Elite Starfighter, Game 3 by Grace Goodwin

7

Darius, Battleship Resolution, Medical Station

“Where is she?Let me see her. Now.” Lily. My pair bond was hurt, and she was here. Somewhere.

“She’s in surgery, sir. You need to calm down and have a seat.” The placating, soothing voice of the medical officer had the opposite effect. I wasn’t calm. I couldn’t do this. Not again.

“Give me a fucking sterile suit. I don’t care what I have to do. I have to get in there.”

The large male officer frowned, clearly out of patience. “You need medical attention yourself, Starfighter. You are covered in sweat and dust, you have blood on your face, and you will do nothing but scare the medical team. So get your ass in that room.” He pointed to a medical treatment room a few paces away marked with the number four. “Get on the exam table and shut the fuck up before I call security.”

Well, this was a battleship, not a civilian hospital. And this medical officer was no low-ranking idiot but a captain. Probably a fully trained physician as well as a soldier. He wasn’t going to budge.

The faster I got my own wounds taken care of, the sooner I could get to Lily.

I walked into the exam room, and the door slid closed behind us, the reflective surface activating to give us privacy as he ran a medical scan.

“Two broken ribs. Second-degree burns on the neck and left hand. A bit of bruising. You’ll be fine.” He gave me the reassurance even as he held a treatment injector to the burned area on the side of my neck. With a quick movement of his hand, the injection activated. The medication flowed into my flesh. It burned like acid, but I didn’t say a word.

“This should take care of any residual bruising as well as speed healing of the burns. I am going to recommend you remain off duty for the next two days.”

“Are we done here?” Lily. I had to get to Lily.

“Not quite.” A second injection followed, this time over my broken ribs. The ache I’d been feeling for the last hour faded at once but was quickly replaced with sharp, stabbing agony that lasted several minutes. When it was over, he held the scanner over my ribs again. “Excellent. Your bones are healthy. The breaks have healed.”

“Great.” My forehead was covered in sweat. I’d had my bones patched before, but that didn’t make it hurt less.

“Yes. I’m prepared to release you from my care. However, you will not be allowed anywhere near your pair bond in your current condition.”

“What condition?”

“You’re filthy. Clean yourself up, Starfighter. I don’t care how in love with you she is; even she won’t want to touch you until you take a shower.”

I stood and walked to see my reflection in the large sliding door. The sight that greeted me was not pleasant. My hair was spiked and grimy. My skin was streaked with paler lines where sweat had created a map through the dust on my face. I probably smelled as bad as I looked.

Damn Vega and every other star. He was right. I could not go to Lily like this.

Waving my hand in front of the door’s release scanner, I waited impatiently, shoving through before it had opened even halfway.

“You’re welcome!” The medical officer’s voice followed me down the corridor, but he was laughing. In fact, I would probably be the laughingstock of the entire battleship in the next few hours. Nothing men liked better than to give one another a hard time for falling in love.

And I wasn’t just in love. I was obsessed. Possessive. Protective. I wanted to lock Lily in our bedroom and never let her out. Keep her naked and sated and safe.

If she’d allow me. Which, based on her reactions during this last mission, was going to be a tough sell. Even if I couldn’t keep a fellow Starfighter out of battle, I could protect her. Move in first in the most dangerous situations. Do everything possible to keep her out of the line of fire.

Whether she liked it or not.

I was not going to lose another person I loved on the battlefield. Never again. And if that made Lily angry, then so be it. I could deal with my woman’s anger. In fact, I would keep her so well pleasured, so in love with me that she would accept my faults, my need to keep her safe. Every time she raged, I would soothe her with pleasure.

Starting now.

Lily, Medical Station, Surgical Recovery

The anesthesia woreoff as if someone had snapped their fingers. One second I was unconscious, the next I was wide awake in a hospital bed of some kind. Taking stock of my situation, I moved bit by bit, testing things out. My leg was sore, and I had a slight headache, but that seemed to be the worst of it.

I sat up, ready to find out what the hell had happened to me.

I remembered being buried in Athena, tons of rock piling on top of my Titan, every alarm and sensor blaring at me that we were in trouble. The sound of Darius yelling my name. Long minutes of darkness when I was completely alone.

And pain. Mindless, staggering pain.

In my leg.

Lifting the sheet covering me, I looked at the leg in question and frowned. There was a transparent bandage covering half of my thigh. No stitches. No blood. Just a weirdly large, sticky bandage that I could see my skin through. It looked fine. Maybe I’d been dreaming.

I wiggled my toes. Flexed my foot. Bent my knee. Tried to lift my leg.

“Damn it!” That hurt.

“Don’t move yet. The bone isn’t completely healed and won’t be for several more hours.” A doctor or nurse or medic, I had no idea which, walked around the foot of my bed with a scanner of some kind, reading data I couldn’t see.

“Hours?”

She looked up, and I was struck by the brightness of her pale gray eyes. “Yes, the femur is a very large bone in human anatomy, and yours was snapped in three places.”

