I knew this. Recognized the symptoms from survival training, from missions that had gone wrong.
Knowing didn't make it easier.
My mate was out there somewhere.
But I couldn't reach her.
Couldn't protect her from whatever these humans were telling her, whatever evil they were doing to her.
I'd failed her.
My claws scraped against the floor. The sound was thin, pathetic. Nothing like the threat I wanted to project.
I forced myself upright anyway. Braced my back against the wall, ignored the way my wings screamed in protest at being folded wrong for so long. My legs trembled under my weight but held.
Warrior discipline. I'd survived worse than this. Had endured missions designed to break me, had flown out of situations that should have killed me.
I could survive this.
Had to survive this.
For her.
Sound filtered through the door.
I tensed. I would not let them kill me easily.
The footsteps grew closer. Stopped outside my door.
I pushed away from the wall. My vision blurred at the edges, but I blinked it clear, focused on the dark rectangle that was the only way in or out.
Metal scraped against metal.
I dropped into a crouch. Low center of gravity, ready to spring. My hands were still bound, but I had claws, had fangs,had a lifetime of training in how to kill things bigger and better armed than myself.
Come on then.
The door swung inward.
Lexa stepped in, haloed in almost blinding light.
For a heartbeat, I couldn't process what I was seeing. My mind stuttered, tried to reconcile the image of her here, now, real and whole and moving toward me with purpose.
Her scent hit me.
Sweet and sharp and absolutely, undeniably real. Not the phantom traces I'd been chasing in my own head, not the memory of how she smelled. This was her, present and immediate and filling the small space with everything I'd been drowning without.
She rushed to me. Her hands found my face, cupped my jaw, tilted my head so she could look me over. Her eyes were fierce, cataloging damage with the ferocity of an angered mate.
"Nyx." My name on her lips cracked something open in my chest. "God, what did they do to you?"
I tried to answer. My throat produced nothing but a rasp that barely qualified as sound, air moving over tissue too damaged to shape words.
Her expression shifted. "Those bastards." She turned her attention to my wrists, found the mechanism holding the restraints closed. Her fingers worked quickly, pressing around in some mysterious sequence I could have never guessed. The cuffs sprang open with a click.
Freedom.
I pulled my hands forward, felt blood rush back into fingers that had gone numb. The pain was exquisite, nerve endings firing all at once as circulation returned. I didn't care.
