The combat instincts had risen up from somewhere deep inside him—not memories exactly, but reflexes, patterns of movement drilled so thoroughly into muscle and nerve that they transcended conscious thought. He didn’t know where theycame from. The cyborg donor, perhaps, or some echo of his own warrior past that had survived the long sleep.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the threats were neutralized.
He turned back towards Alina?—
And froze.
Martin had moved while Rhyx was dealing with the guards. The coward hadn’t tried to fight, hadn’t tried to help his fallen men. Instead, he’d circled around, positioning himself behind Alina, and now…
Now he had a knife pressed against her throat.
“Don’t move.” Martin’s voice was high, reedy with panic, but his hand was steady enough. The blade gleamed in the pale Martian light, its edge resting against the vulnerable curve of Alina’s neck. “Don’t you fucking move, or I’ll?—”
“Martin.” Alina’s voice was very small, very calm. The calm of someone who knew that panic would only make things worse. “Martin, please. You don’t want to do this.”
“Shut up.” He jerked her closer, and Rhyx saw a thin line of blood appear where the blade pressed too hard against her skin. “Just shut up. This is your fault. All of this is your fault. If you’d just—if you’d been reasonable?—”
Rhyx’s fury had gone cold. The burning rage that had driven him to eliminate the guards was gone, replaced by something far more dangerous—a crystalline clarity that narrowed the entire world down to a single point.
The knife at her throat.
Everything else—Martin’s ranting, the unconscious guards, the thin whistle of wind through the cave opening, the distant rumble of approaching vehicles—all of it faded to insignificance. There was only the blade. Only the blood. Only Alina, her brown eyes wide with fear, her hands hanging useless at her sides because she knew that any sudden movement might be her last.
“Release her.”
The words came out flat, empty of the rage that churned beneath his surface. He couldn’t afford to let Martin see how close he was to losing control entirely. Couldn’t afford to give the male any excuse to panic, to make a mistake, to hurt her.
“Release her, and I will let you live.”
“You think I’m stupid?” Martin laughed, high and ugly. “The moment I let her go, you’ll kill me.”
“Perhaps.” Rhyx took a single step forward. Slow. Careful. Non-threatening. “But if you harm her, I will not kill you. I will unmake you. I will tear you apart piece by piece, and I will ensure that you live through every moment of it. Your death will take days. Weeks. You will beg me to end it, and I will refuse.”
Martin’s face went gray.
“You’re bluffing.”
“I am not.” Another step. “I am a warrior of the Var’thaal. We do not bluff. We do not threaten. We simply act.” He let some of the cold fury bleed into his voice. “Release my mate. Now.”
“She’s not your mate.” Martin’s grip tightened, and Alina winced as the knife pressed harder. “She’s mine. She was always supposed to be mine. And if I can’t have her?—”
He moved.
Not towards Rhyx—even in his madness, Martin wasn’t stupid enough to think he could win that confrontation. Instead, he shoved Alina sideways, towards the steep drop at the edge of the cave opening. The ledge they stood on was perhaps thirty meters above the valley floor, and Alina was falling, tumbling towards the edge, her hands scrabbling for purchase on the loose rock?—
NO.
Rhyx lunged.
And something changed.
There was pressure building inside him—had been building since the confrontation began, since the guards raised their weapons, since Martin put a knife to Alina’s throat. He’d been ignoring it, pushing it down, focusing everything on the immediate threat. But now, with Alina falling, with the ground rushing up to meet her, with death reaching its cold fingers towards his mate?—
The pressure exploded.
Pain lanced through his back, sharp and searing, and he felt something tear—not fabric, not flesh, but something deeper, something that had been waiting inside him for longer than he could comprehend. Wings unfurled from his shoulder blades, massive and golden, catching the thin Martian air and lifting him off the ground.
He reached Alina just as her fingers slipped from the ledge.
