Drazex stops. His grip tightens, and the predator surfaces in the set of his jaw, the stillness that settles over his body.
“I want the males who took my Chosen to be found.” The words come out low, lethal.
“Vezra's people scattered when word spread, my lord. We don't have identities for the ones who—”
“I marked them.” Both males turn toward me. “Three of them, at least. One has claw marks down his face. Deep ones. Another has a bite wound on his forearm, human teeth. A third has a shattered kneecap. He won't be walking without a limp.”
Korrel's expression shifts into what might be respect. “That narrows the search.”
Drazex's tone drops into the register that makes other males flinch. “Bring them to me alive. I want them conscious when I return their hospitality.”
Korrel rises, fist still pressed to his chest. “It will be done, my lord.”
He disappears down the corridor at a pace that suggests he understands the cost of failure. Drazex watches him go, tension radiating from every line of his body.
“You marked them.” His silver eyes hold mine with an intensity that coils heat low in my belly. “My little medic with her combat training.”
I lift my chin. “I didn’t make it easy for them to take me.”
He cups my jaw, tilts my face up, and the hunger in his expression has nothing to do with bloodshed. “When I'm finished with them, they'll regret drawing breath on the same planet as you.”
The words land in my chest and take root. Dark. Possessive. The knowledge that this male will hunt down everyone who hurt me and make them pay in blood.
I should be horrified by how much I want that.
I'm not.
My sleep clothes still carry the stains of this night. His blood. My blood. The blood of males who touched me and paid the price for it. The fabric should disgust me. Instead it reads as battle standard, proof that we survived what his father engineered to break us.
Drazex stops before a door I don't recognize. He presses his palm to the scanner, and the door slides open on a space I've never seen. Simple furniture. A bed wide enough to hold a Draveki frame with room to spare. Dim light that gentles the harsh angles of stone walls.
“These aren’t my quarters.” He doesn't step inside. “This is nowhere my father's shadow has touched.”
I understand what he's offering. A space without history. Without the weight of those first days when I was debt and he was danger and neither of us understood what we were becoming.
A beginning. Unmarked. Unchained.
Not his quarters, where Vorath's expectations seeped into every stone. Not the rooms he assigned me, where I counted ceiling cracks and wondered if I'd survive long enough to see my brother again. This is neutral ground. Unclaimed territory we can shape into whatever we choose to build.
Ours.The word rises, and I don’t push it away.
The door closes behind us, and he lowers me to my feet. My legs are weak, but they hold as I step into the space. Tension we've been carrying since he tore that cage apart loosens its hold on my spine. No threats looming beyond these walls, noconspiracy waiting to strike, no father orchestrating deaths from the shadows.
“We're safe.” The words taste strange in my mouth. Safety is an illusion the universe usually enjoys shattering.
“Yes.” He steps toward me, and his scent wraps around my senses until breathing becomes an act of claiming. Musk and heat and the particular warmth that lives beneath his charcoal skin.
“Maeve.” My name in his mouth lands differently than it did before. Softer. Morehim. The male I know exists beneath the harsh rules of a life imposed on him.
I reach for his face, my thumb scraping the stubble on his jaw. “I'm here, Drazex. And I'm not leaving.”
“You will never leave these quarters.” The command comes sharp, brittle at the edges. “I will not have you at risk because of me again.”
The authority lands without teeth. Beneath it, I read the fear he's trying to bury. Hours spent hunting, uncertain whether I was breathing, whether he'd reach me in time.
“I'll leave when I need to. And I won't spend a single moment worried about my safety.”
“Maeve—”
