Claimed (8 page)

He helped her off the floor and led the way to the lift. Tina watched blood drip from her hand to the floor of the lift, leaving a wet shiny puddle.

She wasn’t human anymore. Seeing the scales, her longer, redder hair and greener eyes hadn’t made it sink in, but this, the black blood flowing down her hand, forced the knowledge into her like the inescapable reality of test results. Results didn’t lie, and neither did her blood.

Tina didn’t know how she felt about her new status as less than human.
Conflicted
was the best she could come up with. In fact, she felt conflicted about a lot. She’d expected Sorvar to be a domineering arrogant ass, and he’d shown signs that he could be like that, but he’d also shown her a tender emotional side of him that had hit her right in the chest. Something about a man showing his vulnerabilities never failed to stir up her emotions.

They stepped off the lift, and she followed the males carrying Sorvar down a corridor to Medical. Sorvar’s ship
was
similar in some ways to the other ships Tina had been on—utilitarian, plain, and huge. The corridor was far wider than any other she’d been in, Tina assumed it was to make room for the Morgath’s wings. The doors were all double width—wings, again—and the metal under their feet was hard and resistant to scratches from their lethal claws. But it looked unfinished with all the bare wiring.

Tina’s mouth dropped open when she entered the medical bay of the Morgath’s ship. It was... small. There were only two tables, but it was well appointed with equipment she had no problems identifying.

The male who helped her up tried to hustle her towards one of the tables, but she refused to go until the two males carrying Sorvar had lifted him onto the second table. They placed him face down and released his wings the minute they settled him. Only then did Tina walk over to the other table and settle onto it.

“Tell me what happened while I fix your arm,” the male said.

The ship continued to shudder around them, occasionally jolting her as he cleaned the blood from her arm with a dermal cleanser. Tina explained to him what had happened, keeping her opinions and observations to herself. Something about this male unsettled her. She was almost finished with her recount when he set about healing the deep punctures in her arm with a small laser device.

Tina gritted her teeth at the burning pain as the laser cauterised the small wounds. Gah! He was barbaric! Didn’t they have regeneration pads?

“You know... humans are prone to infection from burns as well as wounds. You would have been better off stitching the wounds closed,” she gasped as he moved the device on to the next wound.

He stared at her with unblinking deep yellow eyes before returning his gaze to her arm. “There shouldn’t be any problem now you have mated. Morgath bodies are inhospitable to infection, but your skin is very soft, so you might scar. The medics at the palace should be able to do something about it when you get there, but I do not have the facilities on the ship to deal with it.”

He turned and barked something in Morgathian to the two other males so fast that she couldn’t understand him, then turned back to finish with her arm. Tina gritted her teeth and tried not to scream. The ship shuddered, worse than before, and an alarm started to blare, the lights flicking from orange to red.

“I need a sample of your blood for comparison,” the male said.

She looked up at the male she’d assumed was the medic as one of the other males joined them with a blood extractor in his hands. “It’s fine, please take whatever you need to find out what’s happened to Sorvar.”

She sat perfectly still as the medic gave the laser device to the assistant and took the extractor. God, she hated tests, hated the endless poking and prodding. All those tests and scans Earth government had forced her to go through to ensure she was healthy and clear to join the space program almost drove her insane. She was a medic, for fuck’s sake, she would know if something was wrong with her.

The Morgath medic pressed the blood extractor against her neck, and Tina winced as the small machine took a small sample of skin and extracted her blood. Her arm throbbed where he had healed her wounds, but Tina ignored it and slid off the table after the medic moved away.

Sorvar was still face down on the other table, his wings spread out to drape down to the floor. Making sure she didn’t stand on them, Tina walked over to him and stroked the hair away from his face. He didn’t move from her small strokes, didn’t shift or change in any way, and she still couldn’t feel him inside her. He had the most luxuriant soft hair, and it tumbled all around him.

