Chapter 45

CHAPTER 45

THREXIN

T hrexin paced the blood passages for ticks upon ticks. Ship hours. It may as well have been ship days.

His skull throbbed endlessly. Mercilessly. To the point that he had half a mind to march into the medbay, grab the nearest sharp object, and dig into his skull—dig it out. It may as well kill him.

He paced.

Something was wrong, he could feel that much. His limiter used to kick in with a smooth efficiency before he could even feel whatever outburst it was protecting him against. By design, he shouldn't even get the chance to know the emotion it was walling off.

Threxin thought back to that time as a teen, in the Elysian command center with that female, tearing at each other as they fucked and bled. Later he'd put it down to the limiter adjusting to the onslaught of puberty, because it had never happened again. Mating was… fine. It was fine. No one got killed, and that was the important part.

Except that night, with his cock buried deep in Alina Argoud, it hadn't been fine.

Disappearing in that warm, wet, clenching sleeve that sucked him in. Watching her take his girth, so clearly not designed for it but doing it anyway. He wanted to force his way inside and rip her open, and he did, and she took it. He felt himself hitting something inside her, knowing he was hurting her and not giving a shoq. Enjoying the way she squirmed beneath him.

His limiter had been fighting hard, building its wall, trying to cage away the real thing inside him that wanted to kill and fuck something at the same time. But it may as well have been a toy, unable to withstand the grotesqueness of what he really was.

Threxin had watched Alina's eyelashes splayed on her cheeks as she looked down at him tearing her apart, her brow furrowed in pain and yet her cunt unable to do anything but suck him in like a thoughtless animal. The way red had crept up her chest, spreading out over her heavy tits and along her pebbled nipples, made him want to claw into her skin and draw out more of it.

He had been about to sink his fangs into that flesh when she looked up at him and their eyes locked. Threxin had expected to see a look of painful resistance. Or maybe resignation to just having it happen and knowing she could do nothing about it. Instead, he saw eyes black with a desire so desperate it could only be mirrored by his own.

She had wanted this. He was hurting her, and she wanted him, and she wasn't like an uhyre female—she would never try to stop him or fight back like one of his cohort would. Even with a vaccine, the lack of physical addiction hadn't kept her wits about her. Alina Argoud was putting her pathetic human life in his hands, trusting he wouldn't snuff it out even as he was pulling a chunk of hair from her scalp with the grip he'd had on her.

It had hurt, the way he wrenched himself away from her, his spikes catching on flesh as they popped out one by one with an ugly wet sound. They dripped with both of them, and shoq, Threxin had half a mind to go back there and finish the job. Fuck every hole he could find and fit into.

But that look in her eye was more effective than the implant in his brain had been. His heart was drilling through his chest as he remembered where he was, who she was, and tried to banish that aching thing that somehow hurt more than his head did when their eyes met.

Threxin had no name for it, but he knew in that moment he'd sooner kill himself than hurt the female before him.

And then she had the gall to bring him calming liquid and try futilely to comfort him. She pitied him. Threxin had nearly ripped her throat out again right then, this insistence of putting everyone before herself driving him shoqing crazy.

He had to get away from her. That was the only thought he could get clear in his mind through the dagger being stabbed over and over into his malfunctioning brain: I can be nowhere near her.

The realization killed him.

A sound from the passage ahead made Threxin stop in his tracks. He narrowed his eyes, tightening apertures to prevent light leaking through and giving away his position.

"I can smell you," the voice bounced off the walls.

Orion Halen.

He came out of the shadows ahead, sparkling eyes visible before anything else. It was like looking in a mirror, really, when you looked at nothing but those cyan slits. Despite a more human appearance in those pinprick pupils, the inner core of them was all uhyre. They were kin.

"What happened?" The rest of Orion came into view. He had his hands shoved into the front pockets of his pants, striding forward calmly. He stopped a few paces away and waited.

"Leave me, human." Threxin was not in the mood to deal with anyone else .

"I can't. You reek. It's making me want to go kill something. Or fuck it. Or both. Probably both."

"Good you have your female then, no?" Threxin snarled, the limiter banging a futile protest in his head.

Orion Halen's mouth quirked into a smirk, one eyebrow rising. "Jealous?"

Threxin's fist was around Orion Halen's neck before his head had realized what he was doing. He'd dragged the human sideways and slammed him into the wall, talons wet with droplets of blood seeping from Halen's skin. For a moment he thought the human might try to fight. He saw the flash of it there, on his face. Instead, Orion's mouth twisted into a mocking smirk as he fought for breath.

"So did it work?" he choked out.

"What?" Threxin growled out a low mutter, fingers flexing into the human's broken skin. Orion didn't even flinch.

"The vaccine," he coughed. "Did it work on my wife's assistant while you two were sneaking around behind her back?"

He froze, limiter churning as apprehension and fury washed over him by turns. Threxin released the human's neck, backing away. Orion Halen seemed entirely nonplussed, pressing a palm to his neck and watching with mild curiosity as his hand came away red with blood.

"When did you know?" Threxin asked dryly, deciding how he was going to hide the body.

"Oh, months ago, of course. Did you enjoy watching me fuck my wife? Is that what did it? No…" Orion Halen scratched his chin with his bloodied hand absently. "You were in the passage together by then. You must've already been… involved."

Threxin's talons twitched. "Who else knows? Your female?"

"Of course not. Kaia has enough to deal with. Like using her blood so you can have your vaccine for your little fuck toy. I'm surprised you even bothered to wait for it. I thought you'd already had her hooked long ago, until I saw how enthusiastic you were about the vaccine. Then I realized you care about this one."

Threxin was tempted to finish strangling him, but Orion's eyes turned suddenly serious, the smirk leaving his face.

"Well? Was the vaccine effective?"

Of course it was.

Threxin thought back, reflecting on Alina Argoud's physical state after she had ingested his exorin for the first time. Arousal was expected. It could be difficult to tell apart the symptoms of normal arousal and an exorin response, but Threxin had observed the test subjects closely enough to feel confident in his ability to tell.

"It worked," he concluded gruffly.

Orion studied him with a knowing look in his eye that Threxin did not appreciate. He remained very still, body seemingly relaxed but in that false way that told Threxin he was actually really shoqing tense. "Is she alive?"

It was, of course, a reasonable question considering what had almost just happened, but he hated that Orion Halen was the one confronting him with it now.

"Yes," he ground out.

A short nod from his lowly kin, and then Orion unwound and began to move past him. "Keep it that way, all right?"

"I intend to." Threxin tracked the ousted commander of his ship as he walked past.

Threxin told himself it was simply Orion's knowledge of their destination that was keeping him from murdering the man who had discovered their secret on the spot. Discovered it long ago, apparently. But that wasn't it—not really.

Orion Halen knew what it was to care for a human. He may be mostly human himself, but Threxin had smelled and witnessed the uhyre within him, and Orion had no limiter to keep him in check.

If anything, Orion was stronger than Threxin could ever hope to be.