Bride of Death Read Online Free PDF

again.
    They returned, and the Six was not happy. Two filled in. “One child. If the infant is found to be sound and full of possibilities for the future, we will consider introducing Prothean blood on a trial basis.”
    The duty captain rushed in. “General, she is gone.”
    Hinlior felt his blood run cold. “What?”
    “Her meal was brought to her, and she had escaped. The guards outside her room were unconscious and a skimmer is missing. We tracked her to the new city, but we lost her in the EM halo.”
    Hinlior jerked his head at the monitors. “Please excuse me.”
    He bolted out of the com room and ran for the main level. He knew where she was going. She was heading home.
    He didn’t know how he was sure of her destination, but he knew she was seeking out the stone behind the city. He was going to find her.
     
    * * * *
     
    They wouldn’t tell her where he was, so Saloa ran. Knocking out the guards was easy. No one on the Death Bringer expected a woman to be battle capable.
    Apparently, they were going to be briefing their comrades when they got up.
    She had found the schematics for the ship on the entertainment console. Making her way through the lifts had been a little tricky, but if you walked like you knew your destination, folks tended not to bother you. No one was expecting her to go wandering around alone, so they made up an excuse for her being in their area.
    The skimmers freaked her out. There would be a twenty-foot drop before the skimmer kicked into hover mode, but after that, it should be easy enough to fly the small sled.
    She shivered and used Hinlior’s passcode to open the skimmer hangar and override the door.
    With her feet still bare, she settled herself on the skimmer and reached up to grab the controls. It was now or never. She hit the tractor, and the chains pulled her along the floor and into launch position. She keyed up the green lights and held on as she was tipped out of the warship.
    She fell for twenty feet before the lights flashed purple and the skimmer propelled itself along the plain toward the city. The structures weren’t occupied yet, and the mechanical sprawl would cover her trail.
    Saloa had to admit that the Anvin were excellent at building cities from nothing. She didn’t pause to see the sights. She continued on into the mountains that her people had made homes in and parked the skimmer half a kilometre from her home.
    The lights had been stripped from the carved stone, but she knew her way around. She sprinted through the halls by the dim glow of the lichen in the niches dug into the rock walls.
    Her feet echoed in the silence where once crowds had gathered during the cold winters. She let herself miss them just a little as she walked down the familiar route to her apartment.
    She wanted her things. Her clothing, her keepsakes. If the Anvin were taking Althur from her, then she would just hide here until she bore her child. There was enough food locally if you knew where to look, and the water ran clear from the purest glacier.
    It would be a primitive existence, but she was carrying the next generation and she was going to defend it.
    Saloa wasn’t sure how she knew that she was carrying, but every instinct in her body had just gone into overdrive. Her sisters had gone feral when they were with child, and it was the steady comfort of their mates that kept them calm and productive.
    If the Anvin wouldn’t let her have her mate, she was going to defend her child with everything in her, and she had the weapons collection to do it.
    She changed out of the soft gown and into an insulated bodysuit. It would flex with her until her final month. After that, she would have to wear sheets if she couldn’t find a spare maternity uniform left behind somewhere.
    Saloa sat in the darkness for a while, breathing in the scent of her own room. She curled into a ball and sniffled as the loneliness took hold.
     
    She jerked awake and wiped her cheeks. Someone was coming. A wave of