Chapter 47 #2
Cassie went next. She tucked the charge baton into the belt Sev had given her and grabbed the ladder with both hands. Ravik stayed directly behind her, close enough that if she slipped, she would fall against him and not hit the ground.
She climbed slower than Sev, but she was climbing, all the same.
“Good girl,” he heard Sev call softly from above. “Come on, you can make it.”
Cassie muttered something Ravik couldn’t hear, but from her tone it was probably sarcastic.
Despite himself, he felt one corner of his mouth tugging up into a smile. One good thing he remembered from his time in the fog was being absolutely certain the curvy Mature Elite was his mate. He had loved her instantly—and he wanted her still.
The only problem was, he was pretty sure that Sev felt the same.
He put one hand on the ladder and glanced back over his shoulder.
The first wave of Infected had reached the broken fencing.
They were snarling now, the wet clicking sounds becoming louder and more frantic as they saw prey above them.
One of them hurled itself against the fence and tore through a gap, slicing its chest open on jagged metal without even noticing.
“Hurry,” he growled.
“I am hurrying,” Cassie snapped from above him. “My legs are shorter than yours and I recently got hit in the head by a pair of battling alpha idiots.”
Ravik flinched.
She must have heard the change in his breathing because her voice softened slightly.
“I’m sorry. That was mean.”
“No,” he said, watching the first Infected break fully through the fence. “It was true.”
There was a pause above him.
Then she said,
“Just don’t do it again.”
“I won’t,” Ravik promised and he meant it. Goddess help him, he meant it more than he knew how to say. Whatever had happened between him and Sev, fists weren’t the answer.
The first Infected reached the base of the tower just as Cassie made it to the platform. Sev grabbed her wrist and hauled her up the last few feet, then pulled her onto the metal grate beside him.
Ravik stayed on the ladder and swung his shock blade one-handed as the creature leapt for his boot.
The blade took it across the mouth and black blood sprayed over the ladder as the thing dropped, shrieking.
Another came behind it, and Ravik kicked it in the face hard enough to snap its head back.
He climbed one rung higher, then another, keeping his body between the Infected below and Cassie above.
“Ravik!” Sev shouted. “Get up here!”
“Working on it,” Ravik growled.
The ladder shook as three Infected threw themselves against the base. The whole tower groaned—metal vibrating under his hands. Cassie cried out above him, and the sound cut through him like a blade as his protective instincts surged.
She’s my mate—I have to protect her!
It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true—she felt like his mate. And the fact that she felt like Sev’s mate too—which was deeply confusing— didn’t diminish Ravik’s need to keep her safe.
He climbed faster.
An Infected with torn gray-green scales managed to scramble up three rungs before Ravik slammed his boot down on its fingers. Bones cracked and it fell backward into the others, knocking them into a snapping, screaming tangle.
Ravik reached the platform and rolled over the edge just as another body hit the ladder below. Sev grabbed his arm to help pull him up.
For one second, their hands locked and their eyes held.
The touch sent a jolt straight through him.
Not pleasure exactly, he thought—not like that fucking mating bite Sev had given him, and not like Cassie’s mouth or the forbidden memory of Sev’s shaft pressed against his. But the contact still carried something.
Though his friend’s fingers he felt familiarity…earned trust…the memory of battlefields and med bays and Sev’s hands hauling him out of danger a hundred times before this. All the good things he’d come to associate with his best friend.
Until he betrayed me. And made me betray myself.
Ravik yanked his arm away as soon as he was fully on the platform and Sev’s face closed.
Good, Ravik told himself.
Except it didn’t feel very good—not very fucking good at all.
The platform was narrow and slick with mist. Cassie was pressed against the tower support, breathing hard, one hand massaging her bruised temple.
Sev crouched by the relay panel, already pulling tools from his kit and prying open the cracked crystalline cover.
Ravik took his position at the ladder, shock blade in hand, and looked down.
The herd was gathering below.
