Manipulating Mikey (First Wave Book 8) by Mikayla Lane

out if he
wanted to remain here or return to them,” Grai argued, uncaring if she believed
him or not. He’d done what he had to do.
    Lauren’s anger only rose at the
callous, calm way Grai tried to defend his actions.
    “How dare you! You aren’t some
supreme leader that has the authority to endanger anyone you want just because
you think they might be a threat! He’s one of our own!” Lauren yelled back.
    Grai’s nostrils flared, and he took
a deep breath to calm himself.
    “This comes from the person who was
more than willing to side with Fiorn against her own people until he went too
far and threatened a pregnant woman and child! Don’t stand there and pretend
offense to something you are guilty of yourself! Again, this only arises as a
problem because of who he is to you, and not because of who he is in general! I
suggest the next tests you perform evaluate your compatibility to him as a mate
and when you finally come to your own senses, Amun will be here to take over
his care because you obviously are far too close to this situation—and him—to
be objective,” Grai ordered, leaving Lauren stunned and speechless.
    Grai looked at the shell shocked
doctor and tried to calm his own quick anger. He put a gentle hand on her
shoulder and made sure his voice was calm.
    “Lauren, run the tests. Take a
little time to adjust to the results and work with Amun to figure out the
discrepancies you found in his mitochondrial DNA. The worm is gone and another
one won’t be put there, but I’m going to suggest that you both move to Base Beta
while you figure things out. For the sake of everyone’s safety, I hope you will
agree,” Grai said softly.
    Lauren nodded her head absently,
Grai’s previous words still sinking in.
    Blade grinned broadly as he walked
past Lauren to the door, limping only a little.
    “Congrats, my friend. Seeing this
look on your face was almost worth the hit to my balls. Almost. I owe you one,”
he said with a teasing grin as he squeezed her shoulder in support before he
left.

 
    Chapter Six
     
    Lauren paced in front of the window
for the second hour in a row as she waited for Mikey to awaken. With Amun’s
help, she’d been able to clear Mikey’s brain of the energy residue from Blade’s
mind worm, and his temperature had stabilized.
    She and Amun had discovered that
Mikey’s unbound beast had seen the worm as a threat to his host and had shut
down Mikey’s brain to protect it from the foreign invader. Once Blade removed
the worm and the residue was cleared, Mikey’s body came out of the coma, but he
still hadn’t awakened, and that worried her.
    Lauren stopped pacing, pulled out
her comm, and ran the same scans on him as he lay in the bed near the window.
When the screen flashed the same information, she sat heavily on the side of
the bed and gently ran a hand down his cheek.
    The scans showed that he was well
and sleeping, but Lauren couldn’t help but feel something was still wrong. She
tried to convince herself that it was just her imagination or irrational fear
because she wasn’t sure how to handle the results of the other scans she’d
done. Still, she couldn’t shake the niggling suspicion that she was missing
something.
    She stood to resume her pacing when
her hand was grabbed and she looked down into Mikey’s smiling face.
    “Why you look so glum, doc? What
happened?” Mikey asked as he sat up and looked around the unfamiliar room.
    Lauren sat back down on the bed and
smiled at the young man who the scans said was her mate.
    “You’re OK now. You just had a bad
reaction to something. What do you remember?” Lauren asked, pulling out her
comm to run more scans now that he was awake.
    Mikey shook his head for a moment,
trying to clear the fog shrouding his memories. He remembered Lauren coming to
his room and going to the dining hall with her . . . Mikey jerked his head up
and looked at Lauren in horror.
    “Oh God . . . tell me I didn’t say
those things,” Mikey