Page 66 of Broken Triad

I have no idea. All I know is that if anyone can survive Scorp venom, it’s these three.

I leave the cloths on their foreheads and touch their necks at the artery. They have the same pulse, their hearts beating as if they are one, and it’s steadier, slowing yet growing in strength, filling me with hope.

I sing to them, a song I can’t remember the words to, one from something deep in my memories when I was a child, sick in bed with my mom standing over me, singing in her angelic voice in the soothing tones that made everything better.

Hours pass. Endless hours, until Krazak’s eyes slowly open.

His irises are bright green. Every vein in his body is infused with venom. He’s grown bigger, his muscles huger, and he looks beautiful yet masculine, the green contrasting against his gorgeous marble skin.

“You’re alive,” I say, my heart bursting with joy.

He blinks, and turns his head to me, his gaze cold.

“Leave.”

Those eyes are the brightest, cruelest green.

“What? Krazak, no. You’re alive. It worked and—”

“Silence!” He booms out the word. Bolden is slowly coming awake. I’ve never heard him so impatient. “I am no longer the man you know. I will not damn a child to this pain, a cursed offspring like Obsidian.” He tries to get up, but he’s too weak. I reach out to stroke his head, but he has the strength to shrug off my touch as if it’s poison, pushing me away.

“What are you talking about?”

“That is the only thing we can bring into this world. We are not meant for you, Lola. War is our destiny.”

“War made you empty.”

“We are made to be empty.” He groans and, with inhuman effort, stands to his full height. His cock is already surging up with renewed need, but he forces it down, grabbing me, throwing me over his shoulder as I protest.

He walks slowly, each step careful, but he ignores my every word as I try to convince him to put me down, just for a moment. I get a view of Khra, still in the pool, his head lolled against his shoulder but his chest moving with his breath, and I know he is alive, and that gives me the smallest comfort as Krazak brings me to my little mining scout ship and straps me into the seat. He does something with the controls I don’t understand.

“Goodbye, Lola,” he says, and closes the door. I try to open it, but it’s locked somehow from the outside, and the ship hums to life, the engine rumbling as it takes off. I grab the controls, but they don’t recognize my input, hijacked by whatever he just did to it.

Tears stream down my cheeks. After everything we endured, after all the pain, there will be no future with his triad.

He didn’t chose his war over me.

He chose nothing.

26

KHRA

Iam alive.

I am alive, and I hate. It’s an emotion I’ve felt before, but never like this, a pure, unending rage. It is all I know as I wake from a sleep as deep as death, a sleep I was not meant to wake from.

I was meant to be consumed by Scorp venom and renewed or obliterated, but I’ve been changed, changed in my core. There is a vivid green pool of anger than encompasses me.

I reach for my smartwatch. It’s shattered on my wrist. I growl in frustration, pull it from my wrist, and slam it against the rock until it breaks into pieces, and pull myself from the cool waters. I look at my forearm. The veins running down it are bright green, and I have power like never before.

I crave the rush of war. I lick my lips, imagining ripping Emperor Raegan’s throat with my bare hands. What would his blood taste like?

Lola.

I try to find her. I breathe in, but there is only the faint hint of her scent on the rocks.

She is gone.

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