Since he had, she couldn’t blow up the ship with him on board and kill him. Her subroutines weren’t stopping her anymore, though. She’d shed them with her mechanical body. Something else was. Something deeper down, buried close to where her heart beat. She ignored the puzzle and concentrated on the fight.
Soriat might be one of the afflicted, unable to fight outside of his suit, but he was still a warrior in it. And she… wasn’t. Whatever she tried, she couldn’t get away from him, or get to the door to open it. Before long, he had her backed up into the corner, a feral grin on his face as he brought a laser cutter down to bear on her chest plate.
“I’ll draanthing cut you out if I have to!” he hissed, a manic gleam in his eyes and the lights behind him turning his straggly thin hair into a halo.
This was it. He had her pinned and there was no escape. Once that cutter broke through the suit’s shields, it would kill her. With a sigh, she closed her eyes. She didn’t want the last thing she saw to be his face. Instead, she called up an image of Jay as a tear streaked down her cheek. At least now she would be with him…
“Get away from her, you cunt!”
The dangerous growl was in a voice so familiar she gasped, her heart aching. For a moment she froze, convinced she’d heard Jay as the room filled with heavy footsteps, both warriors’ boots and the heavier clump-clump-clump of B’Kaar cyberwarriors. But it couldn’t be. Jay was dead. In her grief she was imagining him. Her organic brain was offering her comfort as she faced her own death in the only way it knew how… by giving her the one thing she wanted most in reality.
“I’d do as he says,” another voice broke in. “I don’t know how much you know about humans, but this one’s batshit crazy. Keris, close your eyes.”
“Rynn?” she whispered, as a laser blaster fired. She squeezed her eyes shut just as something went pop. There was a wet splatter across the front of her suit’s shields and then a dull thud as something heavy hit the floor.
A wash of information from the suit tried to get her attention, but she ignored it, opening her eyes. The head and torso shields of her suit flared for a second, burning off the… matter that had been on them. Then she could see.
There, standing in the middle of the ruined lab, stood Jay, a heavy assault blaster balanced on his hip. Dressed in combat leathers with a grim look on his face, he looked every bit as dangerous as the two taller Lathar who flanked him. Xaandril M’rln, the emperor’s champion, and his son, Xaandrynn.
Her family. All together.
21
Keris’s eyes tracked Jay as he walked toward her. With barely a thought, she triggered the release mechanism on the suit and the whole front of it opened up. She tumbled into his arms, wonder filling her as she touched his face.
“You… how? You were dead?” she whispered as his dark stubble abraded her fingertips. He must be a figment of her imagination… or a dream. Any moment now she’d wake up on the cold slab of the table with only the dead guy for company.
She burst into tears, clinging to him. “Please be real… I don’t want this to be a dream!”
“It’s not a dream, sweetheart,” he chuckled, pulling her close and sliding a finger under her chin to make her look up at him. His eyes were warm with amusement and something else. Hope, longing… love all tumbled through her as she smiled, biting her lip.
“They said you were dead,” she whispered, her throat thick and tight. He was here. He was actually here.
“Oh, I’m a lot harder to kill than that, angel. When I said I’d be here for you, I meant it. Since you up and switched the locations on me, I had to come track you down.”
She smiled through her tears at the reminder. He’d said he’d be waiting for her when she’d gotten out of her tank, and he had. Well, technically he’d been in the galley making pasta, but he hadn’t left the base. And he’d looked after her since, posing as her mate and putting himself at risk. Even nearly getting killed in the process.
But after all that, she was still confused. Still not sure why he’d done all of that for her.
“But why?”
“Don’t you know?”
She shook her head. She knew what he said, but how he felt was a mystery. Why would a male like him choose a creature like her? She wasn’t a natural-born organic and she wasn’t sure what secrets her biological body held. It wasn’t entirely organic, that was for sure. If it was, she’d never have been able to pilot the kasivar. Who knew what else had been altered… she might never be able to carry young, for example. She was not a good bet for any male.
“I forgot how… literal the Lathar are.” His lips curved into a smile. “Okay. So how about this? I love you, Keris. I’ve loved you since you pulled me out of that damn torture chamber and stuffed me into an escape pod. I loved you when you stood up to the Krin and I loved you more when you saved that woman’s life, even though you exposed what you were and could have been killed.”
She blinked up at him. All those incidents had happened when she’d been in her metal body. “I… wasn’t organic then.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I fell in love with you before I knew what you’d look like. I fell in love with you, Keris.”
She bit her lip, the wetness at her eyes nothing to do with fear and panic now. “So you prefer that body?”
“Fuck no!” He grinned and pulled her closer. “I really like the way you look now. You’re drop-dead gorgeous. I’m trying to say that I didn’t care what you looked like, what you look like, I don’t care you weren’t born, or whether you started life as a spark of electricity across a circuit board. You’re mine, Keris, and I will love you as long as I live and then beyond.”
She nodded, biting her lip to stop it trembling.
After a moment, he chuckled. “This is the part you’re supposed to say it back,” he whispered. “Don’t leave a guy hanging because I’d look really dumb if I threatened your father and you don’t feel the same way about me after all.”
“You love me?” she managed to croak out.
He nodded and she squealed and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.
“I was a little skeptical when you said she was real now,” the deep voice of her brother said somewhere behind them. “But that just clinched it.”
She ignored Rynn and buried her face into Jay’s neck. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I downloaded into a real body for you, to get you out of that torture cell.”
His arms tightened around her. “That long? I’m so glad you did, sweetheart. Otherwise, I’d never have met the woman I plan to ask to marry me.”
She gasped and pulled back to look at him. “You want to marry me?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded. “I mean, I don’t have a ring and I didn’t know whether you wanted a human ceremony or a Lathar one or bot—”
She squeaked and cut him off with a kiss.
He grumbled in approval, his lips soft on hers. It wasn’t one of the hard, passionate kisses stored in her memory. Instead, it was soft, gentle and full of promise. In it she glimpsed a lifetime of waking up next to him and his strong arms around her, protecting her as she protected him. Her breathing shuddered as she pulled back, feeling their souls mesh as she looked into his eyes.