Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
CHRYS
I watch them for a long moment, wondering if it’s possible that they’ve forgotten I’m here.
That gets me a sharp look from Arc, but they keep talking—maybe arguing—in that language I don’t understand.
Kissu, at least, puts all his attention on me, and it’s fine that they don’t.
I’ve probably taken too much of their attention since I got here.
Head pressing against my waist while I pet him, Kissu pushes against me and for a moment, I think I might actually fall over.
When I laugh, that’s what makes them all finally look at me. I manage to save myself from toppling before they can swoop in.
It doesn’t stop them from looking worried.
Arc picks me up. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“Yes please.”
“Not like that.”
I pout and he knows just how much I don’t like it. It’s a low blow, but I say, “I thought you’d do anything to make me happy.”
Arc is the only one who comes into the room with me, and I don’t let go of him when he stops beside the bed.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him, even though he already knows. “And I have it on good authority that women have bonded to multiple men at once.”
“The three of us won’t fit inside you at once, Chrys.”
Not yet.
He closes his eyes and shivers.
I kiss him until he opens them again, and then I tell him, “We will find a way.”
“What if there isn’t one?”
If there isn’t—
“Do you not want this to work?” I ask, quietly.
I think I know the answer, but if I’m wrong, it’s going to break my heart.
“No.” A flash of pain crosses his face. “I want you here more than I’ve ever wanted anything before.”
“Then why are you fighting me?”
“Because the saints have never given me anything I’ve wanted in my entire life. Because if we try and you bond to them, but not to me, I think it might kill me. Because I love you and I don’t know what to do about it.”
He loves me.
I take his face in my hands and pull him down so that I can kiss him again before I whisper, “We are not going to do anything until Risk is sure it will work and Shock has seen that it does. The four of us are endgame. If the saints don’t like it, they can come down here and fight me.”
He laughs, and I look at the others, standing in the doorway now, watching, waiting for the opportunity to join us.
I hold out my hand and they come to us.
“If we weren’t meant to be, I would have fallen from the sky in some other sector, or in the middle of the city, or I might have made it all the way to Calisan, who knows.
” I let Arc lay me down. “But I didn’t. I’m here, exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Now, who’s going to get my pants off so we can give me a better reason to pass out? ”
“Not today,” Risk crawls into bed beside me. “We’ll take off those pants if you want to put on pajamas, but we aren’t going to fuck you right now.”
I pout, even though it’s clear I’m not going to change their minds.
“Fine. Bring me comfy clothes and cuddle me to sleep if that’s all I can have.”
I don’t argue, because they love me. Arc might be the only one who’s said it, but I see it in the way they look at me. I feel it in the way they move around me, in the way they care for me.
I don’t argue, because I love them too.
There’s no other explanation for this feeling, no other way to describe this happiness, this overwhelming desire to be with them always.
I don’t need the sex.
I want it, obviously, but if it takes years to be sure the bond will take, I’ll wait.
Arc glances at me while they help me change into my pajamas. I don’t try to hide any of my thoughts from him.
I don’t know what he says to them, but Risk goes first, and I figure it out when Arc has put on soft pants and Risk returns with the same thing on. I can guess what Shock will be in when he comes back.
Crawling into the bed with me, Arc and Risk cuddle close, tucking me in, warm and tight.
Kissu lies beside the bed, purring so loudly I can feel it, and Shock has to step over him to join us.
I am tired, and I resent it more than I should. “Tell me a story,” I say, even as my eyes flutter closed.
Arc hums and says, “Not so long ago, the sky split in two. The saints, you see, decided to tempt their most beleaguered children. They tore the sky open and from it fell a beautiful woman. The most beautiful woman in the universe.”
“That’s not fair.” I snuggle against Risk’s chest. “You shouldn’t tell me a story without an ending.”
“You’ll fall asleep before it’s over.”
He’s right, but as he turns my abduction into something that sounds like a fairytale and sleep creeps in to steal me away from them, I can’t help but be a little mad.
I don’t want our story to end, but I do want to close this chapter.
SHOCK
The perimeter alarm screeches and Arc is out of the bed, instantly. Risk too.
I grab the covers that try to go with them, hauling them up and over Chrys, but I shouldn’t have bothered. She sits bolt upright, looking between all three of us for an answer.
“What in the fucking christ was that?” she asks, as I tuck the blankets into her and Kissu takes Arc’s spot in the bed beside her.
