In death, he was staring at her, his eyes wide open. Gone was the brilliant gold of his irises. The entire surface of both his eyes had been bleached milky white.
But it was almost as if he were… looking at her.
Cold air touched her bare thighs and pussy as a gloved hand encircled Arin’s neck, clenching tightly so she could barely breathe. “Be a good girl and stay quiet now,” her attacker whispered into her ear. “Otherwise, we’ll have to restrain you.”
His words faded away, becoming a faint buzz in the background.
Arin wasn’t focusing on him anymore, because Rykal’s mouth was moving.
Maybe she was going insane.
No, it reallywasmoving. He was trying to mouth silent words to her, but she couldn’t lip-read, because he didn’t have any fucking lips left. What was he trying to say?
Her heart started to hammer as hope fluttered in her chest, faint and tenuous.
And then the man straddling her froze. He swore. His companion swore.
Because Rykal’s hand had shot up and grabbed the scientist by the arm, and then Arin understood what he’d been trying to tell her.
Don’t watch.
Hope rose in her heart like a solar flare as the scientist screamed. Her attacker cursed and got up off her, dropping off the table as he and his companion ran out of her room and into the glass-walled room.
Bad move on their part.
A deep, shuddering sigh escaped Arin as she stared at Rykal’s burned body.
Bruised, battered, and horribly disfigured beyond recognition, he was coming to life, like a modern-day Frankenstein.
A true monster in every sense of the word.
Her glorious monster. It didn’t matter if he was hideous or beautiful. He was hers, and nothing was going to change that.
Not the Federation, or the Empire, or even a fucking nuclear missile.
Rykal’s deformed hand gripped the scientist’s arm. There was a crack, and the man’s screams tore through the silence.
And despite what she’dthoughthe’d been trying to tell her, Arin couldn’t look away. She was transfixed by the scene before her. The air was thick with a sense of impending horror, even as her heart swelled with hope.
She didn’t know whether Rykal would ever fully recover from the damage he’d taken, but even at a fraction of his usual strength, these humans would be no match for him.
Shit was about to get brutal, and Arin couldn’t look away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Pain invaded his consciousness. He couldn’t see because his eyes had been burned. He couldn’t smell, because the small fibers of his olfactory nerve had probably been seared in the blast. But he could still hear, and he’d heardeverythingthose humans had said to his beautiful mate.
They’d restrained her, stripped her, and tried toviolateher right in front of him.
Her soft gasps, laced with pain and fury, had drawn him out of his comatose state, thrusting him into a world of darkness where everything was agony, and those pitiful humans scurried about, thinking they could mess with him and mess with his mate.
Despicable humans. They had almost killed him, and then ironically, they had saved him.
Because if his body hadn’t been brought to this place, he would have died in space, starved of oxygen, his nanites in desperate need of protein as they guarded his most vital organs. They were eating away what was left of his flesh; his muscles, connective tissue, and skin, in order to protect and maintain the necessities of life. They surrounded his heart,brain, major blood vessels, and abdominal organs, sustaining him even as Kaiin, lord of death, called his name, trying to drag him into the underworld.
A dark vortex opened up inside him, a swirling mass of hatred and fury and emptiness. He could barely move because his muscle tissue was hopelessly depleted, but as the human approached, he drew on the cold fury within him and willed himself to move.
He drew on his pain, embracing agony.
