Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
DRAZEX
Her taste still coats my tongue when the alert sounds. Sweetness and salt and the particular warmth that belongs only to her, and I am halfway down the corridor before my body stops vibrating with the need to turn back.
I force myself to keep moving, force my legs to carry me toward the crisis instead of back to the warmth of my bed where my Chosen lies with my musk layered into every inch of her skin. Every Draveki I pass will recognize the unmistakable signature of claiming before I speak a single word.
I have marked her. She belongs to me. Let every male in this territory recognize that touching her means death.
She is mine. Mine.
There is danger in that satisfaction. I have handed my enemies a weapon they did not possess an hour ago. Maeve Vance was debt collateral. Now she is leverage. She can be used to exploit me and I made her that way willingly.
I should curse myself for the weakness that made me take what the contract already gave me the right to claim. Instead, the memory of her body yielding to mine, of her arousal blooming into unmistakable heat, of the sounds she made when my knot locked us together sends fresh fire through my blood.
Emergency lighting bathes the corridors in crimson, and my senses strain in two directions.
Ahead, the acrid tang of plasma discharge and burnt flesh grows stronger with each step.
Behind me, the ghost of her warmth lingers on my skin.
I go on. I need to contain whatever is happening here to keep her safe.
The medical wing's doors slide open to controlled pandemonium.
Veth barks orders at two junior medics while an enforcer lies bleeding on the central table, his skin torn open by plasma fire that carved a trench across his ribs.
Kash. One of my senior patrol leaders, a male I have known since we trained together as adolescents.
His eyes are glassy with shock, his breathing shallow and fast.
“Report.” The command snaps through the noise, and Veth's head jerks toward me.
“Ambush in Sector Seven, my lord. Three assailants, plasma weapons. Kash took a direct hit but retreated. He called it in before losing consciousness.” Veth presses a coagulant patch against the worst of the damage. “He'll survive, but it's close.”
Three assailants. The pattern shifts in my mind, reshaping itself.
The previous attacks looked random: a transport malfunction, a poison engineered to mimic natural causes, a plasma shot during a collection run that external enemies could have explained.
This is different. This is an open assault inside our own territory on a patrol route that should have been secure.
“Was there a witness?” I drag my attention to the male bleeding on the table.
“One of the maintenance staff.” Veth nods toward a corner where a young Draveki female sits wrapped in a shock blanket. “She was running a late shift when she heard the plasma fire. Saw a figure fleeing the scene.”
I cross the medical bay in four strides and crouch beside the witness, keeping my tone low enough to avoid terrifying her further. “Tell me what you saw.”
She flinches at my proximity, pulling the shock blanket tighter around her shoulders.
“I was running maintenance on the ventilation shafts.” Her words come in fragments, broken by fear and adrenaline.
“The plasma fire started, and I hid behind the conduit housing. Then the shooting stopped, and I saw... I saw someone running.”
“Describe them.”
Her gaze drops to the floor, unable to hold mine. “House Draven colors. The uniform, I mean. I could see that much.” She swallows hard, her fingers twisting in the blanket's edge. “Average height. Female. Athletic build. She moved fast though, too fast for me to see a face.”
“Direction?”
“Away from where the enforcer fell. Toward the access tunnels.” She risks a glance at my face and looks away again.
I rise to my full height, and she shrinks deeper into her chair.
Average height. Possibly female. Athletic build. House Draven colors. That narrows it down to half my staff.
“Wait.” The word escapes her in a rush, her hand lifting as though to stop me from leaving.
“There was one thing. I almost forgot because it happened so fast, but when she turned.” The maintenance worker's fingers rise to cup her own throat, tracing a line from jaw to collarbone.
“A scar. Pale against her skin. It caught the light for a second as she turned.”
The air empties from my lungs.
I know of only one female with a scar on her throat who wears House Draven colors. Who has an athletic build. Who has access to private records and spaces and who can go wherever she pleases because she's been here for so long.
Vezra.
Vezra assesses everything. She's good at her job. Has been loyal for decades. I trust her.
