Chapter 40 #2
He sat back on the lab stool and, for the first time in a long while, allowed himself to feel afraid.
Not of dying—he had faced death before, in battlefields, quarantine zones, and the ruined lower levels of the Dead Zone when they’d been running for their lives with hoards of Infected on their heels.
Death was not the worst thing, he decided…failure was.
If Severin died and left Cassandra and Ravik without the cure, that would be failure. If he infected himself and became another threat to them, that would be worse. If he carried the Hunger Virus into his own blood and lost himself before he could help them…
He looked again toward the door—he could almost see them in his mind.
Cassandra curled against Ravik’s broad chest, flushed and exhausted and finally quiet.
Ravik holding her carefully, as though she was the most precious thing in the universe and he was afraid his big hands might break her.
The two of them waiting for Severin to return, though neither of them truly understood yet what they were becoming to him…
what the three of them were becoming to each other.
Severin closed his fingers around the injector, then he bowed his head.
“Goddess,” he murmured, his voice low in the empty lab, “If this is arrogance, forgive me. If this is madness, guide my hand. And if this is the only way to save them…let my body be enough.”
Nothing happened—no light glowed and no voice spoke to him as he had heard the Goddess often spoke to her children when they were in need. But he felt a warmth around him—as though someone was giving him a gentle, comforting hug.
It was enough.
Severin pressed the injector to the inside of his arm and depressed the plunger before he could think any longer.
The compound entered his bloodstream in a single cold burn.
He hissed through his teeth and gripped the edge of the table as the sensation shot up his arm.
At first, it felt like ice flowing through his veins.
Then the cold became fire, racing toward his chest…
his throat…his jaw. His fangs throbbed so violently that black spots crowded the edges of his vision.
“Gods,” he choked.
His heart stumbled in his chest once and then again. For one terrifying second, every scent in the room sharpened into something unbearable.
Antiseptic. Metal. Old blood. Viral medium. Cassandra’s honey still clinging to the wand case. Ravik’s smoky scent from the bedding fibers on Severin’s own skin….all of it washed over him, filling his senses unbearably.
Then his mouth flooded with saliva and his fangs burned with the sudden, brutal need to bite…to deliver the cure he could feel boiling in his blood.
At least, he hoped that was what why he had the sudden urge to sink his fangs into flesh.
Severin forced himself to breathe through the intense and overwhelming sensations. He counted the beats of his heart, noted the tremor in his fingers, the heat in his jaw, and the pressure building behind his fangs.
The Hunger did not rise in him—not the way it had in Ravik’s samples and not with the feral blankness and the predatory appetite of a Visskous who had been turned into an Infected.
But something was moving through his blood…something alive, he could feel it.
At last, the worst of the burning eased. Severin remained bent over the table, breathing hard, sweat cooling along the back of his neck. His fangs were fully descended and aching, but the pain had settled into a deep, pulsing pressure in the glands at their roots.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and saw a faint smear of gold-tinged blue fluid—his essence. And Gods, it was altered already. Or corrupted—there was no way to know, not yet.
He needed time. The compound would have to move through his system fully, bind to his essence glands if his theory was correct, and either stabilize there or tear him apart from the inside.
By morning, he would be able to test it. By morning, he would know whether he had become the delivery system they needed…or whether he had signed his own death warrant.
Severin sealed the remaining samples and locked the files.
His movements were slower now, less precise than usual, but he forced himself to clean the station properly.
If he lost consciousness later—or worse became one of the Infected—he didn’t want Cassandra or Ravik walking into a contaminated lab.
The thought made his heart fist in his chest but he tried to push it away. There was no point in worrying now—he couldn’t take back the injection. There was nothing to do but wait and hope and pray to the Goddess that this worked.
But even if it did work and he was able to save them both…he might still lose his best friend.
He had saved Ravik before and Ravik had saved him more times than either of them could count. They had been boys together, then warriors, then partners in the field—two halves of a team that just worked.
Severin knew Ravik’s temper, his humor, his stubborn courage, and his reckless loyalty.
He knew the way the big Beast Kindred pretended not to understand complicated science but remembered every dosage of every medication Severin had ever given him.
He knew the sound of his laugh and the weight of his hand on Severin’s shoulder after a battle.
