Complete silence.
I stood at the edge, breathing hard through the pain radiating from my cracked ribs. My hand pressed to my pregnant bellywhere the eggs rested. Still safe. Still protected. The ribs hurt but the eggs were fine and that was what mattered.
One threat eliminated.
I ran back toward the main chamber despite agony lancing through my flank, unable to stop because I had to know if Drav was winning. Had to be there if he needed me, if Kethar was too much for him to handle alone.
Drav and Kethar were still fighting somewhere high above The Eyrie. I could hear them—the sounds of aerial combat echoing off cliff faces, wings beating and claws tearing and roaring.
Pressing my back to the cold obsidian for stability, I scanned the ceiling, because the ribs were intensifying instead of better. They were there maybe three hundred feet above me, circling each other in the air. Both bleeding. Both exhausted. Kethar's damaged wing was barely functional, keeping him aloft through sheer desperate will. Drav had new gashes across his chest that hadn't been there when he'd launched.
As I watched, Kethar dove in what had to be one final desperate strike. Drav met him head-on and they collided mid-air, grappling with claws and teeth, both of them falling now in a tangle of wings and limbs, tumbling toward the cliff face below.
At the last possible second, Drav broke free and opened his wings, catching air and pulling up.
Kethar didn't. His damaged wing couldn't deploy fast enough and he hit the cliff face at full speed.
The impact was audible even from where I stood—a crushing impact against the stone. Final. Kethar's body slid down the rock face and landed on a ledge thirty feet above me, motionless.
Drav circled once, confirming the kill, then landed beside Kethar's broken body.
I started climbing up to them, moving slowly but needing to see it, needing to know it was truly over. The climb that shouldhave taken five minutes took ten because I had to stop and breathe through the pain.
Kethar was still alive when I reached them. Barely.
His spine was broken—I could see it in the way his body lay at that wrong angle. Multiple bones shattered throughout his frame. Internal bleeding that was probably already catastrophic. He had minutes left at most, probably less.
Drav crouched beside him. "It's over."
"I know." Kethar's voice was wet with blood in his lungs. "Vhel?"
"Dead. Fell through unstable floor in the caves." I knelt on Kethar's other side, moving with a stiff caution that betrayed the fire in my side. "Your plan failed."
"Most plans do when you're desperate enough to try them." Kethar coughed and more blood came up. "Desperation breeds poor strategy. I knew that going in. Attacked anyway because I had to try something."
"Why?" I asked, genuinely curious despite everything. "You knew you'd probably die. Why not just... accept it? Die with dignity instead of attacking a bonded pair?"
"Because dying alone in a cave is worse than dying fighting for something." Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. "Thought maybe I'd get lucky. Thought maybe desperate enough would be strong enough."
Drav looked at me and I nodded, understanding what he was asking without words.
"You fought well," Drav said, positioning his hands carefully at the base of Kethar's skull. "You deserved better than this system gave you."
"Maybe." Kethar's lips curved in something that might have been a smile if he'd had the strength. "Tell the next desperate male you meet—don't attack bonded pairs. The humans are stronger than they look."
"I'll tell them."
One quick motion and vertebrae separated cleanly. Kethar's body went still, finally released from the pain and the sickness and the desperation that had driven him here.
Drav and I sat beside the body in silence for several long moments, both of us processing what we'd just done. What we'd had to do.
"We should move him," I said eventually when I could speak again. "Give him to the scavengers so his death serves some purpose."
"Yes." Drav stood slowly, wincing from his injuries sustained in the aerial fight. Then he looked at me properly for the first time since landing, actually seeing me instead of just the threat we'd eliminated. "He saw me. You're hurt."
"Vhel caught me before I led him to the trap. Claws to the ribs." I tried to breathe normally and failed, the sharp pain making shallow breaths necessary. "Cracked. Maybe two of them broken."
He was on me in a second, hands careful but thorough as they felt my ribs, assessing the damage. Then his palms slid down to cup the swell of my stomach. "The eggs?"
