Page 97 of Ruby
“Perfect,” Szhe’ka warbles when we pull away from the kiss and the harmonics fill my body with warmth, stretching my lips into an embarrassingly wide smile that morphs into a jaw-cracking yawn.
38
Szhe’ka
I wake to her scream.
It tears me from sleep like a talon through flesh. Raw, jagged, wrong. Not the startled cry of a nightmare. Not the breathless sound of pleasure I have learned to coax from her body.
This is agony.
“Ani!”
I am upright before the echo dies, heart hammering, wing stumps flaring wide in instinctive alarm. She is curled on her side in the nest, fingers clawing at her shoulders, her back, her thighs. Her breath comes in broken gasps. Her eyes are wide and wild, unfocused.
“It hurts—” she chokes out, starting with my tongue and then shifting into her native one, voice shredding between languages. “Szhe’ka. Make it stop!”
I reach for her, but she thrashes violently, nearly striking my face with her elbow. The movement pulls my attention to her back—
And I freeze.
Her skin is not skin. It ripples.
Not like muscle. Something moves beneath the surface in waves—rising, pressing, forcing outward. The feathers she has grown over the last few days tremble, then split apart as new shafts spear through.
She screams again, a sound that punches the air from my lungs. This is my fault.
This is me inside her, reshaping her.
After another long scream, my drums still ringing, I snatch her into my upper arms, using my lower set to help us up, scrambling over my ridiculous legs as I stumble out of the hut, my song of alarm rising higher.
Thivoll bursts through the nearby trees and onto the rock-strewn sand, spear-tail raised, nostrils flaring. Ree follows at his flank, breathless but focused.
They take in the scene in a heartbeat.
“It’s happening,” Ree says in the tongue of her beast.
“Happening?” I snarl, barely recognizing my own voice in his harsh language. “She’s in pain. Do something.”
“I will,” Ree bites out. “Put her down.”
I hesitate, but do as she says.
Ree drops to her knees beside Ani without hesitation. “This happened to Olivia, too. Terrible and fast, but she lived.”
Ani arches upward with a violent convulsion, fingers digging into the ground. Feathers burst from her shoulder blades in a ragged line, splitting flesh that closes slowly behind it. Yellow blood beads, then flows.
“She is dying!” I roar in Thivoll’s language, the rasp of it suited to the moment.
“She is not.” Ree’s voice is firm. “Szhe’ka. Look at her.”
“I am looking!”
“No. See her.”
I force myself to breathe.
To focus.
