Chapter 2 #2
“They are thriving,” Alex says quietly, her voice tight. “It is like this planet is actively rewarding them for bonding with the locals.”
The silence between us fills with the terrifying reality neither of us wants to say out loud.
“I tried asking Justine about it,” I tell her, pulling another fiber strip from the basket lining and stretching it. “How the bonding actually works. Whether it is something anyone can initiate.”
“What did she say?”
“That it does not work like that. The dust chooses. It is biological. Instinctive. You cannot just volunteer.” I tie off the fiber with a tight yank.
“So even if I wanted to tell Pam that her debilitating migraines would probably stop if she found a mate among them, it would not matter. It is not up to us.”
“And if it were?”
“It is not.”
“But if it were.”
“Then I still could not look someone in the eye and tell them that submitting to alien sex is their best medical option, Alex. I do not have the right.”
Alex rubs her eyes. The dark circles beneath them are deeply bruised.
“The gap is getting visibly wider,” she says, her voice completely devoid of hope. “Between them and us. You can physically see it.”
I can see it. We are not adapting. We are deteriorating.
And the worst part is, the mated women are not doing it on purpose.
They did not choose this any more than we did.
They just got lucky, and the rest of us got this rock and its slow, grinding hostility.
And even if we could choose to bond just to survive. ..
My stomach does a tight, involuntary flip.
The Drakav are massive predators. And Kol is the largest of them all.
Seven solid feet of towering, heavily-ridged muscle and searing heat.
My pulse jumps at the sudden, uninvited memory of his broad chest, and the thick, overpowering scent of hot stone and spice that rolls off his skin.
A flush of heat creeps straight up the back of my neck, pooling low in my belly. The physical vulnerability of submitting to a creature like that should be just as terrifying as the deadly dust. The fact that my breathing just hitched at the very thought of him is infinitely worse.
“We manage it,” I say. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Day by day. Same as we always do. I will figure it out.”
“And if figuring it out isn’t enough?” Alex murmurs. “At this point, some of us are terrified we won’t survive the month.”
I tie off a section of fiber with a hard tug. “Then we pray we adapt before we run out of time.”
Alex stares at me for a beat before a small, dry laugh escapes her. She covers her mouth instantly, shaking her head. “You never quit, do you?”
“I’m too exhausted to quit,” I correct her lightly. “Go check on Pam.”
Alex pats me on the shoulder and heads back to the sick bay.
For a moment, I stand alone in the quiet. Then, I adjust the filter basket, pick up another strip of fiber, and go back to work.
My hands find their rhythm against the stone. Scrape, twist, stretch. I focus on clearing the thick red algae residue from the filter linings before setting them to dry, letting the repetitive motion drown out the pressing weight of the cavern.
I grab a section of weave, wrapping my hands tight around the rough fibers and pulling hard to stretch it flat against the drying ledge.
I’m wrangling a piece of fiber that’s thicker than the rest when it snaps.
The sudden lack of tension sends me reeling backward, my knees hitting the rough stone floor hard. A long string of foul-smelling red algae goes flying with me. It splatters over a pair of bare golden feet that definitely were not standing behind me ten seconds ago.
I freeze exactly where I fell. The sudden wall of heat rolling off the male standing directly over me makes my neck sweat.
I know exactly who it is. There is only one male in this entire cavern whose body heat hits you before he does. We are alone in a secluded tunnel. Just me and the lethal warlord who threatened his own men on my behalf. And I just threw wet garbage all over him.
I rigidly lock my shoulders, keeping my horrified gaze fixed down on his ruined feet. I brace for the furious roar. I brace for the inevitable physical retaliation. For the terrifying force of a seven-foot predator yanking me up to punish the disrespect.
Instead, a broad, golden hand clamps around my forearm.
With a single, effortless pull, Kol hauls my entire body off the floor.
I stumble forward, my feet scrambling for purchase on the stone as he locks me fully upright against his solid, unyielding chest.
He does not shake me. He does not yell. He ignores the red sludge on his feet.
He is staring exclusively at my hand.
I follow his chaotic gaze. There is a pathetic line of blood welling slowly from my knuckles, right where my hand caught the rough stone earlier this morning.
“It was an accident,” I say, my voice coming out embarrassingly thin. “The fiber slipped.”
He does not let go. He does not even acknowledge my words.
His whole body abruptly locks up. A sudden flare of his glow strobes once, illuminating the shadowed tunnel incredibly hard.
His jaw is clenched so tight a vein stands out in his temple.
He looks as though I just voluntarily severed my own arm right in front of him.
He casually drops a small stone bowl onto the edge of my workstation, the faint smell of crushed firebloom leaves drifting up from a thick blue-orange paste inside it. Draped over his forearm are two thin strips of hide. They radiate heat, like they were just pulled away from the central fire pit.
His free hand comes up. I hear the soft, wet snick as his claws retract, pulling flush against his fingers until there is nothing left but smooth, golden skin. He captures both of my wet hands in his own, slowly turning them palm-up.
