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“Please, I’m begging you to show up just this once. This is a huge opportunity, and it’s very important that you come in person!”
Rafayel sighed, remembering Thomas’s words yesterday when he had practically gotten on his knees to beg him to come to the exhibition for the launch of the collab perfume Rafayel had done with a popular brand.
Now, here he was, standing in a line of people, listening to some scent expert explain their inspiration behind the piece. He stifled a yawn.
He hadn’t even wanted to collab in the first place. He thought brand deals were…tacky. But all he’d really been asked to do was provide art for the promotional materials—it wouldn’t have his name on it or anything, so he figured it was worth it to keep Thomas happy.
When the speech was finally over and everyone applauded and broke away to mingle and eat dry hors d’oeuvres, Rafayel grabbed a glass of champagne and stood off to one side, watching everyone, engaging in a couple conversations with people in a manner boring enough to get them to leave him alone after only a few minutes, and wishing he hadn’t taken Thomas up on this after all.
“Mr. Rafayel, the perfume company would like you to say a few words endorsing the perfume for an online add.”
Rafayel glanced over at a young man and woman who seemed to be PR people, holding a microphone and camera respectively.
He sighed and set his glass down on a nearby table. “Sure, what do you want me to say?”
“If you can spray on some of the perfume and give an artistic description of the scent and how it inspired the painting you did for the collab, that would be great,” the young man said.
Rafayel fought to keep from rolling his eyes. “Alright…but I warn you, I didn’t really smell the perfume before they asked me to do the painting. It was only vaguely inspired by the scent notes they sent me.”
“That’s okay, I’m sure if you come up with something artsy, no one will know the difference.”
Rafayel refrained from huffing in annoyance, briefly glancing around to see if Thomas could save him, but his manager was nowhere to be found. Typical. He wished he had his loyal Miss Bodyguard with him that night, but Ariadne had to leave town for a hunt at the last minute yesterday so he had no one to fend off the vampiric PR people.
They put him in front of a huge display featuring his artwork and set the camera up. The girl handed him a bottle of the perfume.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said, getting behind the camera.
Rafayel nodded and she started filming.
Rafayel spouted some BS about the emotions the paining evoked, transitioning it to the perfume scent notes, which, when Thomas had showed him a test sample, he genuinely thought smelled like seaweed, but to each their own.
“It evokes listening to a whale song in the deep ocean,” he said.
The guy motioned to him to spray the scent.
Rafayel just barely refrained from rolling his eyes and bared his wrist, spritzing a little of the scent onto his skin.
“The top notes are like the glittering sun off of the waves…”
The scent hit him like a tsunami. His nostrils flared and an instant sense of wooziness overcame him.
How…?
“It’s…It will satisfy the longing we all feel for the sea,” he managed to finish before he practically shoved the bottle back toward the reporters.
“Mr. Rafayel? Do you mind saying a few more words?” the young man asked.
Rafayel shook his head. “No, I…don’t feel well. That will have to be it for tonight.”
He left in a rush, hurrying toward the nearest restroom.
He could feel his skin prickling, breathing became more difficult and his limbs shook so much he could barely walk.
Terror at his slipping faculties gripped his mind, fever flared up in his veins, making it hard to think of anything.
He burst through the door of the bathroom and nearly collapsed against the sink. He hadn’t even sprayed that much on—it must have been incredibly concentrated to affect him like this. That certainly hadn’t been the same stuff they had sent from the prototype. What the hell had happened?
He woozily looked up into the mirror, blinking to focus, seeing scales beginning to appear on his face. He could feel more appearing over his body. The scent was both intoxicating and suffocating at the same time. He had to wash this off before he lost himself.
He yanked the facet to turn the water on and scrubbed at his wrist, not caring if his sleeve was getting wet. As he scrubbed, Ariadne was foremost in his mind, his face flushing as he thought of her, her image hammering with every rapid beat of his heart.
The intoxication was decreasing slightly, but he needed fresh air, and preferably a way out of this place that wouldn’t involve crossing the path of any of the exhibition attendees.
Maybe he could call Thomas to help escort him out, but the man might make too much of a fuss.
Before he could think of a plan of action, he briefly glanced into the mirror and saw that someone was standing behind him.
Rafayel let out a startled sound, then a new spike of shot onto his face as the man clamped a handkerchief over his mouth.
To his horror, it smelled like the drug.
He bit hard into the man’s hand, making him pull away with a curse.
Rafayel tried to use his Evol but couldn’t concentrate enough. His faculties had been shot. He staggered toward the door, planning to call for help.
