Her blood keeps soaking into my shirt.
It keeps smelling like copper and heat and something that makes the back of my tongue tingle in a way that has no business being erotic or sacred or anything except deeply, catastrophically inconvenient right now.
The jalshagar answers the scent with another violent surge.
Mine.
“No,” I snarl aloud, my voice going low and rough and not entirely human. “She is not an object. She is not a fucking prize. You will shut up or I will burn you out of my own nervous system if I have to.”
I start moving again.
Faster.
Deeper into the alley network.
Every footstep sends a jolt of pain through my ribs where debris hit me, but I welcome it because it gives my brain something else to focus on besides the impossible gravitational pull of the woman bleeding out against my chest.
She shifts weakly.
Her fingers twitch against my collarbone.
The contact is electric.
My vision goes white around the edges.
“Oh fuck,” I hiss, and nearly lose the cage entirely.
“Easy,” I whisper to her, my voice dropping into something I don’t recognize. “Don’t move. You’re okay. You’re okay. I’m getting you out.”
I am lying.
I don’t know where I’m taking her yet.
I just know I cannot stop.
I round a corner hard and nearly plow into a stack of garbage crates, twisting at the last second to avoid slamming her into them and taking the impact across my own shoulder instead.
Pain explodes down my arm.
Good.
Stay in the pain.
Stay in the now.
Stay out of her blood and the sound of her breathing and the way my body is trying to rewrite the laws of my life around her existence.
My hands are still shaking.
Not stopping.
Not even slowing.
She is limp.
Warm.
Bleeding.
