Chapter 13 #2
The spy must sense something. He starts to turn, to bring his gun around to face the new threat.
He's far, far too slow.
Haid steps out of the darkness as though he was born from it, as though those shadows are his native element and the light is just a courtesy he extends to lesser beings.
His eyes glow with void energy, pure black sclera shot through with veins of purple that pulse in time with his heartbeat.
His face is a death mask, beautiful and terrible and completely inhuman in its rage.
The spy fires. Once. Twice.
The shots go wide. Not because his aim is bad, but because Haid moves like the darkness itself, like something that exists between one moment and the next. The bullets hit the wall behind him, ricocheting with bright sparks that illuminate nothing.
Haid's hand closes around the spy's throat. Lifts him off his feet with the kind of casual strength that makes my stomach drop, that reminds me exactly what he is beneath the gentleness he shows me. A warlord. A weapon. Something the void touched and changed and made into its own instrument.
"You made a mistake." Haid's voice is soft. Conversational. Somehow more terrifying than if he'd been screaming. "You came to my station. You threatened my people."
The spy claws at Haid's arm. Kicks uselessly. His face is turning purple, eyes bulging, mouth working around words that can't escape past the iron grip crushing his windpipe.
"And worst of all." Haid leans in close, until they're nearly nose to nose, until the void-glow of his eyes must be all the spy can see. "You touched what's mine."
The last word comes out as a growl that I feel in my bones, in the base of my spine, in some primal part of my brain that recognizes a predator when it hears one.
The spy's struggles weaken. His gun clatters to the floor.
Haid is going to kill him. Right here, right now, with me watching. And some dark, vengeful part of me wants to let him. Wants to watch this man who threatened me, who reduced me to genetic samples and profit margins, choke out his last breath.
But that's not who I want to be. Not who I've been trying so hard to become.
"Haid." My voice cracks on his name. "Don't."
He doesn't look at me. Doesn't acknowledge that I spoke. His attention is fixed entirely on the spy with the kind of focus that makes my skin prickle, that says nothing else in the universe exists right now except this man and the violence Haid is about to do to him.
"Haid, please." I take a step forward. My legs shake. The vines around us are still growing, still responding to my unchecked power and fear, creating a jungle that will choke this corridor if I don't get myself under control. "I need you to stop."
Something flickers in those void-dark eyes. Some recognition that I'm here, that I'm speaking, that I'm asking him for something.
His grip loosens. Just barely. Just enough that the spy can drag in a gasping, wheezing breath.
Then Haid slams him into the wall hard enough to dent the metal. Once. Twice. The spy goes limp, unconscious or dead, I can't tell which.
Haid lets him drop. The body crumples to the floor like discarded trash, and Haid steps over it without a second glance, his entire attention suddenly, completely focused on me.
He crosses the distance in three strides. His hands hover near my face, my shoulders, not quite touching, trembling with the visible effort of restraint.
"Are you hurt?" His voice is rough, scraped raw. The void-glow is fading from his eyes, but the intensity remains. "Did he touch you? Did he—"
"I'm fine." The words come out too fast, too breathless. "I'm okay, I just—"
My knees buckle. All the adrenaline that kept me upright, kept me fighting, drains away in a rush that leaves me boneless and shaking. I'm falling, and there's nothing I can do to stop it, no strength left to catch myself.
Haid catches me. Arms like steel bands closing around me, pulling me against his chest, holding me up when my own body has decided it's done cooperating.
One hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair, and he's making a sound low in his throat that might be words or might be something beyond language entirely.
"You're safe." He's murmuring it against my hair, into the crown of my head, over and over like an incantation. "You're safe, I have you, you're safe."
I'm shaking. Full-body tremors that I can't control, can't stop. My hands fist in the fabric of his shirt, clinging to him like he's the only solid thing in a universe gone liquid and uncertain.
"How did you know?" My voice is muffled against his chest. "How did you find me?"
"I always know where you are." He says it like a confession. Like something he shouldn't admit but can't hold back. "Every second. Every heartbeat. The station's sensors track you, but even without them, I would know. I would find you."
His arms tighten. Protective and possessive and gentle all at once in a way that should be impossible but somehow isn't.
"No one touches you." The growl is back in his voice, vibrating through his chest into mine. "No one threatens you. Not while I breathe."