Our mate bond wasn't just a metaphor for emotional attachment. It was a literal, biological tether. My body was searching, reaching out desperately for his fire. The tether wasscreaming at me, communicating the agonizing, critical pressure Kaen was enduring miles away in the subterranean containment levels. He was suffering because I wasn't there to anchor him.
I opened my eyes. The hesitation, the fear of leaving the designated "safe zones" that had defined my life, was completely gone.
I slid off the examination table. My bare feet hit the freezing, polished tile floor, sending a sharp jolt of cold up my legs, but I ignored it. I walked directly to the heavy, pneumatic door and inspected the digital locking mechanism.
It was a standard corporate biometric lock, designed to keep heavily medicated patients inside and unauthorized personnel out. It was a decent system, but it was fundamentally designed to deter tourists, not someone who had spent six years disarming security protocols during high-stakes corporate hostage negotiations.
I knelt down, my fingers sliding along the smooth underside of the panel until I found the tiny, recessed maintenance latch. I pressed my thumb hard against the latch, forcing the plastic cover to pop off. A tangle of color-coded optical wiring spilled out.
I didn't hesitate. I reached in, gripped the primary green data-line, and yanked it hard.
The digital display on the lock flickered, sparked weakly, and died. The magnetic seal disengaged with a heavy, satisfying click.
I grabbed the edge of the door and hauled it open manually.
The corridor outside was empty, bathed in the soft, ambient lighting of the Obsidian Wing. The nurse they had promised was nowhere to be seen, likely dismissed by the doctors who assumed I was too traumatized to move.
I stepped out of the Med-Bay. The heavy, invisible tether in my chest pulled sharply to the left, pointing me directly towardthe restricted employee-access turbolifts that led to the sub-levels.
I didn't have a security badge. I was barefoot. My only armor was a flimsy hospital gown, offering no protection in a corporate facility that prioritized rules over survival. Logically, it was madness to abandon the safety of the medical ward to hunt down a volatile, towering alien who was currently considered a lethal thermal hazard.
But as the tether pulled at my ribs again, urging me toward the fire, I didn't feel crazy.
For the first time in a year, I felt perfectly, undeniably sane.
I turned left, and began to run.
Chapter 8
Kaen
The automated medical restraint disengaged with a sharp, pneumatic hiss, retracting its heavy steel clamps into the ceiling. I dropped to the floor of the containment cell, my knees slamming violently against the reinforced durasteel plating.
The pain in my left wing was blinding, a sharp, ragged spike of agony where the auto-doc had brutally forced the dislocated joint back into its socket. But the shattered bone was nothing compared to the catastrophic pressure building in the center of my chest.
They had torn her away from me.
The moment the corporate medics had broken my physical connection to Tove on the ash field, the mating bond we had forged in the cave had violently fractured. Without my mate's soothing touch to anchor the fire, the immense, lethal excess of my Rebirth Cycle had slammed backward, pooling dangerously in my core.
Now, locked inside the subterranean Warden containment facility, the cycle was screaming.
I dragged myself across the floor, my heavy, scaled palms leaving scorching, black handprints on the polished metal. Theambient temperature in the cell was already soaring. The heavy, lead-lined walls were designed to contain a Class-Four thermal hazard, but the synthetic plastics framing the overhead lights were already beginning to warp and drip, completely unable to withstand the blistering heat radiating from my skin.
Every breath I took tasted like ash and sulfur, scorching the back of my throat. My magma-veins, which had settled into a steady, comforting crimson while I held Tove, were now flaring with a volatile, blindingly bright orange light. The glow cast sharp, violent shadows across the small, sterile room.
I reached the primary security terminal mounted on the far wall. The reinforced glass screen was cool beneath my burning fingers, but the sensation offered absolutely no relief. The fire was inside me, actively consuming my failing biology.
I gripped the heavy metallic bezel of the terminal, hauling myself upright. My legs trembled under my own weight. I leaned heavily against the console, my bare chest pressing against the metal, listening to the satisfying hiss as the alloys began to superheat under my touch.
I slammed my fist into the emergency override panel, shattering the protective plastic casing. I didn't bother attempting to input my Warden access codes. The corporate grid had locked me out the moment I was designated a hazard. Instead, I drove my bleeding thumb directly into the optical data port.
The blistering heat of my bio-signature flooded the circuitry, physically fusing the delicate security relays to force a raw, unfiltered connection straight to the primary mainframe. The system, designed to monitor the geothermal currents of the caldera, had no defense against a direct, massive surge of thermal energy from its own source. The terminal flickered violently, the corporate logo dissolving into a stream of raw, green diagnostic data.
Before I could access the environmental controls, the secondary comms unit chimed. A blue, flickering hologram projected from the center of the console, coalescing into the sharp, manicured features of Manager Vance.
"Warden," Vance barked, his voice vibrating with a potent mixture of corporate outrage and underlying panic. He was sitting in the secure, heavily shielded control room near the top of the dome. "You are in direct violation of containment protocols. You are deliberately corrupting a primary security node. Cease immediately, or I will authorize the deployment of cryogenic suppression gas."
I stared at the translucent image of the man who had prioritized a luxury aesthetic over the survival of the island. The deep, feral growl that had started in my chest on the ash field tore its way up my throat, a sound so primal and aggressive the terminal's audio receptors clipped in protest.
