Every step away from her felt like dragging dead weight. He cared nothing for the results, only for her. Before the doors sealed behind him, he looked back, but Lily did not meet his gaze. She sat small and folded in on herself on the medical bed.
Khar stopped outside the room and crossed his arms over his chest.
The walls blocked every sound, giving him no hint of what was happening inside. Still, he made a vow to himself not to move until Lily came out.
When the door slid open, he had no time to brace for the Lily-shaped avalanche that launched itself into his arms.
She clung so tightly he could barely draw breath, and suffocating had never tasted sweeter. Only when his breathing turned into something worrying did she loosen her grip, though she did not fully let go.
“Khar, come see!”
He did not set her down. He simply carried her to the hovering display, where a vast holographic infograph shimmered in the air, animated with the key results of the scan.
“Look! Nothing changed at the DNA level, my nervous system is stable, and my memory is completely intact!” Lily blurted, breathless with relief.
Khar pressed a soft kiss to the side of her neck. When he finished reviewing the data, joy hit him so sharply he lifted her high and spun her in a full circle.
“Ha. Horos never stood a chance against your human resilience. You are the finest example of a remarkable species.”
Lily was still giggling when Khar gently set her down beside the examination bed.
As they faced each other, the post-tension euphoria thinned, replaced by something heavier and far more intimate. Warm pressure filled the space between them, that undeniable pull they had toward one another.
A rosy flush spread over Lily’s cheeks. Khar watched it with breathless focus, as if witnessing something sacred. Every tiny change in her expression stirred something fierce and tender inside him.
“Khar, your message…”
He brushed the tip of a clawed finger along her cheek, barely touching.
“Don’t think about it. You’re safe, so everything is all right.”
“I listened to it.”
Now it was Khar’s turn to look flustered, though his obsidian-dark skin betrayed no color.
“Well. Yes.”
He suspected even his heavy boots could have produced a more eloquent reply, but Lily, his personal goddess, did not seem inclined to punish him for briefly becoming the universe’s most incompetent conversationalist.
“Thank you. It meant a lot. When the results came in, I… I wasn’t brave enough to look. I can handle what happened to my body.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do not interrupt. I can see exactly what you’re thinking.”
Khar closed his mouth.
“That’s horrible, but at least that part is mine. What would have destroyed me is if this changed everything else in my life. Especially what I have with you. Because maybe at first you wouldn’t have minded, but what if later you did? What if one day you looked at me and saw I wasn’t who I used to be, and I wasn’t enough anymore? I don’t know how I would have survived that.”
Her wide, beautiful eyes shone with tears, but she didn’t break this time. Khar wasn’t sure he could have held his own composure if she had cried again.
“Lily, you never have to worry about that.”
He would have continued, but his sharp hearing caught approaching footsteps.
Ikar and Aros.
Too quiet for Lily to notice, but Khar knew instantly they were coming.
He let out a heavy sigh.
“What you should prepare for is the arrival of my two idiotic brothers, who will be with us for a while. I hope they’ll be tolerable for you.”
