Andie ran through the rain—or, well, jogged—and the weird part was, it wasn’t even because she was afraid.

Her brain knew she should be afraid. Her brain told her to be afraid. She was, after all, escaping from an alien kidnapping situation. But the rest of her was just happy to be alive.

She was smiling, even as the light spray of drizzle gave way to heavy raindrops, the kind that meant business as they battered the asphalt in front of her. She was jogging down the side of the highway, waiting for a car to pass by on its way back into Silver Creek, hopefully before Kragen realized she was gone. And possibly the weirdest part of that sentence was that she was jogging.

Andie was not the kind of woman who went jogging. Only now, like everything else, it felt amazing. Like she could go forever. Maybe there’s something to this Leonid mating healing magic.

If she could find a way to bottle it, she’d be rich.

Too bad it came with a side of, “You cannot leave my secret lair.”

Thankfully, the mark on her breast had stopped burning so badly, right around the same time she spied the way out and the idea of leaving didn’t make her feel ill. Whatever crazy pheromone thing she had with Kragen, it appeared to be wearing off.

She wished she didn’t miss it.

On the other hand…freedom.

Andie stopped to look back over her shoulder at the gray, rainy night behind her, hoping to see some headlights. No luck. Didn’t matter; feeling like this, she could jog all the way back into town.

But when she turned back around, it was like jogging into a brick wall.

Andie slowed to a walk, then stopped entirely. She was out of breath, her legs felt heavy and leaden, and all of a sudden she felt the cold rain soaking through her stupid scrubs. And that damn mark on her breast was starting to burn all over again.

“Seriously?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. Had she tempted the Leonid gods or something?

Andie fell to her knees in the mud beside the highway, because that now seemed like the best course of action. Which was also crazy. Everything about this damn night was completely crazy. She had never been so tired in her life, and it had hit her all at once, like a ton of bricks. Like something, somewhere, did not want her to move forward. Not one more step.

“What the hell is happening to me?” she said.

She wasn’t asking anyone in particular. But before she heard the answer, she felt that it was coming.

She felt him.

The tiredness started to lift. The heat came back, seeping in through her skin, settling in her core. And when Andie turned around, she knew what she would see.

Kragen.

He stood behind her and to her right, partially obscured by the shadows of the forest on that side of the highway. He wasn’t trying to flag a car down, after all.

He was looking for her.

Even so, she couldn’t help looking at him. God, he was impressive, even with his bandage visible beneath the army surplus coat he wore over his bare torso. The slightly metallic sheen to his skin giving off a mother-of-pearl opalescence in the rain, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, as he flexed his hands into fists and back again. The heat of his eyes.

“What did you do to me?” she asked.

Kragen stepped closer, further into the faint light coming from a far-off light meant to illuminate the highway. She expected him to look angry, or impassive, or imperious. One of those Leonid emotions.

She didn’t expect him to be sad.

“I warned you,” he said. “We cannot be parted for long, without…”

He seemed to think better of what he was going to say next. Andie didn’t have the strength to argue with him, but her brain filed it away for later.

Later. Like there was going to be a later.

“I promised you, Andromeda,” he said, and strode toward her, this time with purpose. “I will not let harm come to you. You have to trust me.”

Andie rose unsteadily to her feet before he could lift her up. Somehow, she instinctively knew what touching him would do to her. And she wanted to have a clear head for this.

“It’s hard to trust someone who holds you captive,” she managed.

Kragen frowned. For a moment Andie thought he was going to argue with her, tell her again that she must obey, or something.

Instead he took of his giant coat off and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was like wearing a cape. A cape that smelled of Kragen—raw, masculine musk, and…gingersnap? Like a little bit of gingersnap?

“I thought you might be cold,” he said. “It is raining. Humans do not do well in the rain.”

“Did you have to go and be nice?” she said.

“But you are smiling,” Kragen said. “I should not be nice?”

Damn. She was smiling. Kind of took the wind out of her outrage sails.

“Speak, female.”

“You smell good,” she said, and pulled the coat around her a little bit tighter. “So does your coat. Like…male. And gingersnap cookies.”

Andie looked up, embarrassed, only to find Kragen looking down at her with…heat.

