His wings faltered for a moment, disrupting their smooth glide. “Back?”
“To the cave. My samples—I left them when Martin…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “We need them, and we need to—to hide what happened. If anyone finds the bodies, if they realize what you are?—”
“I understand.” His voice had gone flat, the joy of flight bleeding away into grim acceptance. “No one can see me.”
“I’m sorry.” The words felt inadequate, pathetic even. Here he was, soaring through the sky for the first time in millennia, and she was forcing him back to earth because of human politics and corporate greed. “I know this isn’t fair. I know you deserve better than hiding in caves and running from?—”
“Alina.” He cut her off, not unkindly. “You are my mate. Your safety is my purpose. I do not resent the necessity.”
“You should.”
“Perhaps.” His wings tilted again, banking them in a wide curve back towards the mountains. “But I do not. I have my wings. I have you. The rest…” He pressed a kiss against her hair. “The rest we will figure out together.”
The descent was faster than the climb, Rhyx’s wings folding partially to reduce their lift and increase their speed. Alina kept her face pressed against his chest, unwilling to watch the ground rushing up to meet them, trusting him to land them safely.
He did.
His feet touched down on the rocky ledge with barely a sound, his wings flaring out behind him to arrest their momentum. For a moment he stood there, magnificent and impossible, his golden scales gleaming in the pale light and his wings spread wide enough to cast shadows across the cave entrance.
Then the wings began to fold.
Alina watched, fascinated despite everything, as the massive pinions collapsed inward, folding and shrinking and absorbing back into his body. The process took only seconds, but it seemed to happen in slow motion—feathers becoming scales becoming smooth golden skin, the complex architecture of flight disappearing into nothing.
When it was done, there was no trace that the wings had ever existed. No bulges, no scars, no evidence at all except for two thick ridges running parallel down his spine.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.” He rolled his shoulders experimentally. “It feels… strange. As if a part of me is sleeping rather than gone.”
“Can you bring them back?”
“I believe so.” He turned to face her, and she could see the question in his eyes—the hope, the longing, the desperate wish that she would tell him to unfurl them again and take her back into the sky. “When it is safe.”
When it is safe. Such simple words. Such an impossible standard.
“We should hurry.” She forced herself to move, to focus on the practical tasks rather than the emotions threatening to overwhelm her. “The samples first, then…”
She trailed off, her gaze landing on the two guards lying motionless near the cave entrance.
They hadn’t moved since Rhyx had knocked them down. One lay on his back, his helmet visor shattered and dark, his arm bent at an angle that arms weren’t supposed to bend. The other wascrumpled on his side, his jaw clearly broken even through the distortion of his faceplate.
Dead. Both of them, almost certainly. Rhyx had been fast, decisive, brutal in their elimination, and she hadn’t even registered it at the time because Martin had a knife at her throat and she’d been too busy trying not to die.
I watched three men die today.
The thought should have horrified her. Should have sent her spiraling into shock or guilt or some other appropriate emotional response. But all she felt was a cold, hollow numbness—the recognition that those men had tried to capture Rhyx, had pointed weapons at him, had been prepared to take him alive or dead on Martin’s orders.
They’d chosen their side. They’d paid the price.
“Alina.” Rhyx’s voice was soft. “I will deal with them.”
“Deal with—” She stopped, understanding dawning. “You mean…”
“They cannot be found here. Not if we want to conceal what happened.” He moved towards the bodies with the efficient grace of someone who’d done this before, in another life, another time. “Martin fell. His guards fell with him. A tragic accident in the unstable terrain.”
“That’s…” She swallowed hard. “That’s cold.”
“Yes.” He didn’t apologize, didn’t try to soften it. “Is it wrong?”
