Chapter 15 #2
The footsteps reach me before I see their source, carrying the restless energy that has defined my brother since we were children watching our mother bleed.
Samai emerges from a side tunnel, his lighter coloring washed silver in the emergency strips that provide the only illumination this deep. The mask he wears for the world has fallen away, and the male who faces me now holds a gravity that sits poorly on features built for sardonic humor.
“Brother.” He falls into step beside me without slowing my pace. “I've been looking for you. Father's asking questions about the guards you've been dismantling.”
“Let him ask.”
“He's furious. The surveillance hub tech required medical attention after you left.”
“I never touched him.”
“You didn't have to. His hearts objected to being questioned by a male who was ready to rip his throat out.” Samai's stride matches mine as the tunnel narrows.
“Father controls Vezra.” The words cut through whatever he planned to say. “He orchestrated the enforcer deaths to keep me dependent on him.”
Silence stretches between us, broken only by the sound of our footsteps on stone and the distant hum of systems that keep the compound breathing.
“Are you certain?”
“More than certain.” I do not slow. The pull in my blood grows stronger with each step, Maeve's signature calling to me through stone and shadow.
“And Father?”
“Father will answer for what he's done to me. To us.” The cold certainty in my tone carries no anger, no grief, nothing but the focused clarity of a predator. “First I find my Chosen. Then I end Vezra. Then we discuss what happens to the male who raised us to be his slaves.”
Samai processes this, then he nods, a small motion that carries weight neither of us has words for.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Keep Father occupied. Make certain he doesn't interfere before I find Maeve.”
“You're asking me to move against our own house.”
“I’m asking you to choose its leadership.” The tunnel branches ahead, and I take the left path without hesitation, following the thread that binds me to my female. “The male who raised us, or the brother who would burn beside you if it came to that.”
The silence that follows holds everything we have never said to each other.
Years of rivalry and resentment and the complicated love of males who share blood and nothing else.
Samai watching me be what our father demanded while he carved his own path through rebellion and recklessness.
Me warning him about attachment while I failed to recognize the chains wrapped around my own throat.
He inclines his head. “I'll handle Father.”
He disappears into the shadows, his footsteps fading in the direction that leads back toward the compound's upper levels. Brothers choosing each other over the male who made them. Another betrayal in a day already thick with them.
I do not watch him go. The pull in my blood demands all my attention and I race through the underground tunnels taking bend after bend. I would have no hope of finding her if not for our bond. Veth will be rewarded for his loyalty, as will Samai.
Her fear scent reaches me first. Sharp and bitter beneath the sweetness. Then the scent of Vezra, growing stronger. Every muscle locks as I round a bend.
She freezes when she sees me.
Her eyes widen, the scar on her throat stretching as her jaw goes slack, and I read the truth in her expression before she can attempt to hide it. She didn't expect me to be here. She expected no one.
“Lord Draven.”
The distance between us disappears before she can draw another breath. I wrap my hand around her throat and lift her from the stone floor, and the sound she makes holds terror I would have savored an hour ago. Now it registers only as confirmation that she understands what she has earned.
“Where is my Chosen?”
The words scrape through my teeth on a growl that vibrates through her body where my grip suspends her. Her hands claw at my wrist, her feet kicking at nothing, her face darkening as my fingers tighten around her airway.
She gasps the words through the pressure I am applying. “Locked away. Your… your father ordered it.”
As though knowing it would save her.
“Show me.” It's so cold down here my breath frosts in the air.
I open my fingers wide enough to allow her to draw a breath, but nothing more. She lifts a finger and points down the passage she came from and I drag her with me as I stalk toward my mate. She is not far but the sight that greets me hollows me from the centre out.
Maeve slumps against the bars. Bruises bloom across her temple and her arms, evidence of hands that had no right to touch her, and the sleep clothes that still cling to her body carry my scent beneath the fear and cold.
Creviks huddle against the bars, six-legged bodies pressed against metal, keeping her warm.
