“Ok, what the hell was that down there?” Andie demanded.

Kragen had herded them out of the basement in what looked like record time, and he had been silent since. He was carefully and quickly assembling an even greater pile of heavy things to put in front of the now-completely-covered-in-chains-and-very-much-locked door to Rune’s basement, a thoughtful expression on his face. Andie didn’t know what to make of any of that, so she had turned her attention to Kat.

Because really, what the hell was that?

“Well, I don’t know about you,” Kat said, unpacking some more illicitly smuggled supplies from her shoulder bag, “but for me it was my first time looking into the eyes of any Leonid, let alone one with the mating sickness.”

“So you were just curious?” Andie said, folding her arms. “That was just professional scientific curiosity down there?”

“Of course I was curious,” Kat said. “I’m still curious. But I can handle it, Andie. I can handle him.”

“You say that like you’re going to do it again.”

“Well, this situation isn’t exactly sustainable, is it?” Kat said. She looked like she was maybe going to say something more, and then stopped.

Andie didn’t have to turn around to know Kragen was standing behind her. She could feel him. A warm tingle that raced up and down her spine, coiling around her core.

After the basement, it felt really, really good.

“Andromeda will stay here,” Kragen announced, his voice rumbling through her. “Kat will leave, and care for the matriarch.”

Andie turned. “Excuse me?”

Kragen’s face was unmoving. “He saw your face,” he said.

“Um, who saw her face?” Kat asked. “What are you talking about?”

“A Leonid patrol,” Kragen said. “My former brother-in-arms, Magnus. I disabled him, temporarily. He will be unable to find us here for a few days.”

“And then what?” Andie asked angrily.

Kragen’s eyes darkened as he glowered down at her. Andie shivered, as one part of her wanted to climb him like a tree, and the other part wanted to fight him until he threw her down and ravaged her. Was this a fight? Was this what it felt like to be in a fight with a Leonid?

Good Lord.

“I do not know,” Kragen admitted roughly. “But I do know that you will not be leaving my sight.”

Andie didn’t know what to say to that, but she did know she had a lot of feelings. And that Kragen would be hearing about them. Soon.

Instead she turned to Kat.

“Ok, well now that this is literally an intergalactic incident, think you can stay with Gramzy for a few days?” Andie asked.

Kat waved her hand. “Obviously,” she said. “And I’ll see what I can do about using Alliance and IMS lab stuff to look into the mating sickness, too. At least until you guys figure it out.”

“I’m so sorry to have dragged you into this, Kat,” Andie said.

Now Kat made a face. It was a face that said, You are a crazy person.

“I would have literally murdered you if you hadn’t,” Kat said, and came in to give Andie one of her fierce hugs. When she was done, Andie could feel Kragen’s presence watching them both.

“This female is part of your family,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” Kat said. “Thanks for asking.”

“Then you are also under my protection,” Kragen rumbled.

“Sure,” Kat said, and she hoisted her shoulder bag up one more time. “But I am leaving. I am keeping your secret, and I am leaving.”

It wasn’t until Kat was at the door, her beat-up blue Civic stuffed full of work papers and textbooks and most of Kat’s life visible behind her, that her expression changed a little.

She looked at Andie. And she looked worried.

“I love you,” she said. “But you know hiding out here isn’t an actual plan, right?”

“I know,” Andie said.

She just had no idea what she was going to do about it.

* * *

Kragen’s patience was nearing an end.

Not for Andromeda. No, no matter what demands she made, Kragen was never truly angry with her. His frustration at not being able to properly discipline her without claiming her was growing, but he would not direct it at her.

But for the rest of this planet, he had little patience left. At the moment he and his mate were hiding, like cowards, in the wooded lot behind the place Andromeda called a “hardware store,” waiting for the last of the cars parked in the lot to leave. It was dusk. Nevertheless, Kragen could see, even at this distance, that many of the cars had decorations—Andromeda called them “bumper stickers”—with the same design that one of the Idiots who had attacked his mate had worn on his jacket.

It said “Humans First.”

Kragen suppressed a growl for Andromeda’s sake. She was happily eating, having begged him to allow her to stop at a “burger place” on the “highway” for some “takeout.” He used the time to scope out the territory, and refine the psychic shields that would guard them from detection. It required much kuma—but it did not matter. He had his mate.

