Page 2 of Healing the Leonid Doctor’s Heart (Felix Orbus Galaxy #6)

“ S omeone better be bleeding. A lot.” Marcus slammed the button that worked the sliding silver doors of his quarters.

Abi was there. Abigail, in her pale pink dress and her blonde and silver hair up in a ponytail, with a startled look in her blue-gray eyes.

His heart was betraying him. His memories. His professional courtesy and ethics and everything, fleeing away in a haze of sleepy confusion and conflicting thoughts and urges.

Abigail was his patient—had been his patient—a trafficked, kidnapped human that was not supposed to end up anywhere in his galaxy. She was the classic definition of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And every time she smiled, Marcus wondered if she was supposed to be in his corner of the universe after all.

You can’t wonder that. You can’t flirt with a kidnapped human Queen who will probably want to get the hell off this ship at the first opportunity.

But he forced enthusiasm into his voice and moved his arm out of the doorframe, inviting her in with a step back. “Abigail! Hi.”

“I know it’s been a big day, but I missed you at dinner.

I asked Kamau if I could bring you a tray,” she said in her sweet, low voice.

Throaty, but not in the way some of the famous Leopardine chanteuses forced their voices to sound throaty, as if they were about to seduce you with their purring.

Abigail’s voice always made him think of deep things.

Valleys. Rivers. Dark nests of blankets curled around lovers.

Been too long. Been too long since I was in someone’s valley or felt that warm river running around me.

Been too long since I shared a bed—and I never will again.

That’s a given at this age, with any available Queens being snapped up by the younger Knights.

Not some old, broken King like me. Certainly not one like me, no big haul of credits, not vast estates to lure her with. ..

That’s all those fuzzy feelings are. Confusion and memories of old happiness. Move on, Marcus.

“Thank you for the dinner. You didn’t have to do that, but it was very thoughtful. Have you been to see Chandra?”

“I did! She’s adorable. I’m spending more shifts in the nursery this week. Ever since your big meeting on Leonid-One, where you revealed your findings about your... How would you word it?”

“I presented several parts of interest to the medical community at that meeting. Chromosomal compatibility serum and subsequent injections to make human Queens mimic Felid heat cycles is probably the briefest way to put it.” Marcus took the tray and set it down on the small round table for two.

To Felids, it was average height. He hadn’t had one of the human Queens over to his quarters or sitting at his table before.

When Abigail hesitated, he motioned for her to sit down, and he could see just how tiny she seemed in comparison, with all the Felid-sized furnishings so close around her.

Some stupid lustful urge welled up in him when he thought about how they would fit together—and that made him... confused. Angry with himself.

She was your patient!

Everyone on board this ship is your patient! That’s how it goes when you work on a long-haul ship that is required to have a medical officer, fool!

Why do I need to think these thoughts? I had a wife. A Queen of my own. I had a chance at a family. I’m not some young Knight. I don’t... I don’t need this.

Doesn’t mean I don’t get to want it sometimes, when I’m weak.

Abigail’s smile made him weak.

“Right, all of those findings mean Layla could use more help taking care of Alana and Chance. Layla says she’s crazy busy with people seeking information about the treatment program. Leonid families have been calling all week. Lots of people want your help, huh?”

“As the Information Officer, it falls on her to root through the inquiries. If this continues and surrogates can be lined up, it seems that we’ll be turned from a freighter to a medical ship.

It’ll cost a stack of credits, but it’s a possibility in the not-so-distant future.

As for now, Rupex has generously said the Comet Stalker can be a floating clinic if need be, even though there’s really no work.

Yet. My treatment works with humans and, perhaps, infertile Felid Queens. Infertile— not sterilized.”

“I see.”

And that was it. Abi smiled and leaned her chin on her hand. She was content to sit in silence with him, like he’d been content to sit in silence with her, or to talk to her when she first came out of her neurosuppressed state.

“Sorry. Rambling on. All of this medical and logistical mess isn’t very stimulating conversation.

” Marcus remembered his manners as he tore into hot and spicy goat curry, using millet flats to sop up all the broth.

“Kamau can cook, can’t he?” His absent appetite returned with a vengeance.

“This is the best of Servali cuisine right here.”

