19
"Raaevik."
He loomed over her, huge and bloody and wrong.But as she watched, the dark patches across his chest and arm softened, colour bleeding back in as the hardened skin loosened and smoothed out.He shrank, the bulk dropping away until he was just...him.
Mostly.Except for the claws.Those stayed out, long and dark and dripping, and the thick blackened scar across his ribs didn't look like it was going anywhere either.But his eyes.The red bled out last, slow, until the violet she knew looked back at her.
Just him.The man she knew.
He’d come for her.
She'd left him a note.She escaped to save his life, and the stupid, stubborn, impossible bastard had come for her anyway.The relief nearly made her sick.Right behind it came the urge to punch him in his stupid face for not staying where it was safe.She wanted to grab him, and she wanted to kill him herself for being this fucking reckless.
Then she looked past his shoulders, and her eyes widened.
Holy shit.
The room looked like a bomb had hit a butcher shop.Thick, dark blood slicked the floor, pooling around torn metal and the ruined remains of the?—
She snatched her gaze away quickly, not wanting to make sense of those bloody shapes.But even though she wasn’t looking at them now, her brain didn’t let go of the image.The brutality.
Raaevik had done that...For her.
He’d torn them apart with his bare hands.Her gaze dropped.His hands shook as he reached for the restraints holding her down, but he didn't close the distance.He just hovered, his expression pained like he couldn't bring himself to touch her.
Those hands had cracked bone and peeled metal and painted this room red, and now they hovered over her face, shaking like he was the one strapped to a table.The claws made it worse.Claws as long as kitchen knives, like nothing she’d ever seen before...They dripped blood, and he stared at them like he didn’t trust himself not to hurt her.
"Raaevik.Step back.Now." Thyaar's voice cut through the ringing in her ears, low and ruthlessly calm.Too calm.
She turned her head.Thyaar stood in the destroyed doorway, his weapon lowered but his knuckles white, with a dozen Imperial warriors behind him.
They were scared.All of them.
A male edged past Thyaar, hands raised in surrender."Sub-commander.I’m a medic.Let me assess her."
Raaevik whipped his head around at the movement, a feral snarl ripping from his chest, as he bared his fangs.The medic froze.
"I just want to help her," the medic said, keeping his voice low and careful."I need to make sure she’s okay."
“Raaevik,” she murmured.“It’s okay.Just let him do his job, okay?I’m right here.I’m not going anywhere, even if I could.”
A muscle jumped in Raaevik's jaw as he slid a sideways glance at her, angling his body so he didn’t let the medic out of his field of vision either.Then, slowly, rigidly, he nodded.He stepped back just enough to give the medic space.
The medic stepped up to the table.He nodded to her as he reached out to check her pulse.
“Hey there, Emily.I’m?—”
He didn’t get any further.His words cut off as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.His body seized.A violent, full-body convulsion racked his frame, snapping his neck and back into a sickening arc.His eyes filled with red, and he dropped.
He was dead before his skull smacked the bloody deck.
The room erupted into an absolute fucking madhouse.
Warriors scrambled backward, shoving each other to get clear of the table.Someone yelled orders she couldn't make out, and the bio-scanners kicked in with a shriek that bored straight through her skull.Two soldiers grabbed the medic by his ankles and dragged him back away from her into the corridor.
She just lay there.Stunned, she looked down at the floor where the medic had dropped.
She could still feel the trail of his fingers across her skin as he went down.One second, he’d been checking her pulse; the next, he was on the deck, and his eyes were white, and he wasn't breathing.She didn't even know his name.
