“See?”she said, holding her hand up to show Raaevik and wiggling her fingers.“Good as new.Can we go now?”
Kellat tapped a command into the holographic display hovering near his elbow.“Not yet.You need to stay here for an hour.For observation.Standard procedure, I’m afraid.”
“An hour?”She slid off the bed.“For a scratch?I put a plaster on worse things last week opening a can of soup.”
“Please return to the bed, Your Grace,” Kellat said, not looking up from his display.
“But I’m fine.”
“Protocol is protocol.”
“Protocol is stupid,” she muttered, but she climbed back up onto the oversized bed.
Raaevik finally looked at her.His violet eyes were dark, the pupils blown wide.“Youwillstay,” he ordered.“Youwillbe observed.”
“You’re enjoying this,” she grumbled.“You like seeing me stuck on a table like a lab rat.”
“I like seeing you whole,” he countered.“I prefer you bored to bleeding.”
The memory of the training room crashed over her again: the heat of him, the way his hands had gripped her shoulders—neither gentle nor rough, just… desperate.And then she’d slipped, cut herself like a bloody idiot, and he’d turned into an overprotective nightmare with control issues.
She shifted on the bed, the bed’s cover rasping under her in the quiet.The adrenaline from the sparring session was fading, leaving behind a dull ache in her muscles and a particular pressure in her bladder.
She waited five minutes.Then another five.
Kellat was busy calibrating a machine in the corner.Raaevik was back to staring at the wall.
“I need to go,” she said.
His head snapped toward her.“Where?You are under observation.”
“Not go… leave,” she said, heat climbing up her neck.“Go…go.”
He stared at her blankly and she sighed.Fuck, she was just going to have to come right out with it.
“The restroom, Raaevik.The little girl’s room.I need to pee.”
Kellat glanced over his shoulder.“The facilities in this unit are currently undergoing maintenance.You will have to use the ones across the corridor.”
Raaevik frowned.“Is that safe?”
“It is a bathroom, Sub-Commander,” Kellat said, voice flat.“Not a combat zone.Unless the plumbing is particularly aggressive today.”
Raaevik didn’t smile, didn’t blink.He marched over to the bed and offered her his arm, his expression grim.“Come.”
“I can walk to the bathroom by myself,” she said, ignoring his arm and hopping down.“It’s literally ten feet away.”
“I will escort you.”
She blinked at him.“What?You’re going to stand guard while I pee?”
His expression didn’t alter.“I will stand guard outside the door.Move.”
He was unbearable.Absolutely unbearable.And being this close to him made her want to scream, or grab him again… she wasn’t sure which.
She marched past him, chin high.“Fine.But if you try to listen at the door, I’m reporting you to Daaynal.”
Raaevik flinched.It was small—a tightening of his jaw, a flicker in his eyes—but she saw it.