Definitely heat.

“And you smell like nothing else on this planet,” he said. “What are gingersnap cookies?”

Ok, this was definitely not how she thought this conversation would go. Maybe it was just his charming befuddlement about cookies—really? If Leonids hadn’t been introduced to cookies in the two years since they’d come to Earth, someone was screwing up—or maybe it was her overall exhaustion, coupled with the rush she got just from being near this freaking magical Leonid, but…

All Andie wanted to do, at that moment in time, was collapse into his arms. She wanted to be held.

She wanted to be taken care of.

She wanted to be protected.

By her admittedly sexy kidnapper.

“I’ve lost my damn mind,” she said, just as her shoulders slumped and her knees weakened.

Andie might not have fallen. But it didn’t matter. Kragen caught her anyway.

His strong arm snaked around her waist, his hand finding a spot of bare skin at her hip, where her scrubs top and bottoms failed to meet.

His skin met hers, and it was fire.

Andie's eyes flew open at the shock of sensation, the pure heat that radiated from his body to hers. It was like being warmed from the inside out, the swirling sensations settling in her core, between her legs.

For a moment, she forgot. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to lean into him, to inhale his scent, to draw from him…what? She didn’t know. But the longer she stood there with her face pressed against his hard, muscled chest, his skin crisscrossed by scars, the more she felt she could feel—not just in her own body, but…in his?

How did that work?

Wonderingly, she looked up, and looked into his eyes. This close they weren’t just shining, or fiery. The irises looked like rings of molten metal, and the longer she looked into them, the more she felt as though she could see him.

The real Kragen. Felt it, more than anything. As though she had a glimpse of a lifetime of memories, desires, disappointments, griefs, joys. A flash of connection beyond words.

A flash of his heart. It was a good heart. A heart she wanted to trust with her own.

And then…a flash of lust.

* * *

Kragen had withstood actual torture, during his training for the Royal Guard. Only warriors who proved they were unbreakable were chosen. Kragen had been the strongest of all of them.

But this…

Standing with his arms around his mate, knowing he could not claim her?

Nothing in the universe compared to this sort of torture.

He withstood it, because he could feel her growing stronger, the longer they were in contact. And because it was some small taste of her.

Andromeda.

He inhaled her intoxicating scent, deadened only slightly by the rain, and fought as tendrils of temptation worked their way into his mind. He could take her. Just as he could have back at the lair. Their bond was stronger than he ever could have believed, and they’d both be stronger for it, after he claimed her. They would both have their mate.

But for how long?

He knew the answer. Not long enough. And then she’d be doomed to a life of grief.

So when her hands began to move over his muscled back, bringing with them a trail of heat, awakening the fire in his groin, he growled.

It took all of his strength to push her, gently, away from him. To look into those large eyes, with flecks of gold, green, and brown, and say, “Do not tempt me, female.”

She blinked up at him, raindrops balanced on her lashes. She felt it too.

Kragen would have to be strong.

“No, I guess that’s a bad idea,” she said, finally, her brown hair slicked down in the wetness. “You were just healing me, after all, right?”

“Did it help?”

She nodded. Then she screwed her face up, regarding the bandage still wrapped around his waist. Kragen looked down. In his madness to reach Andromeda before the triclosan wore off completely and she was exposed to further danger, he had reopened the wound. His blood had seeped through.

“Red. Just like us, except for the metallic swirly bits,” she said. Then: “Why didn’t you heal?”

“More severe wounds require more intimate contact,” he said.

The word “intimate” reverberated between them. The bond was still strong enough that he could feel what she was thinking. Feeling.

An image of Andromeda spread beneath him, her bare breasts bouncing in the rainy moonlight as he pumped into her, flitted across his mind, and he banished it with a growl.

“Close contact is enough,” he said. “I will heal within days.”

This did not seem to help.

The rain had stopped, for a brief moment. So when she looked up at him, her eyes wet, he knew it was because she was on the verge of “tears.”

“Kragen, seriously,” she said. “What just happened to me? I felt amazing, and I was running, and then it was like hitting a wall, and I didn’t feel better until…”

Kragen sighed. He had made a mistake.