However, as soon as he opened it and rushed out, he ran into something stretched tight in front of the door, instantly wrapping him up and bearing him to the ground, pinning his arms and legs. He cried out, attempting to struggle, but only succeeded in tangling himself up more.
Footsteps approached, coming into his field of vision.
“Well, well, looks like we caught a fish in a net.”
Rafayel’s heart clenched in terror as he looked up and saw a face that was burned into his memory.
“You…” He tried yet again to use his Evol to burn through the net, but the drug had completely overwhelmed his senses, rendering him helpless. As was undoubtedly the intent.
The man standing over him looked satisfied as he crouched down beside Rafayel’s bound figure.
“It’s been a while, Mr. Rafayel. You’re quite the slippery fish despite staying in the public eye. We’re looking forward to inviting you back into our research group.”
“You bastard, let me go!” Rafayel growled.
The man stood and snapped his fingers. A couple other men bent down and picked up Rafayel’s hopelessly bound figure, carrying him out the back of the exhibition venue and toward an unmarked van. They threw him in the back with little care to how he landed. Rafayel grunted as he fell hard on his shoulder.
The man climbed into the back with him, staring down at Rafayel as he wriggled on the floor. “I’ve decided to take it upon myself to continue Mr. Raymond’s research. I think starting with you is only fair, isn’t it? After all, you’re the one who killed him.”
Rafayel kicked at the man, but was shoved flat with the man’s expensive leather shoe on his chest as he pulled a handkerchief and a spray bottle out of his coat pocket.
“Don’t,” Rafayel snarled before the man shoved the kerchief over his face, completely overwhelming him with the scent again. Unable to escape it this time, Rafayel’s eyes fluttered, breath hitching as a forced passiveness came over him. He blinked dazedly, body lax as the fever attempted to burn the dread out of him. He moaned, helpless, as the man chuckled.
“You’re going to be quite useful to us this time. We’ll make sure to make the most of our time together.
~~~~~~~
He remembered very little of the ride there. His mind was blank with all but desperate need that couldn’t be fulfilled, the fever burning through him as he moaned and begged, calling for a name that was always caught on his tongue.
He was finally plunged into ice cold water and he was shocked back to reality, squirming in the ropes that bound him. He was able to breathe finally though, and the shock to his system made his senses return.
He was in a tank, still bound by the ropes, looking out at a sterile lab. Men and women in lab coats walked around working at computers, writing notes and prepping equipment. It was too familiar to him.
He recalled a point when he and the other Lemurians had first come on land, when they had been naïve and desperate, destitute. Someone had approached and said that they would be paid good money and given housing to help out in a lab. They had thought that it would entail cleaning duties or that kind of thing, but in reality Xander Sciences had been interested in Rafayel’s people. They hadn’t just studied the Lemurians, they had run unethical medical experimentation on them, taking blood and cells, pulling their scales out, forcing them into their true forms, vivisecting them…Rafayel still woke up in a cold sweat with the memory of his people’s screams.
Raymond had funded the research and headed the group, but even he wasn’t the sadist that Dr. Levelle was. Rafayel would remember that man’s face anywhere. He had been the one responsible for the most reprehensible experiments to extract the LCMEC cells they had discovered in the Lemurians, believing they would aid in their little obsession with finding the key to eternal life.
Rafayel had escaped the worst of it back then. One of his old teachers had managed to slip him out with the help of an intern who hadn’t signed up for human—or close enough—experimentation.
Now, it looked like he wouldn’t be so lucky. Lemurian specimens were few and far between these days, and Rafayel would be the only one there in the lab.
“We’re ready for him, there’s no reason to delay the experimentation. We’ve been waiting long enough to put this into practice.”
Rafayel looked up to see Dr. Levelle’s face appear in front of the tank as the water was drained and Rafayel was fished out, still wrapped in the net, and carried over to a metal table in the middle of the room.
They threw him down and started cutting him free of the ropes. Rafayel fought, refusing to go down without a fight.
“Let. Me. Go!” he snarled. “You think you can get away with this? They’re already going to be looking for me—you took me from an exhibition I was the featured guest at!”
“No one will think twice about you walking out of a function,” Dr. Levelle said blandly. “I’m sure we’ll have a good couple days before anyone starts looking in earnest. Artists are such flighty creatures after all. Eccentric.”
Rafayel felt his stomach flip. He wasn’t wrong. But Ari would surely worry if he didn’t text back tonight, right?
