novelraw Chapter 217: Sedation
Chapter 217: Sedation
Zubair stayed crouched a moment longer than necessary, watching her.
She sat on the bed with her knees drawn up under the blanket she’d pulled around herself, her shoulders leaned against the mattress like she’d forgotten what a bed was for.
Her bare feet rested on the cold concrete floor, pale toes curled slightly against the chill she probably didn’t even feel.
Zubair felt it.
Not on his skin—he was as impervious to cold as she was—but somewhere deeper, a place beyond sense and nerve that measured comfort in ways he couldn’t name.
She shouldn’t have been sitting like that, as if the floor could take something from her just by existing.
So he slid one arm behind her knees, the other around her shoulders, and lifted.
It wasn’t strength; strength had nothing to do with it.
She weighed less than his gear used to back before the world ended, before the labs, before the hunt. It was the care in the motion that slowed him down, the precision of it.
He felt the shift of her breath when he gathered her in, the slackness in muscles that had been too tight for too long.
Her head tipped naturally into the curve of his throat.
The cameras blinked from the corners. Zubair didn’t bother looking at them.
He rose from the crouch with one smooth push of his legs, turned, and carried her the half-step to the middle of the cot.
The blanket she’d wrapped around herself came with her, edges trailing until he tugged them straight again.
He shook out the top layer once, a sharp flick of his wrist snapping it open, then drew it over both of them as he lowered her to the mattress.
She didn’t protest when he lay down behind her.
The cot dipped under their combined weight, narrow and utilitarian, but it didn’t matter.
Zubair pulled her back into his chest, one arm sliding firmly around her waist until the curve of her spine settled against him. He positioned himself between her and the door without thinking about it, body angling so nothing could reach her without going through him first.
The creature inside him stretched, then stilled.
For the first time since they’d dragged him into this place, the restless heat in his blood went quiet.
It didn’t want a fight.
It didn’t even want the room to notice it existed.
It only wanted this—the slow rise and fall of her breathing against his arm, the loose weight of her head as it tucked under his chin, the clean, tired warmth of her body sinking gradually into his.
He pulled the blanket higher over her shoulders.
Not because she needed it. Because he needed to.
Zubair shut his eyes briefly, then opened them again, scanning the corners automatically, checking the door, the vents, the shadows near the ceiling. Nothing moved but the faint red blink of the camera.
Sera shifted once in her sleep.
Not much.
Just enough that her hips settled more comfortably against him, enough that her breathing eased into something slower, deeper.
The blanket slipped slightly when she moved; he fixed it without thinking, tucking the edge under her arm so she wouldn’t lose it during the night she didn’t even know they were having.
Zubair rested his chin lightly on the top of her head.
He didn’t mean to close his eyes again, but exhaustion made its own rules.
The labs had cut him open, tested his limits, charted the ways he healed, the ways he didn’t.
He hadn’t felt it then. Hadn’t felt it when they pushed him through the gauntlet of experiments meant to break him, to see what lived under his skin besides blood and bone.
But this—her back pressed into his chest, the curve of her shoulder under his arm, the sound of her breathing so close to his own—this slipped past every wall in him.
She smelled like metal and smoke and something faintly sharp, like pine needles after rain. Not the sour-sweet chemical stench of the labs. Not bleach. Not fear.
He pulled her in a fraction closer, his palm spreading over her ribs as if he could keep her there by covering as much of her as possible.
Her breathing didn’t change.
She was already asleep.
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Zubair didn’t sleep. Not at first.
He lay there with his eyes half-open, watching the blurred outline of the door across the room, the faint reflection of light on the tiles.
His arm stayed locked around her waist, the muscles of his forearm curved firm and unmoving over the top edge of the blanket.
Her hair tickled his throat when she breathed.
The cot was too narrow, the mattress too thin, the blanket barely enough for one.
But none of that mattered.
The warmth of her back along his chest seeped through every layer of restraint the labs had welded into him over the years. He could feel her pulse where her wrist rested lightly over his arm.
The creature inside him rumbled low and deep, not angry for once. Not restless. Just... there. Settled. Like the sound a fire makes when it’s burned down to coals.
Zubair let his eyes close finally, not because he meant to sleep but because the weight of her made everything else irrelevant.
The hum of the lights overhead blurred into the background. Somewhere far down the hall, metal wheels rattled faintly against tile before the sound disappeared again.
He didn’t move.
His breathing slowed until it matched hers, deep and even, the two of them folded into the same rhythm without words or thought.
Sera’s shoulders loosened gradually under his arm. Her head rested heavier against his bicep.
The hand she’d left on top of the blanket slipped slightly until it lay closer to his wrist, her fingers curled loosely there like even in sleep she was making sure he stayed.
Zubair didn’t need the reassurance.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
----
The first hiss from the vents was quiet enough that it didn’t register as anything unusual.
Air shifted faintly across the ceiling, carrying no scent, no warning.
Sera didn’t stir.
Her breathing stayed slow, even, the deep kind of exhaustion that had finally pulled her under the moment she knew someone else was keeping watch.
Zubair kept his eyes closed, body curved around hers, his hand still spread firm over her waist. The warmth of her bled steady into his chest.
Another faint hiss from the vents.
The air thickened by degrees.
Zubair’s grip on her loosened slightly as his muscles gave in one at a time, sleep sliding into the spaces the lab had hollowed out of him earlier. He felt the pull at the edges of himself, heavy and certain, but he didn’t fight it.
Not this time.
Not with her here.
The last thing he knew before it took him was the weight of her pressed into his chest, the sound of her breathing steady under his arm.
-----
They didn’t wake when the door opened.
Didn’t wake when boots crossed the floor.
Didn’t wake when the first wrong hand touched her.