Chapter 12
The cut on her throat was gone. There wasn’t even a scar.
Juni sat still while the colony healer’s assistant, Fenriil, ran the device over her skin one final time. Blue light pulsed across her throat. It was gruesome as hell, watching flesh knit together beneath the glow in the mirror the assistant healer had given her.
“You should rest,” Fenriil said, switching off the device. “You’ve had a shock.”
She didn’t want rest. She wanted Goraath.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been standing in that alley with blood on his hands. He’d stepped toward her and she’d flinched. Not from fear, but from everything crashing over her at once... the knife, the blood, the violence. Adrenaline still screaming through her veins with nowhere to go.
But he didn’t know that. He’d seen her flinch and his expression had shuttered closed. Just... gone.
She slid off the bed before Fenriil could stop her. “Where is Goraath?”
“Healer Thayn is treating him in room three. But you really should—”
She was already gone.
The colony medical facility was small. Utilitarian. She passed two closed doors before she found the right one, her hand hesitating on the handle for just a heartbeat before she pushed it open.
Goraath sat on a treatment bed, shirtless. Thayn stood beside him, running a small device like the one Fenriil had used on her over a wound on his arm. Shit, she hadn’t even known he’d been injured.
Thayn glanced up. His eyes swept over her and his lips quirked at the corner.
“Good. You’re healed.” He turned back to his work, nodding toward the side of the bed Goraath lay on. “Sit down before you fall down.”
She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the treatment bed. Close enough that her thigh pressed against Goraath’s. Picking up his free hand... the one Thayn wasn’t working on... She laced her fingers through his.
His skin was cold. His fingers didn’t close around hers but she held on.
She caught a flicker in his eyes as he slid a sideways glance at her. Confusion, maybe. She wasn’t sure, and the expression was gone before she could analyze it.
Sitting silently, she watched the blue light flicker across his arm. Under the blue beam muscle was repairing itself layer by layer. She looked at him again, but his face stayed blank. Empty. Like he’d already decided how this ended and was just waiting for her to catch up.
Fuck that.
She squeezed his hand tighter.
The image of him in that alley wouldn’t stop flickering behind her eyes.
The way he’d moved... nothing like the rancher who fed krulaati and mended fences.
He’d been something else entirely. Something that crushed throats and snapped necks and promised torture in a voice cold enough to freeze blood.
She looked at their joined hands. His were massive and scarred, knuckles dark with someone else’s blood. Hers were small and pale against them. The contrast should have terrified her, but it didn’t. She knew he would never hurt her. Ever.
The blue light clicked off. Thayn set the device aside and straightened.
“You’ll live.” His voice was dry. “Try not to get stabbed again before morning.”
Goraath grunted. His jaw stayed tight.
The healer’s gaze moved between them… Took in their joined hands. Juni’s expression… the rigid set of Goraath’s shoulders.
“The transport warriors should have arrived back. Kaalden’s briefing them now.” He moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
Silence.
Goraath still wouldn’t look at her. His jaw was tight, that muscle jumping in his cheek. His hand stayed limp in hers.
“You should go.” His voice was hollow. “The warriors can take you somewhere safe. Away from...” He stopped. Swallowed. “Away from here.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You saw what I am.”
“I saw you save my life.”
His eyes met hers. The pain there hit her square stole the breath right out of her lungs.
“I killed two males tonight.” Each word was like it was dragged out of him. “With my bare hands. I would have killed the third. I would have—” His voice cracked. “You flinched. When I stepped toward you. You flinched.”
Oh. Oh no.
“Oh Goraath.”
She shifted closer, and leaned in. Taking his face in her hands, she made him look at her. His stubble was rough against her palms.
“I didn’t flinch because I was afraid of you. I flinched because I’d just had a knife at my throat and everything happened so fast and I couldn’t—” Her voice broke. “I wasn’t afraid of you. I was overwhelmed. There’s a difference. A big difference.”
He searched her face.
The door opened behind them and a warrior from the escort filled the doorway, his eyes assessing the room in a single sweep.
“The situation has been contained,” he said, his voice clipped and professional. “However, given the attacks, we’re offering immediate evacuation to any human females who wish to leave. Transport departs in an hour.”
Goraath went rigid under her hands.
“I’m not leaving,” she said, steady and sure. She didn’t even have to think about it. She was staying.
