Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
MAEVE
The corridors blur past in streaks of emergency lighting and stone that has witnessed generations of violence and will witness more before Vahiri Prime releases its grip on House Draven.
Drazex carries me through them, my head tucked against his chest, my arms looped around his neck.
Guards flatten themselves against walls as we pass.
Servants drop their gazes. He doesn't slow.
Doesn't acknowledge any of them. His grip tightens with each step, as if he expects enemies to materialize from the shadows, and I press closer because there's nowhere else I want to be.
His father is caged now. Samai is handling the aftermath, the logistics of containing a Lord who tried to murder his own heir, the restructuring that will consume weeks or months or years.
None of it matters beyond the abstract. What matters is the male pulling me forward through passages that carry the scent of blood and adrenaline and musk that rises from his skin.
We round a corner and nearly collide with Korrel. The guard drops to one knee, head bowed, fist pressed to his chest in the same salute he offered before we descended into the tunnels.
“My lord.” Steady, despite the chaos still echoing through the compound. “What are your orders?”
Drazex stops. His grip tightens, and the predator surfaces in the set of his jaw, the stillness that settles over his body.
“I want the males who took my Chosen to be found.” The words come out low, lethal.
“Vezra's people scattered when word spread, my lord. We don't have identities for the ones who—”
“I marked them.” Both males turn toward me. “Three of them, at least. One has claw marks down his face. Deep ones. Another has a bite wound on his forearm, human teeth. A third has a shattered kneecap. He won't be walking without a limp.”
Korrel's expression shifts into what might be respect. “That narrows the search.”
Drazex's tone drops into the register that makes other males flinch. “Bring them to me alive. I want them conscious when I return their hospitality.”
Korrel rises, fist still pressed to his chest. “It will be done, my lord.”
He disappears down the corridor at a pace that suggests he understands the cost of failure. Drazex watches him go, tension radiating from every line of his body.
“You marked them.” His silver eyes hold mine with an intensity that coils heat low in my belly. “My little medic with her combat training.”
I lift my chin. “I didn’t make it easy for them to take me.”
He cups my jaw, tilts my face up, and the hunger in his expression has nothing to do with bloodshed. “When I'm finished with them, they'll regret drawing breath on the same planet as you.”
The words land in my chest and take root. Dark. Possessive. The knowledge that this male will hunt down everyone who hurt me and make them pay in blood.
I should be horrified by how much I want that.
I'm not.
My sleep clothes still carry the stains of this night. His blood. My blood. The blood of males who touched me and paid the price for it. The fabric should disgust me. Instead it reads as battle standard, proof that we survived what his father engineered to break us.
Drazex stops before a door I don't recognize. He presses his palm to the scanner, and the door slides open on a space I've never seen. Simple furniture. A bed wide enough to hold a Draveki frame with room to spare. Dim light that gentles the harsh angles of stone walls.
“These aren’t my quarters.” He doesn't step inside. “This is nowhere my father's shadow has touched.”
I understand what he's offering. A space without history. Without the weight of those first days when I was debt and he was danger and neither of us understood what we were becoming.
A beginning. Unmarked. Unchained.
Not his quarters, where Vorath's expectations seeped into every stone. Not the rooms he assigned me, where I counted ceiling cracks and wondered if I'd survive long enough to see my brother again. This is neutral ground. Unclaimed territory we can shape into whatever we choose to build.
Ours. The word rises, and I don’t push it away.
The door closes behind us, and he lowers me to my feet.
My legs are weak, but they hold as I step into the space.
Tension we've been carrying since he tore that cage apart loosens its hold on my spine.
No threats looming beyond these walls, no conspiracy waiting to strike, no father orchestrating deaths from the shadows.
“We're safe.” The words taste strange in my mouth. Safety is an illusion the universe usually enjoys shattering.
“Yes.” He steps toward me, and his scent wraps around my senses until breathing becomes an act of claiming. Musk and heat and the particular warmth that lives beneath his charcoal skin.
“Maeve.” My name in his mouth lands differently than it did before. Softer. More him. The male I know exists beneath the harsh rules of a life imposed on him.
I reach for his face, my thumb scraping the stubble on his jaw. “I'm here, Drazex. And I'm not leaving.”
