“All right, well…” Judge Thoughtgood gingerly took the grimy wig, which was now more orange than yellow due to the blood it had soaked up, between her thumb and fingers and held it at an arms’ length.
“I have to go,” Imani told her. “And I’m never coming back to your horrible planet again!”
Turning, she followed the floating stretcher as the Kindred warriors steered it out of the courtroom.
Just let J’are live, she thought to herself as she walked. Please, just let him live!
Forty-Two
“Hey, doll, how are you doing?” Kat peeked into the room at the Med Center where Imani was sitting on an exam table. “I heard you were back here and I thought—”
Imani burst into tears.
“Oh, Kat!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “Everything is such a mess!”
“Oh no! What’s wrong? What happened?” Kat came over at once and put a comforting arm around Imani’s shoulders.
“J’are’s going to die,” Imani sobbed. “I just know he is! And it’s all my fault for getting so angry at him and wishing we hadn’t gotten bonded!”
“Wait a minute—start from the beginning!” Kat exclaimed. “Who’s J’are and how did you get bonded to him?”
“He…he’s my client. Or he was my client—now he’s my mate. Or he will be if he lives—but oh, Kat—I’m so afraid he’s going to die!”
Imani couldn’t help herself. She was full of guilt and self-recrimination. She felt certain that because she hadn’t wanted to be bonded to the big Nightwalker in the first place, she was going to be punished by losing him. How could she have only realized she loved J’are when it was too late? And how could she live the rest of her life without him?
“Imani, honey…” Kat sounded bewildered. “You’ve only been gone a few days and you’re telling me you’re already bonded?”
At that moment Liv, the doctor who had been taking care of Imani since she got back to the Mother Ship, entered the room. She was looking down at a chart and talking as she came in.
“Well, you’re right about one thing—you’re definitely pregnant,” she told Imani. “But I’m afraid it’s too early to tell if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“What? Pregnant?” Kat exclaimed.
Liv looked up.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Imani—I didn’t know anyone else was in here with you. Kat, you’re supposed to ask before you go in to see a patient!” she admonished her friend.
“Sorry, doll—I just heard Imani was here and I wanted to check on her since I’m the one who got her ready to go to Yonnie Six in the first place,” Kat said. She squeezed Imani’s shoulders. “It sounds like things happened pretty fast over there, huh?”
“Extremely fast,” Imani agreed, swiping at her swollen eyes with a sleeve of the large medical gown she was wearing. She was grateful for it—it certainly covered more than her Yonnie Six court clothes.
“Want to talk about it?” Liv asked, coming to sit on the other side of Imani on the exam table.
“First can you tell me if J’are is all right?” Imani looked at her hopefully.
“The last I heard Sylvan was still working on him. He lost a lot of blood and I think there was some nerve damage from the pain collar,” Liv said gently. “But please don’t worry, hon—Sylvan is a very good surgeon and he’s being assisted by our Tolleg surgeon, Yipper. You couldn’t ask for a better team to work on your guy.”
“She’s right about that,” Kat agreed. “So why don’t you tell us what’s going on—what happened on Yonnie Six—to keep your mind off things?”
Imani took a deep breath, trying to gather herself.
“It…it all started when I Claimed J’are by accident,” she said, looking at Kat. “You see, with the Nightstalker Kindred, the females Claim the males and not the other way around…”
She told about dealing with J’are in his feral state and how different he was in his thinking mind…told about the morphids and the mystery of who had really killed Lady Zangelo…told about the growing attraction between herself and the big Nightwalker.
“I knew it was wrong,” she told Kat and Liv. “I mean, he was my client—it wasn’t ethical to have any kind of relationship with him!”
“Well…not to toss ethics aside, but sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants, doll,” Kat said sympathetically.
“Yes, but things just kept going farther and farther,” Imani exclaimed. “Until we ended up in the simulation room in his old house and Mistress Bittlebum locked us in and simulated the Nightwalker Bonding night.”
“What?” Liv frowned. “They have a special night for Bonding?”
Imani explained about the three moons converging and the way J’are had literally lost his mind when his feral side came out.
“He…he hunted me down,” she said in a low voice. “And bonded me.”
“Oh, no!” Kat put a hand to her mouth. “Imani, hon, that doesn’t sound exactly…consensual.”
“It wasn’t…and yet in a way, it was.” Imani had been struggling with this herself. “Rape is never okay,” she said firmly. “Never. But, well…this wasn’t rape—not really. I was as hot as J’are was. I mean, I was scared out of my mind but somehow that only made me hotter.” She shook her head. “Does that even make any sense?”
“I think so,” Liv said thoughtfully. “I think it means that deep down you trusted him not to hurt you.”
“He didn’t,” Imani said. “And, honestly, it wasn’t the sex itself that upset me so much—it was the consequences of the sex.” She put a hand to her lower belly as she spoke, where she could occasionally feel the flutter of new life growing inside her. The baby—J’are’s baby.
“You mean getting permanently bonded or getting pregnant?” Kat asked.
“Both, I guess.” Imani sighed. “It’s just that I knew that J’are would have to go back to his home planet because the Kindred of the Mother Ship don’t trust the Nightwalkers and think they’re dangerous. And I knew if I got pregnant with his baby, it would almost certainly
