Chapter 13

thirteen

. . .

Katarina

I stared at Thaumas, his words echoing in my mind. Leave me behind? After everything we'd endured together, he wanted to face this threat alone?

"No," I said, my voice resolute. "I won't let you do this, Thaumas. I refuse to be discarded for some misguided sense of nobility."

His eyes flashed, a growl resonating deep in his chest. "Discarded? Kat, you know I could never–"

"But that's what this feels like," I interjected, my composure cracking. Tears pricked at my eyes, hot and stinging. "As if I'm not enough, like I'll never be enough to stand at your side when it truly matters."

"Katarina!" Thaumas's wings flared, mantling above his broad shoulders. Conviction burned in his gaze, searing through me. "You could never be a burden to me. You are the very heart of me, the breath in my lungs. I need you like the stars need the void."

He shook me gently, emphasizing each word. "I'm not abandoning you. I could never leave you, not truly. You will be with me every step of the way, the lodestar guiding me home to your arms."

I made a choked sound, twisting my fingers in his flight suit. "Then why go alone? Why descend into this abyss without me to guard your back?"

Thaumas closed his eyes, anguish rippling across his features. "Because if I lost you, if you fell to the horrors of the Shrouded Reach, it would shatter me. Grind me to dust and scatter me to the uncaring stars."

He opened his eyes, amber depths brimming with naked desperation. "I would immolate the universe to keep you safe, Kat. Consign entire systems to oblivion, just to spare you a moment's pain."

I understood then, with crystalline clarity. My fierce, beautiful raptor would martyr himself on an obsidian altar, embrace damnation itself, all for me. All for love, vast and fathomless.

But I couldn't let him. I was no wilting flower, no cowering damsel to be sheltered and coddled. I was a warrior in my right, honed to a killing edge. I would fight for him, for us. For the future we'd bled and rended to claim as our own.

I reached up, lacing our fingers together. Calluses and scars, cybernetics and flesh, each whorl and ridge achingly familiar.

"I love you," I said, the words unvarnished and unequivocal. "I love you, Thaumas Leion'ct, with every fiber of my being."

I brushed my lips over his, tasting salt. "You're my heart, the gravity anchoring me. You've stood at my back through every trial and tribulation, unflinching, unfaltering. My strength and my shelter."

Slowly, I shook my head. "I can't watch you fly into this storm alone. I won't sit meekly by as you throw yourself on a pyre of good intentions."

I met his gaze, emerald to amber, willing him to understand. "I am no innocent to be coddled. I'm the blade forged in the crucible of all we've survived. I will fight at your side, Thaumas. I'll be the void at your wing, the dark armed with fang and flame."

The air crackled between us, charged with the force of my conviction. I was incandescent, adamantine. A falling star daring the firmament to stand in my way.

Thaumas shuddered, a seismic ripple through his powerful frame. As if some fundamental truth of his universe had shifted, realigned to a new pole star.

"Ishtar," he breathed, reverent. "My valkyrie, my bright and fearless one, how did I ever become worthy of you?"

I laughed, relief and adoration bubbling through me like champagne. "I could ask the same of you, my deadly raptor."

I tugged him closer, fitting my curves to his angles. In the medbay"s gloom, his eyes glowed like banked embers. Dangerous. Inviting.

"I love you," I whispered again, a prayer exhaled against his lips. "Beyond reason, beyond sanity."

His growl shivered through me as he claimed my mouth. Rough and searing, tasting of ozone and hunger too long denied. I fisted my hands in his crest, eagerly surrendering to his onslaught. Tongues tangled wetly as he plundered, devoured. Conquering me with lips and teeth and clever, rasping tongue.

I was drowning in him, dissolving. A wanton moan purled in my throat as he gripped my hips, grinding the hard length of him against my aching center. The layers between us were intolerable, infuriating. I needed his skin, his heat.