“It’s the sensors telling us there’s a cavrinskh to take care of,” I say softly.
“Three,” Risk says.
“What?” That pulls me out of bed.
“There are three of them.” He tosses me my suit and I pull it on, trying to remember the last time three of them came into our sector at the same time.
“Never?” Arc answers, his voice low, glancing at me in a way that feels like he’s asking me not to say anything.
Two, yes. One, a hundred times.
Three…
I see them dead and I don’t see anyone with us. But I don’t know how hard this is going to be.
“Hey!” Chrys is on her knees now, watching us with a glimmer of panic in her eyes. “What is going on?”
It’s faster to speak in our own language, but it doesn’t help with her anxieties. “We all have to go deal with them. But we’ll be back.”
“Will you?” Chrys sits on the edge of the bed, the strap of her blue tiger tank top slipping down her shoulder.
She’s not wearing enough clothing to be out from under the blankets. Kissu must think the same. He hops down and covers her feet with his body.
“We will.”
Arc goes to her, kissing her softly. “We’ll always come back for you.”
He leaves, Risk close behind him.
They know we need to go, and quickly, but Chrys isn’t used to this.
She stands, Kissu moving with a low growl, and I know she won’t go back to sleep while we’re gone.
“Come on.” I hold my hand out to her, and she lets me take her to the living area and sit her down on the couch.
I’m not satisfied until she’s wrapped in blankets, Kissu curled next to her with his enormous head in her lap.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
She smiles up at me. “I don’t plan on leaving.”
The ‘ever’ is unspoken.
“We’ve done this hundreds of times before,” I assure her. “We’ll head out, deal with them, and then come straight back.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I kiss her and then hurry through the back hall and all the way downstairs.
They’ve already pulled out my gear and prepped my bike. All I have to do is pull it on, throw my leg over, and follow them out into the Zone.
The ice is like sharp metal on the line of skin between my sleeve and glove.
Without the geothermal heating the others have, our outpost is barely warmer than it is outside.
But with Chrys in residence, the difference between inside and out borders on unpleasant. I know the temperature shift is there, even if I can’t feel it the way she would.
But that discomfort isn’t the temperature’s fault, it’s leaving her.
We fly across the Zone, our bikes throwing long plumes of snow behind us, reaching the perimeter trigger in less than ten minutes. From there…
I hop off my bike, boots crunching in the hard-packed snow, and I swing my gun around, looking for their tracks. But the flurries have covered over any trace.
Four sensors are down. Snapped. One of them bloody.
“One of them might be injured.”
“Better for us that way,” Arc says. “Spread out. The faster we find them, the quicker we can get back to her.”
He doesn’t need to tell us twice.
Risk hurries off to my right and Arc barely looks back at me when he heads for the ridge.
I watch them both, waiting for a monster to fling itself from the snow as their feet cross over, but nothing disturbs the blue blanket except for their boot prints.
Switching my helmet’s overlay screen to a topographical scan of this part of the Zone, I scan the span of snow between them… and I see what I hoped not to find.
The Zone is riddled with ravines. Old scars from lava flows long since diverted, or from ice cutting deep through the rock.
I prefer when they’re still full of ice.
As soon as I reach this one, I know it’s going to be my least favorite kind.
The small scar in the otherwise smooth landscape is dark. When I drop into it, pinging the others with my location, the dark walls force my visor to adjust to the lesser light.
An ever-widening split between rock and ice, the walls rising higher and the ice darkening the further I go.
The crevice starts to narrow and I flick my light on, freezing when it catches the shine of eyes ahead.
“Found one,” I say quietly. Arc and Risk will hear me. The helmet will muffle the sound from the cavrinskh…
It sees me. But there’s nowhere to go.
“I’ve got it backed into a fissure.”
“Do you need help?” Arc asks.
“Don’t think so.” It’s not aggressive. It watches me, pacing, one of its legs hanging limp. “I found the injured one.”
This is the kind of encounter I hate. The waiting game.
It doesn’t want to attack. I don’t want to kill it. Both are inevitable.
I watch it pace. I see it look for a way out.
There isn’t one.
My helmet records every move—a useless function. Something about them has always left artifacts behind in the data.
The dark spot in its forehead.
It’s easy to get distracted by the creature’s split jaw, or the spines sprouting from between the other fur along its back, but the spot is there.
Whatever it is, they don’t want us to know.