“Don’t you dare leave me,” I hissed against her ear as another wave of power surged through our connection. “We just found you. You don’t get to leave now.”
The starlight began to recede from her limbs, the fissures slowly closing as we absorbed the excess magic. Hope flared through the bond. It was working. We were taking the burden off of Jupiter exactly like a shield was supposed to. I already knewit would cost us. I knew without a doubt that this bond would become permanent if it hadn’t been before.
Her breathing steadied, the convulsions becoming less violent until, finally, she lay still in my arms.
“Is she...?” Aiden couldn’t finish the question.
I pressed my fingers to her throat, feeling for a pulse. It was there, weak and uneven, but present thank fuck. “She’s alive.”
Relief crashed through me with such force I nearly collapsed.
“We need to get her back to Dominion,” Draco said. “Their healers won’t know how to handle Ophis magic, but they can heal physical ones.”
I nodded, gathering her closer despite the protest from my wounded shoulder.
“I’ll carry her,” Eris offered, seeing me wince.
“No.” The word came out harsher than I meant it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of letting her go. “I’ve got her.”
As I stood with Jupiter cradled against my chest, I became aware of the stares from the other shield teams. They were looking at us—at her—with expressions ranging from wonder to fear to naked calculation. The whispers had already started.
“Fall back to the extraction point,” I ordered my shield, ignoring anyone trying to approach us. “No one touches her but us.”
The starlight I had absorbed from Jupiter still hummed beneath my skin, mixing with my own magic. I could feel the others experiencing the same thing, our bond with her deepening, strengthening with each moment. Whatever had happened here today had changed us all.
As we moved toward the extraction vehicles, Jupiter stirred in my arms, her eyelids fluttering. When she opened her eyes, they were silver again, not the burning suns of moments before.
“Percy?” she whispered, her voice so weak I had to bend my head to hear her.
“I’m here, honey.”
Her fingers weakly clutched at my combat suit. “You’re hurt…”
“I’m going to be fine, I promise.”
A small smile touched her lips before her eyes slipped closed again. “Good.”
The medical team met us at the extraction point, a mobile unit with equipment for treating magical injuries. I reluctantly placed Jupiter on the gurney, but I didn’t move from her side as they attached monitoring devices to her.
“Sir, we need to treat your shoulder,” one of the medics told me.
I ignored him, my eyes fixed on Jupiter’s pale face. The starlight was gone now, but I could still feel her magic pulsing through our bond, weaker than before but steady.
“Percy.” Draco’s hand landed on my uninjured shoulder. “Let them help you. We’ll watch her.”
I hesitated, then nodded curtly. As the medic led me to another gurney, I watched Aiden, Draco, and Eris position themselves around Jupiter like sentinels. None of them would let anyone near her who wasn’t absolutely necessary.
The medic cut away my combat suit to expose the wound. The bane’s claw had gone completely through my shoulder, leaving an exit wound on the back. Under normal circumstances, it would be excruciating, but all I could feel was Jupiter’s presence in my mind, the faint flutter of her consciousness against mine through our bond.
“This is going to need magical healing,” the medic said, cleaning around the edges of the wound. “You’re lucky it missed anything vital.”
I barely heard him. My attention was still fixed on Jupiter, on the way her chest rose and fell with each shallow breath. I had never been a man who feared much. I’d been raisedto face danger head-on, to calculate risks and accept losses as necessary. But watching her lying there, broken by her own power, I discovered a new kind of fear. The fear of losing something I hadn’t even known I wanted until it was nearly taken from me.
I needed her. Not just as an axis for our shield, not just as a weapon against the bane. I neededher.
“Cassandra wants to debrief as soon as you’re stable,” the medic said, pulling me from my thoughts as he applied a healing salve to my shoulder.
“Tell her she can wait,” I replied coldly. “Our axis needs us.”
