Page 116 of Command

Renza regained himself with the calm professionalism of one who still had a functional limiter: by straying his hand to the pistol at his hip.

That was when Alina reacted.

“No!” She lurched forward, awakening Threxin’s instinct to carve his talons further into her flesh. She would not be going anywhere.

Threxin growled, slamming her backward. Her rapid pulse beckoned to his fangs, and he let the exorin splatter on her shoulder. He snarled at his brother, who had not yet touched the gun but hovered just above it.

“Fucking hell,” someone said from the door.

That’s right.The red bitch. Let her watch. Let her see that her “assistant” was his now. Threxin’s hold on his female tightened until he felt something wet and satisfying beneath the pads of his fingers.

The red female stepped forward then. “You fucker, leave her?—”

“Kaia, please,” Alina begged, her voice small and strained as Kaia Halena approached. “Please stay back. You can’t risk the baby.”

Kaia did stop then, cocking her head to the side. “The baby?”

Alina Argoud seemed to wither in his arms. “I know you’re pregnant, Kaia. You’ve been so sick, and you kept needing the medbay?—”

“I’m not fucking pregnant, Alina, I wassickbecause I was getting drained of blood and ingestingthis asshole’spoison—” she motioned to Threxin “—to use my exorin immunity for a vaccine.”

Alina’s pulse kicked up under the hand Threxin had over her chest. He wanted to sink his fangs into her neck and feel it from the inside. He lowered his face to her skin, inhaling the terror oozing from her pores.

“You…” she choked. “You’re immune?”

Kaia Halena glared between them, realization forming on her face. “So that’s why he fucking wanted it… Alina, you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into?—”

Threxin snarled as Kaia Halena stretched her hand toward his Alina, his talons digging into meat. Kaia froze in place as her eyes fixed on Alina’s.

“Look,” she spoke fast, holding out what he supposedmust have been a placating palm—only it just made him want to rip her hand off. “The NS should feel like… like everything coming to you all at once.”

“I feel nothing,” Threxin barked.

It did not work.

His tunnel vision came to Renza, begging for him to shoot already even as his body prepared to dive for his weapon.

Lesthin and Renza exchanged glances.

“My brain blocked it off for a few minutes too,” Kaia pressed. “Just… Take a deep breath and think of nothing. Relax.”

All heads in the room swiveled toward the human female telling an activated uhyre to relax, and Kaia threw up her hands and let them flop to her sides. “Fuck if I know how he’s meant to do that, but he has to!”

“Your hak,” Alina spoke up, reaching out a hand to Renza. She winced as Threxin’s hold on her chest and waist tightened. Her other hand, he realized, was atop his own, palm stroking his knuckles. Threxin tried to focus on that touch. “Give me your hak.”

Renza’s crimson eyes never left Threxin as he placed the roll into Alina Argoud’s palm. He extracted a firedagger from his pocket, moving slowly as he activated it just enough to light the hak.

Threxin stared at the hand with the weapon until it was put away.

Alina twisted her neck to look up at him and lifted the hak to her mouth first. She took a deep inhale, then tilted her chin up and to the side, blowing the smoke back up to Threxin’s face.

It smelled good. That barely-there itch from secondhand hak lit up a familiar sensation. Threxin tightened the hand he had around his female’s waist and lifted the one on her chest. It came away red as he took the roll from her and put it between his lips.

As the smoke crept down his throat, etching well-worn pathways and settling in his lungs, Threxin vaguely registered that the red on his hand would be blood. It was smeared on the roll between his fingers and, when he looked down, Alina Argoud’s torn shirt. Something tugged at the back of his mind, and Threxin flinched instinctively, expecting the limiter to drive nails into his head.

Only there was no limiter.

There was only this other thing. This thing his Alina also had.

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