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  “So what…you’re just going to…going to melt away?” Her eyes were wide and wounded. “But that’s not fair, Shad! We did what we had to do! We killed the Sovereign! We defeated the Hive and changed the future. It’s not fair.”

  “We always knew it was going to be this way,” Shad reminded her harshly. “We always knew we’d be separated at the end of the loop.”

  “But this isn’t the loop,” Harper insisted. “She Who Alters put us down outside the loop, didn’t she?”

  “I believe she did but it doesn’t seem to matter, the result is the same. You’ll stay here and I…” Shad sighed heavily. “Eventually I will be pulled back to my own time. I’m sorry, Harper,” he said more softly. “I never meant for this to affect you. I was the only one who was supposed to remember and regret. If we had reached the end of the loop as I planned, you would have forgotten me.”

  “I don’t want to forget you. I don’t want to lose you!” She threw her arms around his neck and pressed hard against him, as though she could keep him with her through sheer force of will.

  “I don’t want to lose you either,” Shad murmured. “Remember, I promised I would find you in the future,” he added, trying to make her feel better.

  “I’ll be too old for you!” Her voice was a choked sob, muffled against his neck and her tears were hot against his skin. “And I don’t want to have to wait twenty years to see you again. Please, Shad—we have to find a way to keep you here. We have to.”

  Shad didn’t know what to tell her. He had never felt more helpless than he did holding the woman he loved in his arms and telling her he had to leave her and there was nothing he could do to stop or prevent it.

  “Talk to Sylvan,” Baird advised. He had been piloting quietly, not interfering in the volatile scene between Shad and Harper but now he spoke up. “If anyone can think of a solution, it would be my brother,” he said firmly. “Talk to him.”

  “We have to see him anyway in the med lab,” Shad murmured. “We need to get Harper, uh, checked out.”

  “Maybe he can help you,” Baird said.

  As Harper’s arms tightened around his neck and her sobs shook him, Shad prayed to the Goddess his uncle was right.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Now, then. Varin has informed me you were forced to ingest the Hive’s Blood Honey?” Commander Sylvan raised one pale blond eyebrow at her. He’d already taken blood samples and run several other tests, much to Harper’s impatience. She didn’t want to talk about herself—she was more worried about Shad.

  “Yes, they gave me the Blood Honey stuff but that’s not the main problem right now,” she said earnestly. “Shad’s being pulled back into his own time and we need your help to stop it.”

  A look of compassion came over the Kindred doctor’s face—probably the same look he got when he was telling someone they had a terminal illness, Harper thought.

  “Harper,” he said gently. “I’m the head of the High Council and a doctor—but I’m not a manipulator of time or space. I’m afraid I can’t help you with that particular problem.”

  “But there must be a way,” Harper insisted. “Maybe he’s too close to his younger self here on the Mother Ship. Maybe if we got far away—went back down to Earth—”

  “We were just on Mars, Harper,” Shad reminded her, his voice a low, weary growl. “That’s a hell of a lot further from the Mother Ship than Earth is and I had two, uh, ‘fading incidents’ there. I don’t think getting further away from my younger self is the answer.”

  “But there has to be something we can do,” she exclaimed. “There has to be, Shad. You can’t just…just leave me!”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Kallana,” he murmured. “I just don’t see any way to stop it.”

  Sylvan frowned. “If only there was a way to anchor you here…”

  “Anchor him—yes, that’s it—that’s the idea!” Harper exclaimed excitedly. “Can’t we find a way to anchor him? To…oh!”

  She doubled over suddenly as pain lanced through her.

  “Harper? Harper, are you all right?” Shad’s voice sounded nearly frantic as he grabbed her by the shoulders, saving her from pitching off the exam table in the little private exam room they were in.

  “I…I don’t know,” Harper gasped. The pain was between her legs but it wasn’t so much a pain as an emptiness. An aching…a need to be filled. After a long moment, it seemed to ease and she was able to sit up again with Shad’s help. But though the sharp pain eased, she still felt wrong. Her breasts hurt—the nipples were too sensitive and the breasts themselves felt suddenly full and heavy.

  Feels just like after I had that awful sex-milk, she thought dizzily. God, what’s wrong with me?

  “What’s wrong with her?” Shad demanded, asking Sylvan exactly what she was thinking.

  Sylvan was frowning.

  “I’m afraid I’m not exactly sure. I did see evidence of the Blood Honey she ingested in her labs but I’ve only ever had one other patient who was subjected to it.”

  “That would be Varin’s mate, correct?” Shad asked anxiously.

  Sylvan nodded. “But I don’t believe her symptoms came on as quickly as Harper’s.” He looked at a vid-clipboard chart, staring at the figures there with a frown. “It’s almost like she already had something in her system—something that accelerated and exacerbated he Blood Honey’s effects on her.”

  “The sex-milk,” Harper whispered and even as she spoke, she felt her breasts getting fuller. She remembered thinking that the Blood Honey was a poison like the strange purple liquid she’d been tricked into drinking back at the Thieves' Market. It seemed she had been right. But had the traces of the sex-milk still in her system actually made the effects of the Blood Honey worse?

  Sylvan frowned. “I’m sorry—what? What kind of milk?”

  “It was a kind of aphrodisiac Harper was given on Juno,” Shad explained in a low voice. “It had…side effects which were most uncomfortable for her. I thought she was cured of it but now…I’m not so sure.” He eyed the red Kindred uniform shirt Harper was wearing, the one Baird had loaned her to cover up with.

  Following his gaze, Harper realized there were two wet spots on the front of the thick, silky red fabric.

  Oh no—not again! Miserably, she crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hide the stains. God, what was she going to do?

  Sylvan was frowning. “It’s possible I should run a few more tests—”

  “Testing isn’t what she needs.” The new voice belonged to Varin, the Vision Kindred who had given her back her cloak. He was standing in the doorway of the exam room, a frown on his dark face. Beside him was a petite girl with pale skin and a long waterfall of black hair down to her waist.

  “Varin?” Sylvan frowned. “This is a private consultation, I’m afraid.”

  “Forgive us for barging in.” The Vision Kindred ducked his head in apology. “But my mate Brynn and I have dealt with the effects of the Blood Honey before.”

  The girl spoke up in a soft, bird-like voice.

  “We thought we might be able to shed some light on the situation.”

  “It’s not just the Blood Honey we’re dealing with,” Sylvan objected. “Harper has been given another substance which greatly intensified and accelerated the Blood Honey’s influence on her.”

  “All the more reason you need our help,” Varin said firmly. “Forgive me, Commander Sylvan, but you might have seen what the Blood Honey can do to someone but Brynn here has felt it. And I had a hand in helping to cure her.”

  “So this is curable?” Shad asked eagerly. “How?”

  Varin cleared his throat and shifted uneasily. “Perhaps it would be easier if you and I spoke in private,” he said to Shad.

  “And I’ll speak to Harper—with your permission, of course, Commander Sylvan.” Brynn nodded her head deferentially to the blond Kindred doctor.

  “As you wish. If you need me, I’ll be here in the med station.” Commander Sylvan di