Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rhyx’s hand moved before conscious thought could catch up.
One moment Martin’s palm was arcing towards Alina’s face, knuckles white with the force of the intended blow. The next, those pale human fingers were trapped in Rhyx’s grip, bones grinding together beneath golden scales as he squeezed just hard enough to stop the motion dead.
No one touches her.
The thought blazed through him like wildfire, burning away every pretense of civility, every careful restraint he’d been maintaining for Alina’s sake. This male—this weak, arrogant, pathetic male—had tried to strike his mate.
Martin’s face went white. His mouth opened, working soundlessly, and Rhyx could smell the sharp chemical tang of fear suddenly flooding his body. The overpowering cologne couldn’t mask it. Nothing could mask it. Fear had a scent that transcended species, and Martin reeked of it now.
Good.
“You should not have done that.” Rhyx kept his voice level, controlled, even as fury pounded through his veins like molten metal. He could feel his pulse in his temples, in his throat, in the tight grip of his fingers around Martin’s trapped hand. “You should not have even thought of doing that.”
“L-let go of me—”
“Why?” He tightened his grip incrementally, felt the small bones shift beneath the skin. Martin whimpered. “You would have struck my mate. I should break every bone in your body.”
“Rhyx.” Alina’s voice, strained but steady. “Rhyx, don’t—”
“I know.” He didn’t look at her—couldn’t afford to take his eyes off the threat. “I know, Alina.”
But knowing and doing were different things.
The rage was still there, still burning, demanding that he make this male pay for his presumption.
In the before times, such an insult would have been answered with blood.
With death. Challenges to a bonded pair were answered absolutely, without mercy or quarter, because mercy only invited future challenges.
This is not the before times.
He forced his fingers to loosen. Forced himself to release Martin’s hand, even though every instinct screamed at him to crush it into pulp.
Martin stumbled backward, cradling his hand against his chest. His face was still white, but something was changing in his expression—the fear giving way to calculation, to the cold assessment of a predator who’d been momentarily outmatched.
“Guards.” His voice cracked on the first syllable, but he pushed through it. “Take him. Alive or dead—I don’t care anymore.”
The two armed men had been frozen during the confrontation, clearly uncertain how to respond to a situation that had escalated so far beyond their training. But Martin’s order galvanized them. Weapons came up, targeting systems locking onto Rhyx’s chest.
“Stop!” Alina’s voice was harsh with terror, cracking on the word. She threw herself forward, trying to place her body between Rhyx and the guards. “Don’t hurt him! Please—”
No.
Something snapped inside him.
He moved.
The first guard was still trying to adjust his aim when Rhyx’s hand closed around the barrel of his weapon, wrenching it aside with enough force to dislocate the man’s shoulder.
The guard screamed, but Rhyx was already past him, already reaching for the second threat.
His fist connected with the man’s helmet, shattering the visor and sending him crashing backward into the rocky ground.
The first guard was fumbling for a sidearm with his good hand. Rhyx spun, caught the weapon before it could clear its holster, and drove his elbow into the man’s jaw. The crack of bone was audible even through the thin Martian atmosphere.
Both guards lay motionless on the red dust.
Swift. Decisive. Clean.
The combat instincts had risen up from somewhere deep inside him—not memories exactly, but reflexes, patterns of movement drilled so thoroughly into muscle and nerve that they transcended conscious thought.
He didn’t know where they came from. The cyborg donor, perhaps, or some echo of his own warrior past that had survived the long sleep.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the threats were neutralized.
He turned back towards Alina—
And froze.
Martin had moved while Rhyx was dealing with the guards. The coward hadn’t tried to fight, hadn’t tried to help his fallen men. Instead, he’d circled around, positioning himself behind Alina, and now…
Now he had a knife pressed against her throat.
“Don’t move.” Martin’s voice was high, reedy with panic, but his hand was steady enough. The blade gleamed in the pale Martian light, its edge resting against the vulnerable curve of Alina’s neck. “Don’t you fucking move, or I’ll—”
“Martin.” Alina’s voice was very small, very calm. The calm of someone who knew that panic would only make things worse. “Martin, please. You don’t want to do this.”
“Shut up.” He jerked her closer, and Rhyx saw a thin line of blood appear where the blade pressed too hard against her skin. “Just shut up. This is your fault. All of this is your fault. If you’d just—if you’d been reasonable—”
Rhyx’s fury had gone cold. The burning rage that had driven him to eliminate the guards was gone, replaced by something far more dangerous—a crystalline clarity that narrowed the entire world down to a single point.
The knife at her throat.
