Page 9 of Badari Medic

“Find yourself the right guy,” Brent said in a whisper. “You deserve one of those righteous Badari badasses, you hear me? They’d be lucky to have you. Kinda wish it could have been me.”

“I think I already found the right guy,” she said, placing her free hand on his cheek.

His hand slipped from hers and she let out a primal scream. There was a pulse when she checked again but much weaker and Brent didn’t reawaken.

CHAPTER FOUR

Raeblin stared at the forest in despair. Her mind was racing but none of the thoughts were useful. She tried the telepathic link, throwing all her mental energy into it until she was nauseous with the effort but there was nothing. Fisting her hands in her hair she wailed, “What do I do? Great Mother, what do I do?” Brent was right—she didn’t have anything in her kit for performing delicate surgery on a human and certainly not in the middle of a damn forest. Nor was she qualified to do so. As she surveyed the rocks and trees, an anomaly caught her eye and she focused more closely, rising to go scrape moss off the rock with her talons.

The Badari had no written language but they did have trail signs and she was staring at one, cut deep into the rock a long time ago, judging by the crumbling edges of the mark.Shelterit said, with a squiggle to indicate the direction and another mark giving the distance.

Not too far, Raeblin estimated with hope.

She packed up her kit and managed to lift Brent over her shoulder, refusing to worry about doing more damage to his internal organs. Shelter was important, with night coming on and to get away from the crash site. Now she was looking forthem, she found a few more trail signs and then finally came upon a sheer cliff face but as she drew closer she realized there was an opening cleverly camouflaged,

Raeblin managed to fit herself and her burden through the narrow defile and came to a door which completely blocked the way. Improbably it had a sensor at one side. Not expecting anything to happen, she pressed her palm to the touchpad and the door creaked open. She edged through the opening and found herself in a hallway at the end of which was another door, also with a lock. This one also yielded to her touch and slammed shut the instant she was safely inside. The room she was in now was completely dark, except for faint daylight filtering in at the rear, but with her enhanced vision she saw chairs, a table, a stack of stasis keepers and best of all a bed.

With one hand she stripped the coverings from the bed, the fabric falling apart in her fingers, drifting to the floor in clumps, and laid Brent carefully on the bare frame, which was woven of leather straps. He groaned but didn’t awaken as she set down the medkit and her pulse rifle and explored the room. A knife and a partially carved wooden figurine sat on the table, along with a mug, as if the owner had simply stepped away centuries ago and never returned. Even in the current dire situation Raeblin was excited to be in one of the near mythical Wanderer’s many dwelling places. He was the only Badari in 800 years to escape the lab and had set up caches and refuges across the continent in hopes others of his kind might also manage to escape. The Khagrish had built and equipped more labs on Ushandirr than the scientists had ever needed or used, and the Wanderer was said to have broken into many of them to steal supplies. It had been believed he might have been a myth, created by Badari healers in the early generations to give the men hope, but then Camron and his mate had stumbled on one of the caches.

Raeblin was grateful for the shelter she needed for herself and Brent, and in awe of what the Wanderer had done.

A few of the stasis keeper crates’ tabs glowed green even after all these centuries but she didn’t bother to check the contents right now. There wasn’t going to be a full operating suite or robo med in any of them but she did find handlamps scattered on surfaces throughout the room, several of which fired up for her. Although the power reserve in the lamps was obviously low, at least there was illumination and Raeblin gathered them close to the bed.

She sank into the chair after dragging it next to the bed and hunched over, head down, staring at the floor.

He was dying.

There was only one thing she could do for him whichmightsave his life.

She had the equipment in her medkit. She even had several units of concentrated plasma and Brent had lost a lot of blood.

But human blood wasn’t going to save his life.

Raeblin had once been told by the senior Healer Timtur how the goddess had expressly forbidden any transfusion of blood between a Badari and a human unless they were claimed mates.

Claimed mates.

