Chapter 18
TARKEN
The alley's bio-luminescent moss paints fractured patterns across Alana's face as I press her against the cold alloy wall. My palm splays against the metal beside her head, fingers denting the surface. The Jalshagar thrums beneath my skin like live wires.
"Time?" The word tastes acidic. "Paragon collapses by the hour and you want time?" My thumb traces the curve of her jaw—softer than Baktu flesh, warmer than any touch I've allowed myself in decades.
She doesn't flinch. Never flinches. Her fingers curl into my chest plating, finding the pulse-point between reinforced ribs. "Your people need clear leadership. Not a chieftain distracted by..."
"By what?" My free hand slams against the wall, sparks showering around us. The glow in my eyes casts her face in amber. "Say it. By you? By needing air as much as I need the ground beneath my feet?"
A distant conduit bursts, bathing the alley in sudden crimson light. Her braid unravels at one temple, dark strands clinging to sweat-damp skin. When she speaks, her voice holds the steady pitch of triage calm—the same tone that commands bleeding warriors and collapsing infrastructure alike.
"Distracted by second-guessing every choice. By wondering if saving your city means destroying who you are." Her palm flattens over my racing hearts. "I won't be another weight around your neck, Tarken."
I bark a laugh sharper than vibro-blades. "You think I don't crumble cities daily? Carry entire clans' futures in these hands?" Deliberately, slowly, I slide my calloused fingers down her throat to cradle the base of her skull. "You're not the burden. You're the anchor."
Her breath hitches. Good. Let her feel this unraveling. Let her see the cracks.
"Three days ago, the western spire fell.
" My forehead presses against hers, ceremonial scars grazing human skin.
"I stood in the rubble and didn't bleed.
Yesterday, you smiled at that engineer's child—" The memory sears hotter than plasma burns.
"—and I had to lock myself in the armory to keep from clutching you against the nearest wall. "
Her nails dig into my chest. "That's the problem. You shouldn't—"
"Should?" I growl. "You lecture about symbiotic systems yet deny this?" I drag her hand lower, pressing it against the jagged scar bisecting my abdomen—the one her fingers healed weeks ago. "You remade this tissue cell by cell. You think your prints aren't etched into every healed wound?"
Alarms blare two sectors over. She tenses to run, always running toward disaster. I cage her in.
"Alana." Her name tears from me, raw and frayed. "You scorched yourself into this city's bones. Into mine." The admission scalds my throat. "If you retreat now, you don't take just yourself. You take Paragon's pulse with you."
Her exhale fans across my jaw, equal parts surrender and challenge. I barely recognize my own voice—gravel and wildfire. "You called me a distraction. Let me show you what distraction feels like."
The Jalshagar's current arcs between us as I push her harder against the wall. Her medical-grade fatigues rasp against my battle harness. When her hips roll instinctively, I nearly bite through my tongue.
"Your Council—" Her protest dissolves into a gasp as I nip the tendon below her ear.
"Can burn." My hands find her thighs, hauling her up until she locks around my waist. "They wanted me chained to duty? Look what their chains forged."
Her laugh vibrates against my throat, sharp as a scalpel. "Poetry now? Should I check you for head trauma?"
I carry her toward the sleeping platform, bio-luminescent algae flaring blue in our wake.
"You want clinical terms?" Dumping her onto the furs, I brace over her.
"Elevated heart rate. Vasodilation. Tell me, healer—" My claws shred her shirt's shoulder seam with surgical precision. "—what's your diagnosis?"
She arches into the contact, all defiance and desert-dry wit. "Acute testosterone poisoning." Her fingers dive beneath my chestplate, finding the scar she rebuilt. "Prescription requires direct—"
My roar drowns her quip as I crush our mouths together. She tastes like stimulants and stolen moments, her tongue parrying mine. When her nails score my back, the city itself groans—conduits bursting in sympathy showers of sparks.
"Tarken." She tears free, panting. "The stabilization protocols—"
"Are currently stabilized." I rip her boots off, flinging them across the room. One smashes a nutrient synthesizer. "Unless you’d rather discuss biomes while I’m inside you?"
