Chapter 42
SEVERIN
The lights went out before Severin could decide whether to throttle Ravik or shake some sense into him.
The bunker was swallowed by absolute darkness.
The steady hum of the ventilation system cut off at the same time, leaving a silence so sudden and complete that Severin could hear Cassandra’s sharp intake of breath and Ravik’s low, instinctive growl beside her.
Every muscle in Severin’s body went tight, his frustration with Ravik vanishing beneath a cold, immediate rush of alarm as he realized something…
The lights weren’t coming back on and this was not a simple power flicker.
“Severin?” Cassandra whispered from somewhere in the dark. Her voice sounded frightened but controlled, which was more than he could say for the state of his own thoughts at the moment.
“I’m here,” he said at once, reaching toward the sound of her voice. His fingers found her arm, warm and bare beneath his touch, and he felt her tense for half a heartbeat before she gripped his hand.
A second later, Ravik moved too. Severin heard the rustle of fabric, the scrape of bare feet on the metal floor, and then the Beast Kindred’s massive body was suddenly close enough that Severin could feel the heat rolling off him.
Even half-confused, half-angry, and stubborn as a wall of reinforced alloy, Ravik still positioned himself between Cassandra and the unseen threat.
That was Ravik, he thought with reluctant admiration—infuriating, impossible, courageous Ravik.
“Emergency lights should have come on,” he said, keeping his voice low. His mind was already moving through the bunker schematics, mapping which systems would fail first if the main power went down and which doors would automatically seal.
“They didn’t,” Cassandra said, which was obvious, but Severin didn’t blame her for saying it. Sometimes naming the awful thing helped make it a little less awful, though in this case it really didn’t help much at all.
“No, they didn’t.” He released her hand to feel along the wall for the emergency panel. He found it by memory, tapped the manual activation sequence, and got nothing but a dead click under his fingers.
Ravik growled again, deeper this time.
“What the fuck does that clicking sound mean?” he demanded, and though his voice was clear, there was still a rough edge to it that made Severin’s stomach knot.
“It means the backup cells are either drained or disconnected,” he said. He tapped the panel again, harder this time, even though he knew perfectly well that anger wouldn’t restore power to a dead system.
“Disconnected?” Cassandra’s hand brushed his arm in the dark. “As in, something broke? Or as in, something is breaking it right now?”
Before Severin could answer, a distant metallic boom echoed through the bunker.
Cassandra gasped, and Ravik snarled so loudly that the sound vibrated through the metal walls.
Severin reached for the small light clipped to his belt, clicked it on, and narrow blue-white illumination spilled across the corridor. He used it to look at his companions.
Cassandra was pale, her eyes wide, with one hand pressed to the bite wound on her arm. Ravik stood beside her, shirtless and tense, his golden eyes beginning to haze at the edges, damn it.
“Ravik,” Severin snapped. “Look at me.”
The Beast Kindred’s gaze jerked to his face.
“Stay with us,” Severin said, sharper than he intended. “I know you’re angry and I know you don’t want to listen to me, but we need you. If you slip back into the Hunger haze now, we could all die. Do you understand?”
Ravik’s jaw tightened. For a moment, Severin saw the anger there—the offended pride…the stubborn refusal…the male who had been told his best friend needed to bite him in order to heal him and had reacted exactly as Severin had feared he would.
Then Cassandra touched Ravik’s arm.
“Hey, big guy,” she said softly. “It’s okay—just focus on me.”
The shift in the Beast Kindred was immediate. His shoulders lowered slightly, and the haze in his eyes thinned as he breathed in her scent.
“I understand,” he said at last. His gaze flicked back to Severin, still wary but clearer. “But I’m still not letting you bite me.”
Severin almost laughed, though there was nothing funny about the situation.
“Do you honestly think this is the moment to keep arguing about that?” he demanded. “The power is out, the backup systems are down, and something just hit the bunker hard enough to shake the walls.”
“Then we deal with that first,” Ravik growled. “Afterward, you can go back to trying to get your fangs in me.”
Severin clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached.
He wanted to shout at his best friend—wanted to tell him he was being an irrational, stubborn, over-muscled fool who would rather risk losing his mind than admit that Severin might know what he was talking about.
