Chapter 18 Nyx
NYX
My throat was shredded. Each breath scraped through tissue I'd worn out screaming her name, screaming for release, screaming at walls that didn't care.
The restraints cut deep enough that I couldn't feel my hands anymore. Blood had dried in sticky patches where metal met scale, crusted over wounds that should have clotted but kept reopening every time I moved.
The pain had become background noise, something my body registered but my mind had learned to ignore.
The heat in this box never changed, never gave me markers to track day from night. My internal clock had fractured, leaving me adrift in an endless present where Lexa was gone and I was trapped and nothing else mattered.
Water would have helped.
My tongue had swollen in my mouth, thick and useless. The membranes of my throat stuck together when I tried to swallow. Drakarn could survive a long time on nothing, our bodies designed for Volcaryth's brutal climate, but even we had limits.
I was approaching mine.
My vision had started doing strange things. The walls rippled when I stared too long, patterns emerging from the smooth metal that disappeared when I blinked. Twice, I'd seen movement in the corners, shapes that vanished when I turned my head.
Hallucinations. My mind playing tricks on me.
I knew this. Recognized the symptoms from survival training, from missions that had gone wrong.
Knowing didn't make it easier.
My mate was out there somewhere.
But I couldn't reach her.
Couldn't protect her from whatever these humans were telling her, whatever evil they were doing to her.
I'd failed her.
My claws scraped against the floor. The sound was thin, pathetic. Nothing like the threat I wanted to project.
I forced myself upright anyway. Braced my back against the wall, ignored the way my wings screamed in protest at being folded wrong for so long. My legs trembled under my weight but held.
Warrior discipline. I'd survived worse than this. Had endured missions designed to break me, had flown out of situations that should have killed me.
I could survive this.
Had to survive this.
For her.
Sound filtered through the door.
I tensed. I would not let them kill me easily.
The footsteps grew closer. Stopped outside my door.
I pushed away from the wall. My vision blurred at the edges, but I blinked it clear, focused on the dark rectangle that was the only way in or out.
Metal scraped against metal.
I dropped into a crouch. Low center of gravity, ready to spring. My hands were still bound, but I had claws, had fangs, had a lifetime of training in how to kill things bigger and better armed than myself.
Come on then.
The door swung inward.
Lexa stepped in, haloed in almost blinding light.
For a heartbeat, I couldn't process what I was seeing. My mind stuttered, tried to reconcile the image of her here, now, real and whole and moving toward me with purpose.
Her scent hit me.
Sweet and sharp and absolutely, undeniably real. Not the phantom traces I'd been chasing in my own head, not the memory of how she smelled. This was her, present and immediate and filling the small space with everything I'd been drowning without.
She rushed to me. Her hands found my face, cupped my jaw, tilted my head so she could look me over. Her eyes were fierce, cataloging damage with the ferocity of an angered mate.
"Nyx." My name on her lips cracked something open in my chest. "God, what did they do to you?"
I tried to answer. My throat produced nothing but a rasp that barely qualified as sound, air moving over tissue too damaged to shape words.
Her expression shifted. "Those bastards." She turned her attention to my wrists, found the mechanism holding the restraints closed. Her fingers worked quickly, pressing around in some mysterious sequence I could have never guessed. The cuffs sprang open with a click.
Freedom.
I pulled my hands forward, felt blood rush back into fingers that had gone numb. The pain was exquisite, nerve endings firing all at once as circulation returned. I didn't care.
My arms came around her waist, pulled her against me with more force than I'd intended. She came willingly, her hands sliding up to grip my shoulders, her face pressing into the curve of my neck.
Mine.
My wings spread out and folded around us both. It created a barrier between her and the world, between us and everything that had tried to separate us. My tail coiled around her ankle, possessive and desperate and utterly beyond my control.
I buried my face in her hair. Breathed her in, let her presence start to fill the hollow places that a day of separation had carved into me.