The warrior’s gaze flicked to Goraath, then back to her. “You’re certain? The threats—”
“I don’t recall asking for your opinion.” She held his gaze, let him see the steel in it. “This is my choice and my life. I’m staying.”
The warrior’s eyebrows rose but he didn’t argue. Instead, he nodded and left.
Goraath stared at her like she’d sprouted wings.
“I need you to tell me,” She said in a low voice. “You need to tell me everything. Who you were before you were a rancher. Why you stopped. What ‘krin hunter’ means.”
The silence stretched between them and she watched the war play out across his face...
“Please.” She stroked her thumb across his cheekbone. “No more secrets. I’m not going anywhere, but I need to understand.”
He broke right there in front of her.
“My mother was a warrior.” The words came out slow. “One of the best. I followed her into service as soon as I came of age.”
“You were a warrior too.”
“Worse.” A muscle jumped in his cheek. “I tested into the Hunter program. The empire’s most dangerous warriors. They’re the ones sent into the nests when everything else has failed.”
“Nests?”
“Krin nests. They’re...” He shook his head. “Creatures. Apex predators who consider other species nothing more than food. They infest planets, and consume everything organic. The only way to stop them is to go into the pod nests and destroy them.”
Her stomach turned over. “And you did that.”
“For fifteen years.” His voice was flat. “I earned honor braids for every nest I destroyed. Every kill.”
She tried to imagine it and couldn’t.
“What happened?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”
He was quiet so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. When he did, his voice was low.
“My mother’s unit was ambushed by a pod. I wasn’t there. Couldn’t protect her.” His throat worked. “They brought her body home in pieces. We were lucky to get anything of her at all.”
Oh god.
“I cut my braids that night.” The words were rough and raw, like they were ripped from somewhere deep inside his soul. “All of them. Every bead I’d earned. Buried that part of myself.”
Her eyes burned, but she blinked hard and refused to let the tears fall.
“My father...” He stopped, frowned, then started speaking again. “We mate for life. The bond goes deeper than emotion. Deeper than choice. When one bonded mate dies, the other often follows.”
Her chest went tight. Oh God, it was so hard to breathe.
“Bond-grief. He was dead within six months. Stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped wanting to exist without her.”
The tears fell.
His gaze found hers and the grief there stole her breath. It was so raw and naked. “That’s what the mating bond means. Loving someone so completely that losing them destroys you.”
His hands came up, slowly, hesitantly, and wrapped around her wrists. At first she thought he was pulling her away, but then she realised he wasn’t.
He was holding on to her.
“I watched it kill my father. I swore I’d never let myself—” He broke off. “But then you walked into my house with your Christmas decorations and your stubborn optimism and I couldn’t... I tried not to...”
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, they blazed as he looked at her.
“I love you. I didn’t want to. I tried so hard not to. But I love you, Juni. And it terrifies me more than any pod nest ever did.”
More tears spilled down her cheeks, but she let them fall, holding his gaze with hers.
This was what he’d been fighting. Not her. His own heart.
And he loved her anyway.
“I love you too.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “I realized it at the festival. Right before they grabbed me. I was so scared—” She had to stop, breathe through the tightness in her chest. “I thought I was going to die without ever telling you.”
He brushed away her tears with a gentleness that cracked her heart wide open.
“You almost did.” His voice was destroyed. “Oh, lady… if I’d been slower. If Tarex hadn’t—” He couldn’t finish.
“But you weren’t. And he did.” She leaned into his touch. Let herself be held. “You saved me. Like you’ve been saving me since I got here, even when you were pretending not to care.”
A sound escaped him. Half laugh, half sob.
“I was never very good at pretending.” His forehead dropped against hers. “Not with you.”
She pulled back just enough to look at him.
“I know what the mating bond means now. I know the risk.” Her voice was steady. “And I choose it. I choose you. Grumpy, scarred, secretly-a-legendary-warrior you. All of it.”
“Juni—”
“I’m not finished.” She fisted her hands in his shirt, held him in place.
“I don’t want to go back to Earth. I don’t want safe.
I want this ranch and this colony and those ridiculous krulaati.
I want Midwinter festivals and purple snow and arguing about what color snowmen should be.
” Her voice cracked. “I want you. For as long as we have. Whether that’s fifty years or five hundred. ”