Free The Covenant by Annabel Wolfe Page A

to give credence to his theory it was
    probably necessary to divulge his source. He finally said briefly, “Armada
    himself.”
    “I thought you said he was being detained in isolation on Rapt One.”
    She looked at him with censorious scrutiny.
    “He is.” Ran smiled, a humorless curve of his mouth. “It takes more
    than being imprisoned to stop him, trust me.”
    * * * *
    Larik heard the sound, registered what it was, and sat up so fast his head
    spun. Trey was already up, he saw, bare-chested, his dark hair tousled, a

    The Covenant: The Starlight Chronicles 2
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    worried look on his face as he hovered by the door to the cleansing facility.
    He lifted his hand and knocked lightly on the panel. “Aspen?”
    She didn’t answer, probably because she couldn’t.
    A second day in a row when she’d woken up vomiting.
    Shit , Larik thought, running a hand over his face, feeling a little sick
    himself but with worry, not illness. The morning before both he and Trey
    had refrained from saying much and by later in the day, it seemed to pass,
    her color came back, and she ate her late meal with them as usual and
    appeared normal. They had both been relieved when her daily scan came
    back clean. No fever, no elevated vitals, and she had finally appeared to
    relax, which told him she had been worried too.
    Having it happen again was not a good sign. Not for someone who was
    in quarantine in case they’d been infected. Not for someone who was not
    going to be given any kind of medical care, or so they’d been told.
    The sounds stopped, all was quiet from within the small cubicle, and it
    was clear Trey wanted to go in and help her. But just as clear was they
    hadn’t been invited to do so. Finally they heard water running, and a few
    minutes later the door lifted.
    She didn’t look just pale, she looked positively green.
    Trey immediately lifted her in his arms, cradling her against his chest.
    “You’re going back to bed.”
    The lack of protest over his authoritative tone was not a good sign, and
    she rested limply against him, her long silky hair falling over his arm like
    spilled ink. He took her to the main bed, not her bunk, and laid her down as
    if she might break, brushing a dark curl off her cheek. Larik saw his long
    fingers tremble and felt exactly the same way.
    Petrified.
    Luckily, in moments she fell fast asleep again. In retrospect, she’d been
    sleeping a lot lately, but they’d both attributed it to how they kept her in bed
    quite a bit anyway, and there really was not much else to do.
    In tacit agreement, they went into the main room. Trey didn’t hide his
    worry, his good-looking face taut. “What are we going to do?”
    “The governor said no medical care.” Larik felt helpless and didn’t like
    it.
    “You saw her, she’s sick, Armada.”
    “I know.”

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    Annabel Wolfe
    “Get on that fucking communications system and pretend you’re the
    governor and order a doctor for her.”
    If it’s the virus, no one can help her. Larik didn’t want to say it out loud,
    but he’d spent hours going over the communiqués on what put them where
    they were now, trying to understand every aspect of the situation. The virus
    could be a replica of a rare earth strain, obliterated thousands of years ago,
    and was incurable. Few survived it and there was no treatment. Trying to
    stay calm and think, he said, “You and I both know any physician is going
    to question being ordered into the quarantine holding area. There’s no way I
    could pull it off. Then they’d know two things. I can access any information
    I want, and that she’s ill. I sure as hell don’t want them to know the first,
    and not sure about the second. What about the med kit?”
    A muscle in Trey’s jaw flexed and his crystalline eyes glittered. “The
    standard stuff is geared to injuries more than illness, that’s all.”
    “Fuck.”
    “Yeah, fuck.”
    They just stood there looking at each other. Trey finally said it.