Page 98 of Star-Born Anomaly
“Uncertain.” He lifted his hands out to his sides.
“Then maybe we shouldn’t—”
That creepy-crawly sensation returned to her skin when Iax stopped in the center of the group. Dozens of eyes glinted as they focused on him.
A primal roar came out of nowhere, sounding as though a large animal had taken over the hangar. But there was no animal. No beast. It was all their voices crying out in pain, like Iax ripped something vital from their bodies. Or that a mutual terror had taken hold. Terror and something even worse: devastation.
Her eyes went to Sawyer a second before they all dropped to their knees, hands grabbing at their chests like they tried to stop their innards from spilling out. Blood seeped out of the corner of Sawyer’s nose.
Wynn’s breaths turned into rapid pants. Her fingernails dug into her arms.What have I done?She’d thought she was helping, and instead these people looked like they were dying.
They flopped forward, backward, sideways. Each of them fell to the deck and lay unmoving. The sounds of their shouts echoed throughout the hangar, then silence.
She couldn’t catch her breath.
The tableau froze in her mind, Iax standing at the center of the circle of bodies, his hands lifted from his sides, palms forward. The scene would forever be etched in her memory.
He turned around, then headed toward her. “We must go,” he said with an edge to his voice that she had not heard before, and his face more flushed. He took hold of her elbow and steered her toward the cruiser. “There is no need to take the larger ship.”
Heart in her throat, she looked over her shoulder at the lumps of motionless bodies.
“Are they dead?”
“No,” he gritted, his teeth clenched.
Her focus shifted to him. He looked to be in pain, but was fighting it. What had it done to him? A cold sweat broke out across her skin.
She barely felt Iax’s hands on her waist as he lifted her into the cruiser. She didn’t remember how she had arrived in the co-pilot’s seat. No one else entered the hangar before the engine started and the ship hovered above the landing platform.
Shields rippled around them, and they punched through the SNAP shielding. The cruiser hummed as it shot forward, fleeing that awful place. Then stars upon stars extended before her.
Wynn couldn’t see them through the tears blurring her vision.
Chapter thirty-six
The farther away they traveled from the warship, the more Iax expected Wynn’s relief, but she did not move. With her arms wrapped around her shins, she pressed her forehead against her knees, making herself into a ball.
He did not like this lifeless version of her.
Not lifeless. He experienced her emotions as they pulsed over him in waves. While separated, he had craved the sensation even more than the taste of another’s thoughts.
Her emotions rose and fell chaotically, a contrast to her stillness—a stillness that unnerved him.
He put more distance between them and the Guardian, and did not relax until he knew it would be impossible for any ship in their hangar to give chase and catch up. While on board, he had made sure of that, disabling most of the essential systems before he had recalled his essence into himself.
Without the help of a Calypson, it would take the crew many days, perhaps weeks, to repair the damage he had unleashed in their systems.
The farther they traveled, the more Iax’s mind emptied of others’ thoughts. He understood now the heady nature of coalescing. In the beginning, he had lost some minds, but none near the end. He did not know what The Four would think of that. Would they be displeased because of his errors, or would they task him with coalescing pilgrims in the future?
Though his tension eased, he could not say the same for Wynn. Her spine hunched over her legs, her shoulders shaking while her emotions continued to churn in eddies. He could not see her face because she tucked in tight to her knees.
During their separation, she had stayed at the forefront of his mind. He could not separate his thoughts from his needs, and that had only intensified when he landed on the warship. His need to find her, to free her, had taken precedence over everything, including his mission to The Four.
He could not stand the thought of her closing herself off to him now.
Iax reached out a hand, intent on touching her shoulder, to comfort her like she had sought when he had freed her from the lab, then paused.
The day he had arrived at her outpost, she had screamed at him not to touch her. Had they returned to that place? Unsure, he dropped his hand, but his eyes went to the red stains on her sleeve.
