Chapter 22 #3
I come back with the taste of metal in my mouth. The anchor is still in the arch. My hand is locked around it. The bridge is almost gone. The red in my sight surges.
No. Not now.
I brace both feet against the stone and pull with everything I have. The anchor tears free.
The cavern screams blue. The pool erupts in a sheet of glowing water and root-light. The white-gray machine beneath it flickers, loses shape, then dims by half. The drain slows.
It is not stopped. Only slowed.
The bridge collapses. The shelf beneath me drops. I leap too late for the ridge. Too far from the bridge. Sera moves.
She throws the loose end of the snapped line, the shortened section still tied to her pack. I did not see her ready it. I should have.
The line strikes my arm. I catch it midair and it goes taut. Pain rips through my injured shoulder.
Sera anchors herself against a pillar with one foot and her good hand, the line wrapped around her waist this time, not her wounded arm.
Learning. Good. Terrible.
I swing and hit the ridge below her hard. I dig my claws in, gouging stone, the torn anchor clutched in my other hand. The sample pouch flares against my chest. The entire cavern pulses blue-white.
Sera cannot pull me up, but she can hold the line long enough for me to climb.
She knows it. I know it. Trust.
I climb.
The ridge shudders. The black corruption races toward the pool, then slows where the anchor broke free.
Blue returns to some of the roots. Not all. Some remain black. A victory with rot beneath it.
I reach the top. Sera releases the line the moment I gain purchase and stumbles backward.
I catch her. This time I do not stop myself.
My arm goes around her waist. Her body hits mine. Her good hand lands against my chest, over the sample, over the wild hammering pulse of my hearts beneath it.
The anchor falls from my claws and hits the stone with a dead metallic clatter. For one breath, every system around us answers.
The sample. Her bandage. The epis on the wall. The water beneath the pool. My own blood where the anchor burned me.
Blue light surges through the cavern. Sera looks up at me. Her face is close. Too close. Not close enough.
My hand is still at her waist. Her breath touches my throat.
The red comes again, braided with blue. Not rage. Not only mate pull. Something deeper. A pressure that says here. Now. Hers. Yours. End the distance. End the fear. End the hunger.
I open my hand at her waist. Not releasing her, but offering release. She can step back. She should step back. I need her to step back.
She does not.
“Kavor,” she says.
My name in her mouth is not a warning this time.
“Sera.”
“I know,” she whispers.
“You do not.”
“I know enough.”
“No.” The word tears out low. “Not here. Not with the glow reacting. Not with blood and danger. Not because the cavern is making everything feel bigger.”
Her eyes darken. Human dark. Sera dark. No glow can swallow it.
“You think I can’t tell the difference?” she asks.
“I think I cannot.” That stops her. Good. Truth should stop us. My voice goes rough. “I want you when you are angry, when you are bleeding, and when you tell me no. I want you when the epis glows and when it does not. I want you beyond reason. I do not trust reason right now.”
Her hand tightens on my chest. The sample pulses beneath her palm.
“I am trying,” I say, each word dragged from a place with claws in it, “not to become another thing that takes from you.”
The cavern goes quiet. Blue strands sway. Water drips. Far above, stone settles around the broken signal path.
Sera looks at me like I have opened a wound and handed her the knife. Then she shifts closer. Barely. Enough to ruin me.
“You keep saying that,” she says. My breath stops. “That you won’t take.” Her fingers spread over my chest. “That I have to choose.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze drops to my mouth. The world narrows to that movement. My claws bite into my own palm.
“Sera.”
“I’m choosing.”
The words strike harder than the anchor’s light.
She rises onto her toes, one hand still pressed over the sample between us, the other catching the edge of my harness. I do not move. I do not breathe. I let her come.
Her mouth touches mine.
Soft at first. A question made of heat and trembling defiance. Then not soft.
Sera kisses like she survives. Fierce. Exact. As if every part of her has counted the cost and decided to pay anyway.
The cavern flares blue around us. My control cracks. Not enough to take. Enough to answer.
I cup the back of her head with one hand, careful of her injury, her choice, and the dangerous, impossible truth that she is in my arms because she put herself there.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Small. Hungry. Alive.
The mate pull rises like a zemlja beneath the stone. I hold it back. Barely.
The broken anchor at our feet sparks white-gray. The pool shudders. The blue flare around us turns sharp. Too bright. Too responsive.
Sera breaks the kiss first, breath shaking against my mouth. Her eyes are wide, but not with regret or fear of me. Fear of what has answered.
Across the cavern, every strand of epis points toward us.
Then the old system beneath the pool wakes again.