Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
“Yes, they bite their mates,” Ravik emphasized. “Do you know what the bite of a Blood Kindred does to you?”
“No—does it do something bad?” Cassie asked, looking uneasy. “I thought it just caused pleasure.”
“It does—it makes you fucking come,” Ravik growled. “You don’t understand. Sev asking to bite me is like…like he asked to suck my cock.”
His face got hot when he said it, but it really was the closest comparison he could think of.
“Is that true?” Cassie looked at Sev, whose face was also red.
“Yes, but it’s beside the point right now,” he insisted. “This is the only way to cure both of you—the only way we can all go home again!”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ravik growled. “You two go—I can stay right here and live on the shitty lizard people planet and eat the shitty lizard people food forever if I have to.”
“Why do you always have to be so stubborn?” Sev’s voice had dropped to a low, frustrated growl. “Why won’t you listen to me? I’m telling you the scientific fact that—”
And that was when the lights went out, plunging the whole bunker into darkness.
42
SEVERIN
The lights went out before Severin could decide whether to throttle Ravik or shake some sense into him.
The bunker was swallowed by absolute darkness. The steady hum of the ventilation system cut off at the same time, leaving a silence so sudden and complete that Severin could hear Cassandra’s sharp intake of breath and Ravik’s low, instinctive growl beside her. Every muscle in Severin’s body went tight, his frustration with Ravik vanishing beneath a cold, immediate rush of alarm as he realized something…
The lights weren’t coming back on and this was not a simple power flicker.
“Severin?” Cassandra whispered from somewhere in the dark. Her voice sounded frightened but controlled, which was more than he could say for the state of his own thoughts at the moment.
“I’m here,” he said at once, reaching toward the sound of her voice. His fingers found her arm, warm and bare beneath his touch, and he felt her tense for half a heartbeat before she gripped his hand.
A second later, Ravik moved too. Severin heard the rustle of fabric, the scrape of bare feet on the metal floor, and then the Beast Kindred’s massive body was suddenly close enough that Severin could feel the heat rolling off him. Even half-confused, half-angry, and stubborn as a wall of reinforced alloy, Ravik still positioned himself between Cassandra and the unseen threat.
That was Ravik, he thought with reluctant admiration—infuriating, impossible, courageous Ravik.
“Emergency lights should have come on,” he said, keeping his voice low. His mind was already moving through the bunker schematics, mapping which systems would fail first if the main power went down and which doors would automatically seal.
“They didn’t,” Cassandra said, which was obvious, but Severin didn’t blame her for saying it. Sometimes naming the awful thing helped make it a little less awful, though in this case it really didn’t help much at all.
“No, they didn’t.” He released her hand to feel along the wall for the emergency panel. He found it by memory, tapped the manual activation sequence, and got nothing but a dead click under his fingers.
Ravik growled again, deeper this time.
“What the fuck does that clicking sound mean?” he demanded, and though his voice was clear, there was still a rough edge to it that made Severin’s stomach knot.
“It means the backup cells are either drained or disconnected,” he said. He tapped the panel again, harder this time, even though he knew perfectly well that anger wouldn’t restore power to a dead system.
“Disconnected?” Cassandra’s hand brushed his arm in the dark. “As in, something broke? Or as in, something is breaking it right now?”
Before Severin could answer, a distant metallic boom echoed through the bunker.
Cassandra gasped, and Ravik snarled so loudly that the sound vibrated through the metal walls.
Severin reached for the small light clipped to his belt, clicked it on, and narrow blue-white illumination spilled across the corridor. He used it to look at his companions.
Cassandra was pale, her eyes wide, with one hand pressed to the bite wound on her arm. Ravik stood beside her, shirtless and tense, his golden eyes beginning to haze at the edges, damn it.
“Ravik,” Severin snapped. “Look at me.”
The Beast Kindred’s gaze jerked to his face.
“Stay with us,” Severin said, sharper than he intended. “I know you’re angry and I know you don’t want to listen to me, but we need you. If you slip back into the Hunger haze now, we could all die. Do you understand?”
Ravik’s jaw tightened. For a moment, Severin saw the anger there—the offended pride…the stubborn refusal…the male who had been told his best friend needed to bite him in order to heal him and had reacted exactly as Severin had feared he would.