The Siren's Call (Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance) (FORCED TO SERVE) (25 page)

“Because I once trained to be a warrior, I am in the unique position of being able to both inflict harm and to heal it as needed, much like Malachi. After healing so many hosts in his lifetime, and being in so many different species, the demon’s understanding of how to heal a physical body is quite remarkable,” Boca said.

“You’re joking—right?” Gwen asked.

“No,” Boca said simply.

Gwen looked at Ania, who only shrugged. “Lifting your shoulders and not knowing seems to be your answer for everything these days,” Gwen said sharply, aggravated that neither female was offering much help to Zade.

“I am the peace keeper, not the spiritual counselor on the Liberator,” Ania said firmly, but she still had to fight the twitching of her lips over the glare it earned her.

Gwen dropped her gaze to the male still lying in her lap. “Do you think we’re getting the spiritual counselor back?”

“I think the Creators will do with Dorian what they deem is necessary,” Ania said softly, wanting to ease Gwen’s concerns. “They only seek the highest good. Dorian devoted himself to following their will for him in his life, including being the only Siren I ever knew who willingly practiced celibacy. I feel sure they are working to heal him in some manner. After all, they have already sent him a very compassionate mate. This is proof, yes?”

“I hope so. I really do want to help him, even if I lose the male he’s been this week,” Gwen said. “Though it really was nice not to deal with his pompously enlightened attitude for a while.”

“I know how you feel about him, and so do the Creators. It is my hope you will one day stop seeing your compassionate spirit as a weakness,” Ania said. “It was a hard lesson for me to learn. I pray it comes more easily to you.”

All heads turned as the door opened. Synar and Chiang walked in with matching glares of disapproval.

“You were not released from Medical,” Synar said, speaking only to Ania as he crossed the mat with his shoes on. Swearing as her gaze fell accusingly to his feet, he glared harder. “I need to keep my footwear on. Dorian can cleanse the area later. I’m not staying and neither are you. Malachi is in Medical recovering, which is where you are going this instant. Doctor’s orders.”

“What doctor?” Ania said on a snort. “The senior medics are not really healers, Liam.”

“No, the medics aren’t, but I am. They’re my orders,” Chiang said sharply. “It seems Captain Synar pulled some strings to have my healer status reinstated. Doctor sounds better than lieutenant to me anyway. So let your mate see you back to Medical, Peace Keeper Looren. And do something about the whiny demon in the bed next to you complaining. Apparently, the stasis machine Boca and I built for him wasn’t perfect. His legs are too weak for him to go running around creating havoc at the moment.”

Ania sighed and reached out a hand to Synar. He pulled her up gently with Boca boosting her from behind. Then Synar scooped her into his arms and started walking off with her.

“You could have brought a levitating transport,” Ania chastised, sighing to feel his strong arms around her. She had missed sleeping next to him all those nights in Medical.

“I’m not on good terms with our new doctor right now. I’m a bit afraid to ask him for anything more,” Synar whispered. “Plus this way, I at least get to hold you.”

Ania laughed at how much his words reflected her feelings. She reached out and opened the door for them to help them leave.

When the door clicked behind them, Chiang put a hand out to Boca. “Come,” he ordered.

“I will stay with Commander Jet and help watch over Lieutenant Zade,” she said.

“Sorry,
Ensign Ador
. You’re assigned to me now. I’m your new supervisor. So get off your Sumerian backside and follow me to my new quarters next to blasted Medical. We need to talk,” Chiang said, his tone and glare not allowing for argument. “Besides—the commander has me on a bloody open channel today. We’ll be back here in two minutes if she needs us. Right, Gwen?”

He turned his glare on the female sitting calmly with her mate’s head in her lap as she played with his hair. Chiang rolled his eyes at how utterly feminine—and tamed—Gwen looked. Sirens and their damn proficiency with contenting females. Still, he couldn’t let the opportunity to point it out to her slide.

