Page 24 of Tharn's Hunt
It’s faster than I’d expect, frantic even, but the rhythm of it is…comforting.
Something to focus on as my consciousness wanes in and out.
Where his arms meet my fevered skin, his golden glow pulses softly, like trapped sunlight. It’s beautiful. If I weren’t so weak, I’d lift my hand to touch it.
But I can’t.
I’m so, so tired.
A sob slips out before I can stop it, barely a sound, but enough to shake my chest. The tears abruptly follow, spilling down my cheeks despite how I try to hold them back.
I don’t want to die.
Not here. Not like this.
Not until I’ve seen my sister again.
The alien stiffens beneath me, his muscles bunching suddenly. The movement presses me tighter against his chest.
“No,” he growls, not in my ears, butin my skull.The vibration of it is a shock.
So…hecantalk. His hand moves awkwardly to my face, clawless now as he clumsily tries to…wait…what is he…is he trying topush the tears backinto my skin? “No, precious one. Do not do this.”
A desperate thumb tries to force a particularly large tear back into my eye.
“You must conserve your water. Do not lose hope. You must hold on a little longer.”
His voice scrapes something raw inside me. A place so vulnerable it aches. Because this alien, this stranger, is now the only thing standing between me and death in this wasteland.
A sob rips free before I can choke it back.
His reaction is instantaneous. Almost frantic. A calloused palm smears against my cheek, catching tears before they can vanish into the dust. Like each one is a drop of water he can’t afford to lose. LikeI’msomething he can’t afford to lose.
“Stop that,” I murmur. “You can’t just… push them back in.”
He speeds up. The world around us blurs as he moves faster, his breathing ragged, his heart hammering wildly beneath my jaw. I snuggle closer to it, letting its rhythm soothe me even as my body burns with fever.
It’s nice. His heartbeat.
Strong. Steady. Powerful.
Like him. This strange golden being that somehow exists.
I smile. This has been a dream, hasn't it. He’s not really here, and I’m…
“I’m dreaming of someone holding me. Someone golden,” I murmur.
The world drifts, liquid and hazy. I’m struck by the strange sense of things floating, drifting. Him. Me. The world around us. Everything soft and blurred at the same time.
“Jah-kee,” his voice—or something like it—cuts through the haze. So deep. So full of command but still not in my ears. In myhead. Ah, fuck. I’m dreaming about him talking to me. “You will not die. I will not allow it.”
The words hang in the space between us, vibrating through me, and I blink slowly, trying to focus on his face. It’s hard to think, to breathe.
“You’re so dramatic,”I murmur.
It’s so easy to communicate. As if the barrier between my mind and the world has thinned. As if I am closer to the center of the universe. A part of me notices this, some part tucked away in the back of my fever-riddled mind, but it feels inconsequential. Just a detail in this strange dream that I won’t question until I wake up.
Like his dark, metallic blood. Wait. He’s bleeding. It catches my eye, seeping from the wound on his shoulder and running down his arm in slow, glistening rivulets.
