Christmas in Zonei Pt. 05

"Yes," Raeden said. His already deep voice was several octaves lower, his statement almost unintelligible.

"Stop!" Kim repeated. "Raeden, I agreed to it. I told him he could. You can't—you have to stop!" Kim tugged on Raeden's arm with both his hands, putting his weight into it.

Raeden's gaze shifted to Kim, his eyes glittering under a brow that was suddenly protruding. He must have eased up on the doctor's windpipe though, because the fat man began to take great wheezing breaths.

"You agreed?" he asked, his voice still uncannily deep.

"Yes," Kim cried. "It was the only way I could convince him to treat you. I agreed to give him twelve blowjobs for each session. This was only the first."

"No!" Raeden's voice reverberated through the bathroom, causing things in the cupboard to rattle. "No! You will not!"

"But..." Kim said in a small voice, awed and a little afraid of the change that had come over Raeden. His skin was no longer flushing with colors though, and the lizard patterns seemed to be fading.

"But ... we had an agreement."

"Yes, we did," the doctor gasped out.

"I said, no!" Raeden yelled again. He jerked the doctor forward and slammed him back into the wall. Kim heard a sharp crack as the doctor's head collided with the plaster. He let out a sharp cry, but he remained on his feet.

Raeden released the doctor and whirled to face Kim, breathing heavily, his eyes dark with anger. "Absolutely not!"

"You owe me!" the doctor said, rubbing the back of his head where it'd hit the wall. His voice was hoarse, but he seemed to have mostly recovered from the near strangling. "I can file a claim with CorpSec. I bet they'd be very interested in knowing you have a mod in your unit."

A chill raced down Kim's spine. Immediate physical danger was one thing, but the threat of being hauled away and having his brain fried—that was something else entirely. He had to make good on his agreement.

Kim found himself unable to meet Raeden's angry gaze. He stared at the chipped tile floor and took a deep breath. "We ... I do owe him," he said softly.

Raeden made a sound very much like an angry wild animal, then Kim heard him take several long slow breaths. Finally he spoke again, but his voice was still astonishingly low. "Here! Payment in full!"

Kim whipped his head up to see him grasp the gold chain around his neck and yank, breaking it. He held it out to the doctor, the sapphire and diamond ring dangling from the chain, catching the light as it swayed. Marcus automatically put out his hand, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

"It's real," Raeden said. "And it's worth a hell of a lot more than eighty thousand dollars."

"Raeden, you can't!" Kim cried, tugging on Raeden's arm again, this time to get him to pull the ring away from the contemptible doctor. He couldn't believe the sacrifice Raeden was willing to make. It was too much. A huge, painful lump was suddenly in his throat and he was unable to swallow it back down.

Raeden's face was grimly determined as he completely ignored Kim's protests and dropped the ring and chain into the doctor's chubby hand. The doctor closed his fingers around it, his eyes glittering with greed.

"Now get the fuck out!"

The doctor stared at Raeden. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, but Raeden cut him off with a growl. "If you're not out of this unit by the time I count to ten, I swear I'll fucking tear you limb from limb." Then he started counting, not even leaving a full second between each number, "One, two, three..."

The doctor scrambled out bathroom the door, moving faster than Kim would have thought possible for someone his size. Raeden took up a position in the doorway and Kim couldn't see around him, but he could still hear him counting. The doctor must have run for his machine and then raced out the door, because by the time Raeden got to nine, Kim heard the front door being opened and then slammed shut.

Raeden turned toward him and then sank to his knees with a groan. "My feet fucking hurt like a son of a bitch."

Kim's nerves were stretched taut. The intense emotion he had felt over the last twenty minutes suddenly overwhelmed him. He took a deep shuddering breath and covered his face with his hands. His body started to shake and he sank down onto the toilet seat lid once more.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he gasped out.

He heard Raeden approach him and then gentle hands were pulling him off the toilet seat onto a warm lap. Raeden sat on the floor holding him tenderly. "It's okay," he whispered, kissing the top of Kim's head.

"No, it's not!" Kim cried, pulling his face away from Raeden's chest to look into his eyes. "I ... you gave away your ring—Lyzel's ring. Raeden, why did you do that?"

"Why did you agree to give that sleazy bastard blowjobs?" Raeden countered, anger once more flashing in his eyes.

"Because I didn't want you to lose your feet."

Raeden's expression softened. "Well, I didn't want you to lose your honor," he said quietly.

To Kim's horror, he burst into tears, hiding his face against Raeden's chest. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

"It's okay, little one. It will be okay." He felt Raeden rubbing his back gently and through the thick haze of remorse that shrouded his soul, he wondered how he could do that with his ravaged, unbandaged fingers.

*****

Kim had finished his cry some minutes earlier. His breathing had evened out and the lump in his throat had finally eased, but he still sat on Raeden's lap with his face buried in the big man's chest. He didn't know what to say to him. He was having a hard time comprehending what Raeden had done. He had thought the sullen mod didn't care about him at all, but he'd been wrong. He had given away his most precious possession to save him from his ill-considered promise.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a very loud growl from Raeden's stomach.

Kim sat up and looked at Raeden, astonished, and the big man started to chuckle.

"I'm starving, in case you couldn't guess," he said.

"I'll go find something for dinner." Kim started to jump to his feet, but Raeden grabbed his arm to keep him seated.

"Are you alright?" he asked, peering at Kim closely.

"Yes, I'm fine. But what about you?" Kim examined Raeden in return. His expression was one of concern, not sorrow.

"It was only a thing. A small, lifeless bit of metal." His voice was huskier than usual, belying his words. He swallowed, his large Adam's apple bobbing with the action. "I couldn't stand by while you were hurt. I was well worth it."

Kim felt his face flushing. "I am sorry. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have anything else the doctor wanted..."

"Shhh," Raeden soothed, pushing strands of Kim's hair away from his face. "It's over now. No regrets, okay?"

Kim caught Raeden's huge hand in his own and examined his black fingers. "They ... they look better than before, don't they?" The darkness that had covered some of his fingers almost to his knuckles was now mostly just on the tips. His thumb was barely discolored at all.

"Yes, my fingers definitely feel much better. I'm getting some feeling back in them. My feet hurt worse than ever though," he added ruefully.

"I thought Marcus said it would take days to see the results."

Raeden harrumphed. "I don't think these results are from that damn torture machine. I think