Mindful of Alder’s dismay at my scents, I attempted to keep my worry to myself, instead leading my overeager companion toward the feminine traces I tracked through the air.
Here. There are many females behind this door. Lise is not one of them, I answered his question before he could ask it.
Alder examined the panel. “We don’t have time for finesse.” He turned to me. “Think you could…?”
Of course. I grasped the edge of the door with a claw, peeling it back far enough to take hold of it with my mandibles. Once I had a good grasp on it, it was the work of an instant to rip the door off completely.
Inside the room I revealed, females from many planets huddled together, not moving until Alder bounded into the room.
“What are you waiting for?” he all but shouted. “It’s time to get the hell out of this place. Unless you want to stick around to be sold as breeder slaves? Head straight down this hallway until you come to the bright blue ship docked there. We’ll meet you back there.”
The females poured out of the room around us, most carefully steering clear of me. For some reason, I often intimidated or offended mammals. But one, a bright red biped with tentacles atop her head, stopped to speak to me, leaning in close.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her tentacles waving toward me, stroking the air a mere dulat from my exoskeleton, sensitizing the stelae, the tiny hairs that covered my outer body.
This female knew Chilchek physiology. Her almost-touch was perfect, leaving me reeling with sudden, unexpected desire.
“Okay, okay,” Alder said, ushering her the rest of the way out of the room. “There will be time for all kinds of thanks later.”
Why did you send them to Lise’s ship?
“There needs to be as much confusion there as possible.” Alder headed down the hallway again. “And they’ll definitely cause that. Maybe it will keep the empress’s guards busy and focused on something besides us.”
But that would mean the guards would be heading toward the ship, as well. I scuttled to catch up with him.
I don’t believe you.
“Yeah, I can smell that.”
I believe you wanted to save those females. Maybe even take them with us when we escape.
“Don’t be an idiot. That’s a terrible idea. It would cause no end of trouble.” But Alder rubbed his olfactory organ and failed to make eye contact with me as he spoke—and if there was one thing I had learned from playing games of chance with him, it was how to spot when he was being untruthful.
You stink of lies.
“You’re one to talk.”
I started to reply, but a new scent flowing through the air caught my attention.
Stop. I sense Morpheus. And Lise is with him.
“Morpheus has Lise?”
Indeed he does, and unless I am misreading my signals, they are headed our direction. We should meet them. I released a cloud of pleased pheromones, and turned my attention to Alder, expecting to find him joyfully baring his teeth at me. Instead, he stood with his hands clenched beside him, his facial features scrunched up, and his eyes focused intently down the hall. Anger rolled off him in waves—more than I had ever sensed from him before.
“I cannot believe that metal-winged son of a smallus-fairy fuck-smear got to her first.”
Although I was fairly certain the words were not intended for me, I could not help but reply.
I thought Morpheus was our egg sac and chitin sharing warrior as one. Did you not wish to save him, as well? Were we not planning to find him after we rescued Lise?
Alder’s anger turned to frustration. “It’s not that.” He began moving down the hall to intercept Morpheus and Lise, but more slowly than before. “Of course I wanted to save him. He’s our partner. I simply…” He paused, then huffed out a breath.
Realization dawned on me. You wished to save Lise yourself. You imagined yourself her savior. My mandibles clicked in delight. You were hoping she would turn to you. You wanted her to copulate with you in thanks. I tried to clamp down on my amused scent, but I could tell some of it had escaped when Alder turned his glare on me.
“Yeah, so? You have to admit, I am the most similar to her, physiologically.”
I pondered that. And yet, you have often said that physiology is not compatibility, I pointed out. When there were other females who interested you.
Alder opened his mouth to say something, but never finished the thought, as Morpheus came barreling around the corner from an intersecting hallway ahead of us.
Lise was indeed with him, but not running beside him as I had expected. Instead, he carried her in his arms, where she remained unmoving, for all the universe appearing as if her entire endoskeleton had been removed—a look I suspected did not bode well for her.
“There you are!” Morpheus bellowed as he charged toward us. “One of those leaping monstrosities got her with his venom. We have to get to the medbay on Blue. Now.”
Alder turned to race ahead of them, and I pushed back against the wall to let them all pass, falling in behind to watch our rear for the predators I had scented from this direction.
I might not always understand my egg sac and chitin sharing warriors as one, but I trusted them. If Morpheus said Lise needed help, then it must be true.
And for Morpheus to be this worried, she must be in mortal danger.
If we did not get Lise to medical assistance immediately, she would die.
12
Morpheus
Lise was limp in my arms. If she’d been on my ilk, I’d have declared her flightless by now, ready for the burial grounds that fed into our food supplies. That’s how it was on our planet, our remains part of a cycle that grew the flora of our planet, providing us with the nourishing nectars that kept us healthy, thriving, and fertile.
Bufo Alvarius toxins are fatal. How long