The irony was not lost on him. “Humans First” had its own analog among the Leonids, a despicable faction called the Draconids. It had been the Draconids that instigated the civil war that killed Kragen’s parents. And though only a few Draconid sympathizers were suspected to remain within the Leonid fleet, the memory of the suffering they caused with their beliefs about Leonid superiority was still raw.

But the humans of Humans First were, unfortunately, right about one thing: the Leonids were a danger. Rune was proof.

Kragen thought back to what he had seen in the basement. He had not expected Rune to speak. He had not expected anything, except a possible attack, and he had been prepared to kill his brother if it had come to that. Instead, he did not know what he’d seen.

It had been so long since a Leonid male had been allowed to fall this far into kravok that Kragen did not know what to look for. Was Rune’s sudden ability—or willingness—to speak again a sign of improvement? Or a sign that the darkness that lived at the end of kravok had taken him whole?

Kragen snorted. One car left in the lot. He felt his own frustration growing. He was not used to failure. Kragen had planned for every possible scenario when he chose to honor his obligation to Rune over his obligation to the Leonid queen. Most of those scenarios ended with Kragen executing Rune and then surrendering to the queen, sure to be executed himself, but some of them ended in hope for the Leonid people, in the form of an improved triclosan treatment. Kragen had judged the risk to be worth the cost of his own life.

But now there was Andromeda. Now there was his mate. And all his plans lay in ruins.

Kragen looked at her as the light around him died, fading into dusk. Just looking at her, seated on the grassy ground, leaning back against a tree as she ate her dinner, her brown hair tied back so that he could see her bare neck, clouded his mind.

She was at risk now, because of the bond between them. The bond had called her, and Magnus had seen her with him. Kragen had had to injure his blood brother to give them more time, and he would have done far worse, if necessary. He would have done anything and everything for her.

She looked up at him, her eyes shining like nothing else in the godsdamn universe.

“Don’t watch me while I’m eating,” she said, wiping her mouth. “It’s weird.”

Kragen snorted. If she knew what watching her eat made him think of…

He had never felt anything like this fever. It was getting worse. Kragen was not the sort of male to pray to the old gods, because he preferred to make his own destiny. But he was not above praying for the strength to keep his most important vow. He would see this through without claiming his mate.

“It is time,” he growled. “Rise.”

He had given her an order, and she reacted as his true submissive would. Kragen watched the flush of arousal ripple through her and balled his hands into fists. She did not make this easy.

“You’re sure they won’t see us?” she asked as she joined him at the edge of the wood.

Kragen inhaled her sweet scent, and felt her nearness prickle his skin. He stared straight ahead. There was still a car in the parking lot.

“I could make them all sleep,” he said. “I could erase their memories after we have finished.”

“Please don’t do any of that,” she said.

Kragen snorted.

“They wear the insignia of Humans First,” he said. “Just like the Idiots who attacked you.”

For some reason, this made her smile. He liked to see that.

Then she shook her head. Kragen liked that even more. For some reason, every time she challenged him, he wanted her even more. Wanted to bend that warrior’s will to his own, wanted to watch her scream in pleasure as he made her his.

“These are good people, for the most part,” Andromeda said. “Or at least they’re not all bad. You can’t treat them like the enemy.”

Kragen snarled. Telling him what he could not do just made him want to put her over his knee.

Right there, in the woods. Rip off her clothing, as he had done before. On her knees, in the grass, her ass up and her head down as he held her by the neck and plunged into her wet heat…

“Kragen?”

“Yes,” he said. “Fine. As you wish. I will not attack their consciousness.”

She turned, and Kragen felt her eyes on him.

“What will you do?” she said.

Kragen had asked himself that many times. The knowledge that he did not know what to do now that he had a mate to protect—from the humans, from the Leonids, and most of all, from himself—haunted him. It gnawed at the back of his mind, like a mad, caged animal. Like the animal he would turn into without Andromeda. Like the animal Rune was becoming.

The darkness inside him, the darkness that lived inside all Leonids, wanted her. It did not care about the cost: Andromeda’s suffering, when Kragen was inevitably caught.

Kragen cared. He would not endanger her.

But he would drink of her, to protect her.

“Trust me,” he growled.

He reached out and pulled her close to him. Her scent filled the air as her warm, soft body pressed against his, and the hunger for her flared hot, deep inside him. Kragen released it in a long, low growl, but it did not help. He needed to drink.

“Do not move,” he said.