If she was even able to check her phone… his mind supplied cruelly. She’s probably in the middle of fighting Wanderers right now.
Terror at being alone and abandoned to this atrocity warred inside Rafayel, making him struggle more.
“You bastards! You think I’m just going to let you cut me apart like some biology experiment?”
“Sedate him,” Dr. Levelle said, then amended, “Not enough to knock him out.”
His assistant nodded and prepared a syringe as three others held him down. They unceremoniously stabbed it into his thigh and pushed the plunger.
Rafayel groaned, feeling the sedative take effect. “I won’t…let you do this…” he slurred, feeling his body start to grow heavy, his movements sluggish.
Dr. Levelle was already laying tools out on a tray. “You’ll find you have little choice. Rest assured, you’ll be very instrumental in our scientific endeavors.”
Rafayel struggled weakly as the assistants held him down and started cutting off his clothes.
“H-Hey! Stop it…”
He flushed in embarrassment as they stripped him, having no care for his modesty. They strapped him down onto the table and buckled a tight muzzle over his mouth after taking a saliva sample, nearly choking him with the swab the shoved down his throat.
“Administer the injection,” Dr. Levelle instructed, snapping on a pair of gloves.
Rafayel struggled as much as he could against the restraints as one of the assistants prepared a syringe and injected it into Rafayel’s neck. It felt cold and stung slightly going in but once it started to seep through his body, it felt like hooks digging into his skin.
He groaned past the gag, squirming. The pain only increased, culminating around his hips and legs. Rafayel panted, barely able to breathe, stars shooting across his eyes as his lower body contorted, leaving him writhing against the restraints practically keening from the pain.
It was then he finally realized what was happening as he felt his legs fuse together, lengthen, and finally the scales and fins appeared.
Rafayel slumped on the metal table, drenched in sweat. The change had never been so agonizing before. But then he’d never had it forced on him with a drug either.
Dr. Levelle seemed pleased with his transformation. “Perfect. Now let’s begin.”
~~~~~~~
Ariadne finally got back to her apartment, bidding Xavier goodnight as they parted ways to sleep post mission.
She dragged herself into the shower before collapsing on her bed with a groan, burying her head in a pillow. She was really going to need a vacation after that mission.
She briefly considered reaching for her phone and sending Rafayel a quick text to let him know she was back, but it was across the room on her dresser and she didn’t feel like getting up again. Maybe she would surprise him in the morning and bring him breakfast; a little treat for surviving the exhibition.
She was already half asleep as she started thinking of what she would pick up but exhaustion soon won over, pulling her into a deep slumber.
She woke the next morning to what she thought was her alarm, rolling over and weakly slapping the button on her alarm clock until she realized it wasn’t doing anything.
She groaned, going to hide under her pillow before her mind finally supplied the explanation.
Her phone was ringing.
Ari sat up with a sigh, glancing around before getting up to grab her phone from the dresser. No sooner had she done that then it started ringing again. She didn’t bother looking at the caller ID before answering sleepily, “Hello?”
“Ariadne? Thank goodness I was finally able to get a hold of you.”
She blinked, rubbing her eyes before placing the voice. “Thomas?”
“Yes, it’s me. Is Rafayel at your place?”
“No…” she replied, quickly peeking out the door to make sure he hadn’t crashed on her couch for some reason. “He’s not here. Don’t tell me he was a no-show at the exhibition.”
“No, he came, he just left early without saying anything to me,” Thomas said. “And I went over to his place, but he doesn’t seem to be there either, unless he’s just not answering the door, which is possible. Can you call him and see? He might pick up if it’s you.”
“Yeah, I was actually going to go visit him this morning anyway,” she told him.
“Great, thanks. Tell him to call me when he has a moment.”
Ari hung up and stretched before going to get dressed.
She called Rafayel, but he didn’t pick up so she had to leave a message telling him she was coming over.
By the time she got to the art studio with some fresh pastries she was a little concerned when Rafayel still hadn’t called her back. Maybe he’d just fallen asleep working again.
She opened the door with her spare key and stepped inside. The studio was clean—as clean as it ever was, anyway, and Rafayel was nowhere to be found. She went up to his bedroom, peeking her head in, but his bed looked unslept in.
She called him again, but this time, the line just said it could not be reached.
Worry started to trickle in. Where was Rafayel? And why would he not even call her back? He usually texted her a lot, especially when he was forced to go to events without her. And he had, up until around 10:30 last night, when his texts had kind of abruptly stopped.
She sent Thomas a quick text to tell him Rafayel still wasn’t at home, and he replied shortly with: Can you come to Flux? I need to show you something.
