6. Rhykor
RHYKOR
Sleep comes in fragments, broken by pain and the persistent awareness of her moving through the clinic on the opposite side of the curtain.
I lie on my stomach in the alcove, wings spread across the floor.
My body registers the damage. The burns across my back and shoulders settle into a throbbing ache that pulses with my heartbeat, and the fresh bullet wounds in my side send sharp jolts of protest whenever I shift my weight.
But the worst of it—the membrane tears in both wings—radiates a deep, grinding misery that seeps into my bones and makes the idea of flight feel like a distant memory.
Through the medical divider, I hear Cassia.
She moves through the main room and corridor beyond in a circuit that never stops—footsteps, murmured instructions to Wen, the clink of instruments, the occasional sharp word aimed at a patient who refuses to hold still.
Hours later, she is still treating patients, slipping through the fabric drapes every couple of hours to check my bandages and my temperature with quick, silent hands before disappearing again.
Judging by the rhythmic, pre-dawn clip of her boots against the floor, she had already begun her morning rounds before the sun even hit the horizon.
The woman runs on spite and adrenaline, sustained by whatever scraps of food she forgets to eat between surgeries.
Her scent permeates the alcove. It's soaked into the blanket she draped over me as well as the bandages wrapped around my torso. The very air of this underground room carries it. It’s warm and clean.
Underneath the antiseptic and old blood lingers a scent unmistakably, infuriatingly alive.
Each breath I take pulls it deeper, making the coiled torque in my gut wind tighter.
I’ve been awake for twenty minutes, and I am already memorizing her footsteps.
There is a slight hesitation at the doorway as she checks on me, followed by a quicker pace whenever a patient needs her.
I track the exact floorboard that creaks under her left foot near the supply shelf.
My ears even pick up the specific pitch of the irritated exhale she makes when the generator stutters.
This is madness. I am tracking a human woman's breathing patterns while lying wounded on her floor, and the part of me that should find this pathetic is being systematically devoured by the part that wants to drag her into this alcove and refuse to let her leave.
The curtain pulls aside, scattering my thoughts like shrapnel, and she's crouching beside me with a fresh med-kit, arriving while I'm still trying to piece the first one together.
"Morning." She pulls on gloves; the dark circles hollowing the skin beneath her eyes deeper than yesterday. She's sleeping even less than I am, which should be impossible. Her braid is freshly tied but already loosening, dark curls escaping at the temples. "How's the pain?"
"Manageable."
"That means terrible, but you'd rather chew your own tongue off than admit it.
" She peels back the bandage on my left shoulder blade to examine the burn.
Her fingers are cool against my overheated skin, and the contact sends a jolt through my nervous system so intense I have to lock the muscles in my body to keep from reacting. "Hm, this is interesting."
"What?"
"Your tissue is regenerating faster than I expected.
The burns I treated last night are already showing new cell growth.
Human patients with injuries this severe would still be in the acute inflammatory stage.
" She probes the seam of the burn gently and medically; her brow furrows in concentration.
"The pulse round entry sites are the same and already closing.
I've treated Kraaj before, but I've never had one stay long enough to watch the healing process up close. "
"Kraaj biology prioritizes rapid tissue repair, burning through massive caloric reserves to fuse muscle and bone overnight. It’s an evolutionary necessity because a wounded warrior on a battlefield is a dead warrior.
But it doesn't dull the constant ache of tissue aggressively knitting back together.
" I shift, a sharp, stabbing throb radiating from fresh fused tissue on my flank to prove my point.
"Because you refuse to rest, your rapid regeneration is basically building glass tissue.
It looks healed, but it shatters the second you strain yourself," she lectures, unwrapping the bandage on my right wing membrane.
"Evolution? Is that what you call growing back skin overnight?
Because I call it medically unreasonable and deeply unfair to every human patient I've ever stitched up. "
An almost warm ghost of appreciation moves through my chest. She has a talent for making medical observations sound like personal insults, and the combination is far more compelling than I'm ready to deal with.
