Her stranger didn't look done as he stood over the soldier. His body remained locked in the fight, his muscles stiff through his uniform. He unleashed a quiet and dissatisfied groan, taking a single step back. “Leave the bodies. Cuff the survivor. Help is coming to clean up.”
“I'll stay until they get here,” the friend said. He withdrew something from his pack and drew medicine into a syringe before administering it to the man. “This will keep him out. Go.”
The masked man walked toward her now. In his wake, he left dead bodies and one man who likely wished to be among them.
Kira's knees threatened to buckle.
CHAPTER 31
Kira
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
833 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
The mind worked in strange ways in the face of death. Thoughts both slowed and sped. Fixated and blocked out. Looking at her stranger with the crisis waning, all those thoughts and feelings that only managed to scratch at Kira's mind flooded her.
The feel of his scar burned on her fingers, and she saw him clearly.
Every confounding piece of him slid into place. Every single piece.
Seeing him standing before her in this mask and uniform, those memories of the past sharpened in her mind and collided with the present, overlaying the sharp cut of his shoulders, the way he moved and spoke, that stubborn refusal of kindness.
Coming into his heat, she finally allowed herself to feel that electric air and impossible tug. Her body knowing, remembering, what her mind couldn't grasp. Not just tonight, but every single time she’d ever seen him.
His goggles reflected her eyes back at her, the hot tears lining them spilling over.
She spoke resolutely. “Take off your mask.”
During the fight, he couldn't have been closer, but right now, he felt far away, even though he stood within reach, like he never truly returned to her after that night.
No response from him. No movement.
Kira didn't need to feel beneath his collarbone to confirm what she felt with her entire body.
A plea tightened her every muscle. Frustration.
Her voice hitched—broken and desperate and demanding. “Zayne.”
A beat of silence. Of their heavy breathing in the dark.
She barely heard her own whisper. “Take it off.”
Zayne just stared at her, hidden by that mask he'd worn every time he'd ever seen her, even when she saw his face just fine. For years she burned for this man to return to her, and he'd been with her in captivity every day, refusing to touch her or say her name. Refusing to look at her when he knew who she was from the beginning.
When he knew he had kissed her and protected her for three years.
Zayne had done far more than intervene with Dr. Cooper to protect her. Far more than pretend to hate her to thwart the manipulation. And he'd never been indifferent to her. He'd watched over her and protected her since the night he found her hiding in the cabinet. In a dance of pulling her close to save her and pushing her far, far away for the same reasons.
Oh, she saw it all so clearly now.
Every lie. Every act of protection. Every time he donned his mask.
Behind them, his friend turned away, giving them privacy.
His friend, the one who always came when Zayne didn't want to, who warned her last year, who carried her to the medical room after the tank, who whisked her into the night to escape.
