Chapter 46
CASSIE
“Oh my God—oh, no—stop!” Cassie gasped, jumping to her feet.
But her words fell on deaf ears because the two huge warriors were already going at it.
For one awful second, Severin didn’t even defend himself.
He just sat there on the ground, his fangs still wet with the essence he’d injected into Ravik’s system and his mouth already bleeding from the punch his best friend had just landed.
The blow had snapped his head to the side and knocked his oculars askew, but he didn’t raise a hand to strike back.
He just took it.
Cassie stared at him in horror, feeling like her heart had lurched up into her throat.
He had saved Ravik’s life. He had risked his own life to carry the cure in his body, then bitten Ravik because there had been no other choice.
And now Ravik was looking at him like Severin had done something monstrous.
“Ravik, stop!” she shouted. “He saved you!”
The big Beast Kindred rounded on her, his golden eyes blazing. They were completely clear now—not a single trace of milky-white fog left in them—but somehow that made the fury in them worse. He was fully himself again, or close enough to it that every word he said sounded deliberate.
“You don’t understand what he fucking did to me!” he snarled.
“I understand that you told him to bite you!” Cassie snapped back. “You told him to do it before you hurt us!”
Ravik’s jaw clenched so hard she could see a muscle jump. His face was flushed dark with rage and something else too—shame, maybe—or humiliation. Whatever it was, it was eating at him just as surely as the Hunger Virus had been a few minutes ago.
“He used me like a woman,” Ravik growled.
The words seemed to strike Severin harder than the punch had.
Cassie saw it happen—Severin’s face went completely still and cold, but his eyes changed. Something painful flickered there, something sharp and wounded and quickly hidden behind that icy Blood Kindred control he wore like armor.
Then it was gone.
“Healing essence works through sexual response,” Severin said, his voice low and clipped. “You know that. You have always known that.”
“I know you put your fangs in my throat and made me come like I was your fucking mate!” Ravik roared.
“You were dying!” Severin shouted back, and this time his voice cracked like a whip. “You were turning right in front of us. You begged me to stop you before you hurt Cassandra. So I did—the only way I could!”
Cassie flinched at the force of his voice.
She had heard Severin frustrated before—had seen him cool and clinical and aroused and stern and worried—but she had never heard him sound like this.
Like all the fear he had been carrying for months had finally torn through the careful shell he kept around himself and it was pouring out of him like blood.
But Ravik didn’t back down.
“And what about the rest of it?” he demanded, taking a step toward Severin. “What about the things I’m starting to remember? Cassie between us. Your hands on her. Her mouth on both of us.” His voice dropped into a rough, furious growl. “What the fuck did you let happen when I was out of my mind?”
Cassie felt her face go hot and cold at the same time.
Oh God, he was remembering.
Not all of it, maybe—not clearly—but enough. Enough to know that the three of them had crossed some very forbidden lines in the bunker. Enough to know Severin had been part of it…enough to realize that he himself had not fought it at the time but had joined in willingly.
“Ravik,” she said quickly, stepping between them. “Nothing happened that I didn’t choose. Nothing happened that you didn’t agree to as much as you were able.”
But the big Beast Kindred barely seemed to hear her. His eyes were fixed on Severin now, and the look on his face scared her more than the Infected had. Because this was not mindless rage—this was pain turned outward.
Severin got slowly to his feet.
“I did not take advantage of you,” he said, and his voice was quieter now, which somehow made everything worse.
“I did not force you. I didn’t force Cassandra, either.
Everything that happened between the three of us happened because her body was fighting the virus and because you responded to her as your mate. ”
“As my mate,” Ravik snapped. “Not yours.”
Severin’s mouth tightened.
“I never claimed otherwise.”
“That’s a fucking lie and you know it! If you weren’t acting like she was your mate too, then why did we share her?”
Ravik swung again.
This time, Severin didn’t let the blow land unanswered.
He blocked it with one forearm and drove his shoulder into Ravik’s chest, shoving him back a step.
Ravik snarled and came at him again, and suddenly the two of them were grappling like a pair of wild animals, boots tearing up the damp grass, massive bodies colliding with enough force to make Cassie’s stomach twist.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “Both of you, stop!”
Neither one listened.
Ravik threw a punch that Severin ducked at the last second.
Severin retaliated with a hard blow to Ravik’s ribs, and Ravik grunted but barely seemed to feel it.
Then the Beast Kindred drove forward, caught Severin by the front of his shirt, and slammed him backward against the base of the tower hard enough to make metal shriek.
Severin’s oculars fell halfway down his nose.
Ravik hit him again.
This time there was a sharp crack as the lenses shattered.
“No!” Cassie cried.
