her body was ripped from my shoulders where I carried her. Spinning, I found her sitting and cradling her head, still protected by her helmet, thank the Goddesses, but with the planet shaking around us, I braced myself between the walls and bent over her, protecting her from more falling rocks with my armor. “Amity?” I said again, though VELMA’s alarms and the others’ screams drowned out her voice the first time she replied.
“I’m okay, I think,” she said. “I’m seeing stars. But I’m also seeing rocks. Actually, I’m seeing two of everything. Stars and rocks.”
“Curl into a ball,” I told her and buffeted by more rocks, I gritted my teeth and pressed into the walls on either side of us, my body forming a pavilion for my mate. Determined to outlast the quaking, I locked my armor and grunted with every hit, but the stones bounced off my back, and I kept my gaze on Amity.
When it stopped, I heard Naraxthel’s firm voice. “Everyone report.”
“Amity?” I asked, and she uncovered her helmet and sat up, dazed. “I’m okay,” she said with a nod.
“Amity and Natheka,” I said. The others reported, and I was gratified to hear that everyone was accounted for and uninjured.
Reaching down, Amity grasped my hand, and I pulled her to standing.
“You’re uninjured?” I asked.
“VELMA tells me I have a mild concussion,” she said. “As long as I don’t get hit in the head again, I should be okay.”
“Thank the Goddesses,” I said. “I no longer feel it is safe to carry you on my back.”
She nodded. “I liked being able to pull double duty, but you’re right. I’ll have to save the research for after the quest. I know I’m missing something—some crucial detail—but I can’t pinpoint it yet. I know it will come to me.”
With the air around us smoky from cave dust, I peered through it to the others. Naraxthel and Esra were behind us, brushing each other off and checking for injuries. Pattee and Hivelt were in front a few veltiks and worked to clear some rubble that had piled up between us.
“This was a bad one,” I said, pulling Amity into my arms. “I could have lost you, and that is not acceptable.”
“Hey,” she said, looking up at me with her dark brown eyes. “It’s not acceptable for me to lose you, either. But we’re okay. You used your body as a shield, and nothing else hit me. What about you?”
“My armor prevented serious injury. But there will be bruising on my back,” I admitted.
Her warm smile matched her warm eyes, and she gripped my forearms. “Then I will kiss it and make it better as soon as we get a moment.”
Tightening my hold on her, I closed my eyes and relished the moment. “I look forward to it.”
Amity’s love surrounded me in a cloak, and I thought of her inner strength: crawling to the pod when the slightest pause would have meant death. Fighting a beast five times her size while I lay immobile on the forest floor. And now, using her intellect to solve a deadly puzzle … simply because Raxthezana had asked her.
Amity, she of the friendly demeanor and taming hand, domesticator of monsters, solver of puzzles, was my dearest friend and impassioned lover, and I would be annihilated if she perished. Renewed in my fervor to protect her, I drew her love around me and soaked in her living presence. Would to Goddesses this accursed quest was finished.