Page 91 of The Alien Warrior's Mate

“Your m—” He choked. “I get kidnapped for a few sun cycles and you mate a human?” Clavas held his head and paced the cell. “This is very bad. The Heronas… was this their plan?” Clavas’s eyes darted back and forth. “Was this…?”

“Slow down, Clavas. Speak plainly. What is the Heronas’s plan?”

“To use the Healer.”

“We know.” Tiegan scowled. “They probed your brain to find his whereabouts so they must have heard of his healing powers and sought his blood.”

“Neh. It’s more than that.” He shook his head and paced his cell, looking agitated. “You know the Heronas have been experimenting on Plutonian captives.”

“It’s why we went to war,” Korben said.

“And they haven’t stopped even after the truce.” Lans snarled. “The bastards.”

“When they probed my mind, they knew exactly what to look for. They found the Healer and they brought him here. It was almost… like they were desperate.”

“Do they know about the sacred lake?” Korben asked.

Clavas nodded. “They do, and they are planning ways to invade it. From what I heard, they’re being cautious. The lake is heavily guarded and so is the Healer right now. They don’t want Plutonians to survive a rescue mission.”

“You know where the Healer is now?” Tiegan spoke through the prison bars.

“When I was in their brain machine, I connected with the Healer temporarily. I have his coordinates in my neural connector memories.”

“I still don’t understand,” Lans murmured. “Why are they so desperate for the Healer all of a sudden?”

“The Red Death that killed our females… it is here now.”

Korben exhaled sharply. “Impossible.”

“Why do you think Ziag wears that mask? The Heronas are being wiped out. Not just their females but their males too. They are scrambling for a solution. It seems they have been for a while. With Plutonian blood, they were able to counteract the effects of the plague, but the medicine from our blood is no longer effective.”

“And so they want humans,” Korben said, putting the pieces together. “Because they have Plutonian blood?”

“Neh. Because they discovered that humans also suffered the plague and their children survived. I do not think the Heronas know that Plutonians and humans can mate. If they did…”

“The blood of their offspring would be almost as strong as the Healer. It would save them,” Korben whispered.

The thought of Sah-ah being turned into an experiment was traumatizing enough. Their future children being used as a Heronas lab rat made Korben want to tear someone’s head off.

“Denizi,” Lans cursed.

“I won’t let that happen.” Korben’s voice rose. His neural connector pulsed a signal through his head. He felt his mate’s emotions zipping through him.Determination and fear.The duality of it drilled down and Korben wrapped his fingers around the iron bars, sensing his mate closing in.

“What do we do now, brother?”

Korben narrowed his eyes. “We wait.”

“Wait for what?” Clavas snapped.

“For Sah-ah.”

Thirty-Five

Sara

Korben was supposedto have sent her a message with his coordinates in case of an emergency, but he didn’t. And the urgency Sara felt pouring through her brain from the neural connector told her she didn’t have time to wait.

“I hope I’m heading in the right direction, Enthara,” Sara murmured as the wind buffeted her curls. She kept her eyes closed, only peering through narrowed slits every now and again to make sure she wasn’t steering Enthara into a mountainside.