34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

So I’m looking a bit see-through.

Caleb. Caleb. Caleb . His name circled my mind as I stared at the blank screen. I couldn’t think; I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move.

The door to Command slid open, and an irked voice asked, “What was the great emergency? I was attempting to sleep for but a moment to gather my thoughts and I was interrupted.” Fynlincoxmin tightened the pink silky robe around him.

Commander Bimwoxcol replied, “The leader of the boobas, or perhaps just this ship, contacted us.”

His mouth fell open. “Seriously? Seriously?” He crowded closer to her. “Tell me everything. Better yet, did anyone think to record it? Viable information can be learned from the slightest tic. Show me now.”

As Bimwoxcol pulled up the recorded feed and Fynlincoxmin babbled about how he should have never attempted to rest, Dontilvynsan curled his tail around mine and motioned for the rest of our brothers to follow as he led me out of Command. He moved to his office and everyone slid in behind me.

I was frozen against the wall, panting. Words swirled around me with little meaning. Monqilcolnen was saying something about the shields and our weapons, but I couldn’t focus.

All I heard was Caleb’s panicked cry. He didn’t want to leave me, any more than I desired to be apart from him, but the boobaas were going to take him away, and there was nothing I could do.

Perhaps Caleb would escape from Tatas’s clutch and slide out of the ship.

My head jerked up. “I need to see a monitor of the space surrounding the boobaas’s ship.”

Serlotmiden paused in the middle of his sentence, then asked, “What?”

“Do you think Caleb will get away?” Seth asked.

“He might. I need to see. Now.” I said, racing to Dontilvynsan’s desk and poking at his screen. He pushed me away and pulled up the exterior sensors with a few taps of his fingers. I studied his screen as images of the boobaas’s ship appeared before me. I didn’t see anything.

“Caleb,” I whispered. “Where are you?”

“I do not wish to sleep.”

Kalvoxrencol stood in front of me, arms crossed. All of my brothers had tried to pull me away from the monitors displaying the boobaas’s ship, but I refused to shift.

Caleb was somewhere within that vessel.

Dontilvynsan had tried to ping the boobaas multiple times, but they refused to respond. The Coalition’s support ships were still hours away. The boobaas might leave before the Coalition even arrived to assist if they finished repairing their ship.

Seth popped out from behind Kalvoxrencol and grabbed my wrist. He stared at me with his deep brown eyes, his odd, round pupils so like Caleb’s. “Come on, Fyn. You need to sleep, even if it’s for a few minutes. Caleb will find you.”

I twisted in his grasp and held his hand while my eyes flicked to Kalvoxrencol. I practically saw the stress in his shoulders and in the way his tail thrashed. Being as close as we were, sometimes the pain of one of us became the pain of both of us.

“I will rest.”

His shoulders relaxed, and he wound his tail around mine. “Thank you.”

I squeezed his tail before shaking Kalvoxrencol and Seth off. I left Command without a backward glance and went straight to the quarters I was staying in. Once inside, I sank to the couch to grab my screen and pulled up the sensor feeds. I might have abandoned Command, but I wasn’t going to stop searching for my mate. Sleep was impossible when I knew he was in danger, and they were foolish to believe otherwise.

My gaze never deviated from the shifting images as I scoured every frame for Caleb. He had to be somewhere. I couldn’t live with the alternative of the boobaas leaving with him. He was mine, and he belonged here with me. We belonged together.

A shiver went down my spine. The shared space had turned frightfully cold. Something must be wrong with the environmental controls. I let it go and studied the sensor images, determined to catch sight of my mate, somewhere.

When another tremor went up my spine, I paused, breath turning harsh. My head snapped up. Caleb stood in the middle of the room, shivering violently.

“Caleb,” I breathed, something relaxing deep within me. He didn’t react to my voice, though. I rushed toward him, brushing his spirit, and I yanked back, hissing. Caleb was so cold, he froze my very scales. I clenched my fingers into a tight fist in an attempt to warm them.

“Caleb,” I said again, and he stared blankly back. “Mate, please speak to me.” His body trembled. I tried to touch him, but the cold emanating from him was too extreme.

An idea formed in the back of my mind, and I shoved my hand into my pocket. “Kalvoxrencol,” I said into the glowing blue touchstone.

“Zoltilvoxfyn, what’s going on?” he asked moments later.

“Come to my quarters. Now.” I disconnected and raised the temperature in the shared space. It wouldn’t help Caleb like direct heat, but it was better than nothing. I then forced myself to press against him. “Mate, I’m right here.”

I kept whispering reassuring words to Caleb as I traced my fingers over him, but he didn’t react. “Caleb,” I said, unable to keep the broken tone from my voice. The gray had spread to the whole of his body. My Caleb was steadily ripping apart.