With nothing else to do while the medics analysed her blood and the sample she’d seen them take from Sorvar, she finger-combed his hair and braided the waist length curls into a long tail. The ends curled around her fingers and formed a gorgeous ringlet. Her heart squeezed. If he was awake, she could have teased him about his pretty hair or shown him some of the fun things you could do with hair in bed.

The medic hissed, snapping Tina’s head up. She walked over to the console he was staring at.

“What is it? Have you found something?” she asked.

He turned to look at her, his yellow gaze penetrating.

Tina stared back, refusing to flinch from his direct gaze. “Please, I’m a medic as well. Maybe I can help.”

The medic flicked his hand at the screen, then stepped back. “What do you see?”

Tina looked at the screen, her eyes widening at the detailed image of two separate DNA strands. She’d seen human DNA, had even taken some classes in genetics and molecular biology, but she’d never seen anything like this, not even in her studies at The Fortress.

“It’s DNA, but it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before.” She couldn’t take her gaze off the slowly spinning image.

“That’s because it has mutated no less than six times. Whatever you are, Princess, when the Prince claimed you,” he waved at the screen with one hand, “it did this, and this is the cause of his change.”

Chapter Six

It took three hours for Sorvar’s crew to defeat the Crasgich—three of the most terrifying hours Tina had ever gone through in her life. The ship had shuddered and metal screamed as the Crasgich bombarded them with a hail of fire.

Tina didn’t have much time to think about it as wounded males turned up packing the small med bay with bodies. She helped where she could, mostly with minor wounds.

They limped the rest of the way to Morgath, the damaged ship making the journey take ten hours instead of the five it should have. Tina sat beside Sorvar the entire time despite Seklan trying to chase her out repeatedly.

She refused to do what he wanted, and even went so far as to threaten him with a pissed off Sorvar if he touched her or had her removed. By the time they landed on Morgath, she was sure she could sleep for days and was in desperate need of a meal and some pain relief.

Sorvar hadn’t so much as twitched the entire time. He was in a coma, and every attempt Seklan made to wake him failed. But Seklan scanned and tested Sorvar to the point where he could probably map every individual cell in Sorvar’s body. The mutated DNA was the only thing Seklan could find wrong with him.

Tina struggled with the building pain wracking her body in bursts and her guilt as she waited for the medical assistants to bind Sorvar’s wings for transport. His hair was still in the braid she’d put it in. She smoothed it down his back between his spread wings, playing with the ringlet on the end.

God, it was her fault that this had happened to him. Why had he picked her? Why hadn’t he picked one of the species the Morgath had already successfully mated with?

Maybe his father was right. She slid her hand over the soft smooth skin of his shoulder. She’d given him this weak, thin, easy to damage human skin. Her gaze ran down his arm to his hand—she’d also stolen his claws, a Morgath’s first line of defence. He should hate her for what she’d done to him. Maybe when he woke he would.

Tina stepped back so that the two medical assistants could step up to the table. She watched them bind Sorvar’s wings into position and lift him off the table.

Following the assistants out of Medical and through the ship, she didn’t see another male until they reached the shuttle bay. She’d overheard the Commander tell Seklan the ship was too damaged to make the trip through Morgath’s atmosphere. They were using the shuttle, and she and Sorvar were in the first group to leave.

Tina took her place inside the shuttle beside Sorvar’s prone body. She felt like a child in the seats designed for the larger bodies of the Morgath males, and the strange configuration of the chairs left her back aching by the time the shuttle had left the ship.

The three hours of the fight between the Morgath and the Crasgich wasn’t the scariest thing she’d ever experienced. Thirty minutes in the shuttle and she would be happy to never set foot in space again. Tina clenched her teeth all the way down, biting back the whimpers that rose in her throat.

She would not look weak in front of these males. By the time she collected herself once the shuttle landed, Seklan’s assistants were already walking down the ramp of the shuttle, leaving Tina to rush after them.

