Emma's Heart (Brides of Theron 3) (36 page)

“She went through here. Not sure why she would do
that, but it’s the way she went,” Manko stated to the group as he pointed out the direction that the trail was leading them.

Without hesitation Brylon pushed through the thick brush and shrubs that started to surround him.  He continued on, not caring about the short branches reached and scraped against his bare arms. On the other side of the wall of bushes, he caught sight of a fire and could smell the smoke coming further up ahead. Not thinking twice about what was on fire, he started running as fast as he could, and didn’t stop until he reached the area where the glow of a fire burned brightly. He slid to a stop to survey the area. Behind him, he heard the approaching footsteps coming from his comrades that were running. As he stared at the image before him, the other men crashed into him and knocked him to the ground.

A crashed fighter was wedged between the ground and
a large tree. The glow of a fire lit up the small area near the fighter and they could see someone very large was sitting next to it holding a rather large knife in his hand. Near to him, a figure lay still on the ground, covered with a blanket.

Ceran and Manko advanced f
orward, slightly off to each side of the fire to flank the pilots. They didn’t want the pilots of the downed fighter to have an advantage over them in the case that they decided to fight. Brylon and Zane continued to follow the path they were on, and slowly approached the man by the fire.

Brylon
breathed a sigh of relief when the big man didn’t even attempt to get up off the ground. In just another couple steps, he could see that a head was lying in the man lap and a small body was curled up on the ground next to him. An icy cold feeling washed over Brylon’s skin as he recognized the small figure.

“Emma?” Each step towards his mat
e took a lifetime. She was lying on the ground with head in the lap of another man, and she was totally oblivious that he was right there by her. “Emma?”

“I am afraid that she
is sick with fever.  She hasn’t woken up in the last couple of hours.”

“Zane!” Brylon immediately shouted out for the doctor.

Zane was there by his side in an instant, bending over the fevered body of Brylon’s mate. He pulled off the backpack containing his medical supplies and searched for a temperature gauge. The pencil thin device clicked once as he inserted it into the canal of Emma’s ear.

“Her fever is really
high for a human, 106 degrees.” He looked her body over. He was trying to find a cause. “It looks as if she has an infection somewhere and it needs to be brought under control immediately.” Zane’s first initial examination was a scary one for the entire group. She had managed somehow to survive the deep inner forest, but now she was in danger of dying from an infection.

“Manko call for a shuttle now!” Brylon barked out his orders while kneeling on the grou
nd, holding the hand of his mate. “Emma can you hear me?” He leaned closer to her face, brushing back a strand of hair that had fallen over her forehead. He could feel the heat that was radiating from her body as he touched her reddened skin.

“Do you know where she is hurt?” Zane asked the man by the fire.

“It’s her…her…leg.” Zirlo struggled to answer.

Zane immediately focused in on her legs.
He grabbed both of her ankles and straightened them out so that he could get a better look. Finding the rip in along the front of her pants, he went to work on the injury. “Brylon this isn’t good. I need to get her to the infirmary.” He looked up at Brylon, but just as their eyes met, Zane looked past him at something on the ground. “Who is that over there?” Zane shifted his chin in the direction of the shape on the ground.

Brylon looked to the man holding his wife’s head, “Who is that?”

“That, Brylon, is someone I think you already know,” he whispered out.

Confused by
the fact that the man knew his name, he asked, “How do you know who I am?”

“That’s easy. I watched you grow up in my home with my son.
” He saw the man smile up at him.

Brylon’s mouth tried to form the words he wanted to say, but somehow his brain forgot how to
speak. His copper eyes widened in shock. It was like the movement of everyone and everything around him stopped.

“What…what…” he couldn’t get any other wor
ds. That was alright though, because Zane managed to say what he could not.

“Commander Zirlo?” Zane
looked just as stunned as the rest of them.

“How many times to I have to tell you
boys to keep your mouth shut or the bugs will fly in?” Zirlo chuckled, “It is so good to see you Zane.”

“Oh my Gods
! You’ve got to be joking!” Zane regained his senses and returned his attention to Emma.

“T
his is no joke boys. Do I need to tell you a story about the reason for that high powered optical tube that I caught you three building in my home?” Zirlo’s eyes twinkled in amusement as the scene immediately unfolded in Brylon’s mind.  Brylon thought back to the time when he and his two friends had built a high powered optical tube so that they could spy on the young female that lived in the house next to Zeb’s. Zirlo had to explain to the council why the item found in his home, was in his son’s room.

“No sir. I do not need
to relive that moment,” Zane said as he continued to clean and re-bandage the infected wound on Emma leg. “But, please, tell us who’s lying on the ground over there. I think that I heard you say that we already know him.”

“What, you don’t recognize
your buddy Lars?”

The area was in chaos a moment later as C
eran, Manko and Brylon all sprinted to the man covered by a blanket. Ceran tore back the cover only to reveal one of the most hated men in Theron history.

“What the fuck?” Ceran took a step backwards while Manko pulled out a stun gun and aimed it at sleeping man.

“It can’t be possible!” Manko said to the back of Ceran’s head.

“Where in the fuck did he come from? He is supposed to be dead!” Ceran threw the question out into the air for no one in particular.

“As dead as I was believed to be?” Zirlo chimed in. “He was brought to the prison camp I was working in, almost two months ago.”

“Zeb is going to shit an ona when he sees this asshole.” Ceran was so shocked that he had to sit on the ground
just next to the unconscious man.

“Do me a favor
when you call for the shuttle. Don’t mention that I am alive yet. I wish to see my son face to face,” Zirlo spoke to the group of warriors as a whole.

