Chapter 17
A VERY SPECIFIC KIND OF PAIN RELIEF
MIKAELA
Icome back to the world coughing.
My body convulses, lungs heaving to expel the last of the hot, bitter water. It burns my throat, tasting of copper and rot, but I am breathing.
I am alive.
I slump back against the stone, gasping, waiting for the pain. I wait for the fever to rage, for the cramps to double me over, for the exhaustion to drag me back down.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, a strange, electric hum vibrates beneath my skin. My heart is beating with a rhythm that feels stronger, heavier than my own. I feel…charged. Like I’ve been plugged into a generator.
I blink open my eyes.
The darkness of the alcove is broken by a faint, dying light.
“Sarven?”
He is curled around me, a massive, protective wall between me and the cave entrance. But he isn’t moving.
I push myself up, my hand landing on his chest.
He burns.
It’s not just body heat. It’s an inferno. But where his skin used to be gold, it is now the color of the void. A deep, velvety black. And scattered across it are tiny, flickering points of light.
Stars.
But they are dimming.
“Sarven!” I shake him.
His head lolls back against the rock. His face is a mask of devastation, eyes squeezed shut, lips pulled back in a silent snarl of agony.
I press my hand to his jaw. The moment skin meets skin, the barrier in my mind shatters.
A scream shatters the silence, feeling like it’s coming from everywhere at once.
Only, it’s not a sound; it’s a sensation.
A tidal wave of black, crushing sorrow. It slams into me, stealing the air from my lungs.
It tastes like the remains of a fire. Smoke and ashes. It feels like the end of the world.
Gone.
Failed.
Alone.
The impressions batter me one by one. It takes me a full three seconds to realize that the sensations I’m feeling are coming from him.
The stars on his skin flicker faster. The heat in his body receding, retreating into a cold, silent husk.
He is leaving.
“No,” I gasp, panic clawing at my throat. “No, Sarven, I’m right here!”
I shake his shoulders. Hard.
He doesn’t even flinch.
The sensation of sorrow swirls thicker, so potent a sob tears through my throat.
“Open your eyes!” I scream.
His eyelids flutter, opening just enough to reveal eyes that are no longer red, but swirling, blinded nebulae.
He looks right through me, but I don’t think he sees a thing.
I dig my nails into his shoulders, hard enough to leave marks. But he just closes his eyes again, surrendering to the dark.
Terror spikes through me.
And then I remember. I remember the light. I remember the golden particles entering my body. I remember them chasing the fire of the rot away. A lot of shit has happened on this planet since we crash landed here. A lot of things I cannot explain.
But somehow, I know that wasn’t a dream.
He poured his life force into me to restart my heart, and now he is hollowing himself out to follow me into the dark.
He is dying of a broken heart.
“No,” I gasp, panic clawing at my throat. “No, you don’t. You do not get to quit.”
I scramble closer, climbing over his legs, ignoring the way his muscles are locked rigid as stone.
“Sarven, I’m here! Please,” I sob. “You just have to open your eyes!”
Nothing.
“Sarven!”
The sorrow pouring off him just swirls thicker, a black hole swallowing him whole.
I need to reach him. Words aren’t working. The pain is too loud; the grief is too heavy. I need something stronger. Something strong enough to cut through the darkness and drag him back.
I look down at his body, searching for injuries, for a way to help.
The transformation has ravaged him. His chest is broader, his waist tapered, his entire physiology impossibly rewritten in minutes.
And then I see it.
The pouch is gone.
In its place, jutting against his dark skin, is an erection that makes my breath catch in my throat.
It is terrifying.
It’s thick, rigid, and carved with ridges that spiral down a shaft that seems far too long for any human anatomy. And at the base… a swollen, spherical bulge.
A…knot?
Justine had a theory. She said the Drakav change for their mates. That the bond rewrites their biology to bind them to us. To exactly what we want.
He’s changing for me. He’s made himself into this for me.
And now that change is killing him because he thinks I’m not here to receive it.
A pulse of agony rolls off him as a large number of the stars just flicker and fade out of existence.
No.
I don’t think. I don’t analyze. I act on pure instinct.
I straddle his thigh, placing my hand on his chest, right over his heart, and I push.
Here, I scream in my head. I am here.
Then I reach down and wrap my hand around him.
His reaction is violent.
His back arches off the stone floor with a guttural roar. His eyes fly open, those swirling nebulas directed at the ceiling.
The sorrow flowing out of him fractures. A spike of shock pierces the gloom.
I don’t let go. I tighten my grip, stroking the velvet-hot skin, dragging my thumb over the ridges.
“Feel me.” I stroke him harder. “You feel that? Dead women don’t touch you like this.”
