Chapter 48

CHAPTER 48

THREXIN

A lina grew increasingly more nervous with each passing tick while they waited. Threxin did not know what time it was—whether it was early or late. Honestly, he wished for nothing more than to retire to Alina Argoud's cabin and sleep in her bed for a week. Something he could barely afford to do considering their next jump was fast approaching.

When the door hissed open, Alina practically jumped off the bed, making every hunting instinct in Threxin jump to life. He shoved his tongue into his cheek, squeezing his eyes shut against the impulse. Alina settled and even moved resolutely closer to Threxin's side—stupid, stupid human. Threxin was so busy observing the nervous lines etched into her face that he didn't see who entered until the red female's voice reached him.

"What the fuck…" Kaia Halena was standing behind her male in the doorway. "What the fuck are you doing to her?"

Alina bit her lip, and Threxin saw the tension tremble in her as she met her charge's eyes. Kaia Halena looked enraged. Orion Halen looked utterly bored.

"Kaia…" Alina started, clearing her throat as her voice cracked .

Kaia's eyes narrowed. "Alina, what are you doing?"

"We need your help." His female stepped between them, cutting his line of sight to Kaia Halena's poison glare, and a good thing too, because the red female could really use a shoqing lesson in glaring at an uhyre like that. Threxin felt a growl rising in his throat, and Alina must've heard it, because she cleared her throat again and stepped forward to the red female.

"Kaia, I can explain everything, but for now we need your help."

"My help." Kaia looked to Orion, whose arm snaked around her waist and held her to his side.

"You got your Neurosync late. What… How did you learn to control it?"

Threxin saw the realization dawn on his distant kin as he looked from Alina Argoud to him in the bed.

"How did you know it worked?" Alina pressed.

Kaia Halena raised a brow. "So, what, uhyre are getting our implants now too?"

"Do not talk to me of implants, human," Threxin growled, reaching up from the bed to shove Alina to the side with a sweep of his arm. She faltered, making a pained sound as her weight landed on her previously injured leg.

Humans really were deliciously breakable.

"My kind have had implants drilled into our brains years before you had yours, shredding our brains until there's nothing left," Threxin snarled, glowering at the red female now that his Alina was not blocking the way. "If you want your people to live, you should hope this procedure worked."

His human-kin's female must have seen the change in Threxin because no retort came from her tongue. Then again, it could have been more about Orion Halen clamping a firm hand on the curve between her neck and shoulder and delivering a decisive squeeze. He leaned forward to mutter something in her ear. When his eyes came up to land on his Alina, Threxin began to rise so he could rip his eyeballs from their sockets. Black fury tightened on his ribs, constricting his chest and clawing up his throat. It seeped through the veins in his tongue, drawing spikes and exorin to the roof of his mouth.

Renza noticed.

"Everyone out," his brother snapped, stepping between them.

"What? No, we—" But Renza didn't wait for Alina Argoud to finish before he grabbed for her arm and began pulling her toward him.

Threxin was there in less than a tick. His fangs were bared and exorin spittle flying as he landed a fist into his brother's sharp jaw, sending Renza back before he could gather the female or his bearings.

"Stay the shoq away from her," Threxin hissed in Apthian, yanking the female violently against his chest with one hand on her belly and the other on her chest. He felt the moment her taut body went limp against him, each muscle relaxing, one by one. Alina Argoud was not a relaxed person by nature, which is how he knew she was doing it on purpose.

"Are you trying not to provoke me, female?" He ground out against her ear, mouth twitching up with a satisfied smirk. "You are a good learner."

The problem, of course, and the reason his talons still grappled for her, had nothing at all to do with her submission. It was them . They were all staring at him. They would try to take her away from him any moment. They would strike, and he would be ready.

Renza regained himself with the calm professionalism of one who still had a functional limiter: by straying his hand to the pistol at his hip.

That was when Alina reacted.

"No!" She lurched forward, awakening Threxin's instinct to carve his talons further into her flesh. She would not be going anywhere .

Threxin growled, slamming her backward. Her rapid pulse beckoned to his fangs, and he let the exorin splatter on her shoulder. He snarled at his brother, who had not yet touched the gun but hovered just above it.

"Fucking hell," someone said from the door.

That's right. The red bitch. Let her watch. Let her see that her "assistant" was his now. Threxin's hold on his female tightened until he felt something wet and satisfying beneath the pads of his fingers.

