Chapter 35 #3
All that rage, all that love, poured strength into his arms as he lunged at the beast. His left hands caught the side of the kurghest’s head, one thumb digging into its ruined eye socket. His right hands hammered the head of the spear into its good eye, cracking the surrounding bone.
The prime kurghest’s roar died abruptly. Its head jerked, but Telok exerted more strength, allowing it no escape as he pushed the spearhead deeper into its skull.
“For my mother,” he rasped.
Letting out a half-grunt, half-whine, the beast staggered. Telok released it. Only a small portion of the splintered spear shaft jutted from the creature’s eye, barely as long as Telok’s fist was wide.
The prime’s injured foreleg gave out as Telok stepped back. Its other legs went next, and it crashed onto the ground, splashing muck. It let out a strained, broken breath and stilled.
The rain continued falling. The wind continued blowing. The Tangle continued living, indifferent to the blood and death that had just stained it.
Telok’s legs trembled. Exhaustion pressed in on him from all directions, and agony pulsed through his entire body. But he would not yet submit. He could not.
He turned around, his gaze instantly falling upon his mate, and his already pounding hearts quickened. Lacey now lay propped up on her side, her wound toward the sky, with blood covering her hand and belly. He rushed to her, all else forgotten.
Telok dropped onto his forelegs before Lacey. Bristling emotions roiled in his chest, churning and clashing, but none matched his fear in that moment.
Lacey stared up at him. Beneath the smears of rain-streaked mud, her skin was paler than usual, but her eyes were as bright as ever. “Oh, Telok…”
He knew the moisture gathering in her eyes had nothing to do with the rain.
Taking hold of her wrist, he gently lifted her trembling hand from her wound.
Fresh blood flowed from the long gashes she’d been covering. Gashes she’d received protecting him. A tremor swept through Telok, and fear coiled around his hearts, squeezing tight, bolstered by his useless rage. “My nyleea…”
“Don’t think it’s actually that bad,” she said, voice quavering when he pressed her hand back down. “Looks like…you got a lot worse.”
“I look like shit?” Even as the words were leaving his mouth, his eyes were searching his surroundings.
“You know that’s not what I—”
Slipping his arms beneath her, Telok lifted Lacey off the ground and rose. He quickly carried her toward the fallen tree.
The area was littered with dead kurghests…and at least a few vrix amongst them, including Elharat. None who remained standing appeared to be unscathed. But Telok couldn’t give them his attention now. He had to protect his mate, had to help her, to heal her.
How much of her lifeblood had she already lost? How much more could she survive losing?
He halted near a spot where the rain runoff poured from atop the toppled trunk in a small waterfall, easing Lacey down onto the ground again.
Immediately, he scrubbed the filth from his hands and forearms beneath the water.
Then he cupped his hands together, gathering water in them, and returned to Lacey.
“I am sorry,” he said as he knelt beside her.
Brow pinched in pain, she shook her head. “Don’t be. Just do it.”
Telok gritted his teeth, lifted her hand from her side, and poured the water over her wounds to rinse away the blood and dirt.
Lacey hissed, body tensing. “Fuck!”
He was already drawing sticky silk from his spinnerets. Her pain threatened to break through the wall he’d temporarily raised around his hearts, but he needed that barrier to hold a little longer.
“Curse me,” he said, offering her a lower hand. “Squeeze, strike, scratch, bite.”
Both of her hands clutched his as she gritted, “Weird place to get all kinky, isn’t it?”
Despite everything, he chittered. “You always find humor at the worst times.”
And then he tended his mate’s wounds, pinching the gashes closed and binding them with sticky silk. Lacey whimpered and groaned, breathing heavily through her bared teeth, her fingers squeezing his hand with unexpected strength, body remaining rigid.
She sagged when he finished, her grip easing. “O-Okay. Now it’s your tur—”
Mindful of her wounds, Telok snatched her up into a tight embrace.
Everything struck him at once—the rush of bloody battle, the rage, the fear and worry, the sorrow, anguish, and guilt of losses old and new, the pain of his wounds, the love and the yawning nothingness that would’ve replaced it had he lost her.
His body shook with all that and more, and his breaths came shuddering, harsh, and erratic. The only thing holding him together was the human in his arms. His mate. His Lacey.
She slipped one arm around his back and brought her other hand to his face. Her fingers caressed his jaw. “I’m safe, Telok. We’re safe. You did it. Guess this makes you the prime now, huh?”
“No,” he rumbled, cupping the back of her head with a hand. “Just yours. Just want to be yours.”
Lacey pressed her palm over his cheek. “A thousand of those big, ugly bastards couldn’t change that. You’re stuck with me forever.”
Telok growled, his claws grazing her scalp as his fingers curled into her hair. “Forever will never be enough.”