Page 78 of Taming Chaos

Madness!

Another Bartharran dragged her from below with great force. Torin pulled his claws out of the wall, and they floated upward. Thwack! His throwing knife kissed the alien’s eye socket. The golden-skinned warrior screamed and released her.

More hands fell upon her, grabbing her, caressing her, pulling her with great force even though she gripped Torin’s torso with all her might. Enough. He holstered his gun and found his twin blades. This ends now!

But just as he was about to turn the air around them into a sea of blood, his battle-sense told him to flick a glance over his shoulder.

Danger.

A lone Plutharan floated behind him, plasma gun raised.

About to fire.

Torin’s blood ran cold. At such close quarters, a plasma flare would hit his body and momentarily engulf him, burning Seph in the process.

“No!” he shouted in Kordolian as he saw the alien’s finger twitch.

Torin’s world narrowed down into microfragments of time. It all happened so fast, in less than a fraction of a blink of an eye, but everything felt so slow. He tried to make his back as broad and impenetrable as possible, vainly hoping to shield her, but in truth, he knew he had only one chance to save her life.

The solution came to him in a quick, terrible flash of realization.

His heart protested furiously. I can’t let her go!

But then the cold veil intruded on his mind, and all of his brutal training kicked in.

If he didn’t let go of her now, she would die.

I’m sorry, my love.

He let go of his swords, removed her arms from his torso, and pushed, and it was the most terrible, painful thing he’d ever done in his life, especially when she looked back at him like that, with confusion and anger and fear swirling in her beautiful eyes.

And just like that, she was sucked into a sea of massive golden-skinned Bartharrans, the males pulling her away from Torin with great force and speed.

What the fuck do they want with her?

She disappeared.

Torin screamed in anger, cursing the Goddess for forcing him to make such a terrible choice.

Blam! The plasma fire came, roaring and massive, much bigger than he expected, spreading outward, growing wider and wider as the Plutharan was thrown back through the air by the sheer force of it.

A lurid green flare engulfed his body, and if not for his protective exo-armor, he would have been burned to a crisp.

Torin was thrown forward without his swords. Excruciating pain lanced through his back, as if he’d been stabbed a thousand times with a burning sword. He put out his hands as he crashed into a wall of bodies, desperately pulling several grunting Bartharrans aside, throwing them across the corridor.

“Where is she?” he roared, unsheathing his claws, sinking them into Bartharran armor and flesh. “You can’t take her away. She is mine!”

But there was no way to stop the blood and smoke and debris and bodies from clouding his vision, from blocking his path.

He’d let go, had pushed her away.

To save her life.

Suddenly, Torin felt like a part of his soul was missing, and if he didn’t get it back…

“I’ll kill every single one of you,” he hissed in Kordolian, a great darkness spreading through his heart. His loss, his fault, his fucking madness. To have found the one he’d been yearning for all his life, and to be forced to give her up in almost the same breath…

It nearly destroyed him.

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