“Three places?” I felt like a fool repeating everything she said, but I was trying to figure out how a broken bone could heal in just a few hours.

“Yes. Are you in pain?”

I thought for a moment. “Only when I try to move it.”

“Excellent. That will improve as the bone continues to mend. By tomorrow morning you should be fully healed.”

“How is that possible?”

“We surgically implanted osteobots along the breaks. They will rebuild your bone.” She patted me on the ankle. “Don’t worry, the diaphysis will actually be stronger than it was before.”

“The what?”

“The long part of your bone. In the middle.”

Was she trying to make me feel stupid?

“Normally we would simply do an injection, but your bone fragments required realignment as well.”

Fragments? Gross. I suddenly could picture a surgeon with a knife and a pair of pliers trying to move pieces of my femur around. Not cool. This conversation was making me sick.

Don’t ask.

Don’t you bloody ask…

“Where’s Darius?”

Damn it. Idiot. He wasn’t here. That was where he was. Somewhere else. Maybe he was hurt.

“He was creating a disturbance after his treatment. I do not know where he is now.”

“A disturbance? What kind of treatment? Is he hurt?”

She sighed, but the sound was more tired than anything else, so I let it go.

“Let’s see. Elite Starfighter Darius. Ah yes, here he is.” She scrolled through the data as I would have scrolled through a social media feed on my phone, pausing to scan, then moving her fingers again. “Two broken ribs. Bruises. A few minor burns. He was treated and released. He’s going to be fine.”

Relief flooded me and I tried to hold on to my anger from before, during the mission, but it drained out of me like someone had pulled the plug on a tubful of bathwater. Gone.

“How do I find him?”

She grinned. “I’ll put out a shipwide call. In the meantime”—her smile was infectious—“you have other visitors. If you feel up to it?”

“Who?”

The door slid open, and two people I had once believed I would never, ever meet came into the room like they owned the place. “Lily!”

The nurse left the room as I looked them over, a huge smile breaking on my face. I knew them well, from the unmistakable Starfighter uniforms to the faces I’d grown to care about back on Earth. “Jamie? Mia? Oh my God, what are you doing here? How did you even know I was here?”

“Oh shit, your accent is even cuter in person.” Jamie clapped her hands and came around to my left side. “I have got to learn how to talk British.”

“I’m stationed here. I followed your mission at MCS.” Mia rolled her eyes at Jamie, her thick German accent making me smile even more than Jamie’s exuberant American one. “Jamie has been driving me absolutely insane. Since we knew you were coming, every single moment she’s been talking about the three of us meeting.”

“No, not meeting, going out clubbing. Dancing. We need to get drunk and dance and drive our men crazy.”

Mia chuckled. “A tight black dress and a rave would certainly make Kass lose his mind a bit.”

Jamie was smiling. “Oh yeah. Alex wouldn’t last an hour. He’d throw me over his shoulder and have his way with me in a bathroom stall.”

I nearly choked on my own spit. “What?”

Jamie sat down on the side of my bed and took my hand. “Don’t tell me Darius isn’t smoking hot and totally in love with you?”

“He’s definitely smoking hot.”

Mia, brilliant, annoying Mia caught on to what I didn’t say. “But he’s not in love with you? How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. But he’s not.”

“Have you, you know, had sex?” Jamie asked.

“Yes.”

“Was it good sex?” Mia asked.

I had to be three shades of red by now. Proper ladies did not discuss this kind of thing. “I think so.”

“You think so?” Jamie, so forward. Blunt. She was exactly the way I’d always imagined Americans to be. I simultaneously judged her for it and wished I wasn’t so reserved. I had my maniacally controlling mother to thank for that.

Mia watched me, her gaze more intense than I was prepared to defend against. “You were a virgin.”

“Mia!” Brilliant. Did I have the word virgin written across my forehead in red ink?

Jamie leaned back with a gasp but didn’t let go of my hand. “Oh dear. Well, did he take care of you? Was it good? Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Did you come?” Mia asked. “Have an orgasm?”

Now who was the blunt one?

“Or two?” Jamie added.

“Yes. It was good. Sex isn’t the problem.”

Jamie wiggled her hips to sit even closer. “Spill.”

Mia glanced over her shoulder toward the closed door. “Are those things soundproof?”

She looked from Jamie, who shrugged, to me.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Well, let’s keep our voices down, shall we? Our men are right outside.”

“What?” I hissed, not a bit happy to hear this news. We were discussing my sex life with two alien men I didn’t know standing right outside the door?

Mia leaned close, as did Jamie, until I felt like we were in a footballers’ huddle, foreheads nearly touching. “So, what is going on with you and Darius?”

“And how can we help?” Jamie asked.

I squeezed both of their hands. “You already have. It’s so wonderful to meet you both in person. I can’t believe we are on another planet.”

“Yeah, and back home everyone still thinks Starfighter Training Academy is just a game.”

“How many people do you suppose are playing right now?” Mia mused. “Right this very moment?”