The red female stepped forward then. "You fucker, leave her?—"

"Kaia, please," Alina begged, her voice small and strained as Kaia Halena approached. "Please stay back. You can't risk the baby."

Kaia did stop then, cocking her head to the side. "The baby?"

Alina Argoud seemed to wither in his arms. "I know you're pregnant, Kaia. You've been so sick, and you kept needing the medbay?—"

"I'm not fucking pregnant, Alina, I was sick because I was getting drained of blood and ingesting this asshole's poison—" she motioned to Threxin "—to use my exorin immunity for a vaccine."

Alina's pulse kicked up under the hand Threxin had over her chest. He wanted to sink his fangs into her neck and feel it from the inside. He lowered his face to her skin, inhaling the terror oozing from her pores.

"You…" she choked. "You're immune?"

Kaia Halena glared between them, realization forming on her face. "So that's why he fucking wanted it… Alina, you don't know what you've gotten yourself into?—"

Threxin snarled as Kaia Halena stretched her hand toward his Alina, his talons digging into meat. Kaia froze in place as her eyes fixed on Alina's.

"Look," she spoke fast, holding out what he supposed must have been a placating palm—only it just made him want to rip her hand off. "The NS should feel like… like everything coming to you all at once."

"I feel nothing," Threxin barked.

It did not work.

His tunnel vision came to Renza, begging for him to shoot already even as his body prepared to dive for his weapon.

Lesthin and Renza exchanged glances.

"My brain blocked it off for a few minutes too," Kaia pressed. "Just… Take a deep breath and think of nothing. Relax."

All heads in the room swiveled toward the human female telling an activated uhyre to relax, and Kaia threw up her hands and let them flop to her sides. "Fuck if I know how he's meant to do that, but he has to!"

"Your hak," Alina spoke up, reaching out a hand to Renza. She winced as Threxin's hold on her chest and waist tightened. Her other hand, he realized, was atop his own, palm stroking his knuckles. Threxin tried to focus on that touch. "Give me your hak."

Renza's crimson eyes never left Threxin as he placed the roll into Alina Argoud's palm. He extracted a firedagger from his pocket, moving slowly as he activated it just enough to light the hak.

Threxin stared at the hand with the weapon until it was put away.

Alina twisted her neck to look up at him and lifted the hak to her mouth first. She took a deep inhale, then tilted her chin up and to the side, blowing the smoke back up to Threxin's face.

It smelled good. That barely-there itch from secondhand hak lit up a familiar sensation. Threxin tightened the hand he had around his female's waist and lifted the one on her chest. It came away red as he took the roll from her and put it between his lips .

As the smoke crept down his throat, etching well-worn pathways and settling in his lungs, Threxin vaguely registered that the red on his hand would be blood. It was smeared on the roll between his fingers and, when he looked down, Alina Argoud's torn shirt. Something tugged at the back of his mind, and Threxin flinched instinctively, expecting the limiter to drive nails into his head.

Only there was no limiter.

There was only this other thing. This thing his Alina also had.

Threxin let the thread of it pull at him, held taut between bone and brain matter. He watched her face over her shoulder, fixing his eyes on the flash of blunt white teeth indenting her lower lip as she guided his hand to his mouth with her own, encouraging him to take another lungful of the mineral.

There was a grating sound from one of the four undesirable presences in their space and Threxin's spikes flattened, itching. He narrowed his eyes at Lesthin, who had been its source. His female diverted her attention from him and toward the room. Threxin hissed through his fangs.

"Can you leave us?" Alina asked.

"No," Renza and Kaia Halena said at the same time.

"Please, I… I think you're making it worse," Alina said. "He won't hurt me."

"Alina, have you seen yourself?" Kaia spat. "He's hurting you now."

Threxin snarled at her over the top of his female's head and Alina made a not-dissimilar sound.

"Oh, will you all get the fuck out already?" she snapped. "I'm the one bleeding all over the goddamn floor here, so maybe you can do what I shoqing say this one time. Please!"

The outburst took even Threxin aback, and her human-accented use of an Apthian curse made him huff with amusement.

Renza was the first to comply .

"Go," his brother directed the humans out the door.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Kaia hissed, but Orion Halen was already pulling her out by the arm before Renza could do it himself.

And then they were alone.