44 #2
“I did,” Enzo says without apology. “I caught sight of Ezla—the empress—and I couldn’t in good conscience not check in to make sure everything would be okay. I might not know how you got that scar, but everyone knows it was never normal.”
“So you—”
“You can help her?” Scotty quickly interjects. “If you can help her, do it. Please.” His voice is tense, but it breaks on his plea.
Enzo’s chin dips as he stops before us. “I can help her. It will take time, but I can do it. I work in many departments in the Avri labs.” Eyes speedily analysing the scene and the Avri on all our suits, he says, “The fact you’re bonded could speed things up if you want to use your Avri.
I can’t say for certain, but your bodies are already used to each other’s Avri in a way through the bond.
The energy on your suits will be the best option as it has the most minimal commands given to it at the moment and so will be easiest to alter.
However—and I think you may have understandably failed to think of this possibility in all the chaos—I would suggest using Ezla’s own—”
“No,” she seethes, and the nurse now holding a specialised cloth over her eye jumps as she whacks her hand away to hold it herself.
“I would like my Bonds’. I will not have more red Avri stuck in my face for eternity, even if I do love the colour.
It is too similar to—” It is too similar to his, she finishes through the bond, and my chest spasms in pain.
“Well, if you adjust the shade of your Avri, you could make it invisible—”
“As you are a nurse, I would think you are intelligent enough to know that that would allow the inside of my face to be visible,” she snaps, and even now, injured as she is, the nurse’s huge gulp tells me she’s very much aware of the damage Ezla can cause with a flick of her pinkie.
“I would not want that.” Then she seems to lose a whole heap of energy, as if the effort to get out the harsh words drained much more than she expected it would, her good eye closing and her head tipping back into the pillow beneath it.
“Now, if you do not mind, I would appreciate you getting to work right away.”
“Right, yes, of course.” The wide-eyed nurse rushes for Cooper.
“Do not touch my Bond! He is mine!”
Scared half to death, I think the poor woman’s about to pass out as she freezes in place.
Cooper’s emotions are a complete mess in the bond, just like the rest of ours, but even now, a spark of pleasure at her possessiveness intrudes on his panic and anger, though that’s mostly drowned out and not at all able to be heard as he all but growls, “Vengeance, believe me when I tell you I don’t want another woman’s hands on me, but this needs to be done—”
“Enzo can do it,” she hisses, and the older Exot immediately moves over, no hesitation.
“It should be me anyway for this part,” he tells us quietly, clearly trying not to offend the nurse by keeping his volume low as he gestures for Cooper to raise his arms, which he does at once, holding the faintly shaking limbs out either side of him. “They’re evidently out of their depth here.”
“If you fuck this up—”
Cooper cuts Tate’s growl off this time, voice low as he asks, “You can definitely do this? You won’t hurt her?”
Enzo looks at him steadily. “I’m going to do my best here. I’m evidently not a medical professional, but I would never purposely hurt the woman who’s saving my children, and I’ve commanded enough Avri to believe I can do this.”
“Then do it.”
Without another word, Enzo gets to work.
***
It takes two hours alone for Enzo to override the commands ensuring Cooper’s energy stays stuck to the sinthe and sinthine of his Avri suit.
It takes another four to give it new ones and move the dark green pixels pulled into the air into Ezla’s face.
Ezla’s sleeping face, because she was knocked out by Avri injected into her veins at the beginning of the process to be kept in a stable condition overnight.
As a result of that Avri, the blood thankfully also stopped pouring from her split-open skin ages ago, and now . . .
Mouth hanging open, I gape at my Bonded. She’s still unconscious, but the injection isn’t like one of the medical tubes that keeps patients paused in time for years and years, and she’ll be waking up anytime now as I take in the scar on her face.
The unbelievably green scar.
She looks the same but . . . different. And I obviously knew that it was going to be that colour, but as Enzo steps back, having only just finished working with the doctor’s help, Ezla’s previously torn upper and lower eyelids now perfectly intact but hiding what I know to be a rebuilt eye beneath . . . I struggle to comprehend the sight.
“It’s green,” I whisper the obvious.
“I can see that, Tiger,” Scotty murmurs, just as transfixed, all of us taking in the thick luminous green scar running down the right side of our Bonded’s face.
And the panic’s died down now, my heart rate gradually slowing as the hours passed by, but I won’t be able to calm myself completely until she wakes—
Ezla’s eyes snap open to reveal one glowing green iris and one familiar coffee-brown one.