Creviks that have kept her warm and alive.
“Maeve.” Her name tears from my chest.
She is alive. She is here.
“Drazex.” She comes onto her knees, dirty fingers clutching the bars. “You found me.”
“I will always find you, my Chosen.”
“But you will never have her!” The gun appears in Vezra's hand, the barrel swinging not toward me but toward Maeve.
I do not hesitate. Do not negotiate. Do not calculate odds or consider consequences.
My claws close around her wrist and I wrench.
Bone snaps. Tendons shred. Her hand separates from her arm in a wet tearing sound that echoes off stone, and the severed limb hits the ground with the gun still clutched in fingers that will never fire it.
Blood sprays in an arc that paints the alcove wall, and the smell of it fills my lungs with betrayal made liquid.
She screams. The sound bounces off the alcove walls, high and terrible, the wail of a female who understood what she earned.
I give her no time to understand anything else.
One rake of my claws across her throat. Her scream cuts off in a gurgle as her windpipe collapses. She crumples. Her body hits the ground in a heap of limbs and spreading crimson, and the eyes that watched me grow from infant to heir go glassy and still.
I stand over her body breathing hard, my chest heaving, my fangs extended and my claws dripping with evidence of what I have done. The creviks have scattered to the alcove's edges, their small eyes watching from shadows, their chittering silenced by the violence they have witnessed.
Then I turn toward the cage, and everything else falls away. Her expression holds none of the horror I expected. None of the fear I deserve for the savagery she has witnessed.
She is looking at me as though she’s waited for this. As though the monster I became to reach her is what she needed me to become.
“Took you long enough.” Her words carry exhaustion and relief and an undertone that sounds almost proud.
A sound escapes my throat that belongs to no language. I grip the cage bars and pull.
Metal screams as it tears free from hinges.
The bars buckle and separate, creating an opening wide enough for her to pass through, and then she is in my arms. The impact of her body against mine shatters the last fragments of control I have been clinging to.
She’s warm where she should be cold, solid where my hands kept reaching for her scent and finding absence, alive when my father's cruelty should have broken her.
My arms crush her against my chest, and the shaking that moves through me starts somewhere deep in my bones and spreads outward until I tremble with relief I cannot contain.
She holds me back. Her fingers thread through my hair.
Her breath warms my ear. The creviks press against our legs, their small bodies proof of everything my father tried to destroy.
Soft chittering rises around us, a chorus of sounds that mean nothing and everything, witnesses to a reunion that should never have been necessary.
“You found me.” She repeats the words against my throat, and the tremor in her tone tells me she was not as certain of this outcome as her posture suggested.
“I will always find you.” My response emerges rough. “You're in my blood now. You couldn't hide from me if you tried.”
A sound escapes her that might be laughter or might be a sob. “Good thing I wasn't trying to hide.”
I pull back far enough to see her face, to trace the bruises that mar her temple and her jaw, to mark every wound left by males who will touch no one again. The claiming marks on her throat pulse beneath my gaze, visible evidence of what she is to me, what we are to each other.
Her small hands clutch my clothing. “Drazex, Vezra told me the whole conspiracy. The enforcer deaths, keeping you dependent, all of it orchestrated by your father. He’s used her for years.”
“I know.” The words emerge flat, carrying none of the grief they should contain. “Samai knows too. He's helping us. Keeping Father occupied until we return.”
The truth settles. I’ve carried this blade for decades without naming it. The old files. Torvin who trained me. Kesh who took a blade for me. Rennix who left rations outside my door. Draven who slipped me food during punishment sessions.
The pattern was there in those records. Every enforcer who showed me kindness, systematically eliminated. I told myself I couldn't afford to follow that thought where it led.
Now I understand why. Some part of me already suspected. Already recognized my father's hand in every death that shaped my isolation
Maeve studies my face, reading whatever she finds there in the dim amber light. “What happens when we go back?”
I press my forehead against hers, breathing her in one more time. “I tear apart House Draven and rebuild it from the wreckage.”