tension.

“Don’t kill them,” I said to Kai.

His eyes were trained on the barrels of their weapons, all aimed at us. “I’ll try not to,” he said dryly.

“You don’t know what they’re doing.” I said to the Infoists. “They’re making zombies, breaking the laws of nature.”

The Infoists didn’t move. Kai snorted. “They’re all zombies,” he said. “Does that mean I can kill them?”

They parted and Annatu walked out from behind them.

But it was the expression on her face that punched me in the gut. “I was wrong about you,” she said.

Even now the words stung the child-like part of me that would hold the memory of who she had been to me.

My fingers flew to my vambrace. “I could say the same about you.”

Annatu shook her head slowly. “We are doing what we have always done: preserve life.”

“Making the undead live is not life.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” She lowered her vambrace, the image disappearing. “It’s too late. Our fleet is already out there.”

“We will find the Dragonlords. And they will destroy them.”

She laughed. “There are only four of them left, my dear. Even if you do wake them, you expect four beings frozen for millennia to destroy an entire fleet of ships? Surely you don’t believe in children’s stories.”

Only four Dragonlords? Was Kai’s entire life’s quest for four Dragonlords? It couldn’t be, could it?

A sphere hovered at Annatu’s side. She placed her hand on it and it opened. Reaching in, I saw her pull out something brown and feathery, some silver metallic cord dangling from it.

She turned it to face me.

It was Momo’s head. The cord was the gryphon’s spine.

“We can’t let the last of the gryphonalis die out can we? Or shall I let nature take its course?” Annatu threw the head at me, and it rolled to my feet.

I picked up Momo’s head. It was far heavier than it looked

Eyes lit up, flashing at me.

I dropped the head, lights still bright and flickering. In a pattern of a code I remembered the gryhonalis teaching me.

I was such a fool. Her distraction worked perfectly.

Kai reacted before I even heard the distinctive hiss-whine of something being fired, shoving me hard behind him. I heard the unmistakable sounds of something thudding into flesh, the shots taking him in the chest.

I screamed his name. No. No. No. It couldn’t end this way.

And I saw that he was still standing.

One by one he ripped the viciously long needles from his chest as muscles rippled forth, bones lengthened, flesh flowed and teeth elongated into killing weapons.

Eyes glowed red.

He charged.

I ran towards Kai, even as I saw a bright yellow energy field spring up from the ground separating us.

Entrapbots, spider-like metallic insectoids, jumped upon on me. Their sharp little legs dug little points into my flesh, forcing me to turn and face Annatu.

My grandmother watched me serenely. Her voice was confident, soothing. “It is not too late. You can rethink your choices. You can choose life, Seria.”

Behind me, I could hear Kai roaring, the sounds of weapons firing, metal ripping, and horrifyingly wet liquid sounds of flesh being torn.

“Is this what you call life?”

Her face was so calm. “Death is something that can be overcome.”

Kai roared again, I turned and I saw them attempt to shove an enslavement crown on his head. Icy fear shocked my veins. If those lines dug into his brain, he would never be the same.

I looked back at Annatu in horror. “No. It can’t.”

She smiled a cool smile. “Are you asking for his death?”

I looked back again, seeing Kai struggle, shaking his massive furry head. The enslavement crown as well as the body that clung to it went flying, and smashed against the wall.

“No, I’m asking you to stop this fighting.”

“Too late,” she said with a smile.

A hiss of electricity drew my attention. Through the energy wall, I could see Kai entangled with a series of glowing sparking nets. A soldier jammed a spear incredibly close to his heart. Kai roared in pain.

Sharp points dug into my spine. Pain arced into my body.

So. Much. Pain.

I couldn’t help but scream.

The sound of a white tiger roaring.

Metallic bodies went flying as Kai’s enormous white saber tooth tiger form exploded into existence.

I felt the tell-tale nodes of a sphere press itself into my fingertips. I dug my fingers into it. They were hot and cold, all at the same time. My fingers felt like water balloons. Brilliant code appeared before me. I screamed, calling upon the bots I had unleashed into the Library’s network. They were coming, swarming over the controls of the entrapbots, but coming so, so slowly.

Pain arced my body. I dropped the sphere.

I stretched my arms for it, but it was beyond my reach. Tears filled my eyes, burning with the pain streaking through me. The only thing I could touch was Momo’s severed head, her eyes still flashing.

Flashing?

A code Momo had taught me a long time ago.

Touch me.

I reached for her head, pulled it to me.

Nanites streamed from the head, onto my flesh, shrinking into my skin.

I dropped the head.

My whole world was white hot pain. I never knew that pain could be tasted, could be heard, could be existent in every part of one’s body.

Arms came around me. I tried to push them away and then I realized it was Kai’s unmistakable scent of musk and sweat.

He was saying something, yelling something, but I couldn’t hear.

“Get out of here,” I tried to say, but my mouth just wouldn’t work right.

There was an expression on his face I had never seen before.

Fear.

And just as suddenly, I could hear.

He pressed me to him. “This is not how it will end. You’re not supposed to die right now. The Dragonlords aren’t here yet. You’re not supposed to die right now.”

I drew a breath, shockingly pain-free. “I’m not dying.”

He stopped, his eyes searching my face.

And then he crushed me to him.

All of it finally fell into place. He had seen my death.

And was afraid of it.

For a moment, it was enough.

“Momo programmed herself with nanites. She must have known Annatu’s plans. She must have foreseen…”

I clung to Kai, unable to say the words.

“Tigerlord and Seria,” said Red’s voice from my vambrace. “The virus bots in the networks will only hold them off for so long. We need to leave now!

Kai helped me to my feet. I looked around and saw devastation in the hangar bay. Was that actually a starship torn in half?

“I was angry,” he said.

I saw behind me a pyramid of spheres, the cage I had programmed for Annatu.

Annatu’s not dead,” I said, reading the code flashed by the pyramid.

“Good,” he said, moving towards the pyramid. “Leave her to me.”

I grabbed Kai’s forearm.

His eyes narrowed. I knew what he was thinking. She had tortured him and tried to enslave him.

“Please,” I said again, the memory of Annatu, on the day she had taken me from Kjarn, holding my hand oddly bright in my mind.

His look of disbelief turned into one of grudging acceptance.

He spat at the pyramid of spheres. “Today you are lucky. Fate will not be so kind.”