Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Martin’s scream cut off with a sickening finality.
Alina pressed her face harder into Rhyx’s chest, her fingers digging into his shoulders as if letting go would send her tumbling after the man who’d just fallen to his death.
The wind whipped at her hair, cold and thin and utterly wrong because they were flying, actually flying, and the ground was so far below that she couldn’t bring herself to look.
He has wings.
The thought circled through her mind like a ship caught in orbit, unable to break free. Wings. Massive golden wings that had burst from his back at the exact moment she’d needed them most, carrying them both away from the ledge and Martin’s knife and the death that had been reaching for her throat.
She was shaking. She couldn’t seem to stop.
The adrenaline that had carried her through the confrontation was draining away, leaving behind a trembling wreck of a woman who’d almost died, who’d watched a man fall screaming to his death, who was now suspended hundreds of meters above the Martian surface with nothing between her and oblivion except the arms of an alien she’d known for barely two weeks.
He has wings and I love him and I almost died.
“Alina.” Rhyx’s voice rumbled through his chest, vibrating against her cheek. “Look at me.”
She didn’t want to. Looking at him meant lifting her head, meant acknowledging the vast emptiness below them, meant accepting that this was really happening.
“Alina.” Gentler this time. “You’re safe. I have you.”
I know. That was the strange part. Even with her body shaking, even with her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat, she knew she was safe.
His arms were steady around her, his wings beating in a slow, powerful rhythm that felt as natural as breathing.
He wouldn’t drop her. He would never drop her.
She forced herself to look up.
Rhyx’s face was calm. Not the frozen calm of shock or the forced calm of someone pretending everything was fine—genuine, settled calm, as if flying through the Martian sky with his mate in his arms was the most natural thing in the world.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“No.” His lips curved slightly, almost a smile. “I am not.”
“You have wings.” She knew she was repeating herself, but the words kept wanting to come out. “Wings, Rhyx. You didn’t have wings before.”
“I did.” He adjusted his grip on her, shifting her weight to a more comfortable position against his chest. “Once. Long ago. I had forgotten, but my body remembered.”
The wind caught them, lifting them higher, and despite herself Alina glanced down at the landscape spreading out below. Her breath caught in her throat.
Beautiful.
The canyon stretched towards the horizon like a wound in the planet’s flesh, its layered cliffs catching the pale sunlight and throwing back shades of rust and copper and deep, iron-rich brown.
Dust devils spun across the valley floor, tiny from this height, leaving spiral trails in the red sand.
In the distance, the mountains rose like broken teeth against the pink sky, their peaks touched with the white glint of carbon dioxide frost.
She’d spent years studying Mars from the safety of labs and rovers and orbital surveys.
She’d analyzed its soil composition, mapped its mineral deposits, theorized about its ancient oceans and the life that might have existed before the atmosphere bled away into space.
But she’d never truly seen it before. Not like this.
Not as a living, breathing world stretched out beneath her like a gift.
“It’s beautiful.” Her voice came out hushed, awed. “I never realized…”
“This is how my ancestors saw it.” Rhyx’s wings tilted, catching a thermal, and they rose higher still. “Before the dying. Before we forgot how to fly.”
“What happened to them? Your people?”
“The same thing that happened to this world.” His voice carried an ancient grief, older than memory. “They faded. Slowly, then all at once. The air grew thin, the water disappeared, and one by one, they stopped waking from the long sleep.”
“Except you.”
“Except me.” He looked down at her, his blue eyes soft with an emotion she couldn’t quite name. “I was waiting for you.”
The words settled into her chest like a warm stone, chasing away some of the lingering chill of fear. She wanted to stay here forever, suspended between earth and sky, wrapped in his arms with the wind singing past them and the whole of Mars laid out below like a painting.
But she couldn’t.
No one can see him.
The thought crashed through her reverie like a stone through glass.
Martin was dead—fallen, screaming, to the canyon floor below.
The guards were dead too, left unconscious on the ledge when Rhyx had carried her away.
And somewhere out there, GenCon’s vehicles were still approaching, their sensors sweeping the mountains, their crews searching for the readings that had led them here in the first place.
If anyone saw Rhyx—flying, with his massive golden wings catching the sunlight—everything would be over. GenCon would hunt him. Her own people would hunt him. He’d be captured, studied, dissected in the name of science and profit, and she would lose him forever.
“We have to go back.”
His wings faltered for a moment, disrupting their smooth glide. “Back?”
“To the cave. My samples—I left them when Martin…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “We need them, and we need to—to hide what happened. If anyone finds the bodies, if they realize what you are—”
“I understand.” His voice had gone flat, the joy of flight bleeding away into grim acceptance. “No one can see me.”
“I’m sorry.” The words felt inadequate, pathetic even.
Here he was, soaring through the sky for the first time in millennia, and she was forcing him back to earth because of human politics and corporate greed.
“I know this isn’t fair. I know you deserve better than hiding in caves and running from—”
“Alina.” He cut her off, not unkindly. “You are my mate. Your safety is my purpose. I do not resent the necessity.”
“You should.”
“Perhaps.” His wings tilted again, banking them in a wide curve back towards the mountains. “But I do not. I have my wings. I have you. The rest…” He pressed a kiss against her hair. “The rest we will figure out together.”
The descent was faster than the climb, Rhyx’s wings folding partially to reduce their lift and increase their speed. Alina kept her face pressed against his chest, unwilling to watch the ground rushing up to meet them, trusting him to land them safely.
He did.
His feet touched down on the rocky ledge with barely a sound, his wings flaring out behind him to arrest their momentum. For a moment he stood there, magnificent and impossible, his golden scales gleaming in the pale light and his wings spread wide enough to cast shadows across the cave entrance.
