Page 66 of Conquered Pet
He’d put himself in danger to rescue me even when I’d been the one to run from him.
My hesitation to love him evaporated away into a pile of burning ash. His body started shaking over mine and I wailed in hopes that he would survive this. The air was thin, and I struggled to breathe, coughing on smoke and dust so thick that it left a layer on my tongue and in my throat and down in the pit of my lungs.
I whimpered quietly, my ears ringing so loud that I squeezed my eyes shut in a halfhearted attempt to make it better.
“Talyn?” I whispered hoarsely. I couldn’t look up to see his face. I didn’t know if he was okay.
“Raiza,” he replied. The agony in his voice shook me to the core. “Are you hurt?”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t handle the fact that he was in such pain, and all he was concerned about was if I was alright.
“I’m okay,” I murmured quickly, and I felt his chest collapse in a sigh of relief.
His breathing was deep and ragged. It rattled me to the core. I slowly unfurled myself, wanting to see his face and terrified to at the same time. I swallowed hard, stoking my courage as much as I could and lifting my chin.
“No. Don’t look yet. Close your eyes, Raiza,” he demanded fiercely, and I trembled beneath him. I was so worried that Iattempted to anyway, but he growled in warning, which was more than enough to give me pause. “The danger has yet to pass. My flesh will heal. Yours may not.”
I shivered hard as the residual fires crackled around us. Some of them fizzled out and others did not. The scent of my own singed hair was strong, and I just focused on filling my lungs as I pressed my forehead against his chest.
Behind us, I could hear the men scurrying about in the tunnel. A visceral hatred pumped through my veins. I loathed them for hurting Talyn. I wished unspeakable things on them. I wanted to tear them limb from limb myself even though I knew I didn’t have the strength for it. When the men started talking off in the distance, I jerked in unbearable fury.
“Don’t,” Talyn warned. “Lie still.”
I didn’t want to obey him, but the pain and command in his voice gave me pause. I didn’t want to cause him any additional worry, so I did my best to lie still even though it was the most difficult thing I’d ever had to do in my life.
“Do you think he’s dead? No man would be able to survive anything like that,” Ryan muttered.
One of his men said something in return, but my ears started roaring so loud that I couldn’t make it out. Talyn tensed above me, and I worried that he was in more pain, but I stayed still because he’d asked me to.
He deserved my obedience no matter what happened next.
Without warning, Talyn lurched up. His audible gasp of pain tore at my heart, but when his arms wrapped around my waist, there was no time for me to do anything at all to comfort him. Hestood up so swiftly that it made my head spin. He rushed to the side and threw me to the right into a breach in the wall.
I cried out as I flew backwards. My arms clutched in close to my chest at first, but then I reached to grasp any sort of handholds. I found none. I yelped with fear and at that same moment, a concussive explosion blew Talyn back too.
I watched with horror at the carnage that followed.
The blast was so strong that even Talyn’s superior flesh couldn’t withstand its power. I screamed, but the detonation drowned me out. I slammed against a wall behind me well out of the range of the bomb. My heart stopped and Talyn yelled out in anger and pain somewhere where I could no longer see him.
Time stopped as an even bigger blast came next. I could hardly hear anything, but I was certain that Talyn’s shouting had been abruptly cut off.
A bloom of panic welled inside me. I tried to move, but a flare of pain of my own struck through me with vicious cruelty. The blast burned on outside and my head pulsed. I reached back, realizing I’d probably banged my head against the wall when I’d hit it.
My eyes swam with tears and my vision grew hazy. My tongue felt like a ball of cotton, and I tasted the terrible metallic tang of blood.
A pitiful croak of pain emerged from my lips and a feeling of weightlessness came over me.
The world went black.
CHAPTER 13
Raiza
I don’t know how long I was out for. It could have been minutes or hours, but by the time I finally managed to open my eyes, it was dark. There were no residual fires still burning, no groaning, no voices of vile human men who meant to kill me and my alien mate.
It was silent. Deadly silent.
I pushed myself up to a seated position, groaning softly. I was sore and my head hurt with the migraine of the century, but I appeared to be intact. I moved my fingers and toes, ensuring that they all worked properly. I shifted my arms and legs, noting that everything seemed to move as it should. No sprains or broken bones. Nothing of the sort.