"Please," I panted, writhing as he trailed biting kisses down the column of my throat. "Please, Thaumas."

With a snarl, he hoisted me up, slamming me back against the bulkhead. My legs wrapped around his waist, ankles locking at the small of his back. Cool metal kissed my flushed skin as he rucked up my shirt, smoothing a broad palm over my quivering belly.

His eyes flared, blown black and ravenous as they raked over my bared flesh. I felt branded by that look, flayed and vulnerable. Aching for his possession, his worship.

"I know what you need," he rasped, clever fingers plucking at the fastenings of my suit. The fabric parted beneath his ministrations, peeled away like foil wrapping a decadent treat. "What you crave, my shattering star."

Then I was bare before him, pebbled in the recycled air. He drank in the sight of me, gaze searing trails of tingling warmth across my blushing skin. I could only imagine how I looked - wanton and wanting every secret hollow and soft swell offered for his perusal. His pleasure.

"So beautiful," he murmured, reverence and rapture. One taloned finger circled a tightened peak, teasing, testing. I keened, nipples furling impossibly tighter. Cunt clenching around a delicious emptiness, weeping to be filled. "My masterpiece. My perfect mate."

"Please," I panted, too gone for shame. I needed him inside, plugging all my aching voids, forging us together in the most primal way possible. "Please, Thaumas, I need you, I need."

"Shhh." He gentled me with another devastating kiss, suckling on my tongue until I shuddered and squirmed. "I have you, love. I'll give you what you need, fill up all your hungry emptiness. Fuck you until you can't remember your own name, only mine."

Then he was lifting me again, whirling, and I had a dizzying view of the medbay upending before my back hit the decking. Thaumas followed me down, a looming shadow. Caging me in with the titanic breadth of his shoulders, the thick bands of his arms. His hips found the welcomed cradle of my thighs, notching his heavy cock against my weeping core.

My eyes, when they found his, were molten. Pleading. The universe narrowed to the iron-velvet heat trapped behind his straining zipper, the exquisite ache pulsing in my pelvis. I finally summoned my scraped raw with need voice.

"Make me yours," I breathed, a confession. A covenant. "Mark me with your possession, until every cell sings with it. Until I can't tell where I end and you begin."

His answering growl rumbled through me like thunder, pouring honeyed lightning through my veins. Then he was tearing at his own suit, shucking the offending garment with savage efficiency.

I had a glimpse of dusky, scarred perfection - the hewn musculature, the proud jut of his rigid sex - before he was covering me completely. Skin to skin, not a whisper of space between us. The blunt head of him pressed insistently at my entrance, heavy and velvet-hard.

Thaumas kissed me again, a gentle counterpoint to the trembling tension in his frame. The barely leashed aggression vibrating through tensed sinew and constricting tendon.

"I love you," he groaned, raw and ragged against my parted lips. "Need you, Kat, on a cellular level. The beat and pulse of me."

I arched beneath him in silent invitation, fingertips skimming the raised runes of old scars. Thighs splaying wider, spine liquefying in anticipation of his claiming.

I arched beneath him in silent invitation, fingertips skimming the raised runes of old scars. Thighs splaying wider, spine liquefying in anticipation of his claiming.

"Please," I whispered, the word a benediction. A plea. "Thaumas, I need you. I need you inside me, filling me until there"s nothing left but you."

His answering growl was feral, primal. He surged forward, sheathing himself in my welcoming heat with one powerful thrust. I cried out, nails raking down his back as he stretched me wide, impossibly full.

He stilled, panting against my neck as we both adjusted to the exquisite sensation of our joining. I could feel every inch of him, throbbing and pulsing within me. The heavy weight of his balls nestled against my ass, the delicious friction of his pelvis grinding against my clit.

"Kat," he groaned, voice ragged. "Ishtar, you feel so good. So tight, so perfect."

I writhed beneath him, desperate for more. I needed him to move, to fuck me hard and fast until I shattered around him.