Ariadne hurried over to the gallery as soon as she could, meeting Thomas in his office. She found him staring at the computer screen with a furrowed brow.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Last night two reporters for the perfume company had Rafayel film a short promo video. This was the last I saw of him at the exhibition, and I just assumed he decided he’d had enough after that and left. But they just sent me this video for review before they put it up with the raw footage attached and…see for yourself.”
Ari leaned over his shoulder to watch as Rafayel talked about the perfume, then sprayed some of it on his wrist. That was when his words started to falter and an odd look came over him as he began to grow agitated then ended the interview by saying: “I…don’t feel well. That will have to be it for tonight.” Before he left and the video cut out.
“What’s in that perfume?” Ariadne instantly asked.
Thomas shook his head. “I don’t know. I know that when he smelled the sample he just said it smelled bad, he didn’t have a reaction like this.” He got up and grabbed an elegantly tied black box, handing it to her. “This was in a PR package that was sent to him, but I figured he wouldn’t want it.”
Frowning, Ari opened the box and pulled the delicate bottle out, unscrewing the cap to sniff it.
She blinked a little. The scent was something almost…nostalgic, and made her feel a little dreamlike.
“That’s…an interesting perfume,” she said.
“Really? I kind of thought it was pretty basic myself,” Thomas said as he took the bottle and sniffed it. He then looked at it in confusion and sniffed it again. “This…isn’t right.”
“What do you mean?”
He grabbed another bottle off his desk. “This is one from the launch last night. The scent is completely different.”
Ari took it and sniffed it, realizing he was right. It was a lot more vegetal with a saltiness like the sea. “This is the one Rafayel said smelled like seaweed?”
“Yes, they didn’t change it drastically from the prototype. But that other one…it’s completely different. There must be some mistake…”
“The only reason someone would give him a different one is if there was a reason for the deliberate change. Could it be…some sort of drug?”
Thomas’s face went pale as realization set in. “I need to call the venue and also confirm who these PR people were.”
“I can head over there and ask them to view the CCTV footage,” Ariadne said quickly.
Her heartbeat was racing as she drove over to the venue. She was now convinced that something bad had happened to Rafayel and she was determined to figure out what it was to get him home safe.
~~~~~~~
Rafayel shivered on the metal table, finding it harder and harder to breathe by the second as his body dried out. He’d laid there for hours as Dr. Levelle took blood and tissue samples from him, even going so far as to extract a bone marrow sample which had been beyond painful. But still not as bad as when they plucked several scales; the pain and the blatant disrespect making it so much worse.
He was too dehydrated for tears to slip out of his eyes but the thought of anyone owning his scales outside of Ariadne terrified and infuriated him.
They left him there on the table when they finished for the day, discussing him and their findings like he wasn’t there, listening to them.
“The Lemurian genetics are quite fascinating. I haven’t had the chance to truly study one, especially not in their full form,” one of the assistants said excitedly to Dr. Levelle.
“You’re in for a treat then. We’ll be performing a vivisection once we finish with the rest of the tests,” the doctor replied as he gathered his notes and left the lab.
Rafayel’s stomach flipped in panic. They were going to cut him up? He shouldn’t be surprised—after all, he’d watched them do it before—but still, the thought was terrifying.
He struggled against the straps, fighting in vain to loosen them as his strength wavered. It was so much harder to stay hydrated in this form and he hadn’t been in water since they had first brought him here.
He didn’t know what to do, he only knew he had to get out of there. Somehow. Most likely by himself since who would even think to look for him here?
But if he couldn’t return to his human form, he would be left flopping like a fish—mortifying. The helplessness he felt welled like a deep sea trench inside of him.
He thought of Ari and his eyes pricked. He had spent so long looking for her only for them to be separated like this. He wasn’t supposed to die like this, an experimental subject to humans.
But maybe…a dark voice whispered in his head, after everything his people had been put through because of him, it was, in the end, fitting.
But he wouldn’t give up hope yet. There had to be a way to get out of here, to survive and find his way back to Ariadne.
~~~~~~~
After reviewing the CCTV footage, Ariadne realized just how bad things were.
She caught sight of Rafayel staggering toward the bathrooms, then a few seconds later, several men following. She didn’t see them return the same way, but when checking the other cameras, she saw a van park right in front of the back door and several dark figures load something body-shaped into the back of the van.
She instantly sent the license plate to Nero to see who the van belonged to and called Thomas.
