“No.” The projection drops into my skull like an anvil and I frown.Howam I hearing him? This isn’t the first time that?—
“Erika.”
Jacqui is standing ten feet away, her face smeared with a mixture of sand and dried blood. She is dead-on exhausted. But her gaze is razor sharp.
“I can’t check outside,” I tell her, my voice rising. I gesture at the looming wall of black-skinned muscle caging me in. “He won’t let me within thirty feet of a tunnel.”
Jacqui stares at me. “Stop.”
“I can’t stop. There could be men bleeding out in the dust out there?—”
“Erika. Stop.” Jacqui closes the distance and grabs my wrist. Hard. “Stop moving. Just stop for one second.”
I clench my jaw.
“You’re shaking,” Jacqui says flatly. “You’ve gone white. You’re about to drop.”
“I’m fine.” The words crack down the middle.
Jacqui squeezes my wrist. “Go sit down.”
The back of my throat burns. The cavern suddenly feels devoid of oxygen.
“Later,” I choke out.
“I’m holding the main floor,” Jacqui replies, dropping my arm. “Go.”
I turn abruptly. Kol moves with me instantly, his searing heat snapping back into the center of my periphery. I keep my chin tucked to my chest. Past the central fire pit. Past the blood-soaked sleeping mats. Into the suffocating dark of the rear tunnel.
A narrow fissure splits the rock wall. I wedge myself inside. I hit the jagged stone back-first, sliding straight down until my knees crack against the dust. Kol fills the entrance. His broad shoulders block the cavern light. We are sealed in absolute blackness.
Both my hands slam over my mouth.
My chest heaves. Hot, blinding tears pour out, cutting fresh tracks through the dust and blood caked on my cheeks. I shake hard enough to rattle my own teeth.
“Alex,” I choke out against my palms.
My lungs refuse to expand. The oxygen will not come.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, my brain short-circuiting. “I should have been faster. She’s gone, she’s gone?—”
Kol watches me. He is bleeding from a deep claw gouge across his ribs. He is swaying on his feet, the black starfield actively burning out the last of his gold patches.
But his black eyes do not leave my face.
Then he drops to his knees.
His sprawling hands flank my waist. He hauls me bodily off the stone, dragging my numb frame squarely into his lap. My face smashes into the solid, ridged wall of his chest. Thick arms instantly wrap around my back, consuming me.
His skin is a literal furnace but the heat is comforting. It sinks directly into my freezing marrow, overriding the frigid air of the deep rock. Overriding the fear.
I bury my forehead into the curve of his shoulder.
He shifts, forcing his dense thighs tight against my hips. He rests his jaw squarely on top of my head, locking his face into my hair. The thick column of his throat begins to vibrate.
A low, continuous rumble kicks up deep in his chest.
The purr travels straight through the starfield skin, into my ribs, into my blood.