"Please," I begged again, voice trembling. "Please, Thaumas. I need you to move."

He chuckled darkly, the sound sending shivers down my spine. "As my lady commands."

Then he was moving, pulling out almost all the way before slamming back into me. I screamed, the force of his thrusts pushing me up the decking. He gripped my hips, holding me in place as he pounded into me relentlessly.

Each stroke sent sparks of pleasure shooting through my body, coiling tighter and tighter in my belly. I could feel my orgasm building, a tidal wave of sensation threatening to crash over me at any moment.

"Thaumas," I gasped, voice breathless. "I"m going to come. I"m going to–"

He cut me off with a searing kiss, swallowing my cries as I tumbled over the edge. My body convulsed, muscles clenching around him as wave after wave of pleasure washed over me.

He followed me over the edge, roaring his release as he emptied himself inside me. I could feel the hot spurts of his seed filling me up, marking me as his.

We lay there, panting and spent, for what felt like an eternity. I could feel his heartbeat pounding against my chest, matching the frantic rhythm of my own.

"I love you," I whispered, the words a promise. A vow.

He pressed a tender kiss to my forehead, his breath warm against my skin. "And I love you, my fierce and beautiful Katarina. Forever and always."

We lay there, wrapped in each other"s arms, as the universe spun on around us. For now, at least, we were safe. We were whole.

Then the deck plates shuddered, a pitched, yawing jolt that flung us apart. Klaxons blared, deafening. I swore as I tumbled across the medbay, Thaumas snarling his outrage at the uncaring void.

"Report!" he barked, already lurching to his feet. Murder etched itself into every savage line of his face, amber eyes incandescent with thwarted lust.

Raza's disembodied voice crackled over the comm, uncharacteristically somber. "That was a gravity well, kids. Snatched us right out of warp. We're dead in the black, and you need to see this."

Fear threaded icy fingers down my spine, displacing the hot churn of arousal. Beside me, Thaumas went preternaturally still. The hunter's stiffness telegraphed in the twitch of his feathered crest, the slight flare of his nostrils.

I swallowed hard, the aftershocks of a different sort of adrenaline chilling my overheated blood.

"We're on our way," I said, my voice hollow to my ears.

I turned from the spitting comm unit to meet Thaumas's eyes. Amber and emerald lust tempered - if not banked entirely by the specter looming over us. A shadow as yet unseen, but whose chill breath raised every hair on my nape, settled leaden in my guts.

"Guess our private time is over," I joked weakly, already fishing for my suit. The words sounded thin and brittle even to my own ears, false levity cracking under the weight of our shared dread.

Thaumas huffed mirthlessly as he scooped up his own garments. "The universe has impeccable timing, it seems. And a sadistic sense of irony."

He cast me a quicksilver glance, lancing and tender all at once. "But the sentiment remains, Kat. No matter what lurks beyond that door, no matter what fresh hell awaits us, I face it at your side. Always."

I yanked up the zipper of my form-fitting suit, shrugging my shoulders to settle the fabric. Let his conviction, his ferocity, seep into my marrow. Become iron in my spine, the bedrock of my unflinching resolve.

No power in the ‘verse, no monstrosity or machination, would sever the bond between us. I would cleave to my bright raptor through cataclysm and conflagration, unto the very ending of worlds.

So I lifted my chin, feeling the mantle of the warrior settle across my shoulders. The fearless valkyrie of fang and starlight, hewn to a lethal edge by every trial endured, every battle hard-won.

"Together," I agreed, as the bulkhead door swished open with a pneumatic hiss. As the shadows of an unknowable future nipped at our heels, beckoning us forward into the breach.

Thaumas's smile - grim yet brilliant, the death's-head grin of an avenging archangel - seared itself into my mind's eye. Into the secret annals of my forever heart.

Then, shoulder to shoulder, we stepped out to greet the oncoming storm.