And now Severin knew the sound Ravik made when Cassandra took them both in her mouth…knew the feeling of his shaft rubbing against his best friend’s shaft as both of them took pleasure with the same woman. They had shared Cassandra in ways Beast and Blood Kindred were never meant to share.
Even with the Tenebrian woman, the two of them had taken turns with her.
She had begged to have them both inside her at once, but Ravik had refused.
Though they’d all three been in the same bed together, they had taken her one at a time.
Even drunk, the big Beast Kindred had remembered himself enough to know what the two of them shouldn’t do together.
Severin’s face heated at the memory of pressing his shaft to his friend’s…of feeling Cassandra’s sweet little tongue caressing them both. That memory should have felt like shame. Instead, it felt like the opening of some forbidden door he had spent years pretending he couldn’t see.
Enough—he couldn’t think this way anymore.
Severin closed his eyes briefly and forced himself to stand.
He needed to go back to them. If this was his last night he had as himself, he didn’t want to spend it alone in the lab.
He needed the comfort of their warm bodies and the sound of their breathing.
He needed them both, just as Cassandra had needed both him and Ravik earlier.
The hallway seemed longer than usual as he made his way back toward the mating chamber.
His legs felt steady enough, but there was a strange heaviness in his limbs, as though his blood had become thicker.
Every few steps, his fangs ached and a faint pulse moved through his jaw.
He kept one hand on the wall, not because he needed it, he told himself, but because the bunker corridor was narrow and he was tired.
It was a transparent lie, but there was no one there to call him on it.
When he reached the door to the mating chamber, he paused.
Inside, the amber lights were low. Cassandra was asleep in Ravik’s arms, her curvy body tucked against the Beast Kindred’s chest, her hair spilling over his forearm.
Ravik was awake, or half-awake. His golden eyes were clearer than they had been earlier, though still faintly hazy at the edges.
He looked at Severin and for a moment, neither male spoke.
Then Ravik lifted one hand slightly from Cassandra’s hip and reached toward him.
The gesture was simple—come here.
Severin’s throat tightened and for a moment he considered refusing. The safest place for him, if the compound went wrong, would be away from them. Preferably behind a sealed door with restraints nearby and a sterilized blade in case he had to end the threat before it reached them.
But Cassandra stirred in her sleep and murmured something that sounded almost like his name…and that was enough to break him.
Severin crossed the room and climbed carefully onto the bed. He lay on Cassandra’s other side, facing her and Ravik, close enough to feel their warmth but not so close that he crowded them.
Ravik watched him with those half-clear golden eyes, studying him in the dim light.
“You’re tired,” he rumbled softly, sounding more himself than he had in ages.
“Yes,” Severin admitted. “A little.”
“Come closer.” Ravik gestured for him. “Help me hold her.”
Severin hesitated. If he was still offering to hold the woman they both wanted between them, then it was clear his friend wasn’t all the way back yet.
Ravik’s brow furrowed and he frowned at Severin’s hesitation.
“Come on—Cassie needs us close.”
Severin felt his resistance melting…mainly, he told himself, because what Ravik said was true. She did need both of them.
He shifted closer until Cassandra was nestled between them again. She sighed in her sleep and turned toward him, one hand coming to rest against his bare chest as though she was reaching for him without knowing it. The touch sent a pulse through his altered blood so strong he had to close his eyes.
Oh Goddess, if only we could hold her between us every night like this—forever!
Then Ravik’s arm settled over both of them, heavy and warm, binding them together in the dim amber light.
Severin lay very still with Cassandra’s hand over his heart, Ravik’s breath slow and deep beyond her, and the secret burning quietly in his veins.
He should tell them but there was nothing to tell until morning, he told himself. No certainty…no result and no proof that he had either saved them or doomed them. Only a theory, a prayer, and the strange golden pressure he felt gathering behind his fangs.
Cassandra murmured in her sleep and shifted closer and Ravik’s arm tightened around them both.
Severin let himself rest his forehead briefly against Cassandra’s hair and breathed in the scent of her—warm woman, honey, exhaustion, and the faint lingering glow of the cure her body had begun to make.
In the morning, he would test her blood and his own. In the morning, he would know whether he had become the carrier of the cure…or the next carrier of the Hunger Virus.
Until then, he lay with the two people he was trying desperately not to love too much and finally drifted off to sleep.