Every rational instinct I possess is screaming at me to push the rock away, politely decline the alien blood-vow, and run away as fast as my trembling legs can carry me before I end up backed into a dark corner by a glowing warlord.
But my body ignores my brain. My right hand closes around the stone like a starving animal, and shoves it into the front pocket of my pants.
I should, but I don’t return it. I don’t acknowledge it to anyone either. But for the rest of the day, as I haul water, as I sort the rations, as I bandage scraped knuckles, I keep my handshoved deep into my pocket. My thumb rubs relentlessly over the sharp, carved edges of the symbol until my skin is raw.
By late afternoon,the sick bay is quiet. Ain’s heat makes the air in the cavern stale and difficult to breathe.
I am leaning against the cool stone archway of the healing alcove, staring blankly at dwindling supplies in the first aid kit and actively trying not to panic about the logistics of keeping twenty women alive, when Tina sits up.
It’s the first time her back has left the sleeping mat since the funeral. Her face is pale, drawn tight with the physical toll of the planet sickness. Her thin wrists look like they could snap under the weight of her own arms. But her eyes are clear. The fever is broken.
She pulls the hide blanket weakly up to her chin, shivering slightly in the draft.
Haroth is standing exactly three feet away.
Like all Drakav he is terrifying. He is easily the width of a small refrigerator, his skin a beautiful, deep copper-amber, etched with raised hunting scars. And he is currently attempting to look inconspicuously busy sorting a pile of dried firebloom leaves on a totally unnecessary stone ledge.
He is doing a terrible job.
He drops a handful of leaves onto the floor because his golden eyes are helplessly locked on Tina.
“Hovering,” Alex says dryly, not looking up from where she is wrapping a clean bandage over a scraped knee near the back wall. “It’s like living with a fully armed shadow that has severe separation anxiety.”
Tina doesn’t look away from the alien warrior.
Haroth realizes she is watching him and he freezes. His broad shoulders lock. He snaps his gaze instantly back to the ledge, staring at the crushed leaves as if they contain the vital secrets of the universe, pretending he wasn’t just staring at her with the devoted intensity of a starving dog.
Tina smiles. It is a small, weak, soft thing.
She reaches out a trembling hand, picks up a broken firebloom leaf from the edge of her bed, and holds it out toward him.
Haroth looks at the leaf. He looks at her hand.
He crosses the three feet of space in a single, fluid motion. He doesn’t just take the leaf. His callused hand envelops her tiny fingers, holding them gently, reverently, for three long seconds. He doesn’t say a word. Neither does she. They don’t have the mindspace yet. They don’t even speak a single word of the same language.
I watch them from the archway. The air in my lungs feels suddenly, painfully tight.
Without realizing it, my right hand slides deep into my pocket. My thumb finds the smooth, warm curve of the black stone, pressing hard into the jagged carving until it physically hurts.
I don’t even seehim coming.
Two hours before sundown, I am trying to roll bandages and trying not to think about the terrifying blood-vow rock currently burning a hole in my pocket, when a towering shadow eclipses the dim cavern light.
Before I can even blink, a callused hand simply closes over my shoulder. The furnace heat of him bleeds right throughmy thin shirt as he turns me around. Using the unstoppable momentum of his frame, he herds me away from the sick bay and directly down into the lower armory.
My heart attempts to beat directly out of my throat. I am certain he is dragging me into the dark to strip me out of my clothes and press me against a cavern wall. My brain is screaming at me to retain some shred of human dignity, but my body ignores the logic. My pulse is hammering so hard my vision spots. A sudden panicked thought hits me about whether he even possesses the correct mating anatomy yet, and exactly how my frail human bones will survive the sheer size of it if he does.
But my blood is running so hot with frantic anticipation that I don’t even care.
But instead of throwing me against the cave wall and ruining me for human men forever, Kol stops abruptly in front of a weapons rack. He turns around and shoves a jagged, carved bone-knife that must weigh as much as my own leg directly into my chest.
Oh.
We aren’t hooking up. We are disassembling living creatures.
I stare blankly at the bone weapon in my hands. A hot wave of disappointment crashes straight through my stomach. I know Lucek’s clan is currently circling. I know the threat of a violent attack hangs over the entire cavern. But as I stand in the middle of the dark armory holding a lethal knife, my body is fixated on the heat radiating off the towering alien standing inches away from me.
“Hold,” Kol grates out, the Drakavian word buzzing into English through my translator.
