Salvage Rights (Distant Worlds Book 2) (14 page)

After Lucan let her go,
she turned to find Doctor Avia looking her over with clinical eyes.  Clinical
eyes that did nothing to hide from Danika her fear and distrust.  It seemed
that whatever results she had received in her tests had managed to make her
more suspicious, not less.

“You have some news,
Avia?” Lucan asked mildly, his hand wrapping around Danika’s upper arm to pull
her back to his side.  The move was not lost on the good doctor.  Her eyes
narrowed further.

“I have finished all my
tests and things are as we feared.”  She turned her back on them and walked to
her office at the end of the room.  In a moment, she was back and handing Lucan
a file.

He raised a brow at the
size of it and then looked back at the doctor.  “Summarize.”

“Simply put, she is a
Bruha who has been coded to the DNA of a Warrung.  From my research, it was Ladon
Warrung who must have originally commissioned the tampering, as he is the DNA
match.  She was not imprinted, however.  I cannot account for how she ended up
in a stasis pod, but I will say, medically, her story checks out.  Her age was
halted inorganically at around twenty-four.  That part of her story checks out,
as does her statement that she awoke within the last ten to twelve days.  Her
vitals are consistent with new growth in that time period.  She carries the DNA
strand of the truthsayer, and her brain is, indeed, being actively used far and
above the norm.  That is all I can verify with any surety.  I would speculate
that she is your genetic match, and as a Bruha, she is open for imprinting,
something with the DNA tampering it would be hard for you to resist.”  She
looked between them and at Lucan’s hand on her arm.  “A fact you seem to
already grasp.  Have you finished the imprint?”

Lucan raised a brow,
his voice cool.  “We have not.”

“I would strongly
advise you to put some distance between you, then.  You are not a man known for
having weaknesses.  I cannot prove it, but I believe she was sent here for the
soul purpose of creating one for you.  Once you have imprinted on a Bruha, you
will do anything, give anything to keep her.”  She swallowed hard, her eyes
looking from one to the other.  “Do you really want to make yourself that
vulnerable?”  She spoke before he could tell her to mind her own business.  “Because
if you are, you are not the Lucan Warrung I know.  I would say you are already
being manipulated.”

He did not care for
that, Danika could feel the tension in the room swell and smolder, as Lucan
snapped his attention fully in the doctor’s direction.  With narrowed eyes he
spoke, his voice a cold warning, “Careful, Avia.  Whatever I choose to do in
this situation, I am not so weak yet to swallow such a statement.  And I need
no directions from you.”

The woman paled and
looked away, her voice mellowing to apologetic.  “My apologies, Lucan, but you
asked for my opinion.”

“Wrong.  I asked for
your medical acumen, not your opinion.”

Danika could feel her
embarrassment and something else; she tilted her head to study the woman closer
and felt more than embarrassment.  There was shame, and . . . yearning.  The
good doctor was in love with Lucan Warrung.  It was no wonder she felt so
strongly about this.  If Lucan imprinted, her dreams of one day being noticed
by him would be over.  Danika reached out and touched Lucan’s hand, willing him
not to say the next cutting words she could feel coming.

He looked down at her,
then back at the doctor, and surprisingly he understood because he merely said,
“Is there anything else I need to know?”

Doctor Avia shook her
head.  “That is everything.  Other than what we already covered, she is
amazingly healthy, especially for two hundred plus years.  With that length of
hyper-sleep, you should watch for unexplained emotional outbursts, and
sometimes seizures begin to show up within a few days of waking.  If anything
like that begins to occur, ticks, twitches, loss of sensory input, anything
along those lines, I will need to see her again, and possibly treat her for
hyper-sleep sickness.  However, I think if she was going to have anything like
that she would have already begun showing signs.”

“Little Bruha?” he
asked, unaware how his voice softened along with his eyes when he looked at
her.

“Nothing like that,” she
assured him.  “My emotions seem extreme at times, but I do not know if that is
normal for me or not.”

“Of course,” Doctor
Avia said.  “The amnesia . . . I cannot say whether your memories will return
with time or not.  Since it is not a usual symptom of hyper-sleep sickness, I
can only speculate you might have been mind-wiped before you were placed in the
pod.  If that was the case, we may never know all the particulars, as that is
irreversible.  From what your scans show me that is the most likely scenario.”

“I attacked Briar,”
Danika mused.  “Could that have been symptomatic of the illness?  I was very
angry.”

The doctor snorted.  “Briar? 
I seriously doubt there are many people who have met her who were not very
angry with her.  I hope you pulled out her perfect hair.”  When that was met
with silence, the doctor cleared her throat and went on with a little more
professionalism.  “Anything else you can think of?”

Danika sighed and then
said, “I am not sure what normal sexual stimulus is for a Bruha, but it seems
extreme to me.”

The doctor looked away,
and cleared her throat.  “From my understanding, Bruhas are extremely reactive
to all things sexual.  And in this situation . . . well, I do not think we can
count that as abnormal.”

Danika shrugged.  “Then
I can think of nothing out of the ordinary, such as it is, for me.”

“Very well, then.”  She
turned back to Lucan, her face carefully blank.  “You have my findings and my
warnings.  Let me know if any symptoms do arise, and I will still caution you,
medically, that this imprint should not be entered into without a great deal of
thought on everyone’s part.  Once you have sealed the deal, as it were, there
is no going back.  It is quite literally till death do you part.”

***

Lucan watched Danika
all the way back to the lift.  She was unusually quiet, even for her.  He had
noticed at times she would drift off into some problem or thought in her head,
and he would feel the loss of her as if she had left the room.  He did not care
for the feeling at dinners, and certainly not now, when he could still taste
her on his tongue.  “What has you so distracted?”

