My legs gave out.
He caught me. Arms around my waist, supporting my weight. His face filled my vision, silver eyes wide with something that looked like terror.
"Stay with me," he said. An order. A plea.
I tried to answer. My mouth wouldn't work. The world was tilting, colors bleeding into each other. Shock. I was going into shock.
His hand pressed against my side, trying to slow the bleeding. It hurt. God, it hurt.
"Kyvara, stay conscious. Look at me."
That word again. The one he wouldn't explain. It sounded important. Like it meant something.
I wanted to ask. Wanted to demand answers. Wanted to tell him I'd killed a fucking firebird, and he should be impressed.
But darkness was creeping in at the edges. Soft. Inviting. So much easier than fighting.
His face was the last thing I saw. Those silver eyes, desperate and fierce. His mouth moving, words I couldn't hear over the rushing in my ears.
I was safe. That was the last coherent thought I managed. He wouldn't let me die.
Then the darkness took me.
7
NYX
Lexa’s bloodcoated my hands, slick and too warm, the scent of it drowning everything else. My claws trembled as I peeled back the shredded leather of her shirt, exposing pale skin marred by three parallel gashes. The firebird's talons had caught her across the ribs, torn through fabric and flesh like it was nothing.
My vision tunneled. The world narrowed to those wounds, to the dark blood welling from torn skin, to the too-shallow rise and fall of her chest.
She could have died.
The thought sent fury roaring through my veins. I wanted to go back, find every firebird that had fled, tear them apart with my bare hands. Wanted to paint the desert with their blood, make them pay for daring to touch what was mine.
Mine.
The word pulsed through me with each heartbeat. Primal. Absolute. Beyond reason or control.
I forced my breathing to slow. Forced my hands to steady. Rage wouldn't help her now. She needed me calm, competent, able to assess the damage and stop the bleeding before shock took her somewhere I couldn't follow.
I could do that. I'd treated battlefield wounds before, patched up warriors mid-combat, kept soldiers functional long enough to get them to real healers.
This was different.
This wasmy mate, unconscious and bleeding in my arms, her face too pale, her scent wrong with the copper tang of blood and the acrid residue of firebird flame.
I examined the wounds with shaking hands. Three gashes, each as long as my palm. Deep enough to bleed freely but not deep enough to have hit anything vital—at least I didn’t think so. I wasn’t intimately familiar with human physiology, but a flesh wound was a flesh wound. The firebird had caught her with the tips of its talons, a glancing blow rather than a killing strike.
Lucky.
We'd been so lucky.
My tail coiled around her waist, pulling her closer against my chest. I needed to feel her breathing, needed the proof that she was alive, that I hadn't failed to protect her.
The other wounds were less severe. Scrapes along her shoulder where she'd hit rock. Bruising already darkening her side. Minor burns on her forearm from firebird flame, blistered skin that would hurt like hells when she woke.
When. Not if.
