“I’m scared.”
The image of my chest caving in under the weight of a rival warrior burns across the link, filled with my pure, unfiltered panic.
His broad hands slam flat against the freezing rock on either side of my head.
A dense pressure floods the center of my brain. It smothers the panicked image of the rival warrior instantly. The weight of him occupying my mind presses down on my spine so hard my knees buckle.
But right at the base of my skull, the connection splinters.
A tremor bleeds through the bridge. One that hits my brain like ice.
It is absolute dread.
Kol bows his head, burying his face in the crook of my neck. His chest heaves against my collarbone in a ragged pull of air. The solid mountain of muscle trapping me against the rock is shaking.
It is the most intimate thing another creature has ever shown me.
I pull back, breaking the contact. My breathing sounds thin in the quiet tunnel.
“What are you afraid of?” I whisper aloud.
He turns slightly, his broad chest rising with a long, labored breath. He doesn’t look toward the desert where the enemy approaches. He looks down at me.
His sprawling hand comes up to touch the center of his chest, right over where his heart should be. Then, his hand sweeps the empty air between us before resting briefly over the handle of the bone blade at his hip.
Finally, he makes a sharp, breaking motion with both his hands that makes me jerk a little.
My throat closes.
His golden eyes burn into mine.
Slowly, he reaches out. His claw curls around the back of my neck, his thick thumb anchoring directly over my nape.
“Ain kah vol-ressa,” he says aloud, the guttural syllables grating against his throat. “Vol-ressa kah tor-vakh.”
My earbud crackles weakly....Ain... not ...fear... tor-vakh.
“Ain does not know fear.”
“Fear does not survive tor-vakh.”
My chest aches.
“It is a truth.”
The voice echoes in my head. Not through the earbud. Not through my own mind. Just... there. Before I can even parse that, his hands slam directly onto my hips, gripping me with a strength that bruises, and he crashes his forehead against mine.
The mindspace bridge tears wide open again.
“They come for the females,” his thought roars through the connection and his glow flares bright enough that I have to close my eyes. “They will not have you.”
Before I can even drag a breath into my lungs, he lifts my entire body off the ground and drives me backward.
My spine hits the solid rock wall of the narrow tunnel.
He sets me down hard on a jagged stone ledge, forearms shoving my knees apart so he can step between my legs.
And then he stops.
