Imprisoned Read online

  “You two met under really bad circumstances,” Olivia said softly. “But I believe the Goddess put you together. Why else would you have been Dream-sharing? Why else would your body make your bonding scent for Ari?”

  “I don’t know.” Lathe shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Nothing in my life has made sense since my brother died. I just wanted to avenge him and instead I met Ari and we got…entangled.”

  “Just go talk to her tomorrow,” Olivia urged. “Get her to let you heal her—or at least try.” She smiled. “If what my sister, Sophia, tells me about a Blood Kindred’s bite is true, that should go a long way towards bringing you back together.”

  Lathe felt the blood rush to his face, thinking of the way Ari had reacted to his bite in the past. He cleared his throat.

  “As I said, I don’t believe she feels for me as…as I feel for her. But I will try to get her to let me heal her. If I can.”

  “That’s all I ask,” Olivia said calmly. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry I slapped you. I just thought you were pushing her away because of your wounded pride.”

  “That was part of it,” Lathe admitted. “But I would bond her to me in a heartbeat, pride or no pride, if I thought she really wanted me to. If I thought she felt as I do.”

  Olivia smiled at him and headed for the office door.

  “I think you might be surprised. Just keep an open mind and come visit her tomorrow morning around eleven. I’ll be sure she’s ready for you.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be there,” Lathe said gravely as he saw her out the door. He didn’t for a moment think that Olivia was right in her assessment of the situation. But he was grateful to her for informing him of Ari’s condition.

  He just hoped she would let him try to heal her.

  Forty-Nine

  “Oh Liv, is that you again?” Ari called from the bathroom as she heard the door to her exam room open. The privacy curtain was up so she couldn’t see her friend. “Thank you so much for the new clothes you brought over. I feel so much better dressed than wearing that awful gown. You were right—nobody can feel normal in a hospital johnny.”

  She looked at herself in the viewer, twirling slightly from side to side to see the pretty red dress swirl around her thighs. It was a bit big on Ari but that was fine. The lacy white underwear Liv had sent with the dress fit fine but the stranger upper garment—Liv had called it a bra—didn’t work at all. Which was just as well since the slightly too-large top of the dress had a tendency to slide off her shoulder on one side, which would have shown the lacy straps.

  Ari was content to go without it, though the thin red fabric was a bit clingy around her breasts and nipples. It felt good just to be wearing something pretty again. The new outfit was the most feminine thing she’d put on in ages—a vast improvement over the awful blue and orange striped prison jumpsuit. In fact, the dress was so pretty she could almost ignore the layer of white bandages that covered the side of her neck.

  Almost.

  She still had her prison ID implanted in the hollow of her throat, but Yipper could take that out when he did the other surgery. Ari had been wearing it so long she barely even noticed it anymore.

  “I know you’ve come to try and make me change my mind,” she continued, as she turned to leave the bathroom. “But I’ve decided to let Yipper do what has to be done. I just don’t think that Lathe wants anything to do with me and I won’t—” She trailed off abruptly when she opened the privacy curtain and saw who was standing there.

  Not Liv at all, but Lathe.

  “Hello, Ari,” he said in a low voice. He was wearing what Ari had come to think of as the “Kindred Uniform”—a long-sleeved shirt made of some heavy satiny material and black leather trousers tucked into high black boots. Over this he was also wearing a white doctor’s coat. The pale blue of the shirt brought out the turquoise of his eyes and the look on his face was quiet and serious.

  “Lathe!” Ari put a hand instinctively to the side of her neck, trying to hide the ugly white bandages. “What…what are you doing here?”

  “I came to ask your forgiveness,” he said quietly. “And to ask if you’ll let me try to heal you.”

  “Heal me? Who told you I needed healing?” she demanded.

  “Do you?” Lathe took a step towards her, his eyes scanning over her body and then back up to her neck.

  Ari wondered if he thought she was pretty in the new red dress and then got angry at herself for wondering it.

  “I’m fine,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. “So you can just…just go.”

  “Not until I at least examine you.” He took another step forward, his hand outstretched. “May I?”

  Ari bit her lip. She knew what he would see if he lifted the bulky white bandages because she had dared to peak under them herself.

  What she had seen had almost made her cry.

  A web of ugly black lines radiated out from the spot under her ear where Tapper’s knife had nicked her. They ran like rivers of midnight water up the side of her face and over her scalp as well as down her neck, all the way to her collar bone in the front and her shoulder blade in the back. Slowly but surely the corruption was spreading. She would probably have to go under the knife today before the affected area got any bigger.

  “Please, Ari,” Lathe murmured when she didn’t answer him. “Please let me see.”

  “It…it’s really ugly,” she said at last in a low, choked voice.

  “Nothing about you could ever be ugly to me.” Lathe’s voice was slightly hoarse. “Please, little one…trust me.”

  The use of his old nickname for her took Ari by surprise and put her off her guard.

  “Well…” She shrugged. “I guess it couldn’t hurt for you to just look.”

  “Thank you for trusting me. Will you sit on the bed, please, so I can examine you?” He indicated the high hospital bed and Ari went and perched on it. Doctor Sylvan had ordered some kind of 24/7 numbing treatment for the pain so she didn’t even flinch when Lathe reached up and pulled the bandages aside.

  Ari waited unhappily to see a look of disgust on is face but his expression was carefully neutral. At last he nodded and replaced the bandage.

  “Well?” Ari couldn’t stand it anymore. She needed to know his opinion of her situation.

  “It is…a bad case of corruption,” Lathe admitted. “Possibly the worst I’ve ever seen.”

  “So you can’t heal it, right? Doctor Sylvan didn’t think you could.”

  “I don’t know if I can or not,” Lathe said honestly. “But I would like the opportunity to try.”

  “You don’t have to,” Ari said quickly. “I mean I know…know how you feel about me.”

  “Do you?” Lathe gave her a penetrating look. “You know, somehow I doubt that. Will you let me try to heal you? It is, after all, my fault you were wounded in the first place.”

  “Your fault?” Ari looked at him incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Of course not.” His eyes glowed briefly. “I should have protected you from getting cut in the first place. My honor demands that I heal you.”

  Ari bit back a sigh. She’d been hoping that he might talk as he had that night in the cell—say that he had feelings for her. That he wanted to heal her because he loved her.

  Stop wishing for the impossible, she told herself angrily.

  “Lathe, it wasn’t your responsibility to protect me,” she said at last.

  “I disagree.” He frowned. “But no matter whose fault it was, since you’re aboard the Mother Ship where I am a doctor, it is my responsibility to heal you.

  Ari bit her lip.

  “I don’t…don’t understand why you even want to try. You were going to leave and never see me again. You hate me for lying to you.”

  “I could never hate you, little one.” There was rough tenderness in his voice as he reached to cup her cheek. “Please, Ari—let me at least try.”

  “Well…” Ari looked up at him uncertainly