Dozens of faces tilted up toward them, white eyes glowing, lipless mouths gaping and drooling. More were still coming through the ravine, drawn by scent, sound, blood, and whatever else the three of them were giving off.
Ravik could hear claws on metal as the first ones started climbing.
“How long?” he demanded, casting a glance back at Sev.
“I need three minutes,” Sev said, not looking up from the relay.
“From the looks of this, you have two at most,” he snapped.
“I need three,” Sev repeated.
“Then you’d better work fucking fast,” Ravik told him.
Cassie made a faint sound beside them.
“Boys, please don’t start again.”
Ravik glanced at her and saw the glow under her sleeve pulsing faintly—the place where she was bitten, he remembered now. The reason she’d needed male seed—his and Sev’s both.
His anger faltered. The curvy little human looked tired and scared and brave, and he suddenly wanted desperately to hold her…wanted to kiss the hurt place on her head…wanted to tuck her behind him and make sure nothing in the universe touched her ever again.
Then his mind threw up another memory.
Cassie tucked against his chest while Sev knelt between her thighs with that clear medical wand, filling her because she needed to be filled.
Ravik’s hands on her breasts and belly. Sev’s voice telling him to touch her clit…
telling him how to help her take the wand…
telling her she was a good girl and that she had such a sweet little pussy.
The memory should have enraged him—Cassie was supposed to be his mate—at least that was how his body recognized her.
Instead, his cock stirred to attention again.
He cursed under his breath—not now, damn it! He didn’t need to be fighting for his life with a fucking hard-on distracting him.
He drove the shock blade through the first Infected that got close enough to reach the platform. The body jerked and fell, taking another climber with it. More came behind them, their long fingers gripping the ladder, their mouths snapping.
Strangely, Ravik took comfort in the battle. At least the Infected were a physical enemy he could fight—unlike the fucking memories that kept popping into his head and making him unreasonably hard.
Because this made sense—enemy below, female behind, friend at his back—even if that friend had become something more—something too dangerous to name. All he had to do was kill what climbed, hold the line, and buy them some time.
That was easy.
What was not easy was the way his memories kept turning Sev from friend to rival to something else altogether.
The way he remembered Sev’s hand in Cassie’s hair and did not know whether he wanted to rip him away or put him closer.
The way he remembered the Tenebrian woman from years ago, the taste of ale on his tongue and her hands on his chest while Sev’s hand had slid over his hip, steadying him…
stroking him…making him shudder harder than he’d ever admitted.
He had blamed the Goldsheill ale—for years, he had blamed the fucking ale.
But there was no ale to blame now. Only Cassie and Sev and the memory of wanting them both naked in bed with him.
And a horde of Infected climbing toward them like the whole planet had decided to punish him for remembering.
“Ravik!” Cassie shouted.
He snapped back just in time to see one of the Infected had climbed around the underside of the platform, using the tower struts instead of the ladder. It came over the side near Cassie, mouth open wide, black drool dripping from its needle-sharp teeth.
Ravik lunged but Sev was moving too, abandoning the panel long enough to fire his plasma pistol.
The shot hit the creature in the shoulder, spinning it sideways, and Ravik finished it with a downward strike that split its skull.
The body slid off the platform and vanished into the writhing mass below.
For half a second, Ravik and Sev stood shoulder to shoulder, breathing hard—just like old times.
The thought hit Ravik before he could stop it and he saw Sev glance at him, his blue eyes sharp and pale without the broken oculars.
There was blood on his mouth and a bruise darkening along his jaw.
Ravik knew he had put both of them there.
Something like regret twisted in his chest, but he shoved it away.
“Back to work,” he growled.
Sev’s expression hardened.
“I was working. I only stopped to save our lady.”
He turned back to the panel but his words rang in Ravik’s mind—our lady. As thought Cassie belonged to both of them—as if she belonged between them.
“Fuck you,” he said to Sev, shooting the Blood Kindred a hard glare.
Sev didn’t answer with words but his shoulders bunched and he gave Ravik a one finger salute, which he’d doubtless learned from the humans.
Cassie looked between them, her lips pressed tight.
