Page 31 of Fated to the Dragon Alien
He saw her. Cerani was on her knees in the dust, no helmet, no gloves, suit shoved down to her waist. Her arms were bare to the shoulder where she’d ripped apart her under-suit. Nothing between her and the raw air of the mine. She wasn’t gaspingfor breath. Wasn’t coughing. She pressed a strip of fabric to a wounded miner’s thigh, blood soaking through the cloth fast.
Stavian froze.
Cerani turned her head suddenly—like she felt him before she saw him—and their eyes locked between waves of gritty light. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and her hair was loose, wet from sweat, hanging low over her shoulders. Her lips were cracked, face pale, but she was alive.
Relief hit him so hard he staggered.
Then his mind snapped back to what he was seeing. His wrist panel still didn’t register her suit. It was showing her as offline because, having removed half of it, she should be dead. But there she was, holding someone else’s life together with bare hands in an environment designed to kill.
He dropped to his knees in front of her, but turned his attention to the injured miner Cerani was trying to save. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
“Stavian,” she said, her voice like gravel and smoke, sharp and wild in a way that made something break open in his ribs.
“Medics are on the way” he said.
“I pinged twice,” she said with desperation. “No one’s answering. Comms are down.”
“Not mine.” His comm popped with static.
“Evac team moving into sector E,” came a strained voice over the channel. “Partial tunnel breach. All upper access points sealed. Prioritizing survivor extraction.”
Cerani looked straight at him—eyes clear, jaw set with that same stubborn strength he could never look away from. “They’re running out of time,” she whispered.
He looked back to the miner, whose injuries were extreme. It would take a miracle for this female to be saved, and the mine wasn’t much for miracles. He could see the small female beginning to fade away. “Hold on,” he said to her, placing hishand on the side of her helmet. “Keep breathing. Look right at me. Help is coming.”
The female—Sema—blinked at him. Her mouth moved, but no sound came. He knew this female’s history wasn’t filled with violent crime. She hadn’t committed crimes against the Axis. Yet here she was, dying on the floor of a mine she’d been sent to.
“Stavian.”
He looked up. Dust clung to Cerani’s lips. Her hands were streaked in blood that didn’t belong to her. She held one of her legs at an odd angle, which suggested she hadn’t escaped injury herself. But she kneeled there, steady, as if the mine’s collapse hadn’t touched her.
He heard voices echo down the corridor. A med team coming closer. His comm chirped again, low and broken.
Stavian looked down at the miner between them. Her breaths were slowing.
“We need to carry her,” Cerani said. “It’s bad.”
Stavian nodded. “I’ll take her.” He gently scooped the female into his arms and rose with great care. Sema groaned, but was a limp weight.
Cerani pushed herself up to her feet. She let out a gasp and shifted her weight to one leg. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.” She swiped hair out of her eyes and held his gaze. “I can walk.”
“No, you can’t.” He could carry both females, but not with the gentleness that was required for Sema to not bleed out completely. There was another way, though.
“Climb on my back,” he said to her. “I’m getting you out of here.”
For a moment, as dust drifted around them and metal creaked above like the ceiling couldn’t decide if it wanted to hold, Cerani kept looking up at him. There was no fear in her eyes. No hopelessness. Just trust. Worn, shaken, but real.
And it lit the same fire under his skin that he fought every cycle to contain.
“Okay,” she replied.
He turned and crouched. His body shuddered as her warm body settled between his wings. His blood heated as her bare arms wound around his neck and locked there. Her breath was on his neck. Her uninjured leg wrapped around his middle.Fek, here it was—the skin-to-skin contact he’d craved, but the circumstances were so impossibly dire, all he could do was try to commit the feeling of her to his memory. He could remember it later, when the crisis was over.
He didn’t understand what she was to him, yet. But he knew one thing.
Whatever happened next—he couldn’t lose her.
