Page 9 of Rescued

The two of them turned their broad, toad-like faces to look up at her curiously.

“Why should we stop? Seeing as how this is our job, Miss Lady?” one asked in broadly accented Standard.

Lan’ara didn’t bother to answer him.

“A frame—there should be a stasis frame in here somewhere! Have you seen it?” she demanded.

“The stasis frame? Aye, so we did. We put it in first, since it were so bulky,” the other Brothian said. He pointed to the enormous pile of trash already loaded into the airlock and Davrik saw the corner of a tall black frame poking out of the rubbish.

“Get it out! Get it out right now!” Lan’ara demanded. Her normally soft and soothing voice had turned imperious and commanding and her purple eyes blazed.

Davrik was surprised to see the change in her but he understood—she was defending her mate. Even though she hadn’t met him yet, she knew he was meant for her and she was going to do everything in her power to keep him safe.

It was exactly the way a Kindred warrior would act to protect his mate, he thought. It seemed that the trait of extreme protectiveness carried through, even in this universe where the Kindred were mostly female rather than mostly male.

The Brothians grumbled about undoing all their hard work, but they didn’t dare to disobey Lan’ara when she was glaring at them so sternly. Slowly they cleared the mountain of trash, finally revealing the tall black stasis frame, which was well over two meters high and nearly as wide across.

“That’s it! That’s him!” The relief in Lan’ara’s voice was palpable as she stared up at the male frozen inside the frame. His face was twisted in a rictus of fury and his hands were upraised and clenched into fists, as though he was ready to fight someone.

When he was first getting to know Sonya, Davrik had watched a lot of human movies, as a way to try and understand the culture of his fated mate better. One of those movies had featured something like this, he thought as he stared at the figure in the stasis field. A character had been frozen in a substance called “carbonite” and he had been stuck in a very similar frame.

“We have to get him out of there!” Lan’ara was already reaching for the button which would kill the stasis field.

Davrik put a hand on her wrist.

“Wait. Not here,” he told her. “If what the slaver said was true, he’s already in a state of heightened aggression—it might even be the human version of Rage. You need to unfreeze him someplace quiet and calm, someplace where you can reassure him that he’s safe and no longer a slave.”

“All right. You’re right.” Lan’ara’s hand dropped to her side and she nodded, her eyes still fixed on the frozen features of her fated mate. “It’s just…this is the first time I’ve seen Nate in person—outside of the dreams we shared. I want to talk to him—to comfort him!”

“I understand,” Davrik said quietly. “But let’s at least get him back to the ship first.”

“All right.” Lan’ara frowned. “I think there’s a hover option on this frame—we should be able to float it right out of here.”

They found the controls on the side of the stasis frame and soon it was hovering about a third of a meter off the floor, the hidden motor humming softly. Davrik helped her steer the bulky frame carefully through the corridor and out into the main floor of the Bazaar.

“Can you handle it from here to the ship?” he asked Lan’ara. “I’d like to go talk to that Listerian slaver some more and make sure I can pinpoint Sonya’s location.”

She nodded.

“I’ve got it. I’ll meet you at the ship.”

“I won’t be long.” Davrik hesitated, taking another look at the enraged features and clenched fists of the frozen human male. He was extremely large for a human—as big as a Kindred warrior and Lan’ara was on the small side—at least by Kindred standards. “Look,” he said, touching her shoulder to stop her a moment. “Do me a favor and wait until I get back to the ship to unfreeze him, all right? He looks…agitated.”

She frowned and lifted her chin.

“I can handle him. He’s my fated mate—we’ve been Dream-sharing for months!”

“Well…” Davrik shrugged uneasily. He had a natural urge to protect females—all Kindred did. But he also didn’t want Lan’ara to think that he believed she was less than competent to handle her own mate. “Do what you want,” he said at last. “Just please—be careful.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lan’ara reassured him—a bit frostily, he thought. “See you at the ship.”

“See you at the ship,” Davrik echoed and watched her push the bulky stasis frame down the aisle.

EIGHT

LAN’ARA

Lan’ara got the frame back to where they had docked the ship with no problems. She probably looked like any new slave owner, she speculated—though most of the slaves at the Flesh Bazaar didn’t have to be frozen in a stasis frame.

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