Whatever Annatu had done to Kai during his captivity was undetectable, even to Dr. Silver’s skilled Varanesian senses. She had scanned him with all the equipment on the ship, which granted was a limited amount, but heart rates, blood analysis, x-rays, everything showed him in the best of health. Even the zombie virus was gone.

As for me, the Ealen nanites once in my blood had been altered. Momo had programmed her own nanites somehow and they were why I had been able to break Annatu’s hold on me.

Dr. Silver shook her head. “It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen. They are keeping you healthy because they chomp on foreign viruses and entities better than any immune system I’ve ever seen.”

“Is there any possible way they could be used to…alter my brain chemistry?”

Dr. Silver shrugged. “The stories say that the Ealens could do almost anything. But they couldn’t, could they? Otherwise, the shifters would have never been able to break free.”

I had taken the time to download what files I could on ancient Ealen bio-nanites, but the data ball had been corrupted in our escape. It would take some time before I could sit down and decipher it.

I thanked the doctor. She waved at the open bunk alcove, the one that was assigned to me. “Get some rest,” she said, gathering her equipment. “You need it.”

She left the common area and I stared at the bunks. Next to mine lay Kai’s bunk, the sliding doors to his sleeping capsule opaque and closed. He was in there.

I should let sleeping tigers lie.

But there was so much I needed to say to him, so much I needed to hear.

I knocked on his door.

There was no response.

“Kai? It’s me.”

The doors slid open. He sat up, his huge figure looking even larger framed by the small alcove that held the bunk. Even if Dr. Silver could not find anything, I knew they had done something to him. I could see it in him. It was as if there were something wild struggling to burst free.

“Red and the doctor both refuse to tell me where we are going.”

“A Tigerlord’s prerogative.”

Gorani-shit. I knew what he was doing. I gazed at him unwaveringly. ““You need me,” I said, daring him to deny it.

“I am a Tigerlord,” he said his voice a warning. “I will decide who I need or do not need.”

But he was bluffing and I knew it. He was fighting with me, because he was terrified of my death.

“You can’t choose someone else’s fate,” I said quietly.

“I’m not going to let you die,” his voice firm, his face a closed mask.

If I had not seen the expression on his face, back in the hangar bay when he thought my death had come, I would have despaired. But now I knew his secret. And yet it wasn’t enough that I knew. I needed to hear him say it. Because it was a fear I would not let him carry on his own.

“Here kitty kitty kitty, “ I said, stepping between his spread open legs. I gingerly put my hands on his broad shoulders.

Something flared in his eyes. His hands came up, around my wrists but he left them there.

“You’re not coming with me,” he said softly.

My fingers drifted down the vast planes of his chest, his hands still wrapped around mine. I followed the muscled channel between his pecs down towards his navel. I lifted up his shirt, making hot contact with his skin. There was a sharp intake of breath, whether his or mine, I wasn’t quite sure.

“You need me,” I said again. Come on.

His hands lifted from my wrists, coming around my waist, to rest his fingertips to the small of my back.

I took another step closer, my thighs brushing against him. I was tall for a woman, but Kai’s own height along with the elevation of the bunk meant that we were, for once, face to face. An astringent medical smell tinged the familiar musky scent of him, surrounding me. I could almost feel it thrumming through my veins.

This had been a long time coming.

I willed my hands to be steady as fingertips traced the seam of his trousers, the smart fabric slowly opening underneath my touch. As I reached the base of that tight nestled curve of his length, so ready to be freed, one hand came around my wrist once more. Eyes flashed in warning.

The tiger was close.

“Seria,” he said, his husky voice, setting fire to the blood within me. “You make it so hard.”

I looked down and saw the strong hard line of his response and smiled.

“Good,” I said, bringing my hands to his face. His unshaven face was deliciously rough on my hands. “I can’t fight fate.”

I kissed him.

His surprise manifested in how still he went, the sudden coiled tenseness of his body. I pressed my mouth to his, biding the tiger to come forth, willing him to open to me.

For the space of a heartbeat I thought I might have misjudged him, misjudged us.

And then the tiger, my tiger surged forth.

His mouth opened, and then it was I who was caught. I trembled under the exquisite ferociousness of his hunger. My knees went weak, the simmering knot of heat, always there in his presence, now boiled over. Arms and legs encircled me in a cage, swinging me atop of him, rolling deeper into the alcove of his bunk.

The sleeping capsule doors slid shut, drenching us in complete darkness. I could feel his thighs straddling mine, his mouth still driving me out of my head, but his hands, oh stars, his hands were everywhere and in the darkness I had no hint to the path they would take.

I broke away from the kiss. He nipped my ear, scattering a shiver of desire through me.

“There’s no escape,” he said, ever the Tigerlord, insisting on control.

But I would not be so easy.

“No,” I said. “You’re trapped.”

He laughed then, a wondrously smug sound full of promise, as clothes were opened and ripped off. I savored the weight of him atop me as I scrambled to feel him, those broad never-ending shoulders, and outrageous biceps more powerful than any ordinary man’s.

He hooked one of my knees under his elbow and reached downward, stroking my wetness with a single swipe. His touch made me light headed and weak. His head lowered and he took my nipple into his mouth.

