Arin was already craving air. She couldn’t hold her breath for all that long. She held it to her face and inhaled deeply. “You’re hurt,” he said gently, withdrawing his fingers from her face.
Arin winced. “A few superficial burns, that’s all.” She closed her eyes as a horrible realization hit her. “But the others are dead, aren’t they?”
At first, Rykal’s expression bordered on callous. Anger flickered in his golden eyes, but it dimmed as he looked at Arin. “I am sorry,” he said finally.
Arin dropped her face into her hands and let out a cry of frustration. This was the very thing she’d been so desperate to avoid. Too many had already been lost, and now these soldiers’ lives had been claimed by the disintegrating freighter.
They’d been sent to rescue her, and she couldn’t help but feel responsible for their deaths.
Something gentle dropped onto her shoulder.
Rykal’s hand. “We have to go,” he said slowly, and it was the sound of his voice that forced her to pull herself together.
She knew he didn’t care much about the dead humans, but at least he’d made the effort to acknowledge her sadness. He would never be human, but he’d shown he was capable of learning empathy.
“Now, how do we leave this place, Sergeant? The environment is volatile, and I don’t want you to remain here any longer.”
A series of dullboomsshook the freighter, shaking the walls and floor. Overhead pipes rattled, and there was a great groan as the freighter listed slightly to one side.
Rykal wrapped his arms around her as the floor tilted diagonally, preventing her from falling
“The fire must have ignited the gas in the pipes.” Cold dread filled her. This thing was indeed a floating death-trap. She thought hard and fast. Her rescue team had probably come in on a small, fast craft. But they wouldn’t have been able to enter any of the docking bays without someone in navigation operating the airlocks. That was the standard security setup for a freighter like this.
“I’m guessing there’s a getaway craft hovering somewhere outside.” The logistics of getting onto such a vessel would be tricky. First, they would have to convince the pilot to let them on. Then, they would have to attempt a quick space transfer. Without the proper equipment, the wrong move could send her careening off into space. Maneuvering in zero Gs was always risky.
Rykal inclined his head, a strange expression on his face. After a while, Arin realized someone was communicating with him. He seemed to have some sort of hidden comm device - an implant maybe - that allowed him to communicate with his comrades at will. Rykal replied tersely in Kordolian, and Arin found the strange, lyrical sounds of his native language incredibly sexy as they dropped from his lips.
Shit. She shouldn’t be thinking about such things at a time like this.
“My people are coming back to get us,” he informed her. “I believe the first docking bay’s airlock failed to close properly. We will go down there and wait.”
Arin nodded, studying him carefully. Even though he acted normally and spoke normally, he wasn’t breathing at all. His chest was perfectly still. It was slightly unnerving. He was like a living silver statue, carved from unbreakable stone. She removed the respirator from her face and handed it to him. “Don’t forget to breathe.”
Rykal gently pushed the apparatus away. “I can last long enough without it.” His look was one of mild surprise, as if her concern for him were something out of the ordinary.
Arin wasn’t used to being looked after either, but when Rykal worried about her, it only felt natural.
“Let’s go.” He drank her in with his luminous golden eyes, handing her his soul in a glance.
He showed her everything: his worry, his anger, his darkness, his light, his emptiness.
And he invited her in.
“Come.”
Her cheeks stung, her throat burned, and her legs felt like jelly, but all of those things faded into the background as she took his hand.
Arin had stared death in the face before being snatched from its jaws by her lover. She wouldn’t die here. There was too much they still had to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was movement in the air when there shouldn’t have been. Rykal led Arin into the main dock, searching for any means of escape. The First Division was looping around, ordering the old human pilot to maneuver theArawenback to Docking Bay One.
But they couldn’t enter or exit, because there was nobody to operate the airlocks.
As they strode across the vast floor of the docking bay, Rykal saw the reason for the draft. A stream of air was being sucked into the airlock and out into space, because it was partly open.
There was a narrow gap between the inner doors, just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.
