Page 56 of A Delicate Conquest

That told Mavrel everything about what Zharek was thinking.

“You can’t… reverse death. Evenyoucan’t. That would be an affront to Kaiin himself.”

“The God of Death is just a construct, created to allow us to conceptualize death. We have been rather generous to him in recent times.Toogenerous. I don’t feel like giving him much more.”

“But…” Mavrel shook his head. “It’s impossible. Consciousness has already left the body.”

The look in Zharek’s eyes only served to deepen Mavrel’s unease.

“What is consciousness?” Zharek asked softly. “What are memories? A series of electrical signals, chemicals dancing between synapses? Differentiated cells with different parts of the genome expressed? It’s less like biology and more like magic from the gods, isn’t it?”

“Consciousness…” Mavrel thought about theSylth,about the way he conversed with her sometimes, forgetting she was artificial.

TheSylthnever stayed the same.

New information was always being acquired.

Thanks to millions of continual inputs from all of their ships across the Nine Galaxies, she was constantly changing and evolving.

“But consciousness is just one part of the equation. There’s also the reaction caused by theinteraction.”

Mavrel drew in a sharp breath. “Has this human… triggered your…”

“Mating Fever? No. Her cells are in a state of mitotic arrest, and she is contained within the stasis tank. There is no activerelease of pheromones. I only discovered she was my match when I studied her genome.”

A relief,Mavrel thought silently, for he couldn’t even begin to fathom the horror of having one’s Mating Fever triggered… only to descend into agony and insanity because of unrequited biological needs.

“Do you know why I tricked you, Mavrel? Why I forced the issue between you and your human?”

“I thought it was simply because you enjoy playing god.”

Zharek let out a disdainful snort. “It’s because you were being a stubborn idiot. Anything could have happened to her in the meantime.Anything.She could have been harmed or incapacitated. Another male could have taken her.”

Another male?Mavrel growled, momentarily seeing a haze of crimson.Never.

“One must seize such opportunities. You never know when you might get such a chance again. It might never repeat.” Zharek stared wistfully at the suspended human. “My path is going to be far more difficult than yours, but I’m going to find a way.”

If there was anyone who could pull off such an impossible feat, it was Zharek.

Mavrel didn’t dare ask how he planned on going about it.

And besides, who was he to judge or condemn? He’d already found his mate. He couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult this was for the medic.

Suddenly, Zharek’s actions took on an entirely new dimension, and the last shreds of Mavrel’s anger slipped away.

He felt something he’d rarely felt before—pity.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. If there’s such a thing as gods, they’re testing me right now. Good thing I’m probably the only person in the Universe who can potentially do something about it. It’smyburden to bear, so don’t give me your pity.”

“Does Tarak know about this?”

“He knows of the human but not about my…predicament.You owe me a favor, so I’m calling it in. I expect your complete silence on this matter. Do you understand?”

“If it were anyone else, I’d be up in his office already, but since it’syou…”

“Good. So we understand one another then. Let me have this. I just need time to figure things out.”

Mavrel thought for a moment. “Very well. But I’ll be keeping an eye on you. If I feel you’re going too far, I’ll have no choice but to alert the boss.”

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