I let out a breathy gasp of surprise, for in the dark I couldn’t anticipate his movements. The sensation of his tongue, his teeth on that sensitive nub, his fingers teasing my pussy vibrated a taut line of desire within me. I could not help but to arch towards him, digging one heel into the small of his back. My other foot braced against the back wall of the bunk. His cock was a hot heavy length searing my inner thigh. I moved forward, sliding my slickness along the head of him.

He shuddered, shaking off the last vestiges of his control.

And with a single hard thrust was inside me.

I cried out at the slick stretch of him, so hot, so big, so overwhelmingly Kai. He crushed me to his chest as he speared me with sinewy feline movements. Hot sumptuous pleasure surged forth with each slow delicious stroke, tantalizing me with a finish that seemed just out of reach. “Kai,” I said, his name the only plea I could make.

“It is you who should beware,” he said, placing a thumb on my clit, as he withdrew completely. I reached for his cock, desperate to have him inside me once more, but he easily dodged my clumsy fingers. His voice was a low and weighted with desire. “When it comes to you, I’m not rational. Your scent, the look in your eyes, the heat of your skin, says that you are mine.” He dipped his fingers in me, crooking his fingers inside me in a come hither motion as his thumb swiped my clit. Delicious heat swelled within me, savoring the slow tortuous build even as part of me wanted the powerful frenzied ecstasy of his ravenous appetite set free.

I knew it was there, I had seen it.

But I had forgotten how cats liked to play with their prey.

He flicked his thumb against my clit and I shuddered around him, the pleasure leaving me gasping for breath. He purred. I couldn’t see him, but in that purr I could certainly hear his fucking tiger shifter grin in the dark.

My hands finally wrapped around his engorged cock, drenched with my juices. I twisted my hands in opposite directions along that powerful length of him. He rewarded me with a sharp inhalation of breath. I licked his hard nipple, savoring the salt taste of him, and bit him. It jolted him.

I hadn’t known how close he was to losing control. He had done an excellent job of hiding it.

No more.

Fingers withdrew faster than I could gasp, and he plunged into me. I let out another cry, almost weeping from the sheer magnificent rightness of him. His voice was raw with pent up desire. “You are mine,” he said.

It seemed impossible that I could still speak. But I did, clinging to him as he drove into me, punctuating each word of mine with a dominating thrust. “Then don’t leave me.”

A Tigerish snarl erupted from him, as he cursed fate. He was a maelstrom of defiant anger, possessing me with his savage thrusts. I shuddered, surrendering to the power of his unleashed emotions that I had been desperately craving for what seemed like my whole life. Hot pleasure electrified my body, arching me, curling my toes around his calves. “Yes, yes, yes,” I cried, trying to memorize the slickness of his movements, the salt taste of his skin, the solid strength of him within me. Anger fueled hips moved, rolled, building that incomparably lithe tiger shifter rhythm that brought me closer and closer to carnal delirium. He wrapped my other leg around his waist, opening me to the potent force of him even more, shifting me, just so…

And then pleasure shattered me.

Though we were in the dark, I swear I saw the stars of fate shimmering around us, granting us their blessing. All I could do was say his name over and over again, willing us to hold on to this long hidden truth between us.

Us.

Even now, in the aftermath, the impossibilities of what lay before us began crowding forward. Though it was already dark, I squinted my eyes shut against it, and squeezed him tightly, clinging to him, the dream of us.

No matter what fate brought, in this moment, this man, this overprotective, idiotic man was mine and I was his.

I brought my hands to his face. I couldn’t see him in the darkness. I wondered if he could see mine, knowing how good his eyes were.

“All my life, I thought I was meant to be the sacrifice,” he said, my fingers on his lips.

He left the rest of the words unsaid. Until he met me.

His hold on me tightened. “Name any place in the universe other than where I go, and I will send you there. I will send you there with anything you ask for. Anything in my power to give.”

“I want you, Kai.”

His grip tightened around me, his voice seemed as if it were on the verge of breaking. “You ask for your death.”

“No. I ask to be with you and choose my own fate.”

“Seria,” he said, his voice raw and low, a universe of emotion contained in my name. “You undo me.”

We lay there for a long time, limbs entangled, skin to skin, in silence, in the dark, perhaps sleeping, perhaps not, I wasn’t quite sure. It felt like minutes but was actually hours later when Red’s voice on the coms cut between us. “Tigerlord? Seria? You’d better come to the cockpit. As soon as you can.”

Somehow we managed to get ourselves together into what I thought was a semblance of normalcy, though the raised eyebrows from Red and Dr. Silver told me we hadn’t fooled anyone. It would have made me blush, but I had more pressing concerns.

On the floating screens surrounding the pilot’s chair, the orange dots of fleet ships surrounding us were legion.

“It’s the Nightclaw fleet,” said Red.

“They’ve found us,” I said, at the same time Kai said, “They’ve arrived.”

I looked at Kai in disbelief. “You called him?”

Kai’s implacable Tigerlord face was back on. “Your father can keep you safe.”

I closed my eyes, wanting to kiss and kill this stubborn man all at the same time. I took a deep breath. There was no more running. I had to deal with my father. Then I would deal with Kai.

“Hail them. Give me a com screen.”

Red glanced at Kai.

I gritted my teeth.

I glared at Kai.

“Do it,” said Kai.

A screen appeared. I am sure there were protocols I should be following, but I didn’t care anymore. I swiped, and spoke, broadcasting a live message.

“This is Seria, daughter of Alpha Tazaren, Lady of House Stargazer. Tell my father I wish to speak with him.”