Page 80 of Rescued

Right now Nate’s negative emotions were coming through their own partial Bond like poisonous gas, making her feel like she was suffocating. All his feelings were so intense—so strong. She could feel his negativity draining her reservoir even though all he was doing was sitting there, hating himself. She needed to get away from him—away from those toxic feelings of self-hatred because he felt bad for hurting her.

At last, to her vast relief, the Com-link crackled to life and a female voice replied.

“Commander Lan’ara, this is the Kindred Mother Ship. We regret to inform you that our Spatial folding equipment is down for routine maintenance and won’t be back up again for several hours. Recommend you wait in place—we have your coordinates and we will send you a signal letting you know when we are able to fold space to bring you back.”

Lan’ara clenched her fists. Several hours? She didn’t know if she could survive Nate’s relentlessly negative emotions until then! But what else could she do?

“Understood,” she said in a strangled voice. “We’ll be waiting for your signal. Commander Lan’ara out.”

The Com-link clicked off and Nate stirred in his chair.

“Well, I guess we’re fucking waiting,” he rumbled.

Lan’ara wanted to answer but all she could do was put her head in her hands. His bad feelings were beating at her like waves and she didn’t even have any of his positive emotions like lust or desire to counter them—it felt like she was drowning!

“Hey, baby—what’s wrong?” Nate looked at her and she felt his anxiety for her coming through loud and clear. It was slightly better than his self-hatred, but it was still a negative emotion, laced with worry.

“Please!” she got out at last. “Your feelings—they’re so strong!”

“I’m sorry!” He unfastened his harness and rose quickly. “I’ll go to the other end of the shuttle.”

“No good,” Lan’ara got out. “Not…far enough.”

She’d always been sensitive to his emotions, even before they’d met in person and started building the Bond between them. But now that they had technically reached the Tasting stage of their Claiming period, the connection was so strong that she would have to go to another planet—hell, another galaxy—to get away from his feelings. Putting him at the other end of the shuttle wasn’t going to help a bit.

“Then go back to your home world,” Nate said quickly. “Please, sweetheart—I don’t want to hurt you anymore!” he added, sounding desperate.

But Lan’ara shook her head.

“Not… enough fuel for another landing and take off,” she tried to explain. “We’ll just have to wait.”

“But my feelings are hurting you!” He raked a hand through his long brown hair. “What the fuck can we do?”

“Once we reach the Mother Ship we can have a priest of the Goddess sever our Bond,” Lan’ara said. It was something she’d been dreading, but it was clearly necessary if she was going to be able to function in the same galaxy as the big human.

“But that’s hours from now,” Nate pointed out. “Is there anything we can do until then?”

If he had been born on Careesa Prime into a world of Empaths, as Lan’ara had been, he would have been able to control his emotions—to shut them off or at least mute them. Unfortunately, humans had no such abilities, so she knew it was useless to ask him not to feel so loudly.

Then an idea came to her—it was unorthodox and it would temporarily strengthen their Bond which was the opposite of what they ought to be doing—but it was the only thing Lan’ara could think of.

She just prayed to the Goddess that it would work—otherwise it felt like her head was going to explode!

FORTY-FOUR

NATE

Nate felt like shit—he was overwhelming Lan’ara with his negative emotions but he couldn’t seem to stop. The worse she looked, the worse he felt because he knew he was making her feel bad and that made him feel even worse. It was a vicious cycle and one he seemed helpless to break.

“I’m so fucking sorry, sweetheart,” he said again. “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

“There might be a way…” Lan’ara was rubbing the raised circular ridges at her temples lightly with her fingertips, as though trying to ward off a migraine. “I don’t know how you’ll feel about it, though.”

“Whatever it is, I’m in,” Nate said quickly. Anything to keep from hurting her anymore than he already had. “Do you want to knock me out? Give me some kind of drug until we can get to the Mother Ship?” he offered.

She frowned.

“I don’t believe the ship’s medical supplies have anything that could render you unconscious. Besides, if you fell into a nightmare, I would still be able to feel it and be unable to wake you up,” she added.

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