Prime Obsession (6 page)

* * * *

“What is she doing?” Wulf lunged toward the access panel that led to the tunnels and would have ripped it off its hinges if his brothers hadn’t held him back.

“You can’t go in there. You’ll get killed by the trap,” Huw yelled, avoiding the elbow Wulf threw at his jaw. “Trust in Melina. She can take them.” He roared and tossed his brothers aside then reached for the door again.

“Stop it, Wulf,” Maren ordered, placing his body between Wulf and the door. “Or I’ll have you sedated. Do you want Melina to meet you the first time as you lie unconscious and in restraints?”

Wulf shuddered as he shook off his lava-hot rage. “I’d bet you’d do it, too.” Maren nodded. “Yes, I would. Melina would not thank you for getting yourself killed.” He pointed to the screen. “See, one man is dead. The other soon will be. Watch and learn.” The amused older man then added, “And I would lose the I-am-your-lord-and-master tone of voice with her. She will not appreciate it. She is a warrior and leader in her world.”

“She is Prime and my mate,” responded Wulf bluntly.

“Ah, that is a mere fact of biology,” said Maren as he watched the screen with a slight smile on his face. “You need to add to those facts. She was raised by two Terrans who, to all accounts, loved her and gave her the best of everything. She was trained by the greatest military presence in the galaxy, besides the Prime, of course. And she commands more soldiers than you. She is
more
than a
gemate
, Wulf. You’ll have to accept that so that she will accept the biology.”

Wulf merely grunted as he watched his tiny Melina finish off the smaller man with an efficient slit to his throat and then calmly wiped the blood off on her already bloody uniform.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he shook off the lingering remnants of his rage—

and fear. The connection between Melina and him that awakened upon her proximity and the sound of her voice was strong. He felt her satisfaction at successfully eliminating two more of the enemy. He also sensed her caution—and her pain and exhaustion—and her determination to reach him and his crew.

Pride in her strength and courage threatened to choke him. She was a miracle. His miracle. And he would protect her whether she liked it or not.

He did not like being afraid.

Returning to the master computer panel to work on reprogramming the last trap, the deadliest trap, he snarled, “Someone find my mate some clean clothes. She’ll need something to wear by the time she gets here.” Then he muttered, “I’ll be damned if she wears bloody clothes around me.”

Someone laughed. Wulf looked around for the guilty party, but saw only blankly schooled faces.

* * * *

Mel saluted the camera. “Thanks for the two clicks. It helped.”

“No problem, Melina.” Iolyn replied, not Wulf.

“Iolyn, what happened to your grouchy brother?”

She thought Iolyn might have choked back a laugh, but that could be static. The communications were still scratchy at times. “He’s trying to reprogram the last trap.”

“Reprogram? I don’t like the sound of that,” she said as she walked along the tunnel, trusting in Iolyn to warn her of any trouble ahead. “What’s wrong?”

“Three of the traps were sabotaged,” explained Iolyn. “We think so that we couldn’t use the tunnels to get out and make surgical strikes on the pirates. Wulf killed the traitor before he could shut down our other security measures on the engine room door.”

“O-o-kay. So, you’re telling me I have to work my way through three traps to get to you?”

“Yes.” That was Wulf’s voice. He was angry again. At her—or the situation?

“
Ansu bhau,
” she swore. Seemed a fitting time for her first use of the Prime vulgarity. “Okay, tell me what is coming up, and how I can get through it in one fairly whole piece.” She patted her fanny pack. “By the way, this pack has ear-com units that are programmed for a rotating communication frequency. You’ll need them to bring my men in to help you—if something happens to me.”

“Nothing. Is. Going. To. Happen. To. You. Not while I live.”
Ooh, now the grouchy brother sounded pissed
.
And damn possessive.

“Thanks, Wulf, I think.” She grinned at the camera. “That sort of sounded like a promise and a threat.”

“You are correct,
gemate
. I promise you will survive so that I might punish you for placing your life in danger.”

“Wulf? Tone, son.” A male voice admonished the very grouchy captain.

“Ambassador Maren? Is that you?” Mel asked as she turned left and climbed down a ladder to the level just above the engine room.

“Yes, my dear. It is.”

She smiled at the affectionate tone in his voice. “Am I nearing the first active trap?” All of a sudden, dizziness assailed her. Her breathing grew uneven as she gasped to take in enough oxygen to stop the vertigo.

“Uh, guys?” She coughed, her throat burning. “My breathing unit is going stale. Can I take it off?”

“After this trap,
lubha.
” Wulf said, his voice now calm and all business.

His words, or his voice, steadied her. Her pulse rate slowed back to normal and her breathing eased. How weird. She hadn’t even realized she’d tensed up and exacerbated the situation.