She pulled back just enough to look at me. Her hands found my face again, thumbs stroking over my cheekbones with a gentleness that made my chest ache.
I tried again to speak. Managed something that might have been her name if my throat hadn't been ruined.
"Don't." She pressed her fingers against my lips, stopping the attempt. "Save your voice. We need to move."
She was right. We were still in danger, still surrounded by humans who thought I was a threat.
I nodded. Tried to step back, to put distance between us so we could think.
She didn't let go. Her hands stayed on my face, her eyes searching mine like she was looking for something specific.
"How did you find me?" The words scraped out of my throat.
Her mouth quirked. Not quite a smile, but close. "It wasn’t exactly a mystery. It turns out everyone knows where they're keeping the dangerous monster. And they had the door barred, not locked. But I don’t think we have much time."
The audacity of it would have made me laugh if I had the breath for it.
Her expression sobered, the almost-smile disappearing. "We’re not just looking at a few survivors here, Nyx. The whole damn ship crashed. Everyone who survived is here. Thousands of them."
The words took a moment to penetrate. Thousands.
My mind kicked in despite the dehydration, despite the exhaustion. Thousands meant a population to rival Scalvaris. Meant resources, infrastructure, the capability to mount operations like the Ignarath extraction.
It meant a threat the Blade Council didn't know existed.
"They rescued the humans from Ignarath," Lexa continued. Her voice was tight, controlled. "Including Kira's sister. They think the Drakarn are monsters who enslave and torture humans. They think they saved me from you."
The implications cascaded through my mind.
A human settlement this size, this organized, with this level of capability.
Armed with weapons we didn't understand, tactics we'd never encountered.
If they decided the Drakarn were an enemy, if they wanted revenge for what Ignarath had done to their people …
War.
A war Scalvaris wasn't prepared to fight.
Damn the Forge.
Darrokar needed to know. The Council needed to prepare, needed to understand what was coming. We had to get back, had to warn them before this situation spiraled into open conflict.
But first, we had to escape.
I tested my body, checking what still worked. My legs held my weight despite the trembling. My wings ached but responded when I flexed them. The dehydration made everything sluggish, reactions slower than they should be, but I was functional.
Functional enough to fight our way out.
Lexa seemed to read my assessment in my posture. "We need to move. Now."
I nodded. Followed her to the door, my hand finding the small of her back. The contact steadied me, gave me something to focus on beyond the weakness trying to drag me down.
She paused at the threshold, peering into the corridor beyond. Her body language screamed caution, every line of her tensed for threat.
After a moment, she stepped through. I followed closely.
The corridor was narrow, more metal forming walls on either side. The air was marginally cooler out here, moving instead of stagnant. I sucked in a breath, tried to wet my mouth enough to swallow.
We made it maybe ten paces before the voices started.
Human shouts, sharp and aggressive. Footsteps pounding against metal flooring, coming fast.
Three humans rounded the corner ahead. All male, all armed with those strange weapons I'd seen before. The barrels came up, trained on us with the kind of precision that spoke to military training.
I moved without thinking, putting myself in front of Lexa, my wings spreading to shield her from the threat. If they fired, the shots would hit me first. It would give her time to run, to escape, to survive.
"Wait!" Lexa's voice behind me, urgent and desperate. "Stop!"
The humans were shouting. Words I couldn't understand, tones that needed no translation. Anger, fear, determination.
Lexa tried to move around me. I blocked her with my wing, kept her behind the membrane and bone that might stop whatever those weapons fired.
"Nyx, let me talk to them." Her hand found my arm, squeezed hard enough that I felt it through the scales.
The humans advanced. Slow and careful, maintaining their positions. One of them was shouting at Lexa, his tone demanding.
She stayed where she was. Her hand tightened on my arm, nails digging in.
"Stop." The word was directed at the humans, at me, at the universe that kept putting us in impossible situations. "Just listen."
The human raised his weapon and pointed it at my chest.