“I think Rafayel might have been kidnapped,” she said grimly, pacing around in agitation.
Thomas swore. “I talked to the two PR people who interviewed him last night. They said that a random man they assumed was part of the exhibition handed them a bottle of the perfume before they went to do the interview. I think this whole thing must have been a set up. I just don’t understand why…”
She got a text notification and glanced at it to see Nero’s message.
“I…think I might have just found out,” Ariadne said with growing dread.
~~~~~~~
Going in alone was not a good plan, Ariadne realized that. But considering Rafayel’s delicate situation with hiding his true identity as a Lemurian, she couldn’t even trust her colleagues should they find out. And Thomas wasn’t exactly back-up material. Not that she would put the man in danger even if he was considering he was a new father.
Maybe it was best anyway, staying low was easier with one person.
She knew where they had taken Rafayel as soon as Nero had gotten the van’s owner back to her. The name was someone who worked for the former Xander Sciences—Raymond, in other words. Someone known for conducting sadistic experimentation on Lemurians and even going so far as to display their skeletons in his home. Barbaric, to put it lightly. She had no doubt this Dr. Levelle was just as bad.
She had no idea what she would find when she got to the facility, but she was going to get Rafayel out of there.
Her first stop was Philo where she asked Jeremiah to make her a convincing laboratory ID off the books. He got it back to her within an hour and she drove off to the facility, getting through the gate with little trouble.
Once inside, she set several small EMP disrupters Simone had modified for her for missions around the place, hiding in a broom closet to set them off.
Chaos erupted almost instantly. The few people still working at the facility this late at night rushed to the control and server rooms to see what was going on.
Ariadne slipped past them and headed toward the laboratory.
She could somehow feel in her bones that she was close to Rafayel and that he was suffering. Her heart started to pound, causing her to move quicker.
She burst into the dimly lit lab. The lights were flashing, emergency red coming on in the corners of the room, giving the area a blood-like look. She approached cautiously, taking in the sets of test tubes and beakers, microscopes and other equipment she wasn’t sure of the uses for. Several print outs of blood and cells and inhuman skeletal structure took up a white board with scribbled notes on it.
A curtain at the far end of the room cordoned off the back end of the laboratory. Ari crept toward it, dread settling in her throat as she reached out to pull the curtain aside.
Her heart stopped as she saw what was behind it.
Rafayel lay strapped to a metal table, his legs transformed into a massive fishtail, the fins at the end flopping limply down to scrape the floor. It was a grotesque scene, like looking at a fish at the meat market.
Ariadne had a brief moment of terror that Rafayel was dead, but his chest rose in a shaky breath, and his head turned slowly toward her, eyes blinking open.
She rushed the last few feet toward him and took his face in her hands.
“Rafayel!”
His eyes widened above the leather muzzle covering the lower half of his face. He tugged weakly at the straps around his wrists and she set around undoing them, noticing how dry his skin was.
She finally pulled the muzzle from his mouth and he gasped for breath, reaching for her weakly.
She pulled him into a sitting position and hugged him tightly as his arms weakly wrapped around her and his head landed on her shoulder.
“Ari,” he croaked. “Knew you’d come.”
“You’re okay,” she promised. “You’ll be okay now.”
She quickly calculated before realizing there was no way she could pick him up and carry him in this form.
“Can you change back?”
He groaned and his scales shifted slightly before his large tail transformed back into legs.
Ariadne realized too late that, of course he would be naked, and hurriedly looked around to try and find some clothes, cheeks heating.
Rafayel seemed too tired to care about modesty at the moment though and let her help him into a pair of scrubs she found.
“We probably don’t have a lot of time, let’s go,” she told him. “Can you stand?”
Rafayel let her help him off the table, legs nearly collapsing, but he held onto her.
“Okay,” he murmured and she started walking, before he stopped her. “Wait, wait.”
“What?”
He moved over to a table and shakily snatched a bottle from it. Ariadne could see several shimmering scales inside.
“They don’t get to have these,” he said, tucking them into her coat pocket before leaning heavily on her again.
Ari hurried them out of the facility, barely escaping notice. She helped Rafayel into the backseat of the car, covering him with a blanket and clenching the wheel as she drove as casually as possible out of the gate.
Once they were free, she floored the car back to Rafayel’s place.
“Bath,” Rafayel gasped instantly as she got him inside.
She put him directly into the bathtub and turned the water on. Rafayel sighed in relief as he laid back in the water. She grabbed a cloth and washed his face and neck, rolling a towel for him to use as a pillow.
