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“Yes?” He lowers his voice to a purring rumble transmitted through his muscular body and into my much smaller frame.
“I missed you.”
“I missed you too, my mate. Where can I touch you that won’t cause you pain?”
“I don’t know.” I whimper the words, because I want so badly to be held close again, and to feel the safety I once felt with him running through my veins.
Before we can indulge in any more conversation, the terribly serious voice of the alpha cuts through our little intimacy.
“So,” Thorn says, his big red and gold scaled arms folded over his immense, intimidating chest. His tail swishes back and forth behind him before wrapping around one of his boots. His feet are planted shoulder-width apart, which is quite a ways apart. Thorn is tall, and he is built to do damage. He lacks Avel’s wings, but what he lacks in wings, he makes up for in brutal brawn. The way he is looking at the three of us makes me wonder if we’re not so saved after all.
“I tell you to follow my orders,” Thorn says. “And now, I find you, Avel, inside my empty vault with a tunnel behind you, a criminal next to you, and a very injured human cowering beneath your wings.”
“The tunnel goes to the very heart of the criminal underworld you were so very keen to protect,” Avel says. “You’ve been robbed blind, Thorn.”
He seems to take satisfaction in making that announcement. I do not know what has happened to their relationship in the interim since we had dinner at the alpha’s residence, but it seems to me there is some serious tension between the alpha and his enforcer. I am immediately on his side, of course.
“Raine needs medical treatment,” he says, before Thorn can say anything else.
“It looks as though you all do. Is Torin a prisoner?”
“An ally,” Thorn says. “Without whom we would all undoubtedly have perished.”
“And who might well know where my reserves have gone,” Thorn adds.
“The whelp also needs his wounds tended to. He needs feeding. Then he may be interrogated. If so, I will be the one to do it. Torin is under my protection.”
“Is he,” Thorn says flatly.
I know the alpha cannot be pleased to discover that his wealth has evaporated, but there is a certain sourness to his demeanor which is not entirely accounted for by the loss of material things. He does not seem that concerned about that as much as he seems annoyed at Avel in some profound way. The politics of saurians are beyond me for the most part. I just want some painkillers, a bath, and bed, preferably with Avel.
I lean against Avel gingerly, not wanting to aggravate my injuries, but needing to take weight off my feet. Without a word, he picks me up gently, sliding an arm beneath my hips to support me and avoid hurting me. It almost works, but I grit my teeth and refuse to let my body flinch. I will endure pain for the price of closeness.
There is a moment in which Thorn’s gaze hardens, and I suspect we are about to see the truly feral side of the alpha. But the moment passes, and his expression softens. Whatever is going on here is not so bad he does not still care for Avel.
“You need rest,” Thorn says. “Come with me to my home. The doctor can see all of you, and we can begin to see that justice is done.”
8 ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS
Raine
It is good to be under the roof of someone civilized, I can admit that much. The doctor makes a brief examination and confirms what I already know. My ribs are cracked and my tooth is too. Both conditions are helped by pain killers. Saurian stuff is always so effective. I feel warm and happy.
I sit and watch as the saurian doctor treats Avel. There are so many deep wounds on his body, several of them which require gluing closed. He is put back together one scaly seam at a time as I sit across from them all, feeling the kind of numb you feel when you have been through many terrible things back to back to back. I feel like a sponge waiting to be wrung out, soaked through with all sorts of fascinating trauma.
It’s so nice when you get to feel safe for the first time in a long time. It won’t last long, though. Soon my body will start remembering what my mind wants to forget, and that’s where the aches and pains and weird quirky sensations that last months and years after the fact start. I might be getting too old for this shit.
I keep my eyes on Avel. Seeing him makes me feel better. Just knowing that he is nearby, protecting me, is soothing to what remains of my nervous system.
“Almost done,” the doctor says. “You should be a little more careful, Enforcer Avel. Some of these wounds were close to mortal. A fraction deeper and you have would been beyond my help.”
“I was as careful as I could be, given the circumstances,” Avel says, downplaying the whole horrifying affair. I almost watched him die before my eyes. I will not forget that soon. That is an understatement, actually. I have seen enough unseeable things to know that what I saw will forever live behind my eyelids.
“Are we done, doctor? I wish to embrace my mate.”
The doctor gives something of a disapproving sigh. He is an older saurian with graying scales and a generally warm demeanor, but the warmth is starting to fade.
“It is not a good idea to mate with other species,” he says. “The results are unpredictable.”
