Page 84 of Needed in the Night
Once the crawler safely docked and connected to the port’s climate system, we released our harnesses, stood, and stretched. My stiff muscles protested the long hours of sitting. Now my fantasy of what Mikas and I would do once we boarded our ship began with a hot bath or shower and a longmassage. Something told me Mikas wouldn’t object to this new plan.
While some of the passengers opted to wear their gear all the way into the port, several guides and other passengers opened their thermal suits. I took my suit off to the waist and tied the sleeves around my hips with a sigh of relief. My jumpsuit was quite warm enough inside the port.
With Mikas in front of me, we made our way up a series of ramps from the crawler to the gate on the lower ring that led to ground transportation. At this massive five-level port, one of four terminals on Aloris, passenger ferries belonging to large cruisers loaded in the second-level ring. Small and medium-sized ships loaded from the third and fourth rings. The fifth ring at the top was a hotel and resort.
Hand-in-hand, Mikas and I emerged through the gate and into a crowd waiting to board crawlers and other ground transportation. I scanned the area, looking for Brae and the place we were supposed to leave the rest of our protective gear to be cleaned and reused, but it was hard to see anything through the crush of travelers.
A three-legged creature I didn’t recognize stepped on my foot, and a massive, lumbering Biltrobian bumped into me hard enough that I nearly fell. He rumbled something that might have been disgust. His equally enormous companion made a gesture indicating my relative height and chortled.
I scowled at their disdain. Just because I wasn’t two and a half meters tall and built as solidly as a meteorite didn’t mean they could just?—
Icy cold sliced through my back and deep into my chest.
I blinked a few times, puzzled by the sensation. A draft of outside air coming from the gate we’d just passed through? The cold spread through my insides. Suddenly, I couldn’t get a full breath.
“Isla.” Mikas’s voice seemed to be coming from a long wayaway. He was holding me by my upper arms, his expression part stricken and part pure rage. “Isla…” The word was a distant roar.
Somewhere nearby, Brae screeched, which he almost never did in public—especially when he traveled in shadow form.
“Mikas,” I said, or tried to say. The word turned into a gurgle. My legs went out from under me.
Mikas caught me, cradling me to his chest. He was bellowing something but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. I also thought there was a lot of screaming and frantic movement around us, but that was vague too. Everyone but Mikas were just shadows.
Brae?Even my thought was wispy.Help…
No reply, or at least not one that I heard. That was strange. Where was Brae?
When the pain arrived, it was distant too and not at all like when I’d been shot on Ngara. Whatever had happened, I must not have been hurt that badly, but thinking had become difficult.
Stranger still, something hot and sweet ran over my lips and into my mouth. Was someone giving me a drink?
“Isla,swallow,” Mikas said through the ringing in my ears. His voice sounded like his mouth was pressed to my ear. “Drink, my love.”
My back hurts. I’d meant to say that out loud but the words got no further than my brain. One of us was trembling violently. I wasn’t sure if it was him, or me, or both.
I coughed. Warm liquid bubbled up and spilled down my chin.
“Please do not leave me,” Mikas rasped. “I will not make it a day without you.”
The sweet, hot liquid in my mouth tasted like Mikas—like sun-warmed stone and love, like what had come from his fangs when he bit my leg. That made no sense, but very little made sense at the moment.
“Drink,” he begged. “Isla,please.”
With the last of my waning strength, and with darkness closing in, I struggled to do as he asked. He was hurting and I didn’t want him to hurt. I didn’t want to leave him all alone.
Oh, my beautiful Mikas. My heart. My mate.
He clasped me to his chest and roared.
CHAPTER 29
MIKAS
Pandemonium reigned around us,but it meant nothing to me.
The smell of Isla’s blood overpowered everything else. I raged and bellowed, my spines flaring, fangs bared, claws extended. My beastly fury swallowed my humanity and reduced me to a vicious monster cradling my dying mate as she gurgled her last breaths.
Rage fragmented my thoughts.
