Chapter 4 #2
My mind flashed back to the dream, unbidden and vivid. His tail sliding between my legs, the pressure and friction, the way my body had opened for him.
My thighs clenched. My core pulsed with sudden, unwelcome need. Slick heat gathered between my legs, my body responding to his proximity with embarrassing enthusiasm. I could feel my nipples tighten beneath my shirt, sensitive points that ached for contact.
No. Absolutely not. I was angry, not aroused. This was not the time for my traitorous body to betray me.
Fuck, I did not need this right now.
"I don't see you for a month, and now you're stalking me?" The words came out more breathless than I intended, and I hated myself for it. Hated that he could affect me this much just by existing in the same space.
Damn it, why did I have to say that? The last thing I needed was for him to know I cared. Or something.
"I was away on a mission." He stood too close, invading the space most Drakarn kept between themselves and humans. His silver eyes held mine, unblinking, intense in a way that made my breath catch.
Up close, I could see the white markings that traced patterns across his gray scales, scars that told stories of battles fought and survived.
His scent wrapped around me, smoke and stone and something sharper underneath.
The heat radiating from his scales made the air between us feel thick, hard to breathe.
"I heard. You failed." The words were cruel, designed to hurt. Part of me regretted them immediately. Part of me wanted to hurt him the way I was hurting, wanted someone else to feel the helpless fury eating me alive.
He flinched. The movement was subtle, barely there, but I caught it. A tightening around his eyes, a fractional pulling back that he controlled almost instantly. His tail coiled once, then went still. "We did. I did."
Silence stretched between us. I cataloged details without meaning to. The multiple piercings climbing his ears, the matte black paint on his claws, the way his chest rose and fell with each breath.
He was massive this close, broad-shouldered and built for endurance, designed to carry heavy loads over long distances. I should look away. Should step back, put distance between us. I couldn’t. I stayed frozen, caught in the gravity of his presence.
The corridor felt smaller with him in it. The walls closer. The air thicker. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped, a rhythmic plinking that counted out the seconds of our silence.
His tail moved, just slightly. A coil and release that drew my attention downward before I caught myself. The appendage was thick and muscular, covered in the same gray scales as the rest of him, tapering to a point that looked deceptively delicate.
In the dream, that tail had been everywhere. Wrapping around my ankle, sliding between my thighs, finding places that made me gasp. I had to ignore another wave of heat as it surged through me.
Focus. The mission. The missing humans. Not the way his scales caught the light or how his scent made my head spin.
Something about his report had been bothering me. Some piece of it I was missing. The details kept replaying in my head, fragments that didn't quite fit together.
"You said something about strange dark marks on the walls. Tell me more."
His head tilted, considering. The piercings in his ears caught the dim light, multiple rings climbing the ridge of cartilage. I remembered tugging on them in the dream, the way he'd growled.
Stop it.
My face heated. This was not the time to be thinking about dreams, about the phantom sensation of his scales under my palms, the taste of him on my tongue. I needed to focus. The missing humans deserved my full attention, not this distraction.
"One of the outer walls had been destroyed. At the center of the wreckage there was a dark mark with concentric circles coming out of it like some strange design."
That just tickled my brain more. "What did it smell like?" I demanded. My voice came out sharper than I intended, urgent. Nyx's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't question the sudden intensity.
He paused, his eyes going distant as he pulled up the memory.
His claws flexed once. The movement drew my attention to his hands, to the careful way he held them at his sides.
Those claws could tear through stone, could kill with a single swipe.
But in my dream, they'd been so careful.
Tracing my skin without breaking it, learning the map of my body with reverent precision.
I shook my head as if that would clear the thought. He didn’t seem to notice.
"I can't quite describe it. Acrid. Smoky. Almost like the air near the Great Lava Lake, but not exactly. And there was a hint of something sweet."
Fuck!
The pieces clicked into place with devastating clarity. Acrid and smoky with a sweet undertone. That specific combination. I'd smelled it a hundred times in training, in controlled demolitions, in the careful work of shaping charges to do exactly what you needed them to do.
My heart kicked against my ribs. This changed everything.
"That's plastex. Ordinance we use in terraforming.
But how the hell do the Drakarn have any?
" The words tumbled out fast, my mind already racing ahead to implications and possibilities.
My mind raced. Plastex was stable until you wanted it to explode, then it went up with enough force to level a building.
We'd had it on the Nostos, ready to use it for construction when we reached our new home.
Which we never would.
The thought sent a familiar ache through my chest. All those supplies, all that careful planning for a colony we'd never build. Equipment scattered across Volcaryth's hostile surface, probably buried in sand or melted by lava flows. Unless …
Unless someone had found it.
"Plastex? Ordinance?" Nyx's brow furrowed, the unfamiliar words clearly not translating. The words didn't seem to fit correctly in his mouth.
Right. The Drakarn fought with blades and claws and honor.
They didn't use explosives. Drakarn were too honorable to even think of it.
"Bombs," I said. I made the word as simple as possible, but his expression remained blank.
And when that didn't work, I made a gesture with my hands. "Boom! Fire. Bang."
That did it. Understanding dawned in his eyes, followed immediately by something darker. Concern, maybe. Or calculation. He nodded.
"Maybe a container of the stuff crashed down with the rest of us," I wondered.
Plastex was great because of how stable it was.
Without the right chemical reaction, it was nothing more than a brick of plasticky rubber.
If we could survive crashing down on Volcaryth, it could too.
My voice sounded distant to my own ears, clinical.
I was slipping into tactical analysis mode, the familiar comfort of breaking down a problem into manageable pieces.
"Do you think Drakarn from another city might have attacked Ignarath with it? Taken the humans for themselves?"
The thought made my stomach clench. Trading one set of captors for another, humans as commodities to be stolen and bartered. I hated to consider it, but what else could it be?
"Ignarath is quite isolated. We're the closest city to them, and it's still several days of flight away.
The geography doesn't support a raid from another settlement.
The logistics alone would be nearly impossible.
" Nyx's voice had shifted into something more formal, the warrior analyzing tactical realities. "I will need to think on this."
Think. Wait. It was all the same.
Frustration surged through me, hot and bitter. How much thinking did they need to do? How much consideration and careful deliberation while people suffered? The Blade Council had already voted to abandon the search. Nyx talking about thinking it over felt like another delay, another excuse.
Someone needed to act.
I just needed supplies. A plan. Maybe a map of the route to Ignarath.
And I needed to do it quietly, because no one else would approve this insanity.
"We will get your humans back," Nyx said, and something in his tone made me look up. His eyes held mine, steady and certain. The words carried weight, the kind of weight that came from oaths and honor and all the things Drakarn seemed to value above practicality, and it sounded almost like a vow.
My throat tightened. I wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust that he meant it, that he'd find a way to make it happen despite the Council's vote. But trust was a luxury I couldn't afford.
Not when lives hung in the balance. Not when every day that passed meant more suffering for the people we'd left behind.
"I'll hold you to that."