“Not all that long ago, Dorian Zade was stunned unconscious on the floor of your room by your weapon. And I had to keep you from kicking him while he was unconscious. Now you’re the perfect nurturing female petting her sick mate,” Chiang said sharply.

Gwen smiled at Chiang’s irritation, unoffended by his tirade. She didn’t even have the urge to make him pay for the insults, which were nothing more than the truth of those moments. There was a lot to be said for sexual satisfaction breeding contentment. And maybe it had given her the wisdom to ignore male aggression that had nothing to do with her.

“I told you earlier why I’m feeling this way about him. So stop taking your pisser of a mood out on me. I got enough problems on this ship as it is,” Gwen replied.

“Yes—and now your problems on the Liberator are mine as well.” Chiang closed his eyes on his angry outburst and swore. “You’re right. Being angry is not going to help change what must be done. I apologize. Do you wish Boca to stay with you?”

Gwen looked at Zade’s peaceful countenance. He appeared to be sleeping, but she knew better. And according to Ania, there was nothing she or anyone could do until he woke up. There was no sense in them all just sitting around waiting.

“I’ll call after he comes out of this if we need help,” Gwen said. “He seems to be in a trance state. Ania said it could last for hours. If I get lonely, I’ll contact Sarinnea. Sounds like you have enough to deal with at the moment.”

“I have made my decision, if that’s what you mean. Captain Synar is leaving it to me to inform her of it and obtain her compliance,” Chiang bit off the harsh pronouncement.

“Am I the ‘her’ of which you speak so mysteriously?” Boca asked with a frown.

“Yes. And do not attempt to intuit the reasons. I do not wish the energy of my yelling to be in Zade’s meditation room when he awakes. He distrusts me enough as it is,” Chiang said morosely. “Let’s go.”

Boca sighed and followed the angry male out the door. If Chiang was going to be her new supervisor on the Liberator, they were going have to work out their differences.

When the door clicked behind the last of her angry friends and crew members, Gwen sighed at the peace that settled over the room once more.

“Zade—everyone’s going nuts without that calming effect you drop over the ship. I seem to be the only person on the receiving end of it currently,” she teased, brushing back his short hair. “I get it now. I get why the Liberator needs you and why you chose to do this work when you’re the fiercest warrior aside from Ania that I’ve ever met. So come on back and do your counseling thing, okay? I promise not to harass you over it again.”

She received no answer, but Gwen kept her heart chakra open to him. She wanted her love and acceptance to be the first thing he felt when he came back.

Chapter 17

Chiang opened the door of his new quarters and stepped back to let Boca walk inside.

“This room cannot be your quarters. It is a room for patients,” she said in dismay, looking around. “Where is your private area?”

“Evidently I don’t have any now, but there’s a sleeping room smaller than my old room behind that first door,” Chiang said bitterly. “My bathroom is larger, but that’s because it has to service patients when needed. I guess my privacy is a thing of the past.”

Boca firmed her mouth. “I am sorry you have been forced into this position. Obviously, you somehow think I am to blame. I do not see how.”

Chiang walked to the desk and pulled out the chair to sit. “No. Actually, Zade is to blame for me being forced back into medical service. You are to blame for other things.”

He opened the desk drawer and pulled out the controller device Boca had surgically removed from her mate’s hand.

“I hope you took good notes when you removed this because you and the senior medics are going to have to install it in my hand soon,” Chiang said sharply, watching what little color Boca had in her face fade away. “But I intend to adjust it down to the lowest shock setting before you do.”

“But I thought…Jurek…or even Captain Synar…” Boca said, the statements offered haltingly as she met Chiang’s fierce glare.

“I cannot allow any other male to control you,” Chiang said flatly, holding her gaze. “Not now. Not ever. I’d kill any male who tried to harm you. It is not my choice, but that’s just how it is.”

“But you haven’t…we have never…” Boca tried to draw in a breath, her chest constricting to think of Chiang having that level of control over her. She would have been less of afraid of Malachi having it, even though she quite understood the demon’s true nature was self-serving.

