Page 61 of Loaned to the Leonid Knight

“You don’t need a tongue to give birth!” Farhet suddenly snarled, slamming an impatient fist on the instrument cluster.

“But she does to tell a magistrate what you’ve done,” Gideon suddenly roared, shouldering through the top half of the door, springing out through a too-small gap as metal scraped down his beautiful black fur and deep gouges appeared in his side.

Sasha screamed louder, her whole lungs in every sound, as Farhet rose, the shuttle slowly drifting into motion.

Gideon charged Farhet with pure adrenaline and rage, claws and fangs out as the startled attacker twisted to and fro,shushing Sasha, looking between the controls and back to where he’d secured Gideon.

“You’ve always underestimated me!” Gideon snarled, claws slashing and gouging into Farhet’s elegant face. “Thought you could buy me off. Thought you could pin me down and trap me! You thought I wouldn’t beat every breath from your body to save my Queen and my cub!” He ripped the bloodied claws across Farhet’s chest and threw him down, stomping on his neck to reach the shuttle controls.

Talos burst in, hover cart swinging, eyes wild. “What in Durga’s sacred name?” he roared.

“Help Gideon!” Sasha screamed. “Stop the shuttle!”

“Help!” wheezed Farhet.

“Gideon, don’t! Don’t kill him. Our baby needs you with us, not in some jail,” Sasha begged, finally managing to jam both thumbs into the central part of the harness, snapping half of it open. From there, she managed to wiggle to the ground and crawl to Gideon, letting him grab her instead of focusing on destroying Farhet—even though she shared his desire to.

“You’re hurt. You’re bleeding. Come with me.” Sasha tugged his arm around her shoulders.

“He’s bleeding?I’mbleeding!” Farhet rolled to his back and gestured piteously to his ruined attire and bleeding gashes on his face. “If he had stayed where I put him, he’d have been fine! If he’d done what he was told, none of this would have happened,” Farhet moaned.

“You do not have security clearances to be on board my ship,” Talos growled, the huge Tigerite lifting the injured Leonid by his mane and glaring into his eyes. “As security officer on theComet Stalker, I’m placing you under arrest and putting you in the brig until we reach a planet or you’re collected by the authorities.”

“But... But that’s my servant. He’s holding my cub hostage. He’s—”

“You should shut up,” Talos warned.

“You don’t understand! My brother has found a Servali Queen, and they’re due home soon. I need the pregnant Queen. I have credits. Millions of credits, I could—”

Talos banged Farhet face-first into the metal edge of the shuttle door, knocking him out cold. “Oops.” Talos tossed the unconscious Leonid into the hover cart. “Gideon, to the med bay, don’t argue. Sasha, you, too.” Talos made sure the shuttle was indeed powered off, then raced ahead, dragging Farhet in the hover cart behind him. He yanked his comm from his pocket and hit the emergency alert. “Security breach, all med staff to the med bay, don’t panic, lock down the nursery, and Captain to the brig.”

“‘Don’t panic,’ he says,” Sasha sighed— and then sank down in the seat at the shuttle controls. “You go on ahead, you’re bleeding everywhere.”

“From the closet, not from him,” Gideon spat, looking at his shoulder and side.

“Doesn’t matter. You gotta be okay. Because... Because he said... He said he was going to kill you if I didn’t give him our baby.” She let out a shuddering breath.

“He’s insane. He’s gone mad with his desire to control the Imazi Pride,” Gideon grunted and picked Sasha up, holding her on his good side. “Put your legs around my waist, love. I have you. You’re safe. I would have killed him before I let him hurt you or steal our child.”

“Did you hear what he said? What if the baby was conceived the first night we made love?” Sasah whispered. When we were still in the program. Could he—”

“He’s not going to be a fit parent after this, Sasha, and the program ended, no matter who was in it. You are mine, and thiscub is ours—and the future—maybe a little bloody and bruised, still belongs to us.”

“HE’S INSANE. WE KNOWthis, Gideon. I am so,sosorry he harmed you and your Queen. I am appalled. And ashamed.”

Gideon held Sasha on his knee, ignoring the bandages and bare, furless spots on his arm and shoulder.

“Thank you, Mr. Imazi,” Gideon said, surprised that the elderly, ill Leonid was speaking to him on the screen the morning after the attack. “That doesn’t change the fact that he snuck aboard this ship and tried to kidnap a pregnant Queen, a Queen who has never touched him, who could never have conceived his child.”

“No, I know. I know, Gideon,” Memhet spoke from his screen, clearly not in the same room as his father. “It was evil madness. You don’t have to forgive him. We have made arrangements for him to serve a long, healing stint in the Tigerite System, somewhere remote, where he can... Uh... heal.”

“You mean a place where he won’t embarrass your wealthy family,” Sasha snapped.

Gideon squeezed her knee. He knew the likelihood was that Farhet would never get a true measure of justice as a criminal, not with his family's wealth and connections. He would spin it as a huge misunderstanding. The fact that his family realized this and had arranged to transport him to a sanatorium or facility for mental health help was at least something—and Gideon suspected that part of it was that they knew the media festivities would be endless, and the witnesses like Talos, Dr. Marcus, Sasha, and others would clearly point to Farhet’s madness and dangerous, illegal actions, creating shame and a spectacle they could never undo.

“I know you cannot understand this, young human Queen,” Mr. Imazi said in his aged, shaking voice, “But my son has lost his looks, his mind, and now his freedom, all because of his desperate thirst for control of a Pride. That is my fault. I am an Imazi, and I raised him to lead as I led. Now, after losing so many Queens, with the world changing so drastically, we can see that building a Pride is about people, not riches. Or at least, it is a combination. Gideon, we can handle this matter discreetly, with assurances that Farhet will never bother you again, and that he will remain under a facility’s care for many years.”

“He’s your son!” Sasha yelped. “You’re going to send him away to some insane asylum on another planet for years?”