The hot, humid air hit her like a slap in the face the minute she stepped onto the ramp of the shuttle. Heavy and oppressive, the air felt like a hot summer day right before a storm. Sweat beaded on her brow and collected between her shoulder blades, a sticky wetness that made her clothes cling. Tina trudged down the ramp after Seklan’s assistants and their precious cargo. She gritted her teeth as every step sent pain slicing through her body.

She had spent the last ten hours trying to work out what was wrong with her, why she was in so much pain, but she didn’t have a clue. She didn’t know enough about the transformations the females went through or Morgath physiology to even take a wild guess, and she refused to ask Seklan. There was no way she wanted to appear weak in front of the medic.

Trees surrounded the clearing the shuttle had landed in, pressing in on her with their towering trunks and thick canopies. The hot stale air barely moved in the little clearing, the smell of hot rock permeating everything. Tina sucked in a breath. She hoped like hell the palace wasn’t surrounded by jungle. It would drive her insane.

A group of males, all unmated, stood around a floating medical transport close to the edge of the trees, all of them wearing as many weapons as the males on the ship had. Seklan and the medical assistants headed straight for them, and Tina followed at a distance on shaky legs. It was one thing to see the males in ones and twos, but there were almost a dozen of them standing around the transport.

They were so intimidating that their mere presences felt forceful and heavy. An aura of angry menace clung to them. Tina shuddered as she walked closer.

The nervous tension filling her kept her back ramrod straight even though it sent pain spearing down her spine. Without Sorvar to introduce her, she had no idea who was who. She didn’t even know what Sorvar’s father’s name was, or his brothers’.

She stopped outside the ring of males and watched as the two assistants placed Sorvar on the transport with a great amount of care. They arranged his limbs and wings with care as well, confirming to her that at least some of his family were there.

The group seemed to notice her at the same time. Almost as one they turned hostile eyes, ranging from bright yellow to grass green and every colour in between, towards her. She didn’t need to remember all the information the pod had given her to know the Morgath were a male-dominated society. She could tell just standing there watching them. Their aggressive stances and the condescending looks in their eyes all spoke louder than words.

“
You,
” one of the males growled.

Tina looked into the bright yellow eyes of the male who approached her. Father, then. Sorvar had his eyes—they were the same shade of yellow, and this male’s scales were the exact colour of the scales Sorvar had retained on his body. But he wasn’t mated. How could he have three sons if he’d never mated?

He towered over her as he stopped in front of her. Taller than Sorvar by a few inches and broader through the shoulders, he was more than formidable. He was quietly terrifying, but Tina refused to allow him to intimidate her. She would not let him see her fear or turn into a teary blubbering idiot.

“Your Majesty,” she said with a little bow.

She should have paid more attention during etiquette classes. It had all seemed pretty redundant at the time. She’d never imagined she would come into contact with the ruler of a planet. They rarely left their homes, and Tina had accepted a position on a station so the chances of her coming into contact with one were almost nil.

Now she stood in front of not only the king of the Morgath but Sorvar’s father, and his son was in a coma because of her. What did she say to him in this situation? That she was sorry? It seemed like a useless gesture, the words nowhere near enough for what had happened to Sorvar.

He didn’t give her a chance to say anything even if she could have figured it out. His hand shot out and wrapped around her throat, lifting her off the ground. Tina’s heart started to pound as pain speared through her neck. The thing that had coiled tightly in her gut before Sorvar bound them that was now spread throughout her body sent fire licking through her veins. Tina bared her teeth in a snarl and glared back at him.

God damn son of a bitch. She knew a bully when she met one. Her father had been one, too. She was going to kick Sorvar’s ass for not warning her what kind of male his father was.

“
You
are the one who has done this to my son. You have made him weak, and that fool Crasgich broke the truce because of you!” His hot fetid breath washed across her face, choking her with its heat and stench.

She gripped his huge wrist in her hands. “Sorvar is
not
weak, and if you think he is, then you are a fool,” she gasped.