Page 49 of Decadence

Suddenly, Ikriss found it hard to breathe. Even with pure, pressurized oxygen running through his helmet, his chest suddenly felt constricted, as if his lungs were full of fluid.

“Your opponent’s blade was laced with poison,” Tarak said matter-of-factly. “At the moment, Zharek is keeping you alive with machines. The poison infiltrated your heart and lungs. They are damaged beyond repair.”

For the first time, Ikriss looked down and saw the array of tubes and lines that was hooked to his body.

Something buried deep within him—the part of him that longed for the wild; the icy, windswept plains of the Vaal—recoiled at the presence of these alien invaders inside his body.

Ikriss had always considered himself tough of mind and strong of will. He’d spent revolutions upon revolutions training and building his self-control and restraint.

But now, with the Mating Fever and the pain and the wild, frantic need for her surging through his veins, he couldn’t care less about self-restraint.

To the Nine Hells with it all.

For the first time in a very long time, the icy tendrils of true fear began to snake around his heart. It wasn’t death he was afraid of; he’d stared the Death God in the face many times during the course of battle, and each and every time, he’d been willing to lay down his life for the cause, the glory, and most importantly, the lives of his battle-brothers.

He’d always accepted that his death would come to take him sooner or later.

He’d never been afraid of death… until now.

Now, he was afraid of what might never come.

To catch a hint of that possibility; a promise of what had always been denied to him—a true mate—and then have it cruelly yanked away.

If he died here, he would never get to claim her, and she would be left wanting, always wondering.

Perhaps she would find another.

No.

He would not allow that to happen.

“Zharek,” he hissed, the breath leaving his chest from lungs that felt like they were on fire. “You create monsters with ease. You toy with bodies and biology as if you were one of the cursed Gods themselves. What can you do about this?” As he gestured at his chest, limbs flailing through the viscous liquid, his pain intensified.

Through layers of blue and the transparent glass, he caught a flash of the medic’s fangs.

Zharek’s grin was filled with relish and dark secrets. “I do enjoy a challenge, especially one that is fit for the nonexistent Gods. But even I have no antidote for the poison the Silent One used. It is called Rak-en-krul, or something like that. A true assassin’s tool, probably made eons ago in some ancient Zor laboratory. Interestingly, it screws with my nanites in a big way. One might almost think t he Zor designed it for that very purpose. Very interesting. Very dangerous. As one might expect, the Silent One fully intended for you to die, but you will live, and only because your medic is none other than me.”

Ikriss’s fear intensified. As what? An invalid, unable to fight, tethered to these cursed machines for the rest of my miserable existence?

That would be a fate worse than death.

“Get to the point, medic,” he growled, ignoring the mind-numbing pain.

“I will give you a second life. A new heart and lungs, even better than the ones you have now.”

“How?”

Zharek shrugged. “How else? I am cultivating them in my garden of tissue and organs. You must be patient. I wouldn’t even dare attempt nanosurgery on you. The damage is too extensive, and I don’t have enough medical nanites to repair that kind of damage.” The medic let out a wry snort. “I used too many of them patching up those broken females you found.”

Pain shot through Ikriss’s horn-buds. His limbs tensed. A terrible kind of impatience overtook him as Zharek’s words triggered an image of Sienna in his mind.

He remembered how she was when he first found her; half-conscious, battered, terrified. Now he was the wounded one. Another memory entered his mind; strong, steady hands pressing hard against his chest, desperately trying to stem the torrent of warm blood gushing out of his wound.

Her hands.

Her touch. Her scent. Her voice, swirling around him, carrying echoes of desperation—and something else.

Longing?

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