Makrath crouched beside her. Close enough to touch. His helm turned toward her, that featureless surface tilted in a way that radiated concern.
She tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her side, and she gasped.
His hand pressed against her shoulder, gentle but firm, keeping her down.
"Easy," she managed. "I'm okay."
The sound he made was pure disagreement.
She looked down at herself. Her armor had sealed her wounds—the bio-material knitting over torn flesh—but she could see the damage beneath. The gash across her side was ugly, held together by the suit's emergency protocols. Her bicep was wrapped in dark webbing that pulsed faintly with warmth.
His armor, she realized. He'd used part of his own bio-suit to bandage her.
"What was that thing?" she asked. "The one that attacked me."
A pause. Then sounds—low, clicking, alien—with English layered over them like a second voice from the same throat. The translator's work, rendering his language into hers while his true voice rumbled beneath. "Khelar. Scout. Hunting."
"Hunting what?"
His hand was still on her shoulder. Warm through the armor. Grounding.
"You. The one I chose. They would take you. Use you against me. Against my kind."
She processed that. The Khelar had been hunting her because she was his. Because hurting her would hurt him. Because somewhere in the political landscape of species she barely understood, she had become a target.
"How did it get here? I thought the island was?—"
"Monitored. Protected." His voice was sharper now. Anger, barely contained. "It should not have passed. Someone failed. Someone will answer."
She heard what he wasn't saying. Someone would die for this.
"You came," she said quietly. "You found me."
Another pause. Then, softer: "I always know where you are."
Of course he did. Five days of tracking her, watching her, circling her in the darkness. He probably knew her body better than she did.
The thought settled into her like truth.
"I thought I was going to die." The words came out before she could stop them. "I closed my eyes, and I thought about Aria, and Angelo, and—" Her voice cracked. "And you. I thought about never knowing what this could be."
He was motionless. That predator-stillness she'd seen before. Waiting. Listening.
"I understand now," she continued. "What you are. What you're capable of. I watched you kill that thing, and I understood that the only reason I'm still alive is because you wanted me alive. Because the rules protected me. If you'd wanted me dead at any point?—"
"I would never."
The words came fast. Fierce. More emotion than she'd heard from him in five days.
"I know." She reached up, found his hand on her shoulder, covered it with her own. "That's not what I mean. I mean... I understand what you've been giving me. This Hunt. The chase. Letting me believe I had a chance. It was a gift."
Silence.
"I want you," she said. "I've wanted you since the first time I saw you on that ridge, and it terrifies me, and I don't care. I came to this island for money. I can barely remember why that mattered." She took a breath. "You saved my life today, and that's not why I'm sitting here wanting to touch you again."
He moved slowly, deliberately. His hand came up to cup her jaw, and this time the touch was fierce. Possessive. His thumb pressed against her lower lip, and she felt the tremor in him, the barely-restrained hunger.
"Serafina." Her name, rough as gravel. "The Hunt is not over. But when it ends…”