“I swear to God, if we survive this, I’m locking both of you in a room and making you talk like adults.”
“Bad idea,” Ravik said, cutting down another Infected as it reached the platform. “We might kill each other.”
“No, you won’t,” she snapped. “You’ll be too busy remembering that you’re best friends and you’ve saved each others’ lives multiple times.”
Her words hit too close to home. Ravik snarled in response and kicked another creature off the ladder.
Below them, the herd surged harder—scaly, rotting bodies piling against the tower base. The metal structure groaned with the weight being put on it. Sev’s hands moved fast over the relay, reconnecting cables, stripping wires, and swearing under his breath in the native Kindred tongue.
“Sev,” Ravik warned as the platform shuddered again. “I can’t fucking hold them off forever.”
“I’m almost there.” The Blood Kindred’s voice was tight.
“You said three minutes,” Ravik reminded him.
“It has been less than two,” Sev snapped.
“Feels longer,” Ravik said.
“It always does when one is waiting to die.”
The coldness in his voice sent an icy finger down Ravik’s spine.
Behind him, Cassie made a strangled noise.
“That’s not helpful, Severin,” she said. “So not helpful.”
Ravik almost smiled despite himself. One thing he loved about the little human was the way she handled herself—she had a smart mouth on her that wouldn’t quit, no matter the circumstances.
Then the tower shook so hard that Cassie stumbled. Ravik grabbed her with one arm and hauled her against his side while still holding the shock blade in the other hand. Her body pressed to his—soft and warm and alive—and her scent went through him like a drug.
Need. Fear. Honey. Cassie.
Mine, a voice inside him snarled.
But then Sev’s scent—which was still on her skin—reached his nose. Sharp and altered and golden, it was braided with the warm scent of Cassie’s skin and hair and Ravik’s own scent too.
All three of their scents, all mixed up together. All wrong.
But then why did it feel so right?
No.
Ravik shoved the thought away so hard it made his brain ache. They were going to die here if he couldn’t fucking get his head in the game!
“Signal is active,” Sev said suddenly.
Cassie sucked in a breath.
“Does that mean the Mother Ship can hear us?” she asked hopefully.
“It means the tower is broadcasting our beacon,” Sev said. “Whether the Mother Ship receives it depends on atmospheric interference, distance, and whether my earlier long pulse reached—”
“Sev,” Ravik barked.
His friend glanced up.
“Maybe. Maybe they can hear us.”
“That’s all you had to say,” Cassie pointed out.
And then another Infected reached the far side of the platform. Then another, and another. And a fucking-nother.
Ravik pushed Cassie toward Severin.
“Behind him,” he ordered.
“Ravik—”
“Now.”
This time she listened.
Good.
Ravik stepped to the center of the platform, shock blade raised, while the tower swayed under the weight of the creatures climbing below.
He could hear more of them coming up the struts, hear their claws scraping metal from all directions.
There were too many, even for him. Even with Sev’s pistol and Cassie’s baton and the Goddess herself watching, there were too fucking many.
But the signal was broadcasting—that was something, at least.
He glanced once at Sev and saw the same knowledge in his eyes—they might not make it. After all the narrow escapes they’d had together, this might be the last one—their final conflict.
The one they didn’t survive.
Sev lifted his pistol and came to stand beside him anyway, the two of them shielding Cassie, who was at their back.
Ravik wanted to tell him to get away. Wanted to tell him he was still furious, still disgusted, still not ready to think about the bite or the memories or the way their shafts had felt pressed together in Cassie’s mouth.
But instead, what came out was the old battlefield line.
“No one gets left behind.”
Sev’s gaze flicked to his and for a moment, all the anger and shame and broken things between them hung there in the air.
Then Sev nodded once.
“No one gets left behind.”
Cassie stepped up between them, charge baton crackling in her hand.
“Good,” she said, though her voice shook. “Because I am not being left on zombie planet with either one of you idiots.”
Ravik barked out a laugh.
Then the Infected came over the platform rail in a wave.