Chapter 10 #2
Patel came through the gap next, clutching her data tablet in one hand and a sample case in the other.
Her glasses were cracked and she had a cut on her forehead that she apparently hadn't noticed, because she was already talking about seismic frequencies and crustal stress patterns.
The woman's priorities were both admirable and deeply concerning.
"The seismic pattern is extraordinary," Patel announced to no one in particular. "If I'm reading the frequency data correctly, this was a subsidiary fault responding to tidal stress from the twin suns' gravitational interaction. Melessra needs to see this immediately."
"Patel," Athena said. "Peter is bleeding."
"Right. Sorry. Medical first, geology second. But someone please save my data tablet. The readings from the last fifteen minutes are irreplaceable."
Marina pushed past Toren through the gap, ignoring his protest, and crouched beside Peter.
She examined his wound with hands that were steady and clinical.
Her field medicine training was overriding every other response.
The laceration ran from his shoulder to his upper arm, deep and ragged where the stone beam had torn through fabric and flesh.
"This needs treatment now," she said. "Can you carry him?" she asked Toren.
"Yes."
"Then carry him. Medical bay. Now."
Toren lifted Peter carefully by placing one arm under his knees, the other supporting his back and adjusting his grip to keep pressure away from the wounded shoulder.
Peter was lighter than he'd expected. Not just the general difference between human and Weredragon mass.
It was because the blood loss had taken something from Peter that weight alone didn't measure. A vitality. A substance.
They moved through the damaged corridors at the fastest pace Peter's condition would allow.
The aftershocks had diminished to occasional trembles, and the structural teams were already working.
Weredragon engineers were shoring up weakened ceiling sections with crystalline support struts that locked into the stone and hardened on contact.
"For the record," Peter murmured as they passed through the third corridor, "I still don't like you."
"For the record, you don't have to."
"Good. Because you're carrying me like a bride, and I want it noted that this is the most embarrassing moment of my life."
"I could carry you over my shoulder instead. Less comfortable, but more dignified."
"This is fine. Just move faster. And don't tell Marina about the bride thing."
"Her sister is walking directly behind us. She can hear everything."
"Athena doesn't count. She's seen me in worse positions. There was an incident in basic training involving a rope bridge and a goat that I will take to my grave."
"A goat?"
"Don't ask."
Despite the blood loss and the pain, Peter's humor held.
Toren found himself respecting the man's composure.
He had the determination to be funny when being funny required more energy than he had.
It was a kind of courage that didn't involve fire-breathing or claw-fighting, and it was, Toren realized, one of the qualities that had made Marina care about Peter in the first place.
Not love; she'd been clear about that distinction.
But care. Real, deep, lasting care for a good man who handled pain with jokes and who loved a woman well enough to let her go.
"Toren," Peter said. His voice was weaker now, the humor thinning as exhaustion took over.
"Yes?"
"Take care of her. I'm saying this once.
I'm not going to bring it up again, and I'm not going to hold it over you, and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't kill me to say it.
But take care of her. She's the best person I've ever known, and she picked you, and I respect that, and if you hurt her, I will find a way to punch a dragon in the face. One-armed if I have to."
"I won't hurt her."
"You better not. I've got a dislocated shoulder and an alien carrying me through a volcano, and I've still got one good fist."
Behind them, Marina was coordinating. She'd taken command of the corridor the way she took command of everything by directing rescue teams, checking structural reports and organizing medical response.
Three jobs at once, making it look effortless, covered in dust and someone else's blood.
Toren watched her over Peter's head and felt the last complexity drain out of what he felt.
It wasn't complicated anymore. He loved her.
Not abstractly, not theoretically, not in the guarded, analytical way he'd been allowing himself to feel for nineteen days.
He loved her the way the waterfall loved the stone; completely, inevitably, reshaping everything it touched.
He loved her and he was done pretending he didn't, and the earthquake had burned away every excuse for pretending.
* * *
The medical bay was crowded with earthquake casualties.
There were broken bones, lacerations and crush injuries.
The Weredragon medical staff worked with the calm efficiency of people who'd trained for this, their instruments a blend of crystallographic technology and biological compounds that Marina's team had been studying with fascination.
Peter was placed on a treatment platform. The lead medic; a blue-scaled woman with steady hands and a manner that suggested she'd been treating injuries since before Toren was born, examined the wound with brisk competence.
"Dislocated, not broken," she announced. "The laceration is deep but clean. Thermal bonding will close it. I need to reduce the dislocation first. This will hurt."
"More than being hit by a ceiling?" Peter asked.
"Briefly, yes."
"That's not encouraging."
"I'm not in the encouragement business. Hold still."