3. Zyrus

3

ZYRUS

The lights went out at the same moment Astrid grunted. Instinct took over, and I sprang into action, getting between Astrid and her attacker and letting loose. I should have been a thing of madness and fury, a man defending his mate.

But I was still soulless. Cold. Logical.

It didn't matter. My fists connected all the same. The attacker was small, not as strong as me, but quick. I blocked a blow to the throat and struck a kidney, but the figure danced away and dived down toward my ankles, as if they could trip me up.

I jumped and kicked out, catching the attacker in the side. They hissed and backed off, and the lights flickered back to life. I reached out to stop them from running, but they tore out of my grasp and were gone before I got a good look.

I was ready to give chase. This person had dared to attack my mate. They would pay.

But Astrid made a small sound in the back of her throat, and I froze.

Another man might have ignored it, but I couldn't, not until I was sure Astrid was safe. And no force in the universe could make me leave her side just now.

It should have been emotional. I knew exactly who she was to me. Every night for eleven years I'd replayed our hour together, memorizing every detail, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, why she'd left. Before I sacrificed my soul, it had been a small torture. Afterwards, it didn't hurt to remember, but I made sure to keep it up, to remember my true purpose in life.

That purpose had no idea who I was.

I could see it every time she looked at me. Rather, I couldn't see it. She didn't remember that day on Honora Station. It hadn't recalibrated her entire existence. To her, I was just some alien.

When I had thoughts like that, I was not disappointed that I was still soulless. If I could feel and my mate thought I was nothing, there was no telling what I would do.

But why couldn't I feel her?

Two months ago, I would have said it was a simple fact of existence. But Ryklin and Drex had both found their mates, had somehow healed their minds so that they now felt just as much as anyone. What did I need to do?

Right now, I needed to help my mate, emotions be damned.

I got my arm around her and helped her to her feet. "Are you injured?" I asked. She looked a bit dazed, her hair falling out of its tie and eyes wide in fear.

"Who was that?" Her voice was steady. Even in fear, my mate was solid.

"I couldn't tell. Someone who can punch." My side ached from where they'd landed a lucky shot, but there would be no more damage than a bruise, nothing to be concerned about.

"Are you alright?" She stepped out of my embrace to fully look at me. My body missed her touch.

"Yes. And you?" She didn't appear to need a medic, but she was clutching her hand to her chest. "Let's go back to your quarters so I can look at that."

She made a face I couldn't interpret; it didn't look like something caused by pain. "It's just a cut. I scraped myself on the freaking wall. I can handle it."

"Let me; I have basic first aid training." It was true. It was logical. But that wasn't what was pushing me forward. My mate was injured, however superficially, and it was my responsibility to tend to that.

It was also my responsibility to make sure it didn't happen in the first place. I'd failed on one count, I wouldn't on the second.

Without another word, Astrid walked with me back to her room. The room had once belonged to a woman named Fran who'd been murdered by a Detyen determined to somehow circumvent the Denya Price. Detyens died at the age of thirty unless we found and claimed our mates. Everyone knew that. What they didn't know was the dirty secret of the Detyen Legion.

The soulless.

The Detyen Legion hadn't come up with the technology themselves. It had been discovered in the depths of a data drive, hidden under so many layers of encryption that it had never meant to see the light of day. The Legion may have never tried the procedure, but then Detya was destroyed, and our numbers were decimated. Since then, when a warrior approached his thirtieth year, he was given a choice: die with honor or sacrifice his emotions to remain living and serve the Legion.

It had never been a choice for me. I knew Astrid was out there, and I had to find her.

And then there were the people like me and my fellow ex-warriors who lived on Nebula Outposts. We'd all failed someway, showed some weakness that made the Legion question our right to exist. And we'd each escaped here to avoid a death sentence.

Life was short and brutally regimented for the soulless.

"Sit," I told Astrid once I locked the door to her quarters behind us. I grabbed the first aid kit from the bathroom and knelt at her feet to better tend her wound.

Astrid sucked in a deep breath. I didn't know why. I hadn't touched her yet.

"Give me your hand. Please." I added the last as an afterthought.

She hesitantly held it out, and I turned it palm up. It was a superficial injury. She'd barely bled, but there was a long scrape on her forearm that had torn the skin.

"Does it hurt?" I dabbed a sterile wipe along the wound. Every place my fingers touched her bare skin sent jolts of pain up my own hand, as if I was gripping ice cubes. But I wouldn't let go.

"It's fine." I could tell it was a lie. The skin around her lips was taut, she'd gone a bit pale, and there was a bead of sweat on her brow. That could have been the disinfectant, though. It stung to the deepest hells.

I rubbed a healing cream that contained a numbing agent over the wound and covered that with a bandage. She'd be as good as new in a day or so.

I couldn't let go of her hand. I should have. My body screamed at me that this was wrong, that the pain would only get worse the longer I held on. It was climbing up my arm now, a warning that I refused to heed.

Astrid wasn't pulling away either. Her gaze met mine, eyes boring in deep, as if looking long enough would unlock a puzzle. "Who are you, Zyrus?"

We'd been around one another for a week. She knew perfectly well who I was. That wasn't what she was asking. She wanted to know who I was to her .

She didn't remember.

The day we'd met was burned into my memory, the one constant in a life turned upside down more than once. But that day didn't mean the same to her.

I could tell her. Perhaps that would be the wise move. But a stubborn part of me that had survived even through the soulless procedure wanted her to remember me, wanted to see that recognition bloom.

Instead, I flipped her hand over and brushed a kiss against her knuckles.

Pain exploded in my head, and I ignored it all the same. I didn't feel emotion, not even with my mate, but I could feel this, and I had to believe it was proof that something was real between us.

She sucked in a deep breath, and her hand twitched in mine, but she still didn't pull away.

I could kiss her now. I could lean in and cover her lips with my own, taste her as I had once before. Perhaps that would remind the denya bond of who she was to me. Perhaps that would bring my emotions back so that I could claim my mate as I should have more than a decade ago.

I almost leaned in. But the pain in my head grew even worse until I heard Astrid curse and pull away. She leaned around me to grab a piece of gauze from the first aid kit.

"Your nose is bleeding," she said, holding the gauze in offering.

I took it.

Kissing would have to wait.