Page 39 of Chained to the Champion
“Is it?” If that wing didn't heal, we'd be trying our luck out of there on foot, and I didn't like our odds.
He resisted. Pride was not decorative with Zarvash; it was carved deep into his bones. But then there was another sound, somewhere between a grunt and the click of a tongue. He presented the wounded wing, the gesture a surrender and a dare.
I unwound the binding carefully. The membrane underneath was ugly, swollen, inflamed, scales an oil-slick sheen that was worryingly dark. My own shoulder tingled in sympathy, imagining old injuries lit by pain.
“God, Zarvash.” My touch skimmed along the edge, feather-light, afraid of shattering more than just pride. “Does … this …?” I pressed, just shy of the most discolored joint.
Air hissed between his teeth. “Karys’s flaming breath, yes.”
I jerked back, palm stinging from the memory. “You can’t keep ignoring this.” Soft, but the threat of fury was there, coiled inside helplessness. “I think this is infected. We need to find a healer. If you want to survive?—”
“I am aware.” He growled it, but softer, pain, not anger, vibrating through each word. “I do not require a human to tally my failures.”
I could have snapped, spat back an arsenal of barbed retorts. Instead, the exhaustion won out. “Fine. Lose it. Die spectacularly. Let someone else mop up your mess.” I rose, and water sloshed and splattered my boots.
He caught my wrist, lightning fast. Not bruising, just undeniable. Those claws thrummed under my pulse, a reminder of what he could be. What he chose not to be.
“I did not mean …” His jaw jumped, a muscle ticking. Eyes molten gold and troubled. “Weakness. It is not … permitted. Here.” A confession forced through teeth. The kind of thing I’d seen break men and monsters alike.
Something twisted in me. Anger gone, replaced by longing or dread, I couldn’t tell them apart anymore. “We’re both in the fire.”
I went back to his wing, wrapping it in fresh strips torn from my own faded tunic, soft, worn, heavy with the ghost of soap and sweat. It was the most I could give. When I finished, silence thickened, hot, expectant, like the space before lightning.
“Try not to lose it tomorrow,” I managed, attempting a smirk.
A dry, half-chuckle rattled his chest, the sound ghostly after so much violence. “Your concern is noted.”
“Self-preservation. I’m not breaking out without my seven-foot death machine.” The joke hurt, familiar and barbed.
He turned. The eyes that found me were shadowed, but the gold sparked, hunger, longing, need, or simply the certainty that neither of us were immune. “Is that all I am, Vega? Death?”
The question landed between us like a dropped weapon, fatal, if you hesitated too long. My logic supplied all the right reasons to turn away, but it was already too late. My body was drawn, hooked on the current of him, and I didn’t want to swim free.
“What else,” I whispered, closer now, “would you be to me?”
He moved, a predator’s grace in every inch. The heat of his body spilled into mine, breath hot with the promise of fire. Spice and metal. Lightning in a bottle.
“You know,” he rumbled. No room for doubt in his tone.
My heart battered my ribs like a hawk on volcanic updrafts. My reflexes screamedturn back,abort,retreat. I shut them up with a single breath, closing the gap.
His mouth on mine was nothing like the hunger I’d imagined, sharp and bruising. No, this was a question, a prayer. Lips scorching-soft, sliding over mine, salt and copper and dark honey, tasting of blood and iron and everything I didn’t have a name for. A tremor licked through me, equal parts terror and awe.
He pulled back, only enough for his forehead to rest against mine, the air charged and wild. His claws cupped the back of my neck, impossibly gentle, somehow. “Do you want me to stop?”
The word hovered at the back of my throat. Stop. This is madness. This is?—
“No,” I breathed instead. Not surrender. Command.
Something in him loosened. Before I could regret it, his mouth was back on mine, demand rising with the kiss. More pressure, more hunger: tongue tracing, requesting, tasting. I parted, heat and want dissolving caution, and he slid inside, a question that answered itself.
The world shrank to the fire burning along that line, mouth to mouth, chest to chest, pain to want.
I felt a rumble begin deep in his chest before it was heard. He shifted, pulling me up and over, until I straddled his lap. His hands, big enough to crush me, settled at my hips—cool scales losing their chill with each heartbeat. His chest, all hard planes and ancient scars, pressed to mine. My hands moved by instinct to his shoulders—mapping each patch of scale, cataloguing every uneven seam and battle worn ridge.
“Veshari,” he ground out against my mouth, a word, a vow, a wound refusing to close. “I have wanted?—”
“Shh.” I pressed my forehead to his. “No words. Just?—”