“I’m learning so much about all the different cuisines. Servali, Tigerite, Leopardine—what’s Leonid food like?”

Abigail changed topics easily. Their conversation always flowed, and that was dangerously delightful.

Someone you feel at ease with... It’s a gift the young ones don’t understand, Marcus thought, licking his lips free of the heavy sauce. “Simple but rich. Satisfying. Steaks, tubers, roasted meats, fish from the tropical waters near the Leonid moons, all that sort of thing.”

“Sounds delicious. Sapien-Three food is... Well. I don’t think I should tell you about it while you’re eating.”

He laughed. “I’m a medical professional. I’ve seen things that would make Rupex faint.”

They laughed together at that, imagining the fierce Leonid captain and King of the Comet Stalker fainting at anything.

“It wasn’t so bad in my case. I had a good job.

Nice little apartment. I was near a shuttle point for the Milky Way Intergalactic Port, so that meant we had a lot of intergalactic and international cuisine.

All in boxes and cans, of course, but I could usually buy the canned things, sometimes even the frozen things, not just the dehydrated bits. ”

Marcus nodded, dipping a flat into the curry and pulling the thick, spicy mixture into its center, folding it so it formed a little shell of warm goodness. He held it out to her, belatedly realizing she didn’t have a plate.

“Ooh, it’s dripping!” Abi said, and before either of them could think of a Plan B, she was biting into it while he held it.

While he fed her.

Everything in him seemed to race, burn, and boil, and all he could do to let it out was to let his tail fly frantically back and forth as it hung down around his ankles.

He had done this with his Queen—his Kaya, the most beautiful Servali Queen in the universe.

Surely feeling these feelings was wrong?

His time with Kaya was so short. They were separated more than they were together; he with his position on a long-haul freighter ship, she staying put to help run the family business.

She’d fed him often, every time he stopped by the little restaurant her mother owned, a spoonful of something hot and spicy or warm and comforting. It kept happening, visit after visit, until he realized she was the hottest, most comforting thing there, and he wanted to make her his.

“Oops!” Abi caught the round as he dropped it from his paw, scrambling to get her hand under it as it splattered on the table and splashed her pink dress, dotting it with reddish-brown.

“I’m sorry,” he panted.

Why am I out of breath? I’m not exerting myself.

Bastet’s whiskers, am I holding my breath because I’m nervous? I thought I only did that during emergency surgeries these days...

“I should have let you rest. I’m so sorry,” Abi reached for a napkin and started to wipe her hands off.

“It wasn’t your fault. I’m not... I’m not tired. Today was hard. Happy, but hard. All the thoughts that you can’t quiet, you see. I lost my wife and cubs right at the beginning of the Queen Fever outbreak. I’ve told you?”

She nodded, sympathy in her eyes. “You talked to me a lot when I was too weak to talk myself,” Abi said softly. “I didn’t think about what it must be like, delivering cubs when you lost yours.”

“It’s the best and worst thing, all at once.

” He shrugged. “And I can’t tell the others that.

Not these young families, you know. I worked so hard for this, in their honor, my cubs’ honor, my Queen’s honor.

.. And it’s not like I would have changed anything, simply because it was hard.

” Marcus stopped fiddling with his spoon and bowl, wondering how such steady paws could suddenly feel so much like trembling.

She’s right. I must be tired. Not awake enough to jump out of a sound sleep into a sociable conversation.

Is that the first sign that I’m past it?

Abi patted his paw, her fingers now clean. It felt like an electric shock danced up his spine, and the trembles were gone, replaced by a quivering in his middle that he thought was long dead.

If I’m past it, shouldn’t these urges be gone?

“It’s okay, Marcus,” Abigail said with a quiet smile. “You can tell me. I’m a good listener. I’m boring, but a good listener.”

“Who said you’re boring?” Marcus shook his head.

“Oh, it’s a given. Forty-five years old, never traveled, never deviated from the expected path of a nice middle-class girl from a middle-class part of Sapien-Three.

Never married, barely been kissed, no kids, one job.

.. One boring job.” Abi’s pale pink lips twisted into a self-deprecating smile.

“A job for those of us with nothing better to do than pay attention to massive streams of numbers and credits. The only exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life was land here—and even then, it was almost the last thing I ever did in my life,” she laughed, a bittersweet sound.