Page 15 of Klora (Mates of the Mylos #6)
CHAPTER 15
KLORA
Something was wrong with me. It was normal to itch as our scales erupted, but I’d been in mid battleform shift and holding it for over half a day now. So why hadn’t the itching stopped and instead gotten worse? It was almost as if…no. That was impossible, unless my hormones had become confused by my initial reaction to the teacher by my side when I first laid eyes on him there at the gas station. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true though, was it? I’d seen a picture of him and the young during the debriefing in order to know them on sight. I’d had the very fleeting thought that he was a good looking guy and felt a surge of protectiveness, but I was a warrior sworn to protect. It was literally my job, to protect the Fleet and its allies. The whole purpose of being in the Fleet and a security officer in particular.
But that’s what had to have happened. I saw a good looking guy and a young, and felt the need to find and protect them from any further harm, then initiated a partial shift. Only my body went a little haywire. I needed to contact Chief Medic Proslo immediately and apprise him of the situation. It was one thing to pretend to be the guy’s buddy in private and to be his mate in public. It was quite another to go into full mating rut and tie a guy who was not my mate to me when I finally lost control.
I had to let Sachuu know something was very wrong with me. As my superior officer, that was my duty, especially as my obvious medical anomaly could influence this investigation. He’d take me off this case, obviously, and I’d potentially not only miss the wedding but end up back supervising the brig until my condition resolved. Therefore, the only thing to do was contact Proslo and see if there was a blocker or something he could synthesize and send down that would stall the effects for the next few days. I was sure I’d crack this guy and then could take myself in for a full medical workup. Since this wasn’t a true mating fever, but a battleshift hormonal imbalance mimicking one, it had to be reversible, right? And if not, at least the doc could ease my passing and I’d be mated to a stars cursed criminal.
“Everything alright?” McDuffie asked me, looking concerned.
“Yes, why?” I asked him. Did he suspect there was something wrong with me? If so, he might try to use that as leverage against me to keep his secret.
“Well, you still have your scales and claws out in that, what did you call it?”
“Battle form,” I replied tersely. “This is a partial shift version.”
“Right. So I was wondering if you felt there was still danger to us here, because the Lieutenant Commander wasn’t all battle form-y anymore.”
“I feel it is better to remain on full alert,” I covered. “Besides, people seeing me like this will assume we are newly mated and that is the reason for my scales and eye change.”
“Oh. Right. Duh, me. Human with a Mylos does usually equal mate, and you just told me we were going to use that to explain my presence.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “I must be much more tired than I thought to not have figured that out. Sorry.”
“Stress can do that,” I reassured him, aghast at how my hormones were affecting my emotions. I was feeling sympathy for him! Sympathy, when he obviously had something to do with all of this, or my instincts wouldn’t be going haywire. Even the L.T.C. agreed, which was why he’d become the focus of this part of the op. Sure, he might have ended up trying to do the right thing, but he was far from innocent and needed to face the consequences for his treachery no matter how sorry he was now.
“Yeah. Can we just go somewhere quick? Somewhere where we can just grab some stuff without going from store to store?”
I nodded. I was also ready to put today behind me as quickly as possible, though I couldn’t do that entirely thanks to having to babysit him. I stopped walking and looked down at the map. “According to this, the ABC store should work,” I told him. “They sell Hawaiian wear.”
“Perfect,” he said, and we changed course to head in that direction. It wasn’t very far at all, so we got there within minutes.
“Maybe I should grab something to eat from here,” he said, looking at the refrigerator cases full of ready to eat foods.
“I’ll order room service. We can pick up something from here on the days we go on our beach trip and hike.” I smiled at him, trying to put him back at ease. “When we get to the room, you should take a shower or soak in the bath. It will feel good to wash today’s events off of your skin, and the hot water will relax you. By the time you’re done and changed, room service will have delivered the meal.”
He looked uncertain, but then relented, some of the tenseness leaving his shoulders as he sighed. “You’re right,” he agreed. “And I am starving. I’m a big stress eater and today has been full of that.”
I nodded encouragingly. “Good. Besides, we’d have to get several of those to fill us both up and carry back your clothes.”
He blinked at me. “You’re still hungry?”
I shrugged. “I have a fast metabolism, courtesy of my mother’s heritage. Plus, we Mylos require a lot more food as we’re not as tiny as humans.”
His eyes roved over me, from my head to my feet and he laughed. “Yeah, you guys are all ripped giants. Okay, I see some clothes on a rack over there. “ He tugged me by the hand in the direction he wanted us to go.
I huffed in mild annoyance. I was the one in charge, as he was my responsibility. He needed to remember to step back from his usual role of being the one calling the shots. I wasn’t one of his students after all. He turned out to be correct about where we’d needed to go and in no time at all, we both had a few t-shirts, a tropical print Aloha shirt, swim trunks, a few pairs of shorts he said were smart casual, and a pair of slide on sandals that the price label sign called slippers but which he referred to as flip flops. He also grabbed a some soft stretchy shorts to sleep in. We found sunblock for him on the end cap by the registers, alongside a revolving rack of sunglasses, so we each picked out a pair.
“All we need now is nicer sunglasses and fancier sandals for you to wear to the wedding,” I said, as I paid using the expenses card saved on my kunnarskyn.
“Well, he did say beachwear, so I guess, yeah. Um, that thing has Apple Pay?”
I grinned. “Xeranos asked a few of us to trial an application that will use whatever payment portal a store on Earth uses. If it takes only contactless cards in wallets, it uses that. If it uses Apple or Android Pay, it can use those too.”
“What if it takes all of them?” he asked curiously.
“Then it just uses a virtual card in a wallet thing. He’s hoping to keep fewer physical cards out there so they are easier to keep track of, since the kunnarskyn is impervious to human hacking devices and software, unlike a physical card which could get used before its loss was discovered.”
“Smart,” he murmured as the sales clerk turned his attention to the next customer after a quick, “Mahalo,” at us when handing over the receipt.
He yawned then, turning pink from embarrassment.
“Sorry. Guess I was right about being super tired.”
“Let’s get you up to the room,” I replied, taking the bag in one hand and placing the other on the small of his back to guide him. That felt far too intimate, I decided, crossing a line, so I moved that hand to clasp ours together as before. People did that with children, and children also held hands with their friends. It didn’t have to be romantic at all, even if people around us would assume otherwise. In reality, I was simply making sure he didn’t get separated from me in the throng of tourists or try to give me the slip. That was all.