Then the wings began to fold.
Alina watched, fascinated despite everything, as the massive pinions collapsed inward, folding and shrinking and absorbing back into his body.
The process took only seconds, but it seemed to happen in slow motion—feathers becoming scales becoming smooth golden skin, the complex architecture of flight disappearing into nothing.
When it was done, there was no trace that the wings had ever existed. No bulges, no scars, no evidence at all except for two thick ridges running parallel down his spine.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.” He rolled his shoulders experimentally. “It feels… strange. As if a part of me is sleeping rather than gone.”
“Can you bring them back?”
“I believe so.” He turned to face her, and she could see the question in his eyes—the hope, the longing, the desperate wish that she would tell him to unfurl them again and take her back into the sky. “When it is safe.”
When it is safe. Such simple words. Such an impossible standard.
“We should hurry.” She forced herself to move, to focus on the practical tasks rather than the emotions threatening to overwhelm her. “The samples first, then…”
She trailed off, her gaze landing on the two guards lying motionless near the cave entrance.
They hadn’t moved since Rhyx had knocked them down. One lay on his back, his helmet visor shattered and dark, his arm bent at an angle that arms weren’t supposed to bend. The other was crumpled on his side, his jaw clearly broken even through the distortion of his faceplate.
Dead. Both of them, almost certainly. Rhyx had been fast, decisive, brutal in their elimination, and she hadn’t even registered it at the time because Martin had a knife at her throat and she’d been too busy trying not to die.
I watched three men die today.
The thought should have horrified her. Should have sent her spiraling into shock or guilt or some other appropriate emotional response.
But all she felt was a cold, hollow numbness—the recognition that those men had tried to capture Rhyx, had pointed weapons at him, had been prepared to take him alive or dead on Martin’s orders.
They’d chosen their side. They’d paid the price.
“Alina.” Rhyx’s voice was soft. “I will deal with them.”
“Deal with—” She stopped, understanding dawning. “You mean…”
“They cannot be found here. Not if we want to conceal what happened.” He moved towards the bodies with the efficient grace of someone who’d done this before, in another life, another time. “Martin fell. His guards fell with him. A tragic accident in the unstable terrain.”
“That’s…” She swallowed hard. “That’s cold.”
“Yes.” He didn’t apologize, didn’t try to soften it. “Is it wrong?”
Was it? She turned the question over in her mind, examining it from every angle she could think of.
Those men had been following orders—Martin’s orders, GenCon’s orders—but those orders had included capturing or killing an innocent being whose only crime was existing.
They’d been complicit in what would have been murder, or worse.
And if their bodies were found on this ledge, with evidence of combat, with traces of Rhyx’s presence…
“No,” she heard herself say. “It’s not wrong. It’s just… necessary.”
Rhyx nodded, accepting her verdict without judgment.
He bent down, lifting the first guard with the same casual strength that had crushed Martin’s hand, and carried him to the edge of the ledge.
For a moment he stood there, silhouetted against the pale sky, the body cradled in his arms like a sleeping child.
Then he let go.
Alina flinched at the sound—or rather, the absence of sound. The guard fell silently, tumbling end over end through the thin air, growing smaller and smaller until he was just a dark speck against the distant canyon floor.
The second guard followed moments later.
“It’s done.” Rhyx turned away from the edge, his expression unreadable. “They will be found with Martin. Three men who fell while exploring unstable terrain.”
“And the weapons? The equipment?”
“Scattered in the fall.” He gestured towards the cave entrance. “We should retrieve your samples quickly. There may be others approaching.”
He was right. She knew he was right. But she couldn’t quite make herself move, couldn’t stop staring at the empty ledge where three men had been standing just minutes ago.
I’m protecting him. This is what it takes to protect him.
The justification felt hollow, but it was the only one she had.
She’d chosen Rhyx—chosen him over her career, her safety, her comfortable certainties about right and wrong.
This was what that choice looked like in practice.
Not the romantic fantasy of star-crossed lovers, but the cold reality of bodies tumbling into canyons and lies that would have to be maintained for the rest of her life.
“Alina.” Rhyx was beside her suddenly, his hand warm on her shoulder. “You did not kill them. I did.”
“I know.”
“Then do not carry their weight.” His voice was gentle but firm. “They were threats to my mate. Eliminating threats is my purpose. I do not regret it, and neither should you.”
She wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that it wasn’t that simple, that human morality was more complicated than threats and mates and purpose. But the words wouldn’t come, because deep down, in the parts of herself she didn’t like to examine too closely…
She didn’t regret it either.
Martin had tried to kill her. Had pressed a knife against her throat and shoved her towards a fatal drop because she’d rejected him, because she’d chosen someone else, because his fragile ego couldn’t handle the word no.
The guards had been prepared to shoot Rhyx, to drag him away in chains, to deliver him to GenCon’s laboratories for dissection and study.
They’d made their choices. Rhyx had made his.
And she’d made hers.
“Let’s get the samples,” she said, surprised by how steady her voice sounded. “Then we need to find Jeb and Mattie. We need a plan.”
Rhyx nodded, something like approval flickering in his blue eyes. He released her shoulder and moved towards the cave entrance, his body language shifting from protector to partner as he fell into step beside her.
They had work to do. Plans to make. A future to build, somehow, in the shadow of everything that had just happened.
But first, the samples. First, the evidence of what Mars had once been and could be again. First, the seeds of hope that she’d risked everything to gather.
She followed Rhyx into the darkness of the cave, leaving the empty ledge and its terrible secrets behind.