He groans, a sound of wrecked confusion.
It’s not enough. The grief is still trying to pull him under.
I need to shock his system. I need to override the pain with something undeniable.
Keeping my hold on his shaft, I turn and lean down. The heat radiating off him is dizzying. But the scent of his musk and spice and arousal floods my senses instead.
“Come back to me,” I whisper against his skin, right before I open my mouth and take him in.
Sarven roars.
It is a shattered, broken sound that tears through the cavern.
The sensation hits me instantly. Searing pleasure that nearly knocks me unconscious. I hold on, letting my tongue swirl.
He tastes like life. Like electric nectar.
A moan escapes my lips, the sound vibrating against him, and I take him deeper, swirling my tongue over the ridges, sucking hard.
The dying stars on his skin ignite, blazing into brilliant, blinding white.
“Mih…kay…lah?”
His voice is a wreck. A ruin of gravel.
I don’t stop. I can’t. I work him faster, my hand pumping the length I can’t swallow, my mouth loving the head. I need to ground him. I need to cement him to the earth so he can’t float away.
His hips jerk, bucking up to meet me. His hands find my hair, tangling in the braids, holding me there not to push me away, but to keep me close.
“Alive,” his throat works. “Alive. Alive. Alive.”
And then, as if the realization has finally hit him, he goes rigid. Every muscle in his massive frame turns to iron.
“Mine!” he roars.
He snaps.
The release is violent. He pulses into my mouth, hot and thick and endless.
I swallow. I drink him down. I take every drop of the life he’s offering. I don’t stop until the stars on his skin stabilize. Until they settle into a steady, rhythmic glow that matches the pounding of his heart. Until he slumps back against the stone, chest heaving like bellows.
I pull away slowly, licking the pomegranate taste of his spend from my lips.
Silence fills the alcove. But the heavy, suffocating sorrow is gone.
“Mih-kay-lah.”
It’s a whisper. A prayer.
I look up.
His eyes are clear. They are dark, full of stars, and focused entirely on me with a hunger that could consume worlds.
“Hi,” I whisper, my voice trembling.
He reaches out. His hand shakes, claws retracting as he touches my face. He traces my lips, my cheek, my jaw, as if checking for cracks.
“Water… took you,” he rasps. “I felt… silence.”
“You brought me back,” I tell him, leaning into his palm. “Somehow…you saved me, Sarven.”
“Thought I… lost.” His chest shudders, and I get a sense of that choking sorrow again. “Thought… broken.”
“I’m here,” I promise. “I’m solid. I’m warm. Feel me.”
I take his hand and press it to my chest, so he can feel my heart beating.
He shudders again.
“Mate,” he says. The word vibrates through the bones of his hand into my ribs.
I blink, tears gathering in my eyes. “Yeah… we’re mates.”
He sits up, wincing in pain that he ignores as he reaches for me. He pulls me into him, burying his face in my neck, inhaling deeply.
Then he pulls back, just an inch.
His gaze drops to my mouth, and I remember that almost-kiss on the ledge.
I lean in, and Sarven goes still.
When I brush my lips against his, he flinches with a sharp intake of breath.
I do it again. I lick his bottom lip.
He makes a low, rumbling sound in his chest. He mimics the movement, his tongue tentatively touching mine. It’s rough, textured, and sends a jolt of heat straight to my toes.
Then, he understands.
A low purr vibrates in his chest, and the hesitation vanishes.
He doesn’t just kiss me; he devours me.
He doesn’t care that I taste like poison water and bile. He devours me anyway.
It’s messy and overwhelming and consuming. He tastes like heat and sugar as he sweeps into my mouth with a possessiveness that steals the air from my lungs, using his tongue to learn the shape of me just as he learned the shape of my body with his fingers.
I grip his shoulders, pulling him closer, kissing him back with everything I have.
He doesn’t want to stop.
Even when the energy begins to ebb, he chases my lips, humming with a vibration that rattles my ribs. Then he slows the pace, deepening the contact, drinking me in.
It takes actual effort to pull back, to force myself to break the seal of our mouths just so I can breathe.
And even then, we don’t go far. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me into the cradle of his hips, tucking me against his chest so tightly I can barely breathe.
I don’t mind. I don’t want space.
“Good?” he rumbles.
I let out a breathless, shaky laugh. “Yeah. Good.”
“Sleep,” he commands, his voice thick with possession. “I watch. No water…takes you. No stone…takes you.”
“I keep,” he vows.
I feel the rumble of his purr start up against my chest, vibrating through both of us as he settles his weight back against the stone wall and pulls me with him.
The cave is quiet except for our ragged breathing and the distant sound of water.
I close my eyes, leaning into his heat, and let the rest of the world fade out.