Page 67 of Claimed By the Wraiths

I laughed. It came out wet and broken and real.

I put my mouth against his hair. His hand came up, slow and shaking, and covered mine where it rested on his jaw.

We stayed.

The corridor was quiet enough that Deyric’s voice carried from Serak’s earpiece, reading the channels as they lit up. Emergency sessions convening. Denials collapsing under evidence the conspiracy’s own systems had signed.

The political protection evaporating in real time. The nearest legitimate forces were half a day out and already burning toward us.

Solren arrived at a run, medkit open before he hit his knees beside us. He saw Serak and started working, scanner already in his hand.

He took one look at the readings and his face went carefully neutral, the expression he wore when the diagnosis was bad and the medic didn’t want to scare the patient.

“The ribs?” he asked me.

“Plasma burn. During the second wave.”

“And the rest of it?”

“Shadow-meld overextension. He’s been using the dark road in controlled bursts for nearly two weeks. The deepest sustained push was at the end.”

Solren’s hands paused for half a second. Then he kept working. “I don’t have protocols for that.”

“The bond is stabilizing him. It’s been pulling him back since I touched him.”

“Then keep the contact.”

“I wasn’t planning to let go.”

“Good.” He sealed the plasma burn with regenerative gel and started running a scanner over Serak’s vitals. “His core temperature is four degrees below normal. His neural activity is...” He trailed off, reading the scanner. “I need to research Khavai biology. There’s nothing in my databases for this.”

“Solren.”

He looked at me. The carefully neutral expression slipped for a moment. Underneath it was something I’d never seen on Solren’s face.

Not concern. Fear. The medic who always had an answer looking at something that didn’t have one.

“He’s going to be fine,” I said. My hands stayed locked around Serak’s face. “He’s coming back.”

Solren studied me. Then he nodded. The neutral expression settled back into place.

Solren clipped the scanner to Serak’s chest and unfolded a thermal wrap over him. “I have to triage. Keep him warm. Maintain skin contact. Keep talking to him. The monitor will alarm if his temperature or neural activity drops. I’ll be back in an hour.”

He packed his kit and stood. Serak’s eyes were closed. His hand was still on mine.

I held him. The corridor was empty.

SERAK

When he came back, Solren worked on me for two hours. The plasma burn was simple, regenerative gel and a bandage and a stern instruction to keep direct pressure off the sealed tissue and stop if the seal pulled or bled.

The shadow-meld aftermath was not simple. He ran scans, consulted databases, swore quietly in Rokavai, ran more scans, and eventually told me what I already knew.

“The bond is doing more for your recovery than anything in my medkit,” he said. “Your biology is rebuilding around the new connection, stabilizing what the meld destabilized. I don’t understand the mechanics and I don’t need to.”

“Meaning?”

“Keep physical contact as much as you can while you recover. If the slipping starts again, skin contact immediately.”