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She whirled around toward the door, but he grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to him, covering her mouth with one large hand. Fear churned inside her, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth, and she thought she might vomit. Desperate to escape, she lashed out at Davin, kicking and clawing at his shins and face.

She knew better.

When he wrapped both his hands around her throat and squeezed -- both preventing her from crying out and effectively stopping her assault -- she remembered that fighting was useless. This man, like her deceased mate, didn’t care if he hurt her. He didn’t care if hekilledher. He’d come here to take her back to Gothe’mar. Dead or alive.

“Gamin promised you to me in the event he died on this Universe-bedamned world. I get to fuck you until I’m tired of you, then I get to kill you any way I see fit.” His face was inches from hers. In her collapsing sight, he was all she could see. Little dots began to invade her vision, and her lungs burned with the need for air. “I rather think I’d like to be soaked in your blood as I fuck you… as you die.”

She couldn’t fight against his greater strength if she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe unless he chose to let her. Gripping his wrists weakly, she quit struggling. Still he held on.

His eyes glistened with battle lust, and she realized he might not take her back to Gothe’mar to end her life after all. Eyes glazed in ecstasy, his pulse rate quickening -- his addiction for blood was overriding his common sense.

Two things passed through Akahana’s mind before she passed out. The first was to wonder how Davin had been able to transport into a secure area of Medical Command. The second was an instinctive cry for help…

To Taber.

Chapter Four

Taber sat straight up in his bed. Sweat poured from his body. His heart raced and his chest felt like someone was squeezing it with a vise. At first he thought he was having a heart attack, but then he felt Akahana.

She was hurt, and in extreme danger.

Throwing the covers back, he took only enough time to pull on a pair of pants. Grabbing his gun and communicator, he signaled Mikkarn and Kiril and Khan on the run. “Something’s happening to Akahana,” he snapped.

“Impossible,” Kiril responded. “That’s the most secure section of Earthside Medical Command and, quite possibly, the whole planet.”

“If it’s impossible, then someone here has done something, and you have a traitor in your midst. Akahana is near death.”

“I’m on the way.” Khan was all business. He didn’t question, he simply acted. It was a mark of a good commander. He had nothing to gain by asking for more information at this point, and the life of an innocent to lose if he delayed. Not for the first time, Taber was impressed with the man’s ability to cut through the bullshit and dig out the important information.

Taber reached Akahana’s room at the same time Mikkarn did. “Should we transport inside?” Taber asked. “Catch anyone inside by surprise?”

“If we do that, we’ll have no way of knowing what we’re actually getting into until we’re right in the middle of it. Kiril will be here in two minutes. Our best bet will be to enter here and deal with whatever is inside until he and Khan arrive.”

Mikkarn punched in his access code to Akahana’s door and crouched as he covered Taber. Moving quickly inside the darkened room to the cover of an extended wall, Taber carefully peeked around it. He saw Akahana and Davin outlined in the light of the bathroom.

Akahana’s body was limp, held up only by Davin’s grip around her neck. Taber could no longer feel her presence. Blind fury overwhelmed him. Instead of rushing the man, he simply took aim and pulled the trigger.

Davin moved just as Taber fired, and the shot went wide. Tile from the bathroom wall exploded around Davin’s head and shoulders. He drew his own weapon and fired in Taber’s direction. Taber fired again, this time catching Davin in the upper thigh. The exploding tip of the bullet blew his leg apart, and Davin crumpled to the ground.

That didn’t stop the Gothe’maran warrior, though. He fired several more times before pointing his destabilizer at Akahana’s head. Before he could pull the trigger, Khan’s voice bellowed over the noise. “You will stop, Davin!”

It was enough to make the man hesitate. Taber would have fired again, but Khan’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

Then Davin was gone. Transported back to wherever he had come from.

Taber ran to Akahana’s side and would have picked her up, but Mikkarn stayed him and began examining her. Taber whirled on Khan. “You wanna tell me why you stopped me from blowing his brains all over the wall?”

Khan’s outward appearance was calm and emotionless. God only knew what the man was truly feeling. “Because Davin obviously has his own agenda. I need to know what it is with regard to Akahanaandthe rogue faction.”

“I thought you guys said you had all of them in custody?”

“Considering the fact that Davin was able to transport directly into a secure facility within Medical Command, I’d say there are more out there sympathetic to… something.”

Mikkarn ran a handheld scanner over Akahana and shook his head. “She’s got major damage to her trachea and hypoxia to her brain. She’s lucky I thought to implant an anti-transport chip under her skin. Only a transporter with the proper code can move her.” He looked to Kiril, who had moved in beside Taber. “She’s alive. Barely. But without a healing tube, she’ll die.” His gaze shifted to Taber. “The problem is, I can’t be sure the tube will work on her again. I can’t guarantee she’ll ever wake up, Taber.”

“What do I have to lose?” Taber suspected he sounded as bleak as he felt.

“Nothing. Akahana’s dead if we do nothing.”

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