She works through the wing membrane with careful precision, cleaning the tears and applying fresh salve before re-bandaging sections where the old dressings have already soaked through.
Each touch is professional and focused but sets my skin ablaze.
The injury fades and the pain becomes irrelevant, my entire focus tightening on the maddening proximity of her body to mine.
I focus on the ceiling, counting the cracks in the concrete.
Mental recitations of plotted formations help distract me.
I need anything to drown out the roar of instinct screaming at me to pin her against me and bury my face in her neck where that scent concentrates into something so potent it makes my vision blur.
"You're heating up again."
I blink, and she's staring at my hands, both flush against the floor, my palms discoloring and cracking the concrete from thermal output I failed to register.
"Sorry." My delivery strains against the tightness in my throat.
"No need for apologies. Just stop melting my floor.
" She adjusts a bandage on my wing with fingers that pause—only barely, a hesitation measured in fractions of a second—against the membrane where it meets the muscle of my back.
The spot is intensely sensitive. And from the quick flicker of her eyes to my face, she knows it.
"Your pupils just dilated," she observes.
"It's dim in here."
"It's been dim in here all morning, and your pupils were fine ten seconds ago.
" She finishes the bandage and sits back on her heels, stripping off her gloves.
"Something I should know about Kraaj wing anatomy that's relevant to treating you?
Because if touching certain areas is going to make you radiate enough heat to set my bandages on fire, I need to plan around it. "
Her words are practical and completely reasonable, all of it delivered while the muscles in her throat work tight with a swallow, a tension my heightened senses pick up across the charged space between us.
I push myself into a sitting position, ignoring the symphony of pain the movement produces.
Upright, I'm level with her even sitting on the floor—the size difference between us is absurd and undeniable, my shoulders twice the width of hers, and my horns nearly brushing the ceiling.
She should look small beside me—fragile and vulnerable, simple prey in the shadow of a predator.
Instead, she looks like a woman who spent all night treating a monster and remains thoroughly unimpressed by the monster's anatomy.
"The membrane junction at the base of the wings is—" I search for a word that will keep this conversation medicinal. "Responsive."
She arches an eyebrow. "You mean sensitive."
"I said what I meant."
"You said a word that means the same thing but sounds less embarrassing, which is a very specific kind of dishonesty unexpected from someone called the Dragon.
" She reaches for her med-kit and starts repacking supplies with quick, skillful movements.
"I'll avoid the junction area. Anything else I should know, or are there other parts of your body that might spontaneously combust if I?—"
"You could stop staring at my scars."
The accusation shatters the quiet space between us. She freezes mid-motion, a roll of gauze suspending in one hand, and her eyes snap to mine with a force that compresses the air in this cramped alcove until breathing takes effort.
"My interest lies strictly in assessing your injuries, leaving your scars entirely to the side. Do your best to maintain that distinction."
"A change occurred ten minutes ago. Before that moment, you remained intent on staring."
Color rises in her cheeks, warm brown skin flushing darker across the bridge of her nose, and the sight of it hits me somewhere primal and devastating. She opens her mouth to argue, and my gaze drops to her lips of its own accord.
She catches me.
The silence stretches thick and suffocating. She's looking at my eyes, tracking exactly where they recently were, and I notice the precise moment she registers it—surprise first, followed by anger and an expression hotter and more complicated that she buries so fast it's almost invisible.
"Were you looking at my mouth?"
"No."
"You were absolutely looking at my mouth." She jabs the roll of gauze at me like a weapon. "You—the terrifying Kraaj enforcer, the Dragon, the monster who melts combat drones with his bare hands—were staring at my mouth while I changed your bandages."
"I wasn't?—"
"You definitely were. I have eyes, Rhykor. Very functional ones. Unlike yours, apparently, because if you think I didn't notice?—"
"You talk too much." My response is rough and raw, vibrating with the effort of keeping myself anchored to this floor when the instincts in my body scream at me to close the gap between my mouth and hers.
"Constantly, you argue with everything I say.
And insult me while you're stitching my wounds.
Your mouth never stops moving, and if you think I haven't noticed that?—"