He wanted to shake Ravik until the male understood that this was not about sex, not about pride, and most certainly not about the old rules that said a Blood Kindred should only bite his mate.
But underneath the frustration was fear…so much fear that it felt like a hand around his throat.
Because Ravik didn’t remember. He didn’t remember the worst of the fog…
the vacant eyes…the broken words…the nights when Severin had locked himself in the lab and listened to his best friend growling through the door like an wild animal.
Ravik didn’t know what it had done to Severin to watch him vanish piece by piece into the fog.
And now he was refusing the one thing that might save him completely.
Another boom rolled through the bunker, closer this time and Severin reminded himself of what he had just told Ravik—there was no time to fight about this now. They had to assess the situation and act quickly.
Cassandra flinched at the echoing boom.
“Okay, I hate to interrupt the male stubbornness festival, but what is that?”
Severin turned his light toward the far end of the corridor.
“Either the outer access hatch is under stress or the Infected have found the intake shaft. Possibly both,” he said, forcing himself back into useful facts because useful facts were the only thing keeping him from losing control.
“The Infected have found us?” Cassandra’s voice went tight. “How? We’re underground.”
“The beacon pulses,” Severin said, already moving toward the lab.
“I’ve been sending emergency bursts toward the communications tower whenever we had enough power to spare.
The tower is damaged, but it can still amplify a signal—I sent an especially long one this morning, explaining everything I knew about the Hunger Virus and the fact that we may have a cure now.
The extra-long pulse may have drawn them, or the power surge may have burned through the external couplings. ”
“You’re telling me the signal meant to save us may have led the zombies to our front door?” Cassandra demanded, following him with Ravik close behind her.
“I’m telling you the signal may have been the only reason anyone aboard the Mother Ship might know we’re still alive and where to find us,” Severin said.
“Unfortunately, the Infected are still attracted to heat, movement, sound, and certain electrical frequencies. I had hoped the outer shielding would hold.”
Ravik gave a humorless grunt behind them.
“Looks like you hoped wrong, buddy.”
Severin bit back a sharp reply. It wouldn’t help the situation, he reminded himself. It would be satisfying, but it wouldn’t help.
When they reached the lab, Severin’s light swept over the equipment and the darkened monitors.
Most of the samples were sealed, thank the Goddess, but the refrigeration unit had switched to passive insulation and would not hold indefinitely without power.
The air was already beginning to feel heavier and warmer with the ventilation system dead overhead.
He used his light to scan the bunker’s control system on the far wall—several gauges were cracked and one of the electrical boxes was leaking a stream of dark, acrid smoke.
When he pulled it open, he saw that every wire inside had melted and fused together.
His stomach tightened—there was no fixing or salvaging that.
The bunker was dead and they would be too if they didn’t get out quickly.
Cassandra hovered in the doorway, watching him with anxious eyes.
“How bad is it?” she asked, her voice quivering slightly.
“Bad enough that we can’t stay here,” Severin said.
He grabbed the portable med-kit first, then the sealed case containing the altered honey sample, the anti-viral files, and the remaining compound data and shoved them all in an insulated pack.
“The air recyclers are offline, the outer seals may fail, and if the Infected are at the hatch, they will eventually get in,” he added.
Ravik frowned.
“Then we fight our way out.”
“We’re not fighting unless there’s no other way,” Severin snapped, shoving the pack strap over one shoulder.
“There are too many of them, and Cassandra is still infected. For that matter, so are you. If she is bitten again or if your viral load spikes, we may lose both of you before we reach the surface.”
“My viral load is just fucking fine,” Ravik growled, which was precisely the kind of ignorant statement that made Severin want to throw a sample tray at his best friend’s head.
“You have no idea if your viral load is fine,” he said, turning on the Beast Kindred.
“You feel fine because the cure is active in my system and my scent and Cassandra’s scent are stabilizing you.
That does not mean you are cured and it does not mean you are safe.
It means we are standing on a very thin ledge above a very deep pit and you are stamping your boot on the edge because you don’t like the shape of the bridge! ”
Ravik stared at him and Cassandra stared too.