“Gods
, what a turn of events this been. No one is going to believe all of this even happened.” Brylon sat back down to attend to his mate. “How is she?”

“I can’
t do much for her down here. I didn’t bring any medicine that would handle something this severe. Manko, have you called for the shuttle?”

Manko whipped out his communicator
to check on the progress, “I did when we got here, boss. I’m going to check the E.T.A. Commander?”

Zeb’s voice sounded over the communicator loud enough for Zirlo to hear, “
How is Emma?”

“
She is pretty sick. Along with Brylon’s mate, we have also found two survivors from the fighter crash. What is the shuttle’s E.T.A?” Manko reported.

“A shuttle will be there in about fifteen minu
tes. Hang in there. Tell Zane and Brylon that I will meet them at the hospital when I can leave.”

The sound of his son’s voice sounded like pure music to his old ears. It had been so long since he had heard it. Before the war, he wasn’t known to wear his emotions on his sleeve.  He was always thought to be a tough warrior. But, upon hearing the sound of his son’s voice for the first time in nearly ten years, he started to break down. A sob escaped from his lips, followed by the tears that started to run down his face.
Yes, this has turned out to be the best day of his life,
he thought to himself.

The head on his lap stirred a bit, “Zirlo?” Emma whispered.

All eyes dropped to the small voice that sounded so weak and frail.

“I am here, young one and so is Brylon.” He smiled down into her fevered red face.

Emma tried to open her eyes, but they were so heavy.
Every square inch of her skin hurt and her head pounded.  It was hard to move any part of her body, each part was so heavy and she felt so weak, and cold, and thirsty. She thought she heard Zirlo say Brylon’s name, had he really found her? Was this just a dream? “Brylon?”

At the sound of his name, Brylon leaned in close to Emma face
and she could feel the coolness of his breath on her face as he whispered to her, “I am right here, my love.” She opened one of her eyes just a crack and saw him smiling at her and said, “I found you, my love, and I am so sorry for what happened.  I never should have yelled at you that way.  I was wrong for what I did.”

She managed to turn the corners of her lips just a fraction of an inch upwards.
She said through dry lips, “You found me,” before she had succumbed to the grip of the fever raging inside her body.

Overhead the sound of the shuttle grew closer, and it wasn’t long before it landed a short distance away in the closest clearing in the woods that was near to crashed fighter. The medics exited the shuttle with a hover stretcher and proceed to lift Lars onto it. The second stretcher stood in waiting, for Brylon to lift his mate into it, but it seemed as if he was frozen in place.

“Brylon! We ne
ed to go!” Zane’s voice reverberated throughout his entire being and brought him out of his trance.

He scooped Emma up as gently as he could and placed her on the stretcher. Her skin
felt like it was on fire and her face was completely flushed. He couldn’t lose her now after finding her again. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if she didn’t survive. What a fool he was, to have behaved the way that did.

“Excuse me, but could
one of you boys please help an old man up off the ground.” Since the shuttle arrived, they had completely forgotten about Zirlo. The old man didn’t have the strength or energy to get up. His body looked worn out and though it looked like he was trying, his body would not answer his calls to rise from the ground.

Zane turned back to the man he had known his whole life, “Come on
, old man, up with you now.” He lifted the frail warrior as easily as he would lift a baby. Zeb’s father, once a proud and extremely intimidating warrior, was now a shell of the man he had been.

“Old man, hu
h?” Zirlo chuckled as he slung his arm over Zane’s shoulder, letting the doctor basically carry him to the awaiting shuttle.

“Well, you said it first. Come on, let’s get you home.”

“That’s the best thing I have heard in a very long time.” Zirlo let the tears run freely down his cheeks. After ten years of captivity, Zirlo was finally free and going home to his family.

Hours later in the infirmary, Brylon was sitting next to Emma’s bed. She still hadn’t regained consciousness after waking up for those briefs seconds in the forest. The infection in the leg, thankfully, hadn’t spread much further than the wound itself. But, the fever still raged on. With all the advancements that the Therons made in medicine, fever from infection was still the one thing that the Therons hadn’t been able to master. Even though very few people died from fever anymore, it was one of those things that everyone just had to wait and let run its course.

When Emma had first arrived in the infirmary, Laura had been waiting at the shuttle pad. She was frantic about Emma and wanted to help care for her. Zane was reluctant to let Laura stay at the hospital because she had covered half of his shift for him while he had been gone for the past day and a half.  He insisted that she go home and get some rest, but it was no use, Laura was staying. It wouldn’t be any different than working a double at San Francisco General. Laura talked to Emma, even though she knew her friend couldn’t hear her. When she looked over to another hover stretcher that passed just beside her, the face on the patient didn’t register with her at first. “Holy shit! Is that who I think it is?” she said out loud, after she connected the face with a name.

Zane
approached her from the side and whispered in her ear, “Do not under any circumstances say anything about the man you just saw.”

She nodded her head
, and then turned her attention back to Emma. Inside the examination room, Laura was stunned by how Emma looked. She could tell that her friend had had a rough time out in the forest and was now paying for it. She automatically knew her fever was sky rocketing just by touching her flushed face. She learned quickly during the few short months of her residency back on Earth how judge with the touch of her hands just how high a fever was. Without using a thermometer, her guess was that Emma’s fever had to be pushing 106. This was entirely too high for an adult human to withstand for too long. Before she knew it she was remembering the possible complications of high fever: a fevered patient is at risk and has the potential for fibril seizure, interferences with metabolic functions, and even kidney or other organ failure due to dehydration.  Emma’s situation was dire.