17. Cassia #3
Leaning against the alcove wall, I bury my eyes in my palms. The exhaustion hits in waves now—rolling through my muscles and pooling behind my bruised forehead, dragging at my limbs like lead weights.
Sixty-three patients came through today alone.
My clinic has fully transformed into a field hospital.
Infected droids are tearing the district apart while an unknown entity grows deep within the earth, and Junia stands in front of me asking me to walk into the heart of it.
"Okay," I breathe. "Get your supplies and build the plan. When you're ready, come find me."
Grabbing my arm with a fierce squeeze that locks her raw knuckles into my sleeve, Junia disappears through the breach wall using the silent speed that has kept her alive in this district for half her life.
Walking back through the new wing, I pass the resting patients and step through the breach into the original clinic. Rhykor is there.
Built to block the doorway, he stands with shoulders angled against the frame and wings tight against his spine.
Soot and dried blood crust his jaw, while his thick vest shows a blackened smear along the left side.
Fresh burns mark his forearms where the heat he channels has seared through his own defenses.
The instant I enter, those sharp eyes find me, tracking my movement across the room with a force that makes every other sound in the clinic fall away.
"Junia was here." His inflection scrapes faintly like a question buried under gravel. He must have passed her on the way in and read the urgency on her face, putting the rest together before I even speak.
"She has a route to the source. Three possible entry points from access tunnels across the district. She needs a day or two to prep supplies and run calculations, and then?—"
"And then what, Cassia?" He steps forward, closing on me until the residual warmth bleeding from his skin washes against my face, like standing near an open furnace.
"You walk into a Legion nest? You descend into tunnels filled with machines built to kill everything organic that enters their perimeter? "
"Someone has to document what's down there. Junia has the tech expertise, but she needs?—"
"She needs someone expendable."
"She needs someone she trusts." Holding my ground is a habit I learned long ago, and Rhykor knows it.
"I know the contamination signatures and the medical hazards.
And whatever's at the center of that network—whatever Legion is building down there—someone has to bring back evidence that proves the outbreaks were engineered.
Real evidence, Rhykor. The kind that holds up when this is over. "
His hands flex at his sides. The heat distortion around his fingers intensifies, warping the air in shimmering bands that tell me he’s struggling to suppress his composure while the territorial senses in his body demand to carry me to safety and barricade the exits.
"I already lost you once in Sector Nine." The rawness underneath his voice strips everything else away. "I carried you through burning streets and watched you bleed. Now you are volunteering to walk into the single most dangerous location in this entire district."
"I'm volunteering to help end this."
"You're volunteering to die." His fists flare bright enough to cast shadows across the alcove wall as his volume drops to a register that vibrates through the concrete floor.
"Then trust me to come back," I fire back, making a demand that I have earned the right to make.
The silence snaps tight, as unforgiving as a drawn tripwire.
His chest rises and falls with labored breaths that I can hear the strain behind.
The soot-smeared appearance of his face visibly struggles, showing a war playing out between the commander weighing risks and the man terrified of losing the only person he's ever let past his guard.
He moves fast.
His hands catch my face, broad palms rough with calluses and residual warmth, fingers threading into my hair with a care that contradicts the aggressive tension of his body.
He pulls me forward and kisses me with a ferocity that steals my breath away, replacing it with the taste of smoke and the thundering pulse hammering through his wrists.
It's consuming and furious, carrying the arguments he holds close and the fears he keeps hidden.
His fangs graze my lower lip. His thumb drags along my jaw.
One arm locks around my waist and lifts me onto my toes until I'm flush against his vest, and the vibration of the growl building in him rattles through my bones.
When he pulls back, his forehead drops against mine. His breathing comes ragged and hot against my mouth while those intense eyes bore into me from inches away with a searing tenderness that breaks through his rough edges.
"Come back to me," he rasps. "Whatever you find down there, whatever it shows you—you come back to me, Cassia."
Resting my palm on his broad chest, I press right over the carved lines and the heartbeat I've memorized in the dark.
"I will."
Closing his eyes, he clamps his hand tightly over mine. For three seconds, the collapsing world outside fades into nothing but his heavy pulse and a promise I intend to keep.
Then he lets me go, and we both turn back to the work of keeping everyone alive until Junia comes back with a plan.