Page 93 of Rebirth

I tilt my head, examining my neck for the telltale signs of the infection.

There is nothing. Not even at my shoulder, the contact point.

Gone is the bullet wound that had been there. Completely healed. And I run my hand over the spot, amazed yet terrified at the sight.

Was I healed because of the ba’clan? Or that other thing?

My legs are shaky as a lump forms in my throat the moment I decide to turn around. I do so slowly, eyes on the mirror until I’m looking over my shoulder at my back.

What I see there has me unable to move.

There, at my back running in a neat line down the center of my spine is a thin white column. He’rox’s ba’clan.

But directly behind them, like a festering shadow, is a thick vein that looks like black ink, pulsing to every beat of my heart. Like a thick, black snake. Lurking. Waiting.

Terror shoots through me and I can’t stop myself as I reach for it, clawing at myself, the urge to remove the corruption too strong to deny. Blood springs from where my fingers dig into my skin and I only realize He’rox is holding on to my hands when I try to pull them to rake my skin once more and my whole body jerks toward him instead.

My heart pounds in my chest as panic rises in my throat, while the black vein pulses, as if laughing at my terror.

“Get it out.” My voice is deceptively more level than I feel inside. “Please, He’rox. Get it out of me.”

His grip on my wrists tightens. “Doing so may kill you.”

I shake my head. “I’ll take the risk. I can’t have this—this thing inside me.”

The urge to claw at my back returns. To rip and tear until the corruption is gone. He’rox pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me to still my hands. My breath comes in short, ragged gasps as I stare at my reflection. At the vein.

At the thing that will be the cause of my end.

“Listen to me, Sophie,” he says. “I will find a way to remove it.” He says. “But I need time.”

Time. The one thing we may not have. I squeeze my eyes shut but the image of the vein is seared into my mind.

“We have to get it out now,” I plead. “Before it spreads. Before it—it takes control.”

I cannot imagine walking around like one of those things out there. I’d rather die.

“If I were to cut it out now, you would bleed to death.” His voice is steady, his tone almost unreadable, but I hear it anyway. The anguish underneath his words. Anguish for me. “The network has attached itself directly to your spine and major blood vessels. Removing it without precision will destroy you. And I refuse to let that happen.”

A sob escapes me. I can’t help it.

To survive the Corrupted only to become host to this sinister thing. He’rox strokes my hair, my back, holding me as close as he can. His warmth and the beat of his heart the only things offering me any semblance of comfort.

“I can’t live like this,” I whisper. “With this inside me, waiting to turn me into—into one of them.”

He’rox growls. “I will not let that happen.”

The conviction in his tone gives me pause. I lift my head to meet his gaze, finding determination swimming in the black holes there. “I refuse to lose you.” He pauses. “This is my final oath. I will free you of this.”

The tears spill over, trailing down my cheeks. I cling to him, needing the solidness of his body against mine. His promise is all I have to cling to, for I have nothing else.

“And if you can’t?” I have to ask. I have to prepare for the possibility, as grim as it is.

He’rox holds me close, pulling me against him. “I will find a way.”

His words hardly have time to settle before the room erupts with a blast so loud, my ears ring. Shrapnel fly inward, narrowly missing me only because He’rox spins with me in his grasp, putting his body in front of the flying debris.

A roar barrels from his chest, shaking the room and everything in it, only to be matched with answering roars that thunder through the air, vibrating my bones. I can almost feel He’rox change, the tentacles springing from his back as he releases me and spins to face the gaping hole in the wall.

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