The broken oculars flew sideways into the grass, one lens spiderwebbed and the frame bent.
Severin’s head snapped back and blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, bright red against his pale skin.
For a moment he looked almost shocked—not by the pain, Cassie thought—but by the fact that Ravik had actually broken something he knew Severin needed.
Then the Blood Kindred’s expression went icy. He shoved Ravik back and punched him hard in the jaw. Ravik staggered, then lunged again. They were going to kill each other—Cassie was sure of it!
She didn’t think—she just moved.
Darting between them, she threw up both hands as though she could somehow stop two enormous alien warriors with sheer panic and attitude.
It was a stupid thing to do—she knew it the second she did it, but by then it was too late. Ravik had already swung and Severin was already moving to deflect the blow.
The punch glanced off Severin’s forearm and clipped Cassie on the side of the head.
For a moment, the world flashed white.
Pain exploded near her temple and the ground seemed to tilt sideways. She heard someone shout her name—maybe both of them—and then she was falling.
Her knees hit the grass first, then one hand, and the damp ground rushed up beneath her as the sky spun in a sickening circle overhead.
Everything went muffled…then both males were there, bending over her with terrified expressions on their faces.
“Cassandra!” Severin’s voice was sharp with horror.
“Cassie!” Ravik dropped beside her, his big hands hovering over her as though he was afraid to touch her and afraid not to at the same time. “Gods, baby—did I hurt you?”
Cassie blinked hard, trying to make the world stop moving. Her head rang and her stomach rolled, but at least she was conscious—that had to count for something. She hoped, anyway. She touched the side of her head and winced when her fingers found a tender spot already beginning to throb.
“I’m fine,” she said, though she was absolutely not fine. “I mean, I’m not dead, which is apparently the bar we’re working with today.”
Ravik looked stricken and Severin’s face had gone pale except for the bright red smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re dizzy,” he said, reaching for her chin with careful fingers and tilting her face up to his. “Look at me, Cassandra. Follow my finger,” he commanded, moving his index finger from side to side.
“Do not give me a concussion test while I’m mad at you,” she muttered, but she followed his finger anyway because he looked genuinely terrified.
Ravik made a rough sound and touched her shoulder with unbearable gentleness.
“I’m so fucking sorry—I didn’t mean to hit you, baby.”
“I know.” Cassie closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again when that made the spinning worse. “But you two idiots were so busy trying to beat the crap out of each other that I got caught in the middle.”
Severin looked down and Ravik’s jaw worked. For once, neither of them had anything to say, which was good, Cassie thought.
She sat up slowly with Severin’s hand under one elbow and Ravik’s big hand on her back.
Her head hurt and her pride hurt and her heart hurt most of all, because the look on both their faces made it clear they were horrified by what had happened.
They would never have hurt her on purpose—she knew that.
But they had hurt each other on purpose…and somehow that felt almost as bad.
Ravik rose to his feet first, breathing hard. His hands were clenched at his sides and his gaze moved from Cassie’s face to Severin’s broken oculars lying in the grass. For half a second, shame flickered over his features. Then he pushed it down and looked back at Severin.
“We’ll table this for now,” he growled. “But you’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do later.”
Severin wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand.
His broken oculars were gone, and without them his pale blue eyes looked strangely exposed.
Maybe it was only because Cassie had gotten used to seeing them on him, but without them he looked less like a cold scientist and more like a wounded man trying desperately not to show how much the wound mattered.
“If there is a later,” he said quietly.
Cassie’s stomach dropped.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
Severin didn’t answer. He only turned and pointed toward the horizon.
Cassie followed his gaze. At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. The mist along the ravine floor seemed to be moving—rippling in a long gray-green wave.
Then the wave resolved into shapes—too many shapes. Dozens—no, hundreds—of Visskous bodies were lurching and crawling and running in that horrible jerky way the Infected moved…
And they were coming straight toward the tower—straight toward them.
“Clearly we’ve been scented,” Severin said in his cool, practical way, as though he was discussing the weather and the possibility of light precipitation later instead of the fact that a zombie hoard was headed their way.
Cassie looked around wildly, but there was nowhere to hide.
The tower rose behind them, skeletal and exposed.
The ravine stretched to either side, black stone and broken fencing offering no real cover.
The bunker was far behind them and already lost. The Infected were ahead—pouring out of the mist like a nightmare made of teeth and hunger.
Ravik picked up his shock blade and Severin retrieved his broken oculars from the grass. He looked at them once, then discarded them and drew his plasma pistol.
Cassie forced herself to stand, though her legs shook and her head throbbed. No one spoke because there was nothing to say.
They were trapped with no way out.