“Kol, what are you-”
He dips two thick fingers into the stone bowl, scoops up a thick glob of the blue-orange paste, and brings it directly to my bleeding knuckles.
The icy sting of the crushed firebloom hits my cuts first. I hiss, instinctively jerking my hand back.
Kol does not let me go. His amber eyes lift from my knuckles to lock onto mine.
I cannot look away. He holds my gaze, unblinking. Without ever breaking eye contact, his thumb slides over my knuckles, slowly stroking the slick paste deep into my raw skin.
An electric shiver shoots straight down my arms, bypassing my logic to gather hot and thick directly between my thighs.
My eyes widen as the heavy flush hits my bloodstream.
Kol instantly goes still. His head tilts, his nostrils flaring wide as he drags in a slow breath.
The instant he inhales, his pupils expand.
A sudden flare of gold strobes across his broad chest, and still he does not look away.
Warmth bleeds from his thick hands into my fingers and my throat locks up.
I will not whimper. I will not.
Kol huffs out a breath that sounds too much like a pleased, possessive growl.
I lock my spine, biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. My knees actively threaten to fold.
“Kol.” I pull at my hands.
He still does not let go. His grip is incredibly gentle, but wrapping my fingers in his feels exactly like a trap snapping shut. The sheer power leashed in his golden arms should be terrifying. In fact, I am terrified, which is the only logical reason the inside of my mouth just went dry.
A textbook fear response.
He ignores my protest completely, his attention shifting to the hot strips of hide draped over his forearm. He slides the first strip around my palm, binding the firebloom to my knuckles.
The leather is practically blistering. He pulls the binding tight, and the rough slide of his thumb over my inner wrist sends another shiver down my spine.
“Kol, it is just a scrape,” I blurt out, my voice embarrassingly high in the quiet tunnel. “It is nothing. I do not need this.”
He drops my wrapped hand and takes the other, applying the blue-orange paste with the exact same slow, agonizing care, before wrapping the second hot hide strip around it. He is focused on the mechanics of the knots.
I cannot breathe.
The warm buzz traveling up both of my forearms is drowning out everything else, causing a flush of heat to creep straight up my throat.
He secures the final knot. But instead of letting my hands fall, his thick thumbs slide from my wrapped palms down to press directly over the frantic, hammering pulse at my wrists.
He steps forward.
I am instantly caged against the rough stone of the cavern wall.
He is an actual mountain of dark, heavily-ridged muscle surrounding me, blocking out the daylight and the rest of the cavern.
The overpowering scent of hot, sun-baked stone and pure masculine musk rolls off his skin, making my belly tighten.
He lowers his head.
I freeze. His face stops a fraction of an inch from the curve of my neck. I can physically feel the hot, ragged rush of his breath against my collarbone. He inhales, taking a slow, heavy drag of air so deep his broad chest expands against mine.
His glow strobes violently. A low, vibrating rumble starts deep in his throat. The raw sound rattles straight through my ribs, overpowering the frantic hammering of my own pulse.
Even the lingering edge of my panic evaporates under the sheer, suffocating weight of the sound. The vibration pushes directly into my bones, bypassing my logic and replacing my fear with a liquid ache that pools low in my belly instead.
He pays no attention to my trembling knees. His body simply cages me tighter against the stone as he drags his rough thumb over my inner wrist, grinding his thick, spiced musk directly into my skin.
Then, he pulls back just enough to look at my face. His amber eyes are almost swallowed by blown-out black pupils.
“Huh-rrt?” The question scrapes out of him, rough and guttural. He physically forces the human word up through his throat, punishing his vocal cords.
“It does not hurt,” I say quickly.
It does. The raw skin has been burning like fire since dawn. But I will not show physical weakness to a predator this powerful, not when my body already feels completely at his mercy.
“Let go,” I say, internally cursing the breathy tremble in my tone. “Do you not have a clan to run?”
He stubbornly holds my wrists for one more heartbeat. The heat of his hands is distracting. I need him to leave right now before my knees actually give out.
He exhales another rumble. I can visibly see the terrifying amount of tension locking his broad shoulders, as though he has to manually override his own biology just to force his fingers open.
Slowly, reluctantly, he releases me.
The sudden loss of his heat is shocking. My bound hands instantly feel freezing, raw, and totally exposed to the cavern air. For one completely insane heartbeat, my body actually sways forward, craving the weight of his hands again.
I catch myself before my feet move. There are a hundred things trying to kill us on this dust-rock, and I will not let a pair of warm hands be the thing that breaks me.
“Thank you for the bandages.” I clear my throat, grabbing the bundle of fibers and stubbornly turning my back on him.
Kol watches my back for exactly three more seconds. The weight of his stare burns straight through my shirt. Then he turns, crossing the alcove in those absurd, ground-eating strides, and heads back toward the central fire.
I scrub the weave until the electrical tingling in my palms stops.
It takes a very, very long time.