14. Rhykor #3
Around us, the corridor dissolves into chaos—civilians running, droids still active in the eastern approach, crew members engaging the remaining machines while Junia screams directions at terrified families.
Keeping my arm around her waist, I navigate her out through the burning street.
We move past the gutted housing block before making our way through the frantic checkpoint where humans and Kraaj civilians wedge together in the smoke.
She leans heavily into my side, one hand fists relentlessly in my vest, and I match my long stride to hers, moving steadily.
We manage three of the four miles on foot, but the trek is brutal.
When her knees buckle a mile from the compound, the head wound making the world tilt violently under her boots, I scoop her up; she is far too dizzy and exhausted to formulate an argument.
The Dragon walks the last stretch through the ruined city with a human woman curled protectively against him, and all eyes at the compound gate watch us come through.
The med bay is quiet.
I lower Cassia onto the medical cot, and she immediately tries to sit up, swinging her legs over the side with the stubborn determination I have come to understand is as fundamental to her as the scales on my skin.
"I can handle this myself." She reaches for the antiseptic kit on the instrument tray, and I guide her shoulder back—gently, but firmly enough to emphasize the difference between a request and a statement.
"Sit down and let me work. I am more than capable of managing a treatment this simple."
Her eyes blaze up at me, and for a millisecond the freight bay confrontation flickers through the space, all that fury and betrayal and the wreckage of everything I thought she'd never discover. Then her mouth sets hard, and she holds still, letting me guide her back against the raised headrest.
"Fine, but if you clean that wrong, I'm redoing it."
I pull the med-pack from under the cot and lay out the antiseptic swabs along with butterfly closures and cold compresses.
Her gaze stays fixed on my hands as I retract my claws and shutter the heat radiating from my skin.
As the dangerous edges disappear, the rigid barricade of her posture finally begins to yield, if just barely.
I start with the cut above her eyebrow. The wound is shallow but messy, blood still oozing from a two-inch split that will close well with butterfly strips if I place them right.
I swab the area clean, tilting her chin toward the light with two fingers, and she winces when the antiseptic hits exposed skin.
"So you went out to Sector Nine alone." I keep my eyes on the wound as I set the first closure into place. "Were you trying to get yourself killed?"
The question unconsciously comes off too insensitive. Cassia stares at the far wall while I smooth the second strip over the cut.
"I went because there were families trapped in the evacuation corridor and the distress signal was going unanswered.
" She hisses through her teeth as I affix the third closure down.
"And you're one to talk. I watched you carry civilians out of a collapsing housing block twelve hours ago. Into the tunnels in the dark."
"I had a team."
"A skeleton crew you pulled from the night watch while everyone else slept.
" Her eyes cut back to mine, and amongst the pain and the exhaustion, I see it—the same fierce, impossible stubbornness that made her lie to armed scavengers the night I crashed through her roof.
“You risk your life saving strangers every night and still try to lecture me about self-preservation, Rhykor. That math only works in one direction without hypocrisy.”
I finish the last closure and set the swab aside. The strips hold the cut neatly; she'll check them later, because Cassia trusts her own hands above anyone else's, and I respect that more than she probably realizes.
I crack a cold compress and apply it against her bruised ribs. She hisses and tries to take it from me.
"I can hold my own ice pack, Rhykor."
"And I can sit here and make sure you do." I keep the compress in place, my palm flush against her side, the chill bleeding through my fingers. "You took a hit to the head. Until I'm certain there is no concussion, you're staying awake, and I'm staying here."
"That could be hours."
"Then we have hours."
She stares at me, those intense eyes locking onto my face with a searching precision, looking for reassurance, and her hand comes up slowly, fingers wrapping around the wrist of the arm holding the compress against her ribs.
Small, scarred, and uniform from years of surgical work, her hands rest against the ridge of scales along my forearm, directly over a ceremonial marking I earned during the frontier campaigns.
That specific scar represents a victory measured in destroyed settlements and displaced families.
"I witnessed you carry that old man through the tunnel," she murmurs. "Varrik told me you've been doing it for months, running secret evacuations, building a refugee shelter, risking everything."
"It changes nothing about what I did," I manage.