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Let’s go,” she said with more conviction and strength than she felt.
    Bella looked at her with a strange expression on her face. “Are you with child?”
    “W-what?” Crystal stuttered. “No! Certainly not!”
    “Whether you are or not, we don’t have time for this discussion right now,” Major Dete said. “We have to head out.”
    Crystal followed him out into the corridor and took several fast steps to keep up with his long-legged stride. As they went, she filled him in on the details of the raid.
    “All right,” the Major said when she’d finished. “I should be able to portray this in Fisher’s favor. He stepped in to protect an innocent woman because the Council knows my mate would never participate in anything related to the Movement.” He sent Bella a narrowed-eyed glare over his shoulder.
    She raised a hand before her. “Save the lecture for later, Dete. We don’t have time, remember?”
    “Unbelievable…brash…ill-conceived,” Major Dete muttered to himself as he strode forward.
    When they arrived at the courtroom door, the Major ordered Crystal and Bella to remain in the hallway. “There’s no reason to expose yourselves to the Council. The less they know of you, the better.” He seemed to direct his warning more to his mate than Crystal.
    Bella apparently was in deeply with the Movement, and the Major knew. He either supported her actions, or he quietly disapproved without flatly forbidding her involvement. Either way, Crystal was surprised the Major let Bella risk herself that way, since it was obvious he had a close bond with her.
    He slipped into the courtroom while Crystal and Bella waited impatiently in the hallway. Unfortunately, that gave Crystal time to think about Bella’s question.
    Oh, stars forbid, was she with child?
    Crystal placed a hand tentatively on her stomach. She counted back to her last flow cycle. It was possible, she supposed, but since neither she nor any of the women she knew had regular flow cycles, she never thought about the irregularity as a possible concern.
    And if she was with child, who was the father? Henri, Stepho, or Fisher?
    She was wrong earlier. Her nightmare hadn’t ended at the door to Bella’s pod; it was just beginning. She wasn’t mated to any of the three men, but she could be carrying the child of any one of them. What would the Council do to her when they found out? Would they let her keep the child or force her to give it to a childless woman and her three mates? Or would the Council immediately find Crystal three suitable mates to help her raise the child? And she was quite certain none of those three mates would be Henri, Stepho, or Fisher. She would lose them all.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
    After what felt like a lifetime, the courtroom door slid open, and Major Dete walked out with his arm supporting a bloodied and bruised Fisher. “Let’s get out of here,” he said sharply.
    “Follow me,” Crystal said and took off for Henri and Stepho’s pod without questioning the Major on how he’d managed the miracle of getting Fisher free. Her field training dictated finding safety first. Then, there would be time for a sitch update.
    She quickly led the way to the biological sciences area of the sector. When they reached Henri and Stepho’s pod door, she hesitated for a moment, wishing she could talk to them before barging in with this huge request. She knocked, but neither man responded.
    Checking the chronometer on her portable datapad, she saw it was late afternoon. They were still at work in the lab.
    After a quick look over her shoulder at Fisher’s bloody face and slumped posture, she tapped in the access code to unlock the door. With a soft swish, it slid open, and Crystal stepped across the threshold.
    “Put him in on the berth, Major,” she said a moment before she realized she’d just ordered around a Major.
    His quirked brow showed he’d noticed the same thing, but he refrained from rebuking her. Instead, he