She looked at Brent in the dim light of the handlamps and her heart turned over. She knew he was her fated mate now, no slightest doubt in her heart. And his final words to her had been sweet but even so she admitted she was a long way from knowing he loved her or wanted to be her claimed mate. He might not even want to be saved if the price was knowing a Badari Daughter believed she was his mate.

And the Alphas who enforced the laws of the goddess were totally opposed to humans receiving Badari blood unless they were claimed mates. Aydarr didn’t want any unattached humans in his pack. Of course Brent was one of the threeoriginal allies of his mate Jill so Brent occupied a privileged position in the valley and with the Badari anyway. Technically, if Raeblin carried out her defiant plan and Brent survived, he’d become a member of her own tiny pack, but of course they all owed blood fealty to Aydarr.

“None of it fucking matters,” Raeblin said out loud, defiantly, wiping away a tear. “I love him and I’m not going to sit here and watch him die without trying everything to save him. I’m sorry, Great Mother, if that condemns me to lose the afterlife but I will not let Brent die.”

She opened her medkit and laid out what she needed, then prepped Brent to receive the gift she was going to give, removing his boots and making him as comfortable as she could. Bending over him after these efforts, she gave him a soft kiss on the lips. “Forgive me if this isn’t what you want.” His heart was missing beats now and weak. There wasn’t much time.

With another prayer, in case the goddess was listening and kindly disposed, Raeblin did the necessary procedure to send her rich red Badari blood through a tube into Brent’s human arm. She sat in the chair, monitoring his vitals periodically with her diagnosis device, but mostly holding his hand. Having no idea how much blood she needed to provide, she allowed the flow to continue unchecked. Her Badari constitution was already hard at work replenishing the supply and she wouldn’t suffer any long-term physical repercussions. Eventually she was having black spots in her vision and vertigo and she’d done all she could, so she ended the procedure, cleaned up Brent’s arm—her own healed itself—and sat quietly, holding his hand.

She needed to eat, she needed to rehydrate. There was a tiny stream running through a corner of the room and there might be survival rations in one of the stasis keepers, although the packets would be hundreds of years old but probably still edible,but Raeblin couldn’t summon the energy to go explore. Neither did she want to leave Brent’s side.

From the little she’d been told by the other healers, Badari blood took over the bone marrow of the human and then began working on the person’s entire immune system, bringing it to an approximation of Badari efficiency. Of course since she was basically a Generation One Badari, without all the enhancements and changes of the 800 years of experiments, her blood might not work the same kind of miracle as one of the males could achieve for their partner. Claimed mates also acquired a telepathic bond as a result of a transfusion but since she and Brent had no relationship she wasn’t expecting such a link.

But the Great Mother had to agree to allow the miracle to occur because this shouldn’t work at all. Badari and humans weren’t the same species. Even the Khagrish scientist who had done the first Badari-human transfusion had treated the blood in particular ways to make the transfer happen without killing the human woman. Of the transfusions done since, most had been straight from donor to recipient with no processing and all had worked as far as Raeblin was aware. Badari were pretty much universal donors. It was standard practice now for claimed mates, so the couple could share the telepathic bond and eventually have children. Raeblin wasn’t convinced the goddess would forgive her sufficiently in this case to save Brent, who was after all a human and no one’s claimed mate.

Badari blood was magic and the goddess controlled the magic.

His breathing sounded better and his heart was beating more strongly so she forced herself to rise and take a long drink from the stream, which flowed into a rocky basin. When she turned after slaking her thirst and washing her face, she saw there was a short hallway before the room opened out onto asmall grassy meadow, ringed with trees so big she marveled they’d been able to grow in such a constricted space. The soil must be incredibly rich. Drawn by the peace of the night and the call of the three moons, Raeblin stepped across the threshold with a glance at Brent, who lay unmoving.

Normally she wouldn’t leave his side until she knew he’d survive, because the alternative was unthinkable, but the lure of the moonlit glade was too strong. Her inner predator stretched and purred at the idea of moonlight.

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