Her legs cinch around my hips. "Inside implies permission."
I freeze. Centuries of discipline strain against the Jalshagar's roar. "Alana." Her name fractures in my throat. "I could lay you out like a battlefield. Map every gasp." My thumb brushes her lower lip. "Or you could lead."
She goes still—healer assessing a wound. Then her teeth graze my thumb. "Always the worst patient." Rolling us violently, she straddles my waist. Her hair curtains our faces as she yanks my harness open. "Don't move."
"Or what?"
Her palm slaps my chest. "Or I'll cite you for obstructing medical treatment."
The laugh shocks me more than her audacity. When she peels her leggings down, the scent nearly unmakes me. Her thighs glisten in the algae-light, and every Baktu instinct screams to flip her, claim her, devour.
She reads the tension in my jaw. "Control isn't weakness." Her kiss gentles, a counterpoint to her hips grinding against mine. "But losing it together?"
I drag my tongue up her seam, slow as a blade withdrawal. “You’re dripping clinical terms, healer.” Her hips jerk. I pin them with scarred palms. “Or is that another human… secretion?”
She laughs—a breathless, dangerous sound—as I suck her clit between my teeth. “Yours is the only culture that weaponizes—fuck!—oral fixation.”
The warehouse lights flicker. Paragon’s arterial conduits pulse through the walls in time with her gasps. I lap at her mess, deliberate. Calculated. “Tell me.” My voice vibrates against her. “Which of us is fixated?”
Her hands fist my hair. Pull. “You’re avoiding the Council’s—”
I plunge two fingers inside her. She arches off the furs, a broken moan rattling the rusted shelves.
“The Council,” I growl against her thigh, “isn’t here.” Another finger crooks. Her back bows. “But you are. Open.”
She kicks my shoulder. “Bastard.”
“Try again.”
“Tarken.”
I withdraw my fingers completely. Watch her writhe. “Begging’s beneath you.”
Her heel slams my back. “Negotiation isn’t.” She props herself up on shaking elbows, sweat glazing her collarbones. “Every minute we’re here, your people are—”
I bite her inner thigh. Hard enough to bruise. “My people aren’t your shield.”
She freezes. The warehouse breathes with us—conduits hissing, distant alarms wailing.
“No.” Her palm smacks my cheek. Not hard. A punctuation mark. “But they’re your excuse.” She drags me up by my harness, lips swollen from my teeth. “You want devotion? Lead.” Her legs lock around my hips. “Or does the great Chieftain need permission too?”
I slam into her. The crate cracks beneath us. She chokes my name, fingernails carving trenches through my ceremonial scars.
“Louder,” I snarl.
Her teeth find my jugular. “Prove it’s worth screaming for.”
The challenge ignites the Jalshagar brighter. Every thrust rattles the warehouse’s failing infrastructure. She meets me stroke for stroke, her medical bracelet digging into my neck as she pulls me closer.
“Still—” Her breath hitches. “—think bonding’s a distraction?”
I nearly break the crate’s edge. “I think you talk too much.”
She comes silently—lips mashed together, eyes screwed shut. A wartime medic’s discipline.
I still. “Alana.”
Her thighs tremble. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“Then sound,” I bite her earlobe, “like you mean it.”
Her scream when I bite her shoulder could wake the dead. Paragon’s lights surge in response—temporary equilibrium. She collapses against me, sweat-slick and grinning like a blade wound.
“Still… think I’m the distraction?”
I lick her pulse point. Salt and defiance. “I think you’re a tactical hazard.”
Her palm slides between us. “Says the man ready to go again.”
I catch her wrist. “Later.”
“Promises, promises—”
The warehouse doors blast open. Cold air floods in.
“Chieftain!” A young sentry freezes, torchlight glinting off his shock-wide eyes. “The western spire—it’s collapsing!”
Alana’s legs drop. She’s rebraiding her hair before retrieving her boots. “Casualties?”
The sentry stares at her bare thighs.
I step between them, blocking his view. “Report. Now.”