My door opened without a knock. Twice in one night. Except this time Kearan was already in full crisis mode.
"Trux," he said. "The Hesolga is taking over."
"I'm coming."
"No." The word landed between us. "Stay here. I want you safe."
"That's not how this works.."
Kearan shook his head. "At some point he becomes a danger for all of us, including you. We have to keep you away from him."
He was gone before I could answer.
I stood there about two seconds before my brain caught up. Kearan had come in, said all of it, kissed me like he meant every word, and then the Hesolga had picked that exact moment to break. Which meant one of two things. Either it hadcatastrophically bad timing, or it had been triggered. Zandia had already told us someone was intentionally causing Trux's deterioration, which made it entirely possible someone was triggering these explosions.
Whoever set this up understood the bond. They wanted all of this. I couldn't tell how much of it was intentionally directed or was just a result of cascading events.
Fuck that. Trux was my mate. No one was going to steal him away.
CHAPTER 17
The sound reached me before anything else. Worse than the alarm. The kind of destruction that comes when somebody stops caring about controlling their own strength and starts caring only about getting out. I was still half a hallway from the common room when I heard furniture crashing, somebody cursing while they tried to manage a beast that couldn't be managed. Then there was a voice that sounded like Trux and wasn't quite.
My body moved before my brain caught up. I found the room where the noise came from. The door opened onto chaos. The furniture shoved to the walls in a wide ring, the center cleared on purpose so the thing Trux had become could move without breaking anything else that mattered.
Seph stood near the far wall, hands out in the universal don't come closer. Rhiot off at an angle, far enough not to be a threat, close enough to move. Grayson with his eyes closed, holding some psychic line I couldn't see. Ryker stood off to the side with dread all over his face even though he looked ready to interfere if needed.
Kearan stood between Trux and the rest of the room, not blocking the space. Kearan chanted, his hands moving in a waythat drew the energy out of Trux. All of that pent up energy had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was Kearan's own body.
I understood what I was looking at half a second after I saw it, and the understanding left me feeling sick. Kearan's whole frame was locked, shoulders braced so hard the tension climbed the back of his neck. His hands were spread, palms out, and there was something in the air between him and Trux, something that pulled, and every pull made his breath hitch.
Trux was caught between forms. That was the thing that made the room freeze. Not a man, not a raccoon, but some weird stuttering between the two. And his eyes were wrong. I'd seen Trux angry. I'd never seen his eyes go that flat black that meant the human part had retreated somewhere deep and something else was driving.
"Parker," Seph said, sharp. "Stay back."
I didn't stop. Stay back meant Kearan was alone in there, and when Trux got worse, and he was about to, there'd be nobody to pull Kearan out if he went past what his body could take.
Trux's head swung toward me. The whole room stopped existing for him in that second, the way it does when a predator locks on. His body rotated toward me in jerks, several systems fighting over one shape, and the rumble in his chest climbed into something that was a growl.
"Trux." My voice came out level, because I didn't have the bandwidth to be scared in a way that would stop me. The fear was there, a hum under everything, but it was background. "Hey. Look at me."
His jaw spasmed. He was in there even though he bared his elongated canines in a threatening hiss. That was the worst of it, knowing Trux was still present enough to feel himself losing.
Kearan made a small, controlled sound as he doubled his efforts. His fingers trembled.
"Stay back," Grayson said without opening his eyes, his voice tight. "He's not reading your presence right. He's not aware enough to know it's you."
"He's in there," I said, still moving. Slow enough not to trip the predator, but committed enough that he'd know I wasn't going to stop. "You're still in there, Trux. I know you are."
The thing wearing him lunged.
Not a calculated attack. Closer to desperation, a creature that had been caged too long feeling the cage crack. He had me by the shoulders before I could move my feet, his grip rough enough that I felt every finger through my shirt.
Here's what nobody tells you about getting grabbed by someone mid-berserk. There's a kind of panic that comes before the real panic, and then a place past it where panic stops mattering because you've already committed to how this goes.
I loved him. That was the decision I made. The Hesolga was driving him, but underneath it was Trux, and Trux would never hurt me. Not the parts that mattered.
"I love you," I said, and meant all of it. "I know you're in there. I know you'd never hurt me. So come back."