“You will never leave these quarters.” The command comes sharp, brittle at the edges. “I will not have you at risk because of me again.”
The authority lands without teeth. Beneath it, I read the fear he's trying to bury. Hours spent hunting, uncertain whether I was breathing, whether he'd reach me in time.
“I'll leave when I need to. And I won't spend a single moment worried about my safety.”
“Maeve—”
“Because you'll find me.” His hearts pound a war rhythm against my hand. “You'll always find me. You already proved that.”
A growl builds in his chest. The vibration transfers through my palm, travels up my arm, pools low in my belly. Possession and promise woven into a sound no human language can name.
“Any galaxy.” His forehead drops to mine, his breath hot against my lips. “Any corner of the universe you choose to run. There is nowhere I wouldn't follow. Nowhere you could hide that my blood wouldn't lead me back to you.”
His gaze traces the bruises on my temple, the marks on my arms where guards gripped too hard. His claws extend, retract, extend again in a rhythm that betrays the violence still simmering beneath his gentleness. “I should have been faster. I should have...”
“You came, and they're dead, and we're here.”
We breathe together, the rise and fall of our chests aligning until I can't tell where my exhale ends and his inhale begins. The claiming marks on my throat pulse with their own heat, responding to his proximity, remembering his mouth and his teeth and the sound of my name breaking on his lips.
“This needs to come off. Need to touch you. Kiss you. Taste you. Worship you.” His claws extend, retract, extend again as he fights for control.
I shiver. “Yes.”
He peels my sleep clothes from my body, gentle in a way that contradicts the violence still staining his fingers, and the ruined fabric drops to the floor.
I stand naked before him.
No armor. No barriers. Nothing between my skin and his gaze but the dim light and the trust I've placed in a male who could destroy me without effort.
The air cools my exposed flesh, tightening my nipples, raising goosebumps along my arms. He looks at me the way the devout look at altars.
Not assessing. Not counting wounds. Memorizing. Claiming without touch.
I've been naked in front of other men. Field medics don't have room for modesty when there's shrapnel to extract and wounds to close. This is different. Under his gaze, I'm not a body. I'm a benediction.
His lips find the bruise on my temple. Momentarily press against it. Trail down to the marks on my jaw, my throat, the place where his claiming bite still throbs with heat that has nothing to do with damage.
“Every bruise.” The words vibrate against my skin, dark with promise. “Every mark they left on you. I will repay tenfold. Their pain will last for days before I let them die.”
“They were following your father's orders.” I don't know why I say it. Don't know why I offer mercy to males who dragged me from a bed still warm with his scent.
His head lifts. Pain flickers through his expression first, then anger, then the cold mask of the Chief Enforcer who built his reputation on a mountain of bodies. “They still chose. Every male who touched you made a choice. My father gave the order, but their hands carried it out.”
Beneath the hardness, I see what he's trying to bury. Guilt, corrosive and deep, eating at the edges of his rage.
“This isn't your fault.”
“If I hadn't wanted you...” His jaw tightens. “If I had kept my distance. Treated you as debt instead of...”
“I did my share of choosing.” I cup his face between my palms, force him to meet my gaze.
“You didn't drag me into your bed. You didn't make me want you.
I walked into this knowing the cost, Drazex.
I chose you. Every step of the way, I chose you.
So if there's fault to carry, we carry it together.”
His breath shudders out of him. The tension in his shoulders doesn't release, but it shifts. Guilt held alone becoming burden shared.
I pull him closer, hands fisted in his hair, denying him the distance his guilt demands. “I’m here and I’m yours. That’s all that matters.”
A sound escapes his chest, somewhere between growl and groan, and his mouth claims mine. Hungry. Consuming. Erasing the hours of separation, the fear, the cold stone beneath my body while strays pressed warmth against the bars that caged me.
His tongue strokes against mine in a rhythm that promises what his body intends to deliver. He traces patterns on my lips with his tongue, my teeth, the roof of my mouth, and sensation spreads outward until my skin feels too small to contain what he's building.
I pull at his clothing, urgent, needing. The blood-stained fabric needs to go. I need to see him, touch him, map the body that crossed a compound and carved through enemies to reach me.