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“Are they…” Dom trailed off as he twisted his lips and drummed his fingers faster. “Does it…Does it feel like enough? Having your family? Like you’re complete?”
Garin almost thoughtlessly replied that having his family was more than enough, but then Sazahk and his superfluous spare microscope appeared in Garin’s darkening vision.
Floating closer to unconsciousness than he would like, Garin felt Sazahk tucked under his arm, stealing the warmth from beneath his shirt, and questioning him about every little thing. His heart filled and lightened, like a balloon lifting into the air.
He hated the way they’d parted, and he hated that he didn’t have a clear path back to him.
“It’s…enough, having my family, I think, but there’s…” Garin blinked his vision back. “There’s something, someone, else…” If there was a Sazahk shaped hole in Garin’s life, could he really say his family was enough? They were wonderful and amazing, and it felt like a betrayal to say that they weren’t, but…they weren’t.
“Garin?”
Garin scrunched his eyes closed as Dom’s incessant questioning derailed his wobbling train of thought. “I’m still here.”
“No, that’s not it.” Dom held up a quieting finger and turned toward the door. “Do you hear that?”
The urgency in Dom’s voice jolted some much-needed adrenaline into Garin’s system and for the first time in hours, the black pulled out of Garin’s vision. He sat up from the wall and followed Dom’s gaze, straining his attention out into the hall.
“That’s gunfire.” Garin shoved himself to his feet, gritting his teeth through the wave of nauseating pain. Gunfire and yelling and the unmistakable sounds of men in a panic.
“Are they under attack?” Dom didn’t struggle when Garin pulled the younger man behind him. “Is that good?”
“Not necessarily.” In fact, if it was someone who had gotten wind that a Turner was vulnerable in hostile territory, it was much, much worse.
The heavy, rhythmic tread of marching boots reverberated from the hall, and shouted words in a strange accent. A wave of chittering and clicks Garin had only heard in intelligence videos followed.
Dom stepped around Garin with a look of disbelief. “Are those?—”
“You threaten an individual under the explicit protection of the royal family. Stand down now or be eliminated.”
“—Insects?”
Two thuds shook the door before them, followed by the sounds of metal ripping and sizzling.
Garin kept his gun pointed to the floor and his breath flowing evenly through his lungs. “Shit. The Insects want you dead, too, don’t they?”
“I—they—I mean they might.” Dom shrank back, retreating into the dead-end room. “I made the bullets that kill them.”
“Of which, I don’t have any.” Garin tightened his grip on his useless gun. The door before them screeched and a chunk of it peeled away, clenched in the massive mandibles of an Insect Soldier. “Fuck.”
“Dominic Turner?” An Insect behind the two Soldiers shredding the metal to pieces called through the gap.
Garin glanced at Dom, who stared wildly back at him. Garin jerked his head at the door and Dom blinked and swallowed before choking out, “Yes?”
“What is your status?” the Insect demanded over the grating roar of the door being split apart.
“Um, alive?” Dominic called back, stepping behind Garin. “And unharmed?”
“Good.”
The two sides of the door fell with a clang, and the Soldier that had spoken stepped through, energy weapon in hand and mandibles clacking. After a professional, practiced sweep for threats, the massive Insect pinned his dark eyes on Dom.
“Prince Consort Intended, my name is Ust, and I am here to escort you to safety.”
Chapter Sixteen
Half of Sazahk’s mind watched the steady readout of Garin’s vitals streaming into his implant while the second half watched the rise and fall of his chest through his own two eyes. They both told him the same thing: that Garin was alive. Not exactly well—a bullet had ripped through his abdomen—but alive, and considering the quality of Qeshian medical care, likely to be well soon.
And yet, Sazahk couldn’t tear himself away. He needed to see Garin’s chest rise again. He needed to feel the beat of Garin’s pulse as though it were his own.
