The Healer (The Order of Intergalactic Peace #1) - Kelly Lucille Page 0,72

again, and it was as if he was on a loop. This time she let him finish while she looked him over. “It is unfortunate, but it happens.” Something was not right with any of this, but the way he was reacting made it clear it was more than just coldness on his part.

Serenity had been holding her power in since her attack, but now she didn’t just let it out, but speared him with it, looking for what was causing that flash of pain. Already having a terrible suspicion.

He sucked in a breath at the sudden influx of healing. He closed his eyes and the shudder that racked his form was not one of pain, but pleasure. She could relate, she felt the same under his power, but this time she ignored it and looked deeper. She concentrated on the brain box and saw the flashes of pain and reaction he was experiencing.

She spoke again, her power over that spot. “Councilor Gren killed one of your soldiers for protecting me.”

The flash of something foreign and wrong hit her as soon as he heard what she had said. He was being controlled, she realized, they all were. She looked over the connections as he started to talk. She ignored him because he was saying the same thing he had been spewing. Instead she concentrated her power into a precise instrument and attacked that little, microscopic box that should not have been there. She saw a flash of something coming from the box and blocked it, then realized what it was trying to do and even as Mal Ryn was reaching for her arm she acted.

He fell to the floor unconscious. She followed him down just as she had with Jas. Her hands on either side of his head she went back to the battle she was fighting in his mind now that he was safe from the failsafe. By the time she had eradicated the box and its hold on him, she felt like joining him on the floor.

Instead she walked over to his chair and sat down and waited for him to wake up. It had been a long day mentally as well as physically. She could wake him up as she had done with Jas, but instead she sat and waited for him to wake up on his own. Needing the small measure of peace in that moment. Knowing that it would not last once he was up and aware. Then she would find out if he knew about the boxes and had knowingly allowed himself and his men to be affected or, if like Jas and the rest, he was being controlled without his knowledge.

The answer would determine whether she had a future with the dreaded High Lord of the OIP.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mal woke up on his ready room floor not sure how he had gotten there.

“Good, you’re awake.” He heard Serenity say from somewhere in the room. “I was starting to think I would have to wake you or miss dinner.”

He lay where he was with his eyes on his ceiling contemplating the turns his life had taken since he met this woman. “Why am I on the floor?”

“I had to put you to sleep to get the box off your brain.”

Mal sat up and looked toward his favorite chair. His healer was curled up with her knees tucked beneath her and only her feet sticking off the chair. “Excuse me?” he could not have heard what he thought he heard.

“You had a microscopic…something attached to your brain steering your responses over certain subjects. It was the reason you were so absolutely accepting of the council and its more deplorable actions.”

He stood up and walked over to her, staring at her while he tried to digest what she was telling him.

“Jas had one too. I saw a glimpse when I healed him and removed it at his request earlier. I’m not sure how many have them. I know the Phoenix do and the medics don’t, but that’s all I’m sure of at this point.”

Mal sat down on the long couch beside the chair and stared at Serenity. He would like to say he was shocked by what she was telling him, but it made a certain kind of logic. After taking the time to let it fully sink in he looked back over at Serenity. She had been sitting quietly while he thought, and he appreciated that. “When Jas mentioned killing the council I almost killed him