Page 47 of Command

Someone did notice. Renza. Threxin hissed to himself, andAlina faltered behind him, pace stuttering in his peripheral vision.

He thought the next sound he heard may have come from her, and it took a tick to recognize otherwise. Threxin ducked into the side passage they had been passing. In the same sweep, he clasped Alina by the back of the neck and dragged her behind him. Her back slammed into the front of him and he felt the breath that would soon turn into a scream in her throat—one he cut off by slapping a large palm over her small mouth as he backed them farther into the shadows.

He’d been just fast enough; a tick later, the source of the sound came into view: Orion Halen’s red female, running. She stumbled and fell, hard. The adrenaline roiled off her in waves, cloying in its musk. It kicked up his pulse and cinched his ribcage. Alina made a muffled sound, and Threxin jerked her tighter to himself in a warning to shut up, crushing her against him with the arm he had clasped across her stomach.

After several ticks, another scent broke through the heavy stench of the female’s adrenaline: the cold crackle of uhyre arousal wafted forth. Orion Halen came into view in the passage ahead. The air around him may as well have been a black hole. He sensed that Alina felt it too—she shuddered and recoiled against him, her hands finding his forearm and folding across it in a desperate grip.

His red female had begun to clamber to her feet, but Orion Halen stopped her with a boot on her back.

“Stay down,” he commanded.

Threxin flashed a fang. Orion Halen should not be commanding anything on this ship with such delusional authority.

A moment later his human-kin was on his knees above the female, rolling her to her back. She resisted with all her strength, clawing at the front of his shirt, scraping for his face. The female against him shivered, but Threxin grew progressively stiller as he observed the savage scene. He fought toignore the scent of fear evaporating from Alina Argoud’s sweat glands, yet his grip tightened on her waist.

Threxin fought to bring himself down, sensing the warning signs of the limiter at the base of his skull, but it was difficult to not be infected by the smell of it all, especially with the soft body pressed flat against him. Alina Argoud clutched at his arm as if that would save her. Threxin nearly scoffed at the notion. He resisted making a sound only by putting his chin atop her head and drawing in the frightened female scent of her. Curled around her with her blunt claws digging divots into his arm, Threxin watched the scene before them even as the limiter spun up to a dull warning buzz in his head.

Orion Halen’s eyes glowed and a hint of silver already colored his lips. That must have been his version of exorin, diluted with human saline and not the potent black of a full-blooded uhyre. With a vicious snarl, Orion pinned his female’s flailing hands above her head and kicked her legs apart with a knee. His other hand unclasped his belt with practiced ease, then hiked up the female’s loose skirt around her hips.

Threxin swallowed iron, choking it down to prevent exorin spilling from his lips and onto the female shivering against him. His body was acutely aware of her heat seeping into his skin, but his eyes were glued to the scene before him.

CHAPTER 22

ALINA

When Kaia screamed, Alina’s blood ran cold. She was weak, probably pregnant, and under attack. But the massive palm crushed against her mouth prevented sound, and the immovable arm across her belly, talons splayed wide at the side of her waist, prohibited movement.

Not that Alina was so sure she could move. She found herself shrinking into the uhyre behind her—the one who had just executed two people the day before, she remembered. Whose aliens had killed even more to commandeerColossal. Her heart was about to punch straight through her ribs. She could feel it, and she couldn’t even do her breathing exercises. Not with Threxin’s hand clamped over her face like that.

Alina squeezed her eyes shut as Orion shoved his hips into his wife, digging Kaia into the black floor beneath him. Red marks were already forming on her wrists, where he pinned them over her head. The thought of her back and spine getting raked over the ground like that was sickening. Even though Alina didn’t look, she couldn’t block out the sounds.

Was that what it had been like for her charge for all theseyears? Alina knew Kaia and Orion had a rough start to their relationship, but after Kaia almost died in that assassination attempt right after their marriage, things seemed to change. For the last two years, all the way until the invasion, they just seemed so… inseparable. Had she been going through this that entire time? Getting raped in the hidden pathways of the ship, where no one could hear her or help?

If Alina had been a good enough assistant to earn Kaia’s trust, she would’ve told her. Alina could’ve helped. Alina had knownColossal’scommanding line was uhyre, and therefore violent. But she’d never been exposed to it so viscerally.

Alina’s racing mind was wrenched to a standstill when a moan reached her ears. The hand at her mouth tensed, then loosened, and Alina opened her eyes. The rise and fall of Threxin’s chest behind her stilled as they saw Kaia arch up toward the man fucking her into the ground. The fear on Kaia’s face had at some point transformed into something more like desperation. When she tilted her head back and bared her throat, Orion took the offering, sinking his teeth into her pale flesh. He left silver trails streaking down her skin.

It was all just obscene. Watching it, and worse… watching it with Threxin’s breath skating down the back of her neck. Could it really be that Kaia was enjoying this? Was it the exorin she must’ve had so much of, making her crave whatever way Orion chose to take her?

Their movements, though violent and haphazard, developed a writhing synchronicity that reminded Alina of a vid she’d seen of snakes on Old Earth. Kaia and Orion slithered in a perverse unison as he trailed his tongue and teeth up her neck, along her jaw. Kaia lifted her head to lick at the exorin that dripped from his mouth as he hovered above her, and Threxin’s hand tightened on Alina’s stomach.

“Eyes on me.” Orion’s instruction was a hoarse rasp thatmade Alina’s gut clench. She swallowed as something pressed at the small of her back—a hardness she’d only just registered but quickly identified. Threxin shifted behind her.

Kaia obeyed Orion’s instruction without hesitation. She peered up at him through hooded lids, and Alina could see the pull of it—the way he trapped Kaia just like Threxin had her. The way her eyes turned black and his flashed cyan. But looking on from afar, Alina noted the frantic desperation in Orion Halen’s eyes. He didn’t look like a monster toying with its “victim” at all. Wasthatwhat Threxin had been like too? Or was he in complete dominion of the cruel lure in his own eyes when he did that thing?

When Orion picked up the brutality of his pace, Kaia matched it. She clasped her hands to his sides and drove his black shirt up, raking her hands up his body. Her nails left crimson trails in their wake. Orion Halen crushed his mouth to hers, their tongues and teeth flaying at each other, throats gulping at the exorin flowing between their starved mouths.

They came with reverberating groans as their lips and eyes remained locked. Orion Halen’s bicep rippled at Kaia’s side as she spasmed beneath him, his hand splayed along her neck.

In the quiet aftermath of the sight, Alina grew acutely aware of the molten heat between her legs and the hard bulge against her back. She noted a scent of rotting narines in the uhyre breath that ghosted over her skin. She shifted in the grip of her captor. Her fingers, she realized, had been clenching his forearm with such force that they’d gone numb.

Orion Halen tensed. He lifted his head from where it had been nuzzled into his wife’s sweat-glistened neck. His fingers never ceased stroking at her crimson curls as his face turned directly toward Alina’s and Threxin’s hiding spot. He stared into the darkness, rabid eyes narrowed and chin stained silver. Alina shoved herself back against Threxin, willing forhim to move farther out of sight. But Orion had already moved on, getting to his feet and lifting Kaia along with him, leaving Threxin and Alina to deal with the aftermath of what they had witnessed.

CHAPTER 23

THREXIN

Alina Argoud was hyperventilating. Threxin had started off dragging her down the public hall to her cabin. But when the blood drained from her face with such suddenness that he was sure she would collapse, he flung her over his shoulder instead.

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