Page 59 of Whispers of the Void

Each breath I take is a breath closer to having her back in my arms. That knowledge keeps me from devolving into nothing more than a beastly shadow of myself. She hasn’t seen what we are at the most fundamental level, nothing more than monsters capable of nothing but destruction.

I want to protect her from ever seeing that.

The front door hangs from the hinges when I get to the house. My heartbeat roars in my ears as I run inside and nearly lose my footing on the massive pool of blood under my feet. Uzold’s body lies against one wall, and his head rests at the other side of the corridor. An arc of blood drips down the walls. Grief briefly grips me at the sight, but I bury it just as quickly as it comes. I’ll grieve later, first I have to find Neev and make sure she’s okay.

“There’s two sets of footprints,” Altis says as he pulls his sword off his back. “I’ll follow the one down to the grotto.”

“I’ll go with,” Hyva says. “There’s nothing I can do here.”

“I’ll follow the other.” I withdraw my sword and move as quickly but quietly as I can down the corridor toward the bedrooms.

A fire still burns in the hearth of the library, but it’s empty. Neev was probably reading as she does most nights. I don’t want to call out her name on the slim chance the intruders are still here. As I come around the corner, I see my door kicked in. The metallic scent of blood, fear, and anger lingers in the air as I approach.

My stomach drops at the thought of what I may find as I enter. My eyes are immediately drawn to several puddles of blood on the floor. One is Zeahirian and the other human. Both the daggers I keep on my bedside table are on the floor, one blade covered in Zeahirian blood.

My chest fills with pride that she was even able to draw blood. My feisty mate wouldn’t go down without a fight. I worry though as I look through more of the room and out on the balcony when I don’t find her. I’m about to enter her bedroom when Hyva reaches out to me.

“Get down here now. Kodia and his mate are protecting Neev’s body. I can’t get close.”

I drop everything and race back into the house, running down the hall and taking the stairs three at a time down. Nothing can prepare me for the sight when I come down into the grotto.

Kodia is standing protectively in front of his mate, who has her front flippers splayed on either side of Neev’s unmoving body. Both of them have their teeth bared and the spikes around their necks fully flared.

I move in front of Hyva slowly with both my hands up. Kodia tracks my movement with narrowed black eyes. I crouch down before him to show I’m not a threat and remind him I’m his soul tied. When the bond manages to overcome his primal need to protect his mate, his spikes relax, falling back down against his body.

I briefly touch my forehead to his, breathing out in thanks that he found her and protected her just as I hoped he would. Then I turn my attention to his mate who hasn’t relaxed a bit. Her razor-sharp teeth gleam in the dim light as she watches my every move.

Kodia turns and approaches her first. He presses the side of his head against hers and purrs. The sound reverberates through the room, and her eyes close softly. As her body relaxes over Neev’s, I move closer carefully.

I would know if Neev was dead; I would feel it. But while I don’t feel that loss, I also don’t feel her the way I do when she’s conscious and healthy. We need to help her now. Impatience wars with respect as I watch Kodia slowly bring his mate down.

I crouch low before her when her eyes fly open. Bowing my head in submission feels beyond wrong, but I can’t risk angering the beast. Kodia waddles off the ledge and dives into the water, coming back to the surface and calling for his mate. She looks at me and growls a warning before moving off and following him.

Hyva rushes over and pulls out the scanner that Altis ran and grabbed while I dealt with calming the animals. He runs it over her body while it beeps constantly with alerts and readings. He swears under his breath and looks up at me.

“I can’t help her down here. We need to get her back on the ship.”

“I’ll arrange it,” Altis says before running off.

“What’s wrong?”

“At this point the list of what isn’t wrong is shorter. Miraculously she’s breathing, but she’s got multiple broken ribs, a concussion, and likely a brain bleed. Her wrist is broken, as is a bone in her face. I need to close the wound by her eye, or we risk her losing it. I can stabilize her here, but we don’t have long.”

It’s the worst part of being on the surface, the lack of access to technology. It’s why the only hospitals for the planet are all located on the dark side of the planet in orbit. So the radiation from our star doesn’t interfere with the life-saving technology.

We could call for an emergency transport to one of them, but I trust Hyva more than any other doctor, and our technology is more advanced anyway. I follow all the directions he gives me as I assist him in stabilizing her.

It’s a challenge to compartmentalize my emotions from the goal, but I spent my life learning to do so as the Lord of House Aste and as I rose in the military ranks. I still have to put every single thing I learned to use, though. When I look down at her bruised and bloodied body, I want to tear the world apart until I find who did this. I want to rip the perpetrators limb from limb and peel their skin off. I want to bathe in their blood and listen to their screams of agony on repeat.

When I find them, they won’t have an honorable death. They will die crying and pissing themselves in complete fear and regret for ever touching my mate. They won’t receive death rites, they will be left to rot in a heap like the garbage they are.

* * *

We got her to the ship in record time due to Vynia calling in favors from one of her former lovers. Because we keep a skeleton crew aboard the ship on a ten-day schedule, Hyva has assistance from two of his medical crew. Vynia stayed behind to lead the investigation on the surface.

I’m torn between wanting to go and hunt those responsible down and the need to be here, sitting bedside in med bay waiting for Neev to awaken. The desire to place my hand on Neev and enter her mind is one I have to fight second by second, but Hyva reassures me that she’s not in distress.

In the past day I’ve mapped each of her bruises, each mark indelibly etched into my mind. When I find the male who did this, I’m going to shred him apart slowly peeling his skin from his muscles and his muscles from his bones. I’m going to bathe in his blood and wear his talons around my neck.

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