“Tens of thousands,” I guessed.

Jamie sighed. “Well, I wish they would hurry up and beat the game. We need them. This war is not going well, in case you didn’t notice.” She glanced down at my bandaged leg, still uncovered from when I’d moved the sheet. “What am I talking about? Of course you noticed.”

The war wasn’t going well? What did that mean?

“Forget about the war,” Mia insisted. “Tell us about Darius. What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. The sex was great. Then we went to our first mission briefing, and I found out he was already a Titan…with a different partner.”

“Who?” Jamie asked. “A woman? Is he pair bonded to someone else?”

“Did she die?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t said a word about it, and I haven’t had time to ask.”

Jamie winced in empathy. “Well, if she died, I could see how he wouldn’t want to talk about it. Might be too painful.”

Exactly. “Which is why I don’t think he’s in love with me. The sex is good, but there’s something missing, you know? He doesn’t talk to me. He’s not honest. He’s keeping secrets. And worse than that…”

I stalled, but Mia was having none of it. “Worse than that is what?”

“He was completely psycho on our last mission. Shoving me out of the way, ordering me to wait for him instead of doing my job. He treated me like I had no skill and no idea what I was doing.”

“You’re an Elite Starfighter. Damn right you know what you’re doing.” Jamie jumped to my defense.

Mia, however, had grown pensive. “Maybe you should give him a chance. If he lost his pair bonded in battle, maybe he’s afraid it will happen again. Maybe he’s afraid to lose you, too.”

“Maybe.” The idea was worth considering, but even that wouldn’t excuse not telling me about his past. I’d felt like an idiot in that briefing room, everyone there knowing his history but me. Me! When I was supposed to be the one he loved, his pair bonded, the one he shared everything with and trusted above all others. His freaking wife, for goodness’ sake. Or as close to a marriage as these Velerions got.

The nurse came back into the room with a smile pasted on her lips, the same smile I’d seen on nurses’ faces back on Earth. The I’m-here-and-it’s-time-for-everyone-else-to-leave smile. “Let’s get you cleaned up, Lily.”

I glanced down at my hands, clasped on either side by my friends, and noticed they were covered in dirt. “I guess I really need a bath.”

Jamie laughed. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but you stink, girlfriend.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“We’ll be back to check on you tomorrow. General Romulus promised me you would be given quarters on board the ship as well as a day or two off to heal properly.”

“The nurse said I’d be fully healed by tomorrow morning.”

Jamie slapped me on the shoulder and it stung. “Woman, take the day off. Trust me. Speaking of…” She glanced down at a display on her forearm. “We’re due for Queen Bitch patrol in half an hour.”

“What?” I asked.

Jamie stood and gave me a quick, gentle hug. “You’ve heard of Queen Raya and her planet-destroying missiles?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m on missile patrol, saving the galaxy one blown-up missile at a time.”

“What happens if you miss one?”

Mia and Jamie both froze, but it was Mia who spoke. “Not funny. Not going to happen. Not on my watch.”

Jamie clarified. “Mia finds ’em and I kill ’em. Most of the time. Sometimes I find one first, but that’s rare. I’m only one small ship, and Mia has a freaking army of satellites, drones, and scanners.”

“My minions are very well trained,” Mia agreed.

“They’re computers.”

“Very well-trained computers.”

They walked toward the door but turned to wave farewell. “Get better!” Jamie ordered.

“Give him time.” Mia’s words were no less an order.

“I’ll try.”

The door slid open, and I caught the barest glimpse of two men I recognized from their game avatars, Kassius and Alexius. The alien hotties we’d all oohed and ahhed over every time we played.

The only one missing was mine.

“Let’s get you ready for the next round of visitors.” The nurse’s false cheer and wink were appreciated but wasted on me. Maybe it wasn’t false, but I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. I didn’t trust others easily. And when I put weight on my leg, I felt anything but cheery.

“Can we not talk? I’m sorry, but I’m tired, my leg hurts, and I don’t feel like saying much.”

“Of course.” Cheery or not, she was kind. That I appreciated very much as she helped me move, step by agonizing step, toward what appeared to be a shower with a seat in the center.

Thank all that was holy, because there was no way I could stand up long enough to take a shower.

I didn’t hear the door open. The nurse turned in alarm, then smiled. “Starfighter Darius, I was wondering when you would appear.”

“Now. And I will take care of her.”

“Of course.” The nurse smiled and nodded her head without the slightest protest. The next thing I knew, I was in Darius’s arms, cradled against his chest like a baby. I was wearing an alien version of a hospital gown, which, as most hospital attire was wont to do, didn’t cover much.

Darius stopped at the bed and pulled the blanket loose to cover me, tucking me into his arms as gently as he could.

“What are you doing? I’m supposed to take a shower.”

“I will take care of you in our private quarters, Lily. I’m here now, and nothing else is going to hurt you tonight.”

Except you,I thought, but I laid my head against his shoulder and didn’t argue as he carried me.