When Chiang stood and crossed the floor to her, she had to tilt her head back and up to keep holding his gaze. His hand reached out and gripped her shirt lifting her up to her toes. Fear, greater than any she had ever felt, robbed her of breath totally when he growled at her, an animal-like sound she had never heard uttered by a male before.

Then blissful darkness claimed her.

His anger dissipated instantly when Chiang felt Boca suddenly go limp in his hands. What in Helios had just happened? He had intended to kiss her, not hurt her. Didn’t she know that?

“Shades of Kellnor—Boca.
Boca
,” he called urgently, lifting her into his arms, carrying her to his tiny bedroom to lay her gently on the tiny bed. He wanted to hold her, to pick her up and rock her, but he didn’t dare. He was too damn afraid of what it might do to him, and what he might be tempted to do to her.

“Wake up, Ensign Ador. That’s an order,” Chiang said brusquely, following it with Greggor curses when she still didn’t move.

He went to the bathroom and rummaged in the medical kit there until he found a cold compress. Crumpling it to activate the gel, he felt the cold seeping throughout it as he brought it back to her and put it on Boca’s forehead. Touching her again was his undoing. He wanted to weep over having caused her to faint.

“You’re supposed to be some blasted fierce warrior female and yet you pass out on me when I’m mad. I just wanted to kiss you to ease my own torment that they’re sending you back to those bastards that hurt you, and I can’t stop it. You need to get your warrior act together if indeed you are one. Boca—I’m the good guy, not the one you have to genuinely fear,” Chiang insisted, hands trembling as he checked her vitals, which appeared mostly normal.

Had she gone into some kind of trance to escape him?

Chiang groaned at the thought and put his face between her breasts. He wanted to cry, scream, and berate the Creators for their role in their lives. He’d never been afraid for a female before, never worried that he would prove insufficient to protect one. Every insecurity he had was evident to him in the lax body of the only female he’d ever not been able to deny wanting.

“I want to run away with you to someplace where we can live peacefully and never have to be exposed to this kind of life again. We’ll plant a garden, work with our hands,” Chiang promised, whispering against her. “We’ll grow old together and make bets on which one of us outlives the other.”

He felt her small hands stroking his hair and turned his lips into one of them.

“Thank the Creators. Please do not pass out to escape me again. I know you don’t want this connection to me. I don’t want it to you either. And I’m not the best person to go with you back to the nightmare you escaped, but I’m going anyway. You have no choice except to get used to it,” Chiang said. “I have no choice except to go.”

“I knew you were going to be a problem for me the first time I saw you, Chiang of Greggor,” Boca said hoarsely, putting a hand to the cooling gel pack and pressing it to her eyes.

“I feel I am being forced into doing what I do not wish to do, but I can’t let you go with someone else just because I’m afraid for us both,” Chiang said.

“I am afraid, but I’m doing it anyway,” Boca said firmly. “I must go. There are so many captive females still there, Chiang—not just that one official’s daughter. I have to try and free them.”

“Are you really the fierce warrior Gwen thinks you are?” he demanded.

Boca adjusted the cooling pad on her forehead. Her head was throbbing from her momentary unconsciousness, but her mind was clear.

“I don’t know if I am or not. My Sumerian mate denied me the chance to find out. Are you going to try to use our connection to deny me the same?” she asked.

Chiang growled again and climbed over her in the bed. He lay down by her side, his arm across her. “I am not your mate. What say do I have in the matter?”

Boca closed her eyes and pulled the cooling cloth over them. She was silent while she thought. The Greggor’s desire called to her to meet it, but once she did, it was like handing him an invisible controller. She was Sumerian. She would be energetically bound to do as he demanded if she committed to him as his mate. Disobedience would mentally damage her.

She thought of the women on Lotharius, those who would die for entertainment, those who feared to speak of their pain. She thought of those who were stolen from their true mates. If she could affect change in that society, perhaps it would satisfy the warrior spirit that had always lived within her. Perhaps then she could tolerate being someone’s mate again.