Chapter 19 #2
A voice bellowed from the doorway, and they all snapped around.
The Emperor strode through the doorway, authority radiating from him and the four huge combat robots that followed him like ducklings after their mama.
Huge, armoured and heavily armed ducklings.
Stopping in the middle of the room, Daaynal swept a furious glare over the assembled warriors.
"She is under my personal protection," he snapped. "Find another solution. Now."
The room went silent. So silent she could practically hear the blood dripping onto the metal floor. Through the glass, she watched Raaevik. He stood between her pod and the rest of them, chest heaving, claws still out.
Daaynal was talking to the ranking officer, issuing orders, and Raaevik wasn't listening. He was looking at her. Just at her. The same way he'd looked at her in the dance studio when he'd held her too close. The same way he'd looked at her in the corridor when she'd told him to stay.
“Raaevik... don't,” she ordered. “Don't you fucking dare.”
She saw his jaw set a full second before his body moved.
Then he slammed his fist into the containment unit's locking mechanism, and the keypad shattered in a shower of sparks and broken plastic. The heavy door hissed open, cycling contaminated air directly into his face.
And he walked inside.
No.
"Get out," she gasped. "Raaevik, get the fuck out of here."
He didn't stop. The pod was too small for him… his shoulders filled the space, blocking the light from outside, and she was trapped between him and the back wall with nowhere to go.
"I'm poison!" She shoved herself into the corner, knees up, arms clamped against her chest. "He touched my wrist and died in seconds, you stupid—"
He dropped to his knees in front of her. Close enough to touch. Close enough to kill.
And her brain just... stopped arguing.
Because he wasn't going to leave. She could see it in the set of his jaw, the way his eyes held hers without flinching. He knew what she was. He'd watched that medic hit the deck. And he'd smashed the lock anyway because that's what this impossible, stubborn bastard did —
He was going to die in here. With her. Because of her.
Not the pathogen. Not Korrait. Her. Every breath she pushed into this sealed space was another lungful of whatever was living under her skin, and he was kneeling in it, and any second now his eyes would go red, and his body would seize, and she'd have to watch the only man she'd ever—
Oh, fuck.
She loved him.
She'd known. Of course, she'd known. She'd been dodging it since she'd met him, burying it under sarcasm and survival instincts and telling herself it was just stress, just proximity, just what happened when a stupidly attractive man kept saving your life and looking at you like you were the only thing in the room. But it wasn't. It was him.
The man who'd torn a room apart with his bare hands and then been too afraid to touch her face. Who was kneeling in front of her right now, choosing to die rather than let her be alone.
And she was going to be the last thing he ever touched.
"Raaevik, please..." Her voice broke. "If I touch you, I'll kill you. I don't want to kill you. I love you, please."
He ignored her, expression set.
The external field protocols triggered the fail-safe, slamming the door shut and sealing them both inside the cramped pod.
He wrapped his massive arms around her and hauled her tight against his broad chest. “I’ve got you, kelarris. I’ve got you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, completely rigid against him as she braced for it. The sudden jerk of his muscles. The choked gasp. The heavy weight of him collapsing on top of her. She shook so hard her teeth rattled, just waiting to feel the only man she wanted die in her arms.
For a second, nothing happened.
His chest rose and fell against her. Steady.
Slow. The thud of his heart pulsed against her cheek, heavy and rhythmic and completely, impossibly normal.
She counted. Waiting for the stutter. Waiting for the hitch that meant the pathogen had found him, that she was about to feel the exact moment his heart quit.
It didn't come.
He was warm. Furnace hot, the way he always was, burning right through the thin fabric of her tunic. His arms were solid around her, and his breathing didn't falter. She pressed her ear harder against him just to make sure the heartbeat was real.
"Wait... What? I don't understand," she whispered as she looked up at him. "Why aren't you dead? You should be dead?”
The containment door hissed open again, and they both looked up.
A scarred stranger stood in the doorway, his expression totally calm and unconcerned, as if he hadn’t just walked into a pod with a bio-weapon.
She gasped, drawing back. He didn’t have a hazmat suit on, just normal warrior’s leathers.
Bright silver hair spilled over his shoulders, one side with more braids than she’d ever seen on a warrior before.
Raaevik shoved her behind him, a ferocious snarl ripping from his throat, flashing his claws in warning. But the stranger just looked at him. Held his gaze until, slowly, the snarl in Raaevik's throat died down to a low rattle.
She blinked, looking around Raaevik’s arm. “Who are you?”
The new arrival smiled.
“My name is Isan, and I’m the only chance either of you has to survive.”