She looked over at him
like she just remembered he was there and blinked.  Then said something he was
not expecting.  “The doctor is in love with you.”

He raised a brow.  “Women
tend to be attracted to the man in charge, it is nothing personal.”

Danika actually smiled,
then shook her head like he was the dumbest man alive and wasn’t it cute. Also
a look he did not care for.  “For a man who watches everything, you see very
little when it comes to the heart.”

“The doctor was sent
here by my brother as a plant. She was to feed him information about me.”

She tilted her head the
way she did when she was searching her mind.  “That would explain the shame,
but why do you allow her to stay if that is the case?”

“I monitor and control
her communications.  So far she has only sent along harmless information, things
he would hear through other channels regardless.  She is a good doctor and a
lousy spy.  Should that change I will put a stop to it, and kill her.”

“Kill her?”  Now she
studied him the same way she might a true puzzle.  “From what I am
understanding from her, she is not doing whatever it is willingly.  Have you
asked her why she would spy for your brother?”

He snorted.  “I do not
have to ask.  My brother has a certain method to his madness.  Either he has
someone she loves held hostage against her behavior, or he has abused her so
much she would do anything he said out of fear of ending up back in his
clutches.”

Danika stepped back and
grabbed the bar of the lift for support.  Suddenly her legs had turned to jelly. 
“Kira?”

Luc studied her briefly
before he nodded.  “She is also a spy for my brother, though she does not know
it.  When he feels the time is right, he will call on her to complete some task
or collect some information, and she will be too terrified to refuse.”

“How do you know this?”

“As I said, he is at
least consistent in his madness.  Kira is too beautiful even in her scarred
state for my brother to have released her to anyone but death.  He does not
like to share his toys.  I knew when she was allowed to be sold to me that she
was more useful to him as a sleeper agent.”

“You took her anyway?”

“You have met Kira.  I
could not leave her with my brother, just as I assume, your Captain Tyber could
not see such a piece of art as yourself going to him.  Men are forever at the
mercy of true beauty.”

She tilted her head and
studied him again.  “You are right.  I have met Kira.  I could not have left
her there either, but I do not believe she will do as you think she will if he
calls her to service.  She is loyal to you.”

“Loyalty is as nothing
to true fear.  Trust me, she will act as she has been trained to act.  I only
hope it is nothing I will have to kill her for.”

“You certainly take
such thoughts easily.”

“Make no mistake of who
I am.  I may not have my brother’s madness, but I am a Warrung.  Killing is
what we do best.”

She shook her head,
raising her little chin defiantly in defense of his character.  It was . . . endearing,
and completely naive.  “You are not the hardened killer you would like the
universe to think you are.  You would not kill Kira or the doctor so easily.”

He moved closer until
he could look down on her, his eyes piercing and flat.  “You better hope you
are wrong, little Bruha, as after tonight you will be mine in every conceivable
way, and that means my brother will come for you, because you are mine, and because
you are what you are.”  He ran his bare knuckle down her cheek.  “My ability to
defend and kill so effortlessly is the only thing that will keep you safe, and
all of us alive.”

“You are saying your
own brother will try to kill you?”

“I am saying when he
finds out what I have, he will stop at nothing to take it.”  He leaned down and
brushed a soft kiss to her lips.  “My death would only be a nice bonus.”

She stopped him from
leaning down for another touch with a hand to his chest.  “They might surprise
you, Kira and the doctor.  The doctor may never send anything he can use, and
Kira may come and tell you when or if he contacts her.”

He smiled and shook his
head.  “Not in the worlds I was born into, little Bruha, nor in any I have seen
since.  But if it gives you comfort to think it, I will be diligent and
ruthless enough for the both of us.”

Danika was working out
her own possibilities when he raised her chin and caught her eyes.  “You will
not speak of this to her.  It will do nothing but cause her to fear and dread
every moment until it happens, and in the end, it will not change her actions,
but only torture her with possibilities.”

“I do not want Kira to
face such a choice,” she whispered beseechingly, “nor you the one you so
blithely speak of.  Say what you want, but I know it would kill something in
you to have to destroy such a person.  There has to be a way to keep her safe
and out of whatever plan your brother hatches.”

“If you can come up
with something in that super brain of yours feel free to share it,
with me,
not Kira
.”

She met his eyes, hers
searching, his he knew to be implacable, even where she was concerned, in this
he would not yield.  It went against his nature to even be discussing this with
someone else.

Her words were heartfelt
when she spoke, and it caused a tightening in his chest he was not accustomed
to.  “I swear I will not betray you in this, or anything else — for any reason.” 
Then she wrapped her arms around his waist and tucked her head against his
heart and hugged him.  He froze at the unexpected feel of it, the truth she
spoke, and the warmth she gave him without ulterior motive or condition.  At
once, he wanted to fling her away from him; at the same time, he fought the
need to crush her in his arms.  Finally, he simply closed his arms around her
and held her close.  It felt good, and dangerous.  In that moment, he admitted
that the doctor had been right.  He would do anything he had to, give anything,
kill anyone, to keep this woman by his side . . . and he had not had her yet.

***

If Danika had not felt
the surge of emotion when she hugged him, she would have been devastated by the
cold withdrawal and desertion when they returned to their private areas. 
Instead, she took his dismissal and hasty withdrawal as what it was – a pirate’s
strategic retreat.  To say he was not comfortable with his emotions was putting
it mildly.  The surge of emotion he could not hide made her question if anyone
had ever hugged him in his life.

It did not escape her
notice that he was subconsciously testing everyone close to him and setting
them up for failure, including her.  It would be hard not to say anything to
Kira, but she would find a way to protect her friend, and she would do it
without betraying Lucan.  No matter what he expected in the end.