She has access to every code, patrol schedules, vulnerabilities in House Draven's defenses I have left her to look after.
The maintenance worker is still talking, but her words reach me through water. Through the roar of blood in my ears and the slow, grinding shift of everything I thought I understood rearranging itself into a horrifying shape.
Vezra in the corridor, her gaze lingering on Maeve a beat too long. Updating access logs she shouldn’t have needed to update. Knowing every supply route, every access point, every shadow in this compound where a killer could hide.
I trusted her. And she used that trust to murder my enforcers one by one while I searched everywhere except where she stood.
Traitor. Vezra is the traitor.
“Take this female to the recovery wing.” I straighten, addressing one of the junior medics. “Make sure she's comfortable. Guard her door.”
If Vezra learns I know who she is, the maintenance worker will be a target.
Then the realization hits, and cold floods through me.
Maeve's words from days ago surface: She doesn't like me.
Most of your staff ignore me. She was cataloguing.
And I dismissed it. Told her Vezra assesses everything, that it was her job, that I trusted her.
But Vezra wasn't assessing a new variable in the compound's routine.
She was measuring a threat. Reading the weakness I was too blind to see I was broadcasting every time I looked at Maeve, every time I brought her food, every time I walked her through restricted corridors instead of sending a guard.
Vezra knows. Has known longer than I have. And if she's willing to poison enforcers who have served House Draven for years, she won't hesitate to eliminate the female she's identified as my vulnerability.
I'm moving before the thought finishes forming, my stride eating the distance to the door. I turn to Veth, one hand already on the panel.
“Monitor Kash's condition. Send updates to my personal comm.” Mywords come out clipped, harder than I intend.
The medical bay doors close behind me, and I am bolting down corridors bathed in emergency red, through the checkpoints that separate the working sections from my private wing.
The closer I get to my quarters, the more my heightened senses betray me.
Her scent threads through the recycled air, that particular sweetness I could track across the entire compound.
I marked her last night, but she has marked me in return.
Her warmth lives in spaces I have allowed no one else to occupy, soaked into walls and fabric and the very air I breathe.
My Chosen. The word rises unbidden, and I don't push it away.
She is my Chosen.
Footsteps sound behind me. Familiar rhythm, familiar weight. I turn to face my brother.
Samai stands in the corridor's crimson glow, his lighter coloring washed to shades of blood and shadow. His expression carries none of the mockery I have grown accustomed to. The male watching me now wears gravity poorly, the weight of it sitting wrong on features built for sardonic humor.
“Why are you here?” I wince at the harshness of my words.
“Hello to you too, brother.” He rearranges his features into an intensity I haven't seen in a long while.
“I came here to warn you about Father before.” Samai's mouth twists into an expression that falls short of a smile.
“Her arousal was thick enough to taste through the door.
I didn't want to interrupt what you were doing in there.”
Fear coils through my chest, tangled with a sharper edge.
She is the first softness I've allowed myself.
And my father will take her from me. Not because she's a threat, but because she matters.
Because I let her matter and he knows. Of course he knows.
Sharp anger rises beneath the fear, hot and useless, because there is no enemy I can kill to fix this. The enemy is my own blood.
And that is another reason my father knows. Anyone who can detect scent as strong as I will have known how she felt about me. Her desire hung around her like a flashing light.
The instinct to bare fangs at my brother rises before I can suppress it. Samai notices the shift in my posture and raises his hands, palms out.
“Easy. I'm not your enemy.” His silver eyes, lighter than mine but carrying the same predator intelligence, search my face. “I came to tell you that Father will summon you. You know he's going to demand you send her away. He's going to frame it as protection for the House.”
My mother's face surfaces in my memory: dark eyes, warm smile, the gentle hands that held me through childhood nightmares before she became the subject of them.
She chose betrayal over us. Chose to sell Syndicate secrets rather than remain in a marriage that had become a cage.
The Council made examples of traitors, and my father made my brother and me watch so we would understand the cost of caring.
“The human will not betray me.”