He would indulge this conversation only because he saw, belatedly, that his mate—claimed or not—needed to understand more about their situation. But they needed to get out of the open. And fast.

“There is a chemical, triclosan,” he said. “Found in many of your ordinary household items here on Earth, but rare elsewhere. For some reason, it helps to dull what we call kravok—the hunger. I reasoned that it might also help to dull the mating bond, and that this might make things easier for both of us. So I injected myself. Without it, an unclaimed mate would not be able to go even this far without unspeakable suffering.”

“So I’m literally tethered to you?” she said. “Like…like a dog?”

“Do not speak of yourself like that,” he commanded. “But the relief—for you—from this drug is temporary.”

“What do you mean, ‘for you’?” she said, and now she wrapped her arms around herself, making her even smaller under the jacket he’d been able to procure. “Don’t you need relief, too? Since this is so freaking terrible?”

Kragen looked skyward in frustration. He would never understand human females. At least this human female. She seemed to careen between moods faster than he could predict, and for reasons that remained mysterious no matter how he long he thought about them. And they did not have time.

“For me, it is painful,” he said. “The drug is painful, being apart from you is painful. It makes no difference. And now we must go.”

He reached for her arm, but she stepped out of his reach.

“What?” she said. “No.”

“Woman,” he said, through gritted teeth. “The longer we are out here, the more danger we are in. The drug provides some protection, but I do not know how much, and I will not risk you. I have equipped the warehouse with the best cloaking technology we have. We will return there. Now.”

He did not mention that they were already risking too much. Even though Leonid patrols had long since stopped looking for him in the area, and no one would be searching for a burgeoning mating bond, it wouldn’t be long before every Leonid could feel, on some level, what was happening between him and Andromeda. It had been so long since anyone had felt a budding mating bond. It would be…an event.

So they would leave now.

Kragen meant it as a statement of fact, a reminder that he could order her to do it. That he didn’t need to order her to do it. That he would, if necessary, sling her over his shoulder and carry her back over her objections.

He didn’t mean to frighten her.

“That’s right,” Andromeda said, her eyes going wider. She took another step back, shaking her head, her eyes never leaving his. “Cloaking technology? You’re hiding. You’re hiding from everyone. Because of whatever you have locked behind that door.”

Godsdammit.

She had Kragen’s full attention. She was never supposed to see that. No one was.

“You will not go near that door again,” he growled.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I have no plans to. What the hell do you have down there?”

There was no way to answer that.

Not to Andromeda. Not to the Leonids. Not to the Alliance.

What Kragen had behind that door—what he had done—he’d done for a vow, but it didn’t matter. It doomed him, eventually.

And he wouldn’t let it doom her.

“You know what?” Andromeda said, and took off his now rain-soaked jacket. For some reason, that stung him more than anything else. “I don’t need this. And I’m going home.”

Kragen said nothing.

“You promised not to hurt me,” she said. “Are you breaking that promise?”

“Never,” he said. “But if you do not listen to reason, I will give you an order. And you will obey it.”

He felt that was true, that she would be as much a slave to him as he was to her, even if he did not know it. There were so many things he didn’t know about their bond. About what it could be.

Things he would never know.

“I mean it, Kragen,” she said. “I need to go home. And you don’t even want me. If I’m so repulsive to you, can’t you just let me leave?”

All of his frustration boiled over, and he could feel his eyes flash as his hands balled into fists.

“I told you that you will not speak of yourself that way again,” he said. “That is an order.”

Andromeda froze, just a few feet away from him. Staring.

“Now, Andromeda,” he said. “Or I will carry you myself.”

This time, she didn’t try to fight her tears. Kragen had made his mate cry.

He was filled with unspeakable shame.

“Then you will have to hurt me,” she whispered. “Because I do not belong to you, you freaking caveman. That’s not how human women work. And I told you, I have to go home to my grandmother.”

Kragen was seized with an unfamiliar sense of powerlessness. She was right. He could no more hurt her than he could pluck the moon out of the sky. And in a few minutes, it would doom them both.

“Why?” he demanded. “What is this foolishness?”

“It’s not foolish, you giant idiot!” Andromeda shouted. “She’s sick!”