Page 117 of Command

Threxin let the thread of it pull at him, held taut between bone and brain matter. He watched her face over her shoulder, fixing his eyes on the flash of blunt white teeth indenting her lower lip as she guided his hand to his mouth with her own, encouraging him to take another lungful of the mineral.

There was a grating sound from one of the four undesirable presences in their space and Threxin’s spikes flattened, itching. He narrowed his eyes at Lesthin, who had been its source. His female diverted her attention from him and toward the room. Threxin hissed through his fangs.

“Can you leave us?” Alina asked.

“No,” Renza and Kaia Halena said at the same time.

“Please, I… I think you’re making it worse,” Alina said. “He won’t hurt me.”

“Alina, have you seen yourself?” Kaia spat. “He’s hurting you now.”

Threxin snarled at her over the top of his female’s head and Alina made a not-dissimilar sound.

“Oh, will you all get the fuck out already?” she snapped. “I’m the one bleeding all over the goddamn floor here, so maybe you can do what I shoqing say this one time. Please!”

The outburst took even Threxin aback, and her human-accented use of an Apthian curse made him huff with amusement.

Renza was the first to comply.

“Go,” his brother directed the humans out the door.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kaia hissed, but Orion Halen was already pulling her out by the arm before Renza could do it himself.

And then they were alone.

CHAPTER 49

ALINA

When the only sound left was the remaining sad beeps of the machinery Threxin had all but destroyed, his iron arms finally uncurled from her body and she stumbled forward out of his grasp.

That was when the pain really set in. Maybe it was the shock, or the pressure his arms had been putting on her body to stifle the blood and nerves, but it all came now. Looking down at herself, Alina dared to lift her shirt to expose the skin.

Five pointed gashes trailed red into the bottom of her shirt, red collecting along the waistline of her trousers. On her chest, her shirt had stuck to the bloodied skin. These scratches were longer, and in the back of her mind Alina knew she had to work fast and get them treated. Her mind was oddly calm, but logically she could see this was bad. It wasreallybad.

When she turned around and looked up at Threxin, his eyes first raked over his handiwork and then his face turned pallid—a color she hadn’t seen on him before. Funny, she had almost begun to think uhyre skin never changed color. She’d never seen him pale or blush.

“Alina Argoud,” he rattled, staring at her chest. “I…” He drove the heel of his palm into his temple. “Call Renza back. He needs to finish this.”

“No.” Alina stepped toward him. “Threxin… I’m going to transmit, and you’re going to feel me. Okay?”

Threxin stood there and stared at the mangled skin he had created, and the horror in his eyes was belied by something else: a primal alien hunger that, even worse, still made Alina’s body respond in a way she was definitely not supposed to now. The tightness in the pit of her stomach was entirely misplaced. She was going into shock—that must be why this was happening.

“Yes,” Threxin said, ripping his gaze away.

“Close your eyes.”

He did, and Alina nudged him gently to sit on the bed with what little strength she had left. She perched on the edge beside him and took a tick to catch her breath and admire the sharp angles of his face, the cyan glow of the tense slits in his skin, ones that were presently closed tight yet vibrating with a longing she knew very well.

She hovered a shaking palm over his left cheek. It took a few seconds to get her head in order to emote to him. She hadn’t used that muscle in so long, her NS wasn’t used to being called upon by now. What used to come naturally now felt like her physio—forcing an atrophied muscle into action.

But she felt him, radiating warmth against her hand, and she thought she felt the open link inside him too. You could usually tell when an NS comm had hit home—or hitsomething. And all she had to do was not try too hard. All that was needed, according to Renza’s theory, was the truth.

I’m here,she transmitted the thought and the flutter of warmth behind it.

There was no indication that it worked. No indication that he felt her at all. But as she gazed at his face, deathly still in its focus and brow creased in a deep frown, the internal barriers Alina had been holding crumbled. This man—thisbeing—made Alina feel larger than her shell. Something in her grew, pushing at her edges. It would crack her open, and she wouldn’t even care. It would reach for him until he met it and took it for his own.

He's mine.

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