Page 80 of Chained

Maxym raises his head from his hand, a rather wet smile on his face. “I knew which one was you.”

“There’s another human in the dome?” I ask, my voice stumbling.

“There is.” Nate nods enthusiastically.

“Did you know?” I demand of Dirk.

“I was unaware of any human, not even you,” he says. “It’s possible the Bogarok have found the other human and brought it here too.”

“No humans other than you,” Maxym says, partly to himself.

“You mean there were no other humans in the dome before me?” I ask, taking hold of his shoulders and making sure his glazed gaze is on me.

“Only you,” he murmurs, leaning in to snatch a kiss.

A kiss I’ve missed so much, it’s almost like it’s the first time all over again. A possession of my entire being, concentrated into spicy feathers and hard abs.

I hadn’t even realized I’d closed my eyes, but when I open them, Maxym stares down at me, like he’s trying to sear my image on his brain. His head bare, I can see all of his face once again.

“Only you,” he repeats, stroking a huge finger over my cheek. “All of the stars, all of my feathers, every nest I can make, I offer it all to you, sweeteregri.”

He cups my chin and presses another kiss to my lips, stealing my rational thought from me in an instant. Maxym and the baby growing within me have become my entire world.

“Szek will be coming to see my progress shortly,” Dirk interrupts us gently. “He will want answers about you both.”

“Szek?” Maxym queries as I am released.

“Szek is a Varangy. He appears to be in charge on the ground, as it were, for this Protoex,” I say.

“He is Protoex’s second in command,” Dirk confirms.

“Varangy are foul creatures,” Maxym growls. “I thought they were all dead.”

“Not all of them,” Dirk says, handing over a set of glowing blue pulsar cartridges to Maxym. “Szek and his crew remain.”

“You know about the Varangy?” I query. “He claimed they were nothing but ghosts.”

Maxym stretches his neck. “I don’t know what was in that stuff, Dirk, but it’s cleared my mind considerably,” he says before dropping his gaze back to me.

Clarity fires through me, as if a curtain is being drawn back.

“I was the commander of a small cohort of Gryn tasked with exploring this part of the galaxy when we were attacked,” he says, blinking as the memories return. “Our ship was disabled, and…”

“And the next think you knew, you were in a cage?” Dirk completes Maxym’s sentence. “The Varangy specialize in capture of species the Drahon and Protoex require. Large, vicious warriors like you, who can only be taken by stealth.”

“We were preparing to fight.” Maxym furrows his brow, and I feel the pain of his thought processes. “And then the air…got thick.”

“They use a stealth device to get close to the species they’ve identified, attach a disruptor to the hull to scramble the functions and to inject a gas into the atmospherics in order to render the occupants unconscious. It’s a trick the space-pirates, the Tormelek, have also started using.”

“Let me guess.” Maxym glares at him, his desire for violence rising like lava in a volcano. “You invented it?”

“Not me,” Dirk says. “That one is all Varangy.” His lip curls with disgust.

“You were with other Gryn?” I draw Maxym’s attention back to me.

“Free Gryn,” he says with a wide smile. “We were searching for others stolen from our planet. It is the main mission of the Gryn.”

His joy at finally recalling who he is gives me shivers. I see through his eyes what it was like to be in command, to search forothers like him, and as he cycles through all the newly recalled thoughts, his sudden despair that he, and presumably his team, ended up in exactly the position they were seeking to free others from.

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