Everything else—Martin’s ranting, the unconscious guards, the thin whistle of wind through the cave opening, the distant rumble of approaching vehicles—all of it faded to insignificance.
There was only the blade. Only the blood.
Only Alina, her brown eyes wide with fear, her hands hanging useless at her sides because she knew that any sudden movement might be her last.
“Release her.”
The words came out flat, empty of the rage that churned beneath his surface. He couldn’t afford to let Martin see how close he was to losing control entirely. Couldn’t afford to give the male any excuse to panic, to make a mistake, to hurt her.
“Release her, and I will let you live.”
“You think I’m stupid?” Martin laughed, high and ugly. “The moment I let her go, you’ll kill me.”
“Perhaps.” Rhyx took a single step forward.
Slow. Careful. Non-threatening. “But if you harm her, I will not kill you. I will unmake you. I will tear you apart piece by piece, and I will ensure that you live through every moment of it. Your death will take days. Weeks. You will beg me to end it, and I will refuse.”
Martin’s face went gray.
“You’re bluffing.”
“I am not.” Another step. “I am a warrior of the Var’thaal. We do not bluff. We do not threaten. We simply act.” He let some of the cold fury bleed into his voice. “Release my mate. Now.”
“She’s not your mate.” Martin’s grip tightened, and Alina winced as the knife pressed harder. “She’s mine. She was always supposed to be mine. And if I can’t have her—”
He moved.
Not towards Rhyx—even in his madness, Martin wasn’t stupid enough to think he could win that confrontation.
Instead, he shoved Alina sideways, towards the steep drop at the edge of the cave opening.
The ledge they stood on was perhaps thirty meters above the valley floor, and Alina was falling, tumbling towards the edge, her hands scrabbling for purchase on the loose rock—
NO.
Rhyx lunged.
And something changed.
There was pressure building inside him—had been building since the confrontation began, since the guards raised their weapons, since Martin put a knife to Alina’s throat.
He’d been ignoring it, pushing it down, focusing everything on the immediate threat.
But now, with Alina falling, with the ground rushing up to meet her, with death reaching its cold fingers towards his mate—
The pressure exploded.
Pain lanced through his back, sharp and searing, and he felt something tear—not fabric, not flesh, but something deeper, something that had been waiting inside him for longer than he could comprehend.
Wings unfurled from his shoulder blades, massive and golden, catching the thin Martian air and lifting him off the ground.
He reached Alina just as her fingers slipped from the ledge.
His arms closed around her, pulling her against his chest as his wings beat once, twice, driving them up and away from the killing drop below. She gasped, her hands clutching at his shoulders, her body trembling against his as the ground fell away beneath them.
“Rhyx—” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Your wings—”
“Later.”
Below them, Martin had stumbled backward—shocked, perhaps, by the transformation he’d just witnessed. But his retreat had taken him too close to the edge, and the loose rock of the ledge was crumbling beneath his feet.
Rhyx watched, Alina cradled safely in his arms, as Martin’s expression shifted from shock to terror.
“No—wait—help me—”
The ground gave way.
Martin screamed as he fell, a high, thin sound that echoed off the canyon walls and went on and on and on until it cut off abruptly, finally, completely.
Silence.
Alina buried her face against Rhyx’s chest. He could feel her shaking, could hear the ragged hitch of her breath as she fought against the sobs that wanted to escape.
“It’s over.” He pressed his lips against her hair, holding her close as his wings carried them higher into the pale Martian sky. “He can’t hurt you anymore. No one can hurt you anymore.”
“You have wings.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me you had wings.”
“I didn’t know.” He adjusted his grip on her, marveling at how natural this felt—the wind beneath his pinions, the world spread out below him like a map, his mate safe and warm in his arms. “They weren’t there before.”
Alina pulled back just enough to look at him, her eyes red-rimmed but filled with wonder rather than fear.
“What are you?”
“I don’t know.” He met her gaze, letting her see the truth in his eyes—the confusion, the uncertainty, the strange exhilaration of discovering yet another piece of himself that he hadn’t known existed. “But whatever I am, I am yours.”
She laughed—a wet, broken sound that was half sob, half genuine amusement.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“Is it untrue?”
“No.” She reached up, her fingers brushing against his jaw. “No, it’s not untrue at all.”
Below them, the Martian landscape stretched out in endless waves of rust and ochre, ancient and new all at once. Behind them, the cave system that had birthed him sat quiet and waiting, its secrets not yet fully revealed. And somewhere ahead…
Somewhere ahead was a future he couldn’t see. A world he didn’t fully understand. Enemies who would come for them, questions that had no easy answers, challenges that would test everything they were and everything they could become.
But Alina was in his arms.
And he had wings.
For now, that was enough.