As he soaked, she called Thomas to inform him of the rescue and he gave her a relieved thanks, telling her he would send over anything Rafayel might need.
She then went back to tend to Rafayel, watching him perk up a little after being in the water for a while.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asked softly.
He shook his head and took her hand. “No. Just…stay with me.”
She knelt by the tub and did just that, not wanting to leave his side either.
“What happened?” she finally asked.
He took a shuddering breath. “It was a trap. They used the perfume collab to get at me. I didn’t realize Raymond knew about that concoction.”
“What even is it?” Ariadne asked. “I smelled the fake one, and it…well it was odd but it felt nostalgic almost.”
Rafayel’s ears tinted slightly. “It’s…something Lemurians would usually gift to their lovers.”
Ari frowned before she blurted, “It’s an aphrodisiac?”
Rafayel glared at her, ears burning even more. “Not…entirely. It’s more like, a drug, like catnip almost. But it can have…other effects.” He huffed. “Basically, it lowers inhibitions and can make Lemurians suggestible and easy to control.”
“Like a Lemurian roofie?”
“Kind of; it can have that effect in large doses. But normally, among each other, it’s used consensually in a lot less concentrated doses.”
He flushed even brighter. “I was…actually planning on trying to make some to give to you. I don’t know how I feel about it now, though.”
She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it. “You only have to if you feel comfortable,” she told him. “It’s disgusting that they used something so meaningful from your culture like that.”
He smiled a little and threaded his fingers through hers. “You already have my scales, and my bond, I have little choice but to trust you.” He met her eyes. “And you came for me, after all. Got me out of there before they cut me apart. I do trust you, Ari, with my life, and my very being.”
She leaned in to gently kiss his cheek, sealing her promise to never betray him.
She got up to get him some fresh clothes.
“Are you okay to get out of the bath now?” she asked.
He nodded and stood shakily as she helped him to dry off and dress in his robe. He looked a little better now, but she was determined to inspect all his injuries.
He leaned heavily against her as she helped him toward his room.
“My head hurts,” he said tiredly.
“I’ll get you something for the pain, and something to eat too. I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“The drug is still wearing off,” he murmured as she eased him into the bed, pulling the blankets up to his waist as she fluffed the pillows behind his back.
“Food will help, and coffee,” she promised.
She made him coffee and toast, figuring that would be easy on his stomach for now, and watched him eat it before giving him pain pills. As he drank the coffee, she glanced at the little jaw of scales that now sat on his bedside table.
“Your scales—what should I do with them?” she asked as she picked up the jar, staring in awe at the iridescent little fan shaped scales inside.
“Keep them close to you, like I keep you close to me,” Rafayel said, and grabbed her wrist, tugging her closer.
“They’re very pretty.”
He smirked a little. “Do you know what it means when you compliment a Lemurian’s scales?”
She shook her head as she crawled onto the bed, kicking her shoes off.
“It’s basically a love confession,” Rafayel said smugly as he wrapped his arms around her and rested his head on her chest.
“Oh, is it?” she asked, settling a hand in his hair and massaging to help ease his headache.
He hummed contentedly. “Yeah. Practically a proposal.”
She snorted, but hugged him closer as he nuzzled against her.
They were silent for a long time, and she thought Rafayel had fallen asleep, but he eventually spoke up, “This wasn’t the first time I ended up there.”
She rose slightly to look at him, not sure she had heard him correctly. “What do you mean?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “When we first came here, some of my people were tricked into being experimented on by Xander Sciences. Raymond murdered many of my kin. If it wasn’t for one of my kind old teachers I would have met their fate. I almost…” he swallowed hard, “I almost felt that this was retribution for not being able to save them. That I deserved to meet the same fate.”
“No, you can’t think like that,” Ariadne said firmly, tilting his chin up so he would look at her. “That’s survivor’s guilt talking, Rafayel.”
“I know,” he admitted. “But I still regret everything that happened to my people.”
“I know.” She stroked his hair soothingly. “But you constantly do all you can for them. Even getting revenge. Sometimes surviving is the best way to honor those who are gone.”
“I guess I can see your point,” he admitted, eyes falling shut wearily. “I wish I could wipe them all off the face of the earth.”
“Someday, maybe,” Ari told him. “But right now, you need to rest and recover. I’ll stay here with you until you wake up.”
Seeming comforted by that, he settled more heavily in her arms and his breathing evened out. She watched him sleep for a long time, grateful to have him back in her arms, vowing that if anyone tried to take him from her again, she would be the one getting revenge the next time.