9. Cassia #3
He's standing at the railing, wings slightly spread to catch the breeze, staring out across the darkened sprawl of District Seventeen.
The industrial lighting below paints the ruined skyline in patches of amber and shadow, and the distant flicker of fires in the outer sectors marks neighborhoods where the power grid has already failed.
His shoulders are rigid inside his vest. His hands grip the railing, and I can see faint red distortion where his palms heat the metal.
Sleep is clearly a stranger to him right now.
Tension coils through his body, obvious even from the doorway.
His wings twitch at sounds too distant for me to hear, and his head makes micro-adjustments as he tracks movement across rooftops from blocks away.
Fading scabs peek through the torn fabric of his vest where claw marks scored his ribs during the clinic attack, the healing tissue still dark and tight against his skin.
"You're going to burn through that railing." Stepping onto the platform, I lean against the doorframe.
His hands loosen, the distortion fading as he veers his head enough to catch me in his peripheral vision. "You should be sleeping, Cassia."
"So should you. When's the last time you actually rested?
" Coursing through the platform, I lean against the railing beside him—two feet of space between our elbows that feels simultaneously too wide and insufficient.
"And I mean actual sleep, not closing your eyes for twenty minutes and then spending six hours circling the compound.
Dessik told Elias you've been making rounds every ninety minutes since we arrived. "
His eyes narrow, his expression turning sharp and defensive. 'I patrol my territory. That's my job.'"
"Your job is containing Legion. Your obsession is circling this compound like a caged animal because you've convinced yourself that the second you stop moving, something gets through.
" I turn to face him, leaning one hip against the railing.
"A collapsed enforcer protects exactly zero people, Rhykor. You're running on fumes."
"I'm fine."
"You're a terrible liar. For an enforcer, you'd think?—"
"I said I'm fine." His tone hits with a raw, frayed edge he’s never aimed at me before, crackling with a frustration well beyond patrol schedules. And the dark circles framing those burning eyes tell the real story. "The compound is secure, and the perimeter is covered. Go back to your room."
"Don't dismiss me." Pushing off the railing, I face him fully.
"I'm not one of your soldiers, and I'm not going to snap to attention because you bark an order.
You dragged me into this compound and rearranged my entire life because you decided I needed your protection.
The least you can do is stop pretending you're fine when you're clearly falling apart. "
“What do you want me to say?" He rounds on me, and the full force of his attention slams into my chest—all that coiled energy focused into a single point.
"That I can't sleep? The memory of those machines hitting your door replays every time I close my eyes.
During my patrols, I keep imagining the consequences of a thirty-second delay.
" He takes a step closer, towering over the space.
"You want me to admit that this—whatever this is—is eating me alive?
Fine, it's constantly eating me alive, Cassia. Is that what you want to hear?"
"I want you to stop treating me like I'm made of glass!"
Slipping out before the volume can be tempered, the protest carries days of pent-up frustration. Constant guards and barred corridors are suffocating enough. Worse still is the weight of his gaze, tracking my every movement as though a single blink might cause me to vanish.
"My survival in this district predates your arrival by years! Navigating these streets alone never required a cage or armed escorts. A pacing sentinel outside the walls all night is entirely redundant for a woman fully capable of keeping herself alive!"
"You think I chose this?" Two strides and he's on me—towering and furious, energy crashing from him in waves that make my skin prickle and the metal railing behind me groan.
"You think I want to spend my waking moments planning the distance between you and the nearest threat?
Mapping the corridors and the possible entry points, because the thought of something reaching you while I'm away turns my blood into fire?
" His hands grip the railing on either side of me, claws sinking into the metal, caging me between his arms. His face drops to mine; warmth from his breath brushes my forehead.
“This is necessity. It always has been.”
My back hits the support column. One of us moves, maybe me, maybe him, maybe both, and the distinction stops mattering the second his arms close around my escape routes.
The concrete leeches the heat from my back through my jacket, while the furnace of his body locks me in from the front—a wall of muscle and barely restrained fury.
His forearms bracket my head, his claws digging deep enough to dimple the solid stone.
A frantic rhythm hammers within my chest, vibrating all the way to my fingertips.
We stand face to face, close enough to trace the faint scars along his jaw and feel the kinetic energy coiling within his muscles.
He holds that power restrained, though it still trembles beneath his skin.
Shallow, ragged breaths fan across my lips as his chest shudders, the bullet wounds in his shoulder fiercely protesting the strain of the earlier fight.
Palms press against his chest, intending to shove him back.
Betraying the intent, my fingers curl tight into the fabric of his vest. That contact wrings a guttural, wrecked sound from him that sits somewhere between a growl and a groan.
The vibration shudders through my hands, racing straight down my spine.
His mouth drops half an inch closer. His eyes search mine, incandescent and furious at whatever invisible force keeps dragging us into the same orbit no matter how hard we push apart.
Then his hands release the concrete.
He shoves himself backward so violently that the platform shakes, cold rushing into the gap where his body was, and his fists clench at his sides—trembling, heat radiating from his palms bright enough to cast shadows across the metal grating.
Scorch marks shaped like his boots glow on the concrete where he was standing.
He stands there, breathing hard, his muscles rigid, physically restraining himself from doing what his body demands.
"Go inside, Cassia." His delivery sounds like an object being crushed. "Please."
The "please" destroys me. Having pulled bullets from his chest and fought him through a hundred confrontations since the night he fell through my ceiling, I know that word has never left his mouth. The Dragon begs for nothing until now.
I peel myself off the column, and my legs feel borrowed. The phantom impression of his vest still clings to my fingers, the resonance of that sound echoing through my palms.
"Goodnight, Rhykor." I say, steadier than I have any right to expect.
Walking off the platform on legs that barely cooperate, I feel his stare on my back the entire way—burning and devastating in its restraint.
Back in my room, I perch on the rim of the medical pallet, rubbing my palms straight against my thighs until the shaking stops.
It takes a long time.
The proximity should have been what broke me—the heat and the cage of his arms against the concrete.
But it was the stopping. The pulling away and the please.
Because a man capable of melting steel with his unarmed hands just held himself back from touching me with a restraint that cost him more than any fight I've ever watched him win, and the devastation on his face when he pulled away told me everything his mouth refused to say.
Pressing my hands down harder against my thighs, I stare at the concrete wall.
I'm in trouble. A deeply irreversible, burning-building trouble.
And I have no idea what to do about it.