Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

THREXIN

T hrexin prowled Colossal's blood passages for endless ticks after leaving Alina in her cabin. Ship hours passed, and still he paced, his limiter humming incessantly in the depths of his skull until he thought he'd never be rid of it again. The feeling of it churning at his brain matter, manipulating his synapses—severing some connections, making new ones—was so constant that it seemed to increase his agitation, only to forcefully shut him back down soon as he began to acknowledge it.

He kept waiting for it to numb him out, help him think clearly.

Alina Argoud had stood there, having exposed herself and him to Per Halen, and still she begged him to spare the human's life. She would be marked a traitor, shunned should she be caught. Surely she knew that. And still the sanctity of life was more important.

It was stupid, illogical, and self-destructive.

It made him feel like he needed to protect her at all costs. Like he needed to keep her close.

Like she was his.

The knowing twisted something in his chest—it was all at once a hope, a certainty, and a despair. Keeping her safe meant keeping her whole. It meant preventing a physical dependence that would warp her senses. It meant keeping her away from him .

Threxin cursed at himself in Apthian as he drilled his steps into every unexplored nook and cranny of his fucking ship.

He wished he'd never come here.

He had passed the passage that led to the medicinal bay twice, ignoring the fresh scent of Orion Halen and his female each time. He hadn't had the time to dig deeper into their interest in that place and into the female's increasingly deteriorating state. There were bigger things to worry about.

Like not thinking about Alina's lips or tongue or tits. The wet warmth of her tightening cunt and the way her skin prickled when she came. Her hands squeezing her breasts for him, her back arching as she moved how he'd told her to. Not thinking about her eyes, drowning in need as he devoured her. Or the blooming temptation to go to where Per Halen was being held and beat his shoqing head in, take his skull in his fist and smash it beneath his boots.

A white-hot poker lashed his eye sockets, and if Threxin hadn't known any better he'd think his own skull were cracking. He grabbed the wall, palm slapping at the cool surface over his head as he doubled over. He spat a mouthful of exorin at his feet and waited for the pounding to abate.

If he were thinking logically, Per Halen would be dead by now.

Instead Threxin was commandeering the scarce time of one of his cohort to guard him in a locked cabin and make sure he spoke to no one. An uhyre resource Threxin could not reasonably afford, but his judgment had long been clouded.

His nostrils flared at that scent again. The path well worn by Orion Halen's feet and those of his "wife." That was what he called her. A formal union of human and part-uhyre. It was disgusting .

He wanted it.

Threxin curled his lip. Perhaps he should kill Kaia Halena too for allowing herself to get addicted. And her master—her husband —he wasn't uhyre enough to bother keeping alive. He could die for his transgression, even if it was made before Threxin had set his rules.

How he hated fucking rules sometimes.

Threxin shook out his head, clearing the white blotches from his vision as best he could. He needed to think about something else. Something useful.

Something like what the shoq those two kept doing in the medicinal bay, and whether it was dangerous to his ship and his command.

Threxin followed the scent to the familiar door. He couldn't tell if they were in there or not, his senses dulled by the memories of Alina's sweet breath washing over him as she…

He slapped his palm to the reader and exited the passage into total darkness.

The lights faded upward from dim to blinding as he entered the tiny lab room. It smelled like blood, exorin, and the sharp tang of sterilization chemicals. A long counter in the middle sat stacked with laboratory equipment. Microscopes, pipettes, sealed sampling needles. A machine was agitating tubes of blood with a low hum, the liquid sloshing silently inside as it was shifted left, right, left, then rotated, and then the pattern started again.

A box of intravenous bags was stacked behind a transparent door of a wall-height chill unit. Threxin narrowed his eyes to read the labels. Electrolytes. Below that, a set of black containers had been stacked. Threxin opened the door of the unit and pulled one out, twisting off the lid.

The exorin scent hit him immediately, weakened but cloying. It had been gray and diluted—Orion Halen's. Seeing the fluid like that, collected, stored, and numbered, was sickening. What was Orion Halen storing it for? Just for his female? Or were there others he'd ruined before her? How many humans on this ship were secretly addicted already? Threxin's fingers twitched with unregistered excitement at the thought of slicing more throats.

Was the blood in the tubes Orion Halen's too? Threxin scanned the room for any more information, and his eyes fell eventually to a locked cabinet below the counter. The door was flush with the paneling on either side of it, easily missed. It had a print lock, but of course there was no lock on Colossal that a commander's blood wouldn't open. A sampler was conveniently located next to the print reader. Threxin pressed a finger to it, satisfied when the sampler pricked his skin.

The cabinet fell open from a bottom hinge, revealing a vertical stack of physical pages held together by a single metallic ring in the top left corner. Threxin leafed through them, all in Universal, of course. This would take hours to get through, making it the perfect distraction from his instinct to march back to Alina's room, claw her clothes off, and sink himself inside her. Threxin groaned, tension pulling at his spine as his spikes stood erect at his nape. He fisted the stack of pages and began to read.

It was early morning ship time when Threxin entered the commander's suite of cabins. The ship's inhabitants would have just begun stirring for their early shifts, bringing Colossal 's blood to life. The commander's cabins were dark and unfamiliar and smelled like sex and exorin. The jarring musk did not deter him. Threxin prowled directly for the source: the bedroom.

In the doorway he absorbed the sight. Orion Halen was between the legs of his female, the spikes at his neck jutting up, mirroring his own just hours before. His hands, oversized for a human, held pallid inner thighs open as his mouth worked at her cunt. Her groin was slick with silver. The muscles of his back bunched with tension as Threxin entered—Orion Halen's fingers tightened on the meat of his female's thighs until surely they would leave bruises as he registered Threxin's presence. His spikes flattened on his nape.

Muscle bunched beneath taut skin as he raked a hand to the bedside table with his face still buried in his female's cunt, grabbed some undecipherable trinket sitting there, and hurled it at Threxin with a violent jerk of the arm. Threxin caught the heavy object in one hand, weighing it in his palm.

A red tangle of hair popped up, an arm swept over it to push it back and reveal wide green eyes as she stared at him over her husband's back. Immediately her legs began to squirm shut, fighting their way from her master's grip, her hips writhing from his mouth as she scrambled up in the bed.

"What the fuck ?" she shouted, pulling her legs to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

Orion Halen twisted his head to look at Threxin, snarling mouth stained silver. He wiped his lips with the back of his arm, a violent gleam in his eye. "What in the goddamn fuck do you want?"

Threxin barely looked at him. His gaze remained fixed on the female cowering behind her part-uhyre mate. Her addictive part-uhyre mate. The man she should be physically craving if she went too long without tasting him.

Threxin lifted the sample he'd taken from the chill box to the light between his thumb and forefinger. The tube of blood belonging to the woman shaking before him glinted beneath the warm overhead lamps. Immediately the energy within the room shifted.

"I know what you are doing," he said quietly.

Both humans tensed, Orion Halen opening his mouth to speak. Threxin cut him off.

"I will assist."