Then the meaning of the last word sunk in. “I am not your
little love
, Captain,” she snapped. “I am not little and have never been any man’s love.”

“I am happy to hear that,
gemate.
And you will be small next to me.” Wulf chuckled.

Grouchy brother was laughing? Was this the same man who’d growled at her earlier?

He changed moods so quickly she couldn’t keep up with him.

“What’s so funny?” she snarled.

“Nothing, Melina—And my name is Wulf,” he admonished. Irritation definitely colored those last words, she noted. “Now, be calm,” he continued. “You need the breathing unit to get you through the next trap. It is poison gas.”

“Great. Does it poison on contact or just through breathing? Or both?” she asked, cautiously approaching a section of tunnel hazed with mist.

“Cursed independent woman, you must learn to trust me. I would never send you into danger unprepared,” growled Wulf, then he sighed. “It is only through breathing,
lubha
—keep the mask on. The trap is only ten meters long.”

“I don’t know you well enough to trust you,” Mel grumbled.

“Then trust me because I am an ally and fellow soldier,” ordered Wulf.

Mel nodded and sent him a snappy salute. She entered the mist and walked quickly through it bracing her hand on the wall for support since she was still dizzy and now seeing double. Her breathing unit wouldn’t keep her alive long in this stuff if she fell.

As she exited the mist, her knees gave way. She stumbled forward several more meters, then plopped onto the floor, catching herself on her hands and knees, before collapsing onto her stomach.

“Melina? What’s wrong?”

Wulf’s voice was filled with fear. That bothered her. He must never be scared—not a big strong Prime male. She would not allow that. As if she could do anything about it.

She would’ve shrugged, but it took too much energy.

Suddenly, her pulse accelerated as adrenaline poured into her system. It was as if Wulf’s fear had become—and exacerbated—hers, giving her the extra chemical boost needed to make it further away from the mist still trailing around her. That was crazy.

She had no connection to him.

Damn, she must be more light-headed than she’d thought.

Using the new-found reserves, she belly-crawled along the tunnel floor, putting as much distance between her and the poison behind her.

The tunnel whirled around her as if she was in zero gravity space. Her empty stomach heaved. She snatched the breathing unit off her face, then choked and gagged.

Only bile came up.

“Melina,
lubha
? Are you okay? Tell me!”

The command in Wulf’s tone raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Why did this man affect her so? She shook her head and gulped in the relatively fresher air of the tunnel.

“I’m … fine,” she gasped, swallowing the bile that still threatened to burn its way up her throat. “The air … in the unit … was bad—and I got … dizzy. Not … poison.” She struggled to sit, her back against the cool tunnel walls. “Need to catch my breath a second—I’m fine.”

She wiped her mouth on the back of her tattered uniform sleeve and reached for her water bottle, still attached to her pack. Taking a mouthful of water, she rinsed her mouth and spit, then took a couple of sips. Her stomach calmed down.

Closing her eyes, she reoriented. Taking slow deep breaths, she fully oxygenated her blood, which went a long way to solving her nausea and dizziness. After one particularly deep breath, she gasped and clutched her side.

The double-damned right side. Pirates, Parker and Antareans had all had their shots at that side in the last few months. She should buy regen table stock; she’d make a mint as much as she kept them in business.

The small human male in the tunnel had gotten in a good hit and sliced her there. She was bleeding. Damn, some of her dizziness might be due to blood loss. She surreptitiously looked at her right hand. Bright red blood covered her fingers and palm.

Yep, she was actively bleeding.

“Melina! Talk to me,
gemate lubha
.” Wulf’s not-so-dulcet tones echoed around the tunnel. Damn, the man could bring down a mountain with that roar.

“I’m just catching my breath, okay?” Mel stood up, sliding her back along the wall and using her strong and uninjured legs and glutes to push her to a standing position.

“Can’t a gal take a short break?”

“Take a break when you get to my side,” ordered Wulf.

Bossy alpha-male
.

“Yes, oh Obi Wan.” She saluted the camera and strode forward taking a right turn at the sign pointing to the engine room. “What’s up next in this Prime tunnel-of-horrors?” Wulf muttered as if he consulted with someone. “Huw and I feel you will need to shimmy under the lasers on your stomach. Can you do that, Melina
lubha
?” Concern in his voice now. Uh-oh, trouble ahead.

“Sure. But why are you afraid? I like your rude, conceited, angry tone of voice better, Wulf.”

Huw spoke. “Melina, we are concerned because you are bleeding.”

“Well, damn, I thought I’d hidden that fairly well. You must have very good cameras.”

