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)
He should tell them all of it…but he didn’t. Because he was sure Cassandra would try to stop him. And Ravik, even half-recovered, might tear the injector out of his hand before he could depress the plunger.
Severin told himself this was logic, not cowardice. One of them had to be the test subject, and he was the only possible candidate. Cassandra was the catalyst and already infected. Ravik was unstable and still fighting his way out of the Hunger fog. Severin was a Blood Kindred, a scientist, and the one whose body was biologically suited to carry the cure if it worked.
It was a calculated risk…a terrible risk.
But what else could he do? They couldn’t stay here forever, trying and failing again and again as the virus spread in both Cassandra and Ravik. Their stores of food wouldn’t last forever and the machinery in the engine room of the bunker had been making some worrisome noises lately. It was an old structure—one of its vital functions was going to fail at some point—probably some point soon.
No—he had to take the risk, Severin decided. There was no other way.
He prepared the injection with slow, precise movements adding Cassandra’s glowing honey, Ravik’s altered blood markers, and his own anti-viral base. Then a fragment of his essence to give the compound a map—a way to find the glands it needed to bind to. He adjusted the ratios twice—then a third time, because his hand was hovering over his own possible death and precision mattered.
When the injector was ready, the fluid inside was clear at first…then it turned faintly gold.
Severin stared at it. Such a small amount of liquid to hold so much hope…or so much ruin. What would happen to Cassandra and Ravin if he become an Infected himself? What would they do?
He sat back on the lab stool and, for the first time in a long while, allowed himself to feel afraid. Not of dying—he had faced death before, in battlefields, quarantine zones, and the ruined lower levels of the Dead Zone when they’d been running for their lives with hoards of Infected on their heels.
Death was not the worst thing, he decided…failure was.
If Severin died and left Cassandra and Ravik without the cure, that would be failure. If he infected himself and became another threat to them, that would be worse. If he carried the Hunger Virus into his own blood and lost himself before he could help them…
He looked again toward the door—he could almost see them in his mind. Cassandra curled against Ravik’s broad chest, flushed and exhausted and finally quiet. Ravik holding her carefully, as though she was the most precious thing in the universe and he was afraid his big hands might break her. The two of them waiting for Severin to return, though neither of them truly understood yet what they were becoming to him…what the three of them were becoming to each other.
Severin closed his fingers around the injector, then he bowed his head.
“Goddess,” he murmured, his voice low in the empty lab, “If this is arrogance, forgive me. If this is madness, guide my hand. And if this is the only way to save them…let my body be enough.”
Nothing happened—no light glowed and no voice spoke to him as he had heard the Goddess often spoke to her children when they were in need. But he felt a warmth around him—as though someone was giving him a gentle, comforting hug.
It was enough.
Severin pressed the injector to the inside of his arm and depressed the plunger before he could think any longer.
The compound entered his bloodstream in a single cold burn.
He hissed through his teeth and gripped the edge of the table as the sensation shot up his arm. At first, it felt like ice flowing through his veins. Then the cold became fire, racing toward his chest…his throat…his jaw. His fangs throbbed so violently that black spots crowded the edges of his vision.
“Gods,” he choked.
His heart stumbled in his chest once and then again. For one terrifying second, every scent in the room sharpened into something unbearable.
Antiseptic. Metal. Old blood. Viral medium. Cassandra’s honey still clinging to the wand case. Ravik’s smoky scent from the bedding fibers on Severin’s own skin….all of it washed over him, filling his senses unbearably.
Then his mouth flooded with saliva and his fangs burned with the sudden, brutal need to bite…to deliver the cure he could feel boiling in his blood.
At least, he hoped that was what why he had the sudden urge to sink his fangs into flesh.
Severin forced himself to breathe through the intense and overwhelming sensations. He counted the beats of his heart, noted the tremor in his fingers, the heat in his jaw, and the pressure building behind his fangs.
The Hunger did not rise in him—not the way it had in Ravik’s samples and not with the feral blankness and the predatory appetite of a Visskous who had been turned into an Infected.