Or rather, he lurched and half—ran/half—stumbled over the red hills with Kiera in his arms, driven entirely by instinct and desperate love and the fading scraps of his mind. Her body bounced lightly against his chest with each step and every time she did, panic stabbed through him afresh because she remained far too still.
“Kiera,” he muttered desperately. Or perhaps he only thought it. He was no longer entirely sure which sounds were leaving his mouth, and which remained trapped in his head. “Stay with me. Stay.”
The wind brought her scent to him constantly—cold skin, fear, the chemical trace of Higgs’ drug, and beneath it all the sweetness that was hers and hers alone. He clung to it. Followed it the way a drowning male might cling to a floating branch.
Home. Need home. Need to warm her.
The sanctuary blurred around him as he crossed it. He vaguely registered the shimmer of the enclosure barriers, the movement of some small creature darting in the meadow, the high idiotic cry of a theeble somewhere in the distance.
“Good boy! Good boy!”
The words meant nothing. In his deteriorating mind they sounded like, “Hurry! Hurry!”
At last the rounded shape of the home-dome rose before him. Brux nearly sobbed with relief.
Door. Need open. How?
For one awful second he stared at the silver panel and could not remember how it worked. It was just a hard shining thing in his path while Kiera’s body grew colder and colder against him.
Then memory flared. Palm. Her palm. Enough mind remained for that, thank the Goddess.
Brux shifted Kiera awkwardly in his arms and pressed her limp hand to the door panel. Green light outlined her fingers and the soft sexless voice murmured something he did not understand—only the tone mattered. Welcome. Open.
The door whooshed aside, and warmth spilled over them.
Brux carried his mate inside at once.
The home-dome smelled like her–that was the first thing he noticed as he staggered through the curving hallway toward the bathing suite. Her scent was everywhere—in the walls, the living furniture, the coverlet in the bedroom they passed, the air itself. It should have soothed him. Instead it only sharpened his urgency.
Need warm. Need water.
His thoughts were almost gone now.
No more trial. No more shuttle. No more Higgs. Those things were gone–torn away like dead leaves in a storm. There was only action and instinct and need.
The bathing suite…steam…water. Yes.
Brux stumbled inside and nearly dropped Kiera in his hurry to get her there. Somehow he did not. Somehow he still managed to lower her carefully onto the warm stone beside the pool.
Strip. He had to get the freezing clothes off her.
His fingers felt clumsy and strange now–too large and too blunt, as though even his humanoid hands were forgetting themselves. But he tore at her clothes with frantic care, peeling away her t—shirt and jeans and the underthings beneath, baring her chilled skin to the warm mist of the room. The ropes binding her wrists got in the way, but he bowed his head and bit through them–his fangs made it easy. At last, she was nude.
She looked terribly still. Brux whined deep in his throat.
Then he stripped too. Shirt first, already half—shredded and sticky with his own blood. Then the rest. He barely understood what he was doing, only that barriers had to go. Fur to skin. Heat to skin. Water.
He climbed into the pool with her in his arms and the warm water closed around them in a rush.
For a heartbeat he nearly sagged with relief.
Warm. Good.
But Kiera remained cold.
Brux cradled her against his chest, holding her so close he could feel every line of her body against him. Her head fell against his shoulder. Her braids floated out around them in the steaming water. He gathered her tighter, curling around her as best he could despite the wounds pulling and healing and itching all at once along his side.
His mind was almost gone now. Words had become fragments.