“This is not a joking matter,” Wulf said, his words clipped and stark. He was afraid again—for her. “Can you make it fifteen meters on a downward incline? You’ll have less than a meter of clearance between the floor and the lower array of lasers.” Mel mentally did the math. Thank God, her ass was fit, round but tight. “Yes, I can do that. We trained to crawl under trip wires in booby-trapped forests. I was always the best at it since I was smaller than the men. But what will the last trap be?”

“Off—I hope,” Wulf muttered.

Mel laughed. “I think that sounds like a deal. Next corner, I think. I hear the sizzle and burn of the lasers.”

“One more thing, Melina,” Huw said. “There is a dead human and a barely alive Erian in the way. You’ll have to shimmy around them.”

“
Ansu bhau
. Well, it couldn’t be a piece of cake. No, never that,” muttered Mel as she turned the corner and spotted the Erian, eyeing her, a leer on his lipless hole of a mouth. The dead human was not a problem. He was definitely dead. No human could be laser-burnt like that and live. She shuddered.

The human lay just inside the trap. She might be able to use him to run interference with the lasers and the Erian.

“Okay, here goes nothing.” She pulled her knife out of its scabbard, just in case the Erian managed to reach her, and held it in her left hand, at ready. She needed her dominant right hand to help pull herself along the deck.

Getting on her stomach, she shimmied to the dead Terran. She shoved at him. Yep, she could move him. Alrighty then. Lifting the human up, she smelled his flesh burn even more and involuntarily flinched in reaction. Hell, he was dead and his thick body would protect her. Gritting her teeth against the smell and the slimy feel of the bodily gunk dripping off the dead man, she crawled under him and used his body as a shell. She’d once carried an injured Nowicki just this way through one of those booby-trapped forests she’d mentioned. Sort of on-the-job training, but the Prime need not know that. She got the impression they’d never reconcile women being placed into those kinds of dangerous situations.

“You think to escape me, human?” the Erian snarled.

Well, shit
. She’d forgotten all about the lizard as she’d tried not to vomit from the grisly mess she held over her body. Peering out from under the dead human, she saw that she had almost traversed the trap halfway.

Something grabbed her ankle. She chanced a look back. Lizard-breath’s frigging tongue had wrapped itself around her ankle. Damn, she hated pseudo-reptilian species.

Shifting even further under the dead, smelly and increasingly gooey human, she placed her knife on the ground and turned slightly to wiggle her laser out. It would be tricky, but she thought she could get a clean shot.

She aimed. One short burst of the laser and the tongue was decimated and her ankle merely scorched. Soft tissue had no chance against a laser.

The Erian’s howl was garbled.

“Hey, be glad it wasn’t your ugly dick,” she muttered. “That’s what I did to the last lizard I came across.”

Replacing the laser, she picked up her knife, stuck it back into its sheath, then shimmied harder. Just as she was about to stop and rest, Wulf yelled, “Get that apayebo off you. You’re safe now.”

Sighing with relief, she heaved the dead weight to one side as she rolled the opposite way. She came to rest, her forehead against the cool, clean metal wall. She loved the smell of metal—it didn’t stink like dead bodies—or her. She could just hug the floor and take a nap—she was that tired.

Nope, there was something she wanted more. She barely lifted her head. “Tell me there are showers and clean clothes in the engine room.” A deep masculine chuckle that she just knew was Wulf echoed off the metal tunnel walls. “No shower, but water and clean clothes.”

“That’s good,” she sighed as she lay still for just a little bit longer. “What next? The last trap off yet?”

“No,” Wulf said, his tones almost soporific to her senses. It was as if a gentle tropical breeze caressed her inside and out. He was calm now—as in calm before the storm? The man had more mood swings than a hormonal teenage girl. “But it will be. I will not let you take any more risks.”

There was that promise of possessive protection in his voice again. Oddly enough, she felt safe and secure instead of pissed off at the alpha-ness of it all. Captain Wulf Caradoc was on the job and things would be fine.

She shook her head. Yep, she must still be suffering from the lack of oxygen. She was the one to ensure other’s safety above her own. No one had ever taken care of her before—other than her parents.

Shakily, she pushed her way to her feet, then glanced back at the Erian who glared at her with hatred burning in his dying yellow eyes. “You know, someone will need to clear the trash out of this tunnel.”

“We’ll handle it.” Wulf’s tones reverted quickly back to the don’t-mess-with-me tone. “You’ve done enough.”

“Hey, I’m not volunteering. The job is all yours.” She headed in the direction of the engine room, using the walls to hold her up. “Tell me when to stop, okay?”

“Fifteen more meters. Then sit and rest. I’ll come in to get you when it is safe.” Mel walked to just short of the trap. It was a solid laser wall. “Well, shit. I think I’ll just follow that advice couched in the tone of an order. I’ll be holding up the wall when you get here.”