“Oh, Mate, I’m sorry,” I told him. I shouldn’t have started courting him or allowed him to remain. I’d failed him. Completely and utterly failed him.

The door opened without permission, and Kalvoxrencol strode inside alone. “Zoltilvoxfyn?”

“Caleb is here and freezing cold. I need you to unleash your inner fire.”

“Where is he?”

I directed Kalvoxrencol to stand behind Caleb, and light pooled under his scales. Heat poured off him in waves, and Caleb didn’t react. I traced my fingers down his arm. He twitched. Placing my mouth near his ear, I whispered, “Caleb.”

He jolted.

I brushed the tip of my nose over his frozen spirit, ignoring the cold that burned my scales. “My Caleb.”

“It hurts,” he whimpered.

My soul clenched. “What? Pest’s light or the cold?”

“Cold. So cold.”

“Am I hurting him?” Kalvoxrencol asked as the burning light dimmed.

“No,” I ordered. “Don’t stop, Pest.”

Sometimes I had a hard time remembering that everyone didn’t see or hear Caleb as I did. From his perspective, he stood a small distance in front of me while I spoke to no one. Though he had to feel the cold coming off Caleb.

“Place your hands on me, Mate,” I said.

Caleb shifted as close as he could without disappearing inside of me. I traced my fingers up and down Caleb’s back as Kalvoxrencol let off a steady heat and light. My chest was frozen by Caleb, but my fingers and face were burning from Kalvoxrencol’s inner fire, both equally uncomfortable, but I remained quiet.

My wings slid out to envelop Caleb and Kalvoxrencol in my embrace. The light burned the delicate membrane of my wings, but I gritted my teeth, ignoring it. Kalvoxrencol glanced at me, and the light dimmed.

I growled at him.

“I’m hurting you,” Kalvoxrencol whispered.

“Caleb needs it.”

Kalvoxrencol’s wings escaped from his shirt and rested under mine, trapping more of the heat with Caleb in the center. My breath turned harsh, though Kalvoxrencol did not react. His own inner fire didn’t bother him, no matter how hot he burned.

After a bit, Caleb stopped shivering and relaxed against me. When touching his soul didn’t freeze me, I said, “He’s fine now, Kalvoxrencol.”

The light vanished, and his wings retreated under his shirt. He slipped out of my quarters without a word to give me and Caleb privacy and to, no doubt, tell our brothers of his return.

My fingers continued to move over his back, brushing through the outline of his soul. Whether he perceived my touch or not, I couldn’t stop myself. I needed reassurance of Caleb’s presence. He was here. He was safe.

My eyes flicked down to his slight form, and my soul clenched. Caleb was transparent. He’d always been fuzzy on the edges, but this was different. More extreme. I easily saw the floor through his soul; Caleb was barely here.

“Mate, can you tell me what happened?”

He didn’t respond and continued to huddle against me, almost as if intended to crawl inside of me.

Not speaking, I continued to keep my arms around my mate and pretended to hold him within my embrace, like I could keep him here by sheer force of will.

Everything hurt. I recognized the pain was rather faint, but years had passed since the last time I truly experienced pain, barring that short stint after the last time I’d vanished, and I didn’t know what to do with it or how to cope. My Sunshine kept speaking to me, but his words floated in one ear and out the other. While I didn’t understand what he said, the even timbre of his voice soothed me. Like sunlight, his fingers trailed over my back, and I adored the slight pressure.

Each time I vanished and reappeared since meeting Fyn, my physical awareness had grown exponentially. Though, I doubted it was wise to keep disappearing. Perversely, that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to scrape Sunshine’s scales across my nonexistent skin. I wanted to kiss his lips. I wanted to feel him. All of him.

What I truly wanted was to be alive. But that ship had gone and sailed. On the other hand, if I hadn’t died all those years ago, I wouldn’t be here with Fyn right now. There was no choice between the two. I would pick Sunshine over life, over physical sensations, over existence itself.

My gaze moved upward, and Fyn was already looking at me. “Told you I would come back,” I said.

“Yes, you did.”

I went up on my toes. “Hello, Sunshine.”

“Greetings, Little Soul.”

Sliding out of his arms, I peered down at my body. I finally looked like the ghost I was. I could see through my arm to the wall and I’d turned mostly gray.

“Well, fuck.”

Fyn brushed my cheek and asked, voice grave, “How did you escape?”

“You know how.”

“You made yourself vanish.”

“I focused as hard as possible to come back to you.” My tether. How he was my tether before I’d even known he existed seemed implausible. But for better or worse, my soul was tied to Zoltilvoxfyn, and to move on meant I had to let go of him, which would never happen.