Page 29 of Survivor
“But I thought you....” The haunting image of his broken body refused to leave my mind.
His broad shoulders—noticeably broader than before—rose in a modest shrug. “I was hurt... dying, but then I heard you scream, and it... it awakened something within me.” A kaleidoscope of emotions flickered across his expressive eyes. “And I shifted.”
“Looks like all that training finally paid off.” I placed my palm against his cheek, thoughtraininghardly described the torture he’d endured at his mother’s hands in her attempts to force him to shift.
“Training had nothing to do with it.” Vraxxan leaned forward, his lips brushing mine in a kiss as delicate as butterfly wings. “I shifted because of you.”
“Me?” I blinked, utterly bewildered.
“All I could think about was protecting you,” he murmured, his thumbs caressing my cheeks with infinite tenderness. “When you screamed out in pain,” he shuddered visibly. “Everything after that is a blur until the creature lay dead and my father arrived.”
“Where is Vysar?“ I asked, suddenly aware of his absence.
“He has gone with the Peecha to remove the quasat’s carcass before it attracts other predators.”
I trembled again, remembering the monstrous size of the beast. Disposing of such a body would be no small feat.
“How does your leg feel?” Vraxxan asked, his voice laced with concern.
I flexed my foot experimentally. It ached like an overworked muscle after an intense workout. Curiosity drove me to pull back the blanket, revealing my injury. “Is that a leaf?”
“Yes.” Vraxxan’s long fingers played delicately at the edge of the verdant covering. “Ceeka, the Peecha healer, treated you with a special poultice. The quasat’s claws carry a bacterium that can be deadly.” His eyes met mine, raw emotion laid bare. “You nearly died. The fever consumed you for two days. I thought....” his voice broke, “I thought I was going to lose you forever.”
“I’m here,” I reassured him, capturing his hand and bringing his knuckles to my lips.
Vraxxan sighed deeply, leaning forward until our foreheads touched. “I have never been so terrified in all my existence.”
“I’m here,” I promised again, though the residual weakness in my body testified to how close I’d come to slipping away. “I guess I need to get Ceeka a gift for saving me. Do Peecha like jam?”
Vraxxan chuckled, but there was something mysterious glimmering in his eyes that intrigued me. “What?”
He inhaled deeply, choosing his words with careful deliberation. “I’m not certain the poultice was the only thing that saved you.”
“What else did Ceeka give me?” I braced myself, determined not to recoil if Vraxxan mentioned some kind of ground-up, fermented creature guts. Whatever she did, it apparently saved my life. I’d had straight up poison injected into my bloodstream to fight the cancer.
Vraxxan drew another deep breath while a tentative, worried smile played across his lips. “My blood.”
“Excuse me?” I shook my head in disbelief. Surely, I had misheard. “Did you say yourblood?”
He nodded solemnly, and I fought the instinctive urge to gag. I loved Vraxxan with every fiber of my being, but drinking blood—my teenage crush on Edward Cullen notwithstanding—was beyond my comfort zone. I ran my tongue over my lips, relieved to find no residual taste, though I wasn’t entirely sure what blood would taste like.
“Exactly how much of your blood did I drink?” I asked, morbid curiosity getting the better of me.
“Drink?” Vraxxan’s face contorted in disgust. “Gross! You did not drink my blood. I applied it directly to your wound.”
I glanced down at my leaf-covered leg again with newfound fascination. “I didn’t know Zarpazian blood possessedhealing properties.” During my adventures in space, I’d encountered countless oddities—aliens who could mesmerize with a mere wink or maim with a snap of the fingers. The concept of a species whose blood held healing powers wasn’t so far-fetched. After all, vampires did it all the time.
“Normally it does not, but with you... it is special,” Vraxxan admitted with a strange glint—almost worry—in his teal eyes, which seemed to shimmer like the surface of a tropical ocean.
“Special, how?” I pressed, my breath catching in my throat as I waited for his answer.
The grip Vraxxan held on my hands grew tighter. A faintly sheepish smile curled his sculpted features. “The legends appear to be true.”
I frowned for a moment, not understanding, but then remembered the stories that Vysar told us of Zarpazians shifting because of their true mates. My eyes went wide, my heart hammering with a mix of excitement and hope, sending butterflies dancing through my stomach. “You mean?”
“You are my true mate, Lucy.” Vraxxan’s smile was soft and tentative, and the hands that still held mine squeezed gently, his touch sending waves of warmth through my body. “When I heard you scream in pain, something happened to me, and I just... changed. I didn’t even realize I’d shifted until my father pointed it out. The only thing that mattered to me was protecting you.”
“And the blood thing?” My heart was hammering so loudly in my ears that I barely heard my own voice, the sound like thunder in the intimate space between us.
