Chapter 33 Brux
brUX
Brux was struggling to stay sentient.
He could feel it happening–the void was sucking at him again. Allowing the Rage to take over while he fought Higgs had brought the primal side roaring back to the surface, and now it wanted more. More blood. More violence. More mindless surrender.
It clawed at the inside of his skull and dragged at his thoughts, trying to pull them down into that old terrible emptiness where words dissolved and reason became instinct, and nothing mattered except hunger and fear and the need to protect what was his.
Already he could feel the edges of his conscious mind fraying.
Thoughts that ought to have come clearly were breaking apart before he could hold them. His human form still clung to him–mostly–but the wolf’s face remained, and his eyes still burned red with Rage.
His breath came hard and rough through his muzzle. Every scent in the freezing warehouse hit him too strongly—blood and fear and dead meat and the bitter stink of Higgs’ opened throat and, brightest and most important of all, Kiera.
Kiera. His mate.
Brux focused on her, trying to claw back from the edge of nothingness that threatened to suck him down.
She was slumped on the bloody floor where Higgs had thrown her, half—curled on her side, hands still tied in front of her, skin pale and ashy beneath the harsh freezer lights. Frost had gathered in her braids. Her whole body smelled wrong—too cold, too still, too close to danger.
She was freezing to death.
The thought came to him like a blow.
No. No, no, no.
He dropped to his knees beside her. The cold no longer meant anything to him.
Neither did the pain from the stab wounds in his side and shoulder and ribs.
He was aware of them, distantly—warm blood slipping down his fur and skin—but they didn’t matter.
Monstrum healed quickly–those wounds would close.
What mattered was Kiera.
She felt like a statue made of ice when he gathered her into his arms. Brux couldn’t talk but a terrible, broken sound came from deep in his chest.
Too cold–she was much too cold.
Sentient thoughts struggled to the surface of his mind.
Must get warm…must heal…
His thoughts had become that simple now–that rudimentary.
The long careful lines of reason he had fought so hard to hold were fraying faster by the second.
There was only Kiera in his arms, limp and freezing and precious beyond measure.
Only the certainty that if he did not warm her up right now, he would lose her forever.
Lose her. Can’t lose her.
The words barely meant anything in his slipping mind and yet the fear of it was enormous. He got to his feet with her clutched against his chest and staggered out of the freezing warehouse.
The change in temperature outside hit him all at once.
The air on Plo’nix was cool—always a little cool—but after the deep freeze it felt almost warm.
The sky overhead had deepened toward evening, lavender deepening to royal purple at the edges.
The silver—threaded grass bent in the wind. The chiming trees whispered.
Brux barely saw any of it. He started toward the sanctuary–started in the direction where home lay. But could he heal her there?
At first he thought—shuttle. Take shuttle. Faster. Go to Mother Ship.
But even as the thought rose, it slid away from him again. It was too many steps…too many controls…too much thinking.
He could feel the beast pushing harder inside him, crowding out words and logic and memory. He did not trust himself to fly anything now. Not with Kiera’s life in his hands.
So instead, he ran.
Or rather, he lurched and half—ran/half—stumbled over the red hills with Kiera in his arms, driven entirely by instinct and desperate love and the fading scraps of his mind.
Her body bounced lightly against his chest with each step and every time she did, panic stabbed through him afresh because she remained far too still.
“Kiera,” he muttered desperately. Or perhaps he only thought it. He was no longer entirely sure which sounds were leaving his mouth, and which remained trapped in his head. “Stay with me. Stay.”
The wind brought her scent to him constantly—cold skin, fear, the chemical trace of Higgs’ drug, and beneath it all the sweetness that was hers and hers alone. He clung to it. Followed it the way a drowning male might cling to a floating branch.
Home. Need home. Need to warm her.
The sanctuary blurred around him as he crossed it. He vaguely registered the shimmer of the enclosure barriers, the movement of some small creature darting in the meadow, the high idiotic cry of a theeble somewhere in the distance.
“Good boy! Good boy!”
The words meant nothing. In his deteriorating mind they sounded like, “Hurry! Hurry!”
At last the rounded shape of the home-dome rose before him. Brux nearly sobbed with relief.
Door. Need open. How?
For one awful second he stared at the silver panel and could not remember how it worked. It was just a hard shining thing in his path while Kiera’s body grew colder and colder against him.
Then memory flared. Palm. Her palm. Enough mind remained for that, thank the Goddess.
Brux shifted Kiera awkwardly in his arms and pressed her limp hand to the door panel. Green light outlined her fingers and the soft sexless voice murmured something he did not understand—only the tone mattered. Welcome. Open.
The door whooshed aside, and warmth spilled over them.
Brux carried his mate inside at once.
The home-dome smelled like her–that was the first thing he noticed as he staggered through the curving hallway toward the bathing suite.
Her scent was everywhere—in the walls, the living furniture, the coverlet in the bedroom they passed, the air itself.
It should have soothed him. Instead it only sharpened his urgency.
Need warm. Need water.
His thoughts were almost gone now.
No more trial. No more shuttle. No more Higgs. Those things were gone–torn away like dead leaves in a storm. There was only action and instinct and need.
The bathing suite…steam…water. Yes.
Brux stumbled inside and nearly dropped Kiera in his hurry to get her there. Somehow he did not. Somehow he still managed to lower her carefully onto the warm stone beside the pool.
Strip. He had to get the freezing clothes off her.
His fingers felt clumsy and strange now–too large and too blunt, as though even his humanoid hands were forgetting themselves.
But he tore at her clothes with frantic care, peeling away her t—shirt and jeans and the underthings beneath, baring her chilled skin to the warm mist of the room.
The ropes binding her wrists got in the way, but he bowed his head and bit through them–his fangs made it easy. At last, she was nude.
She looked terribly still. Brux whined deep in his throat.
Then he stripped too. Shirt first, already half—shredded and sticky with his own blood. Then the rest. He barely understood what he was doing, only that barriers had to go. Fur to skin. Heat to skin. Water.
He climbed into the pool with her in his arms and the warm water closed around them in a rush.
For a heartbeat he nearly sagged with relief.
Warm. Good.
But Kiera remained cold.
Brux cradled her against his chest, holding her so close he could feel every line of her body against him.
Her head fell against his shoulder. Her braids floated out around them in the steaming water.
He gathered her tighter, curling around her as best he could despite the wounds pulling and healing and itching all at once along his side.
His mind was almost gone now. Words had become fragments.
Must warm. Must keep. Must not lose.
He held her with all the strength left in him and rocked her slightly in the water without even knowing he was doing it. His wolf muzzle pressed into her damp hair, breathing her in over and over as though scent alone could keep her tethered to life.
“Kiera,” he managed once. Or it came out only as a low, ragged whine.
No matter. Only warm mattered now. Only her body slowly, slowly losing that terrible frozen feel in his arms.
Brux sank deeper into the pool with her clutched against him, the steam curling around them, the last scraps of sentient thought slipping through his grasp one by one. He no longer knew how long he sat there.
Only that he could not let go.
Could not stop holding her.
Because if he did–if he loosened his arms even once–if he let the void have him completely before she was safe and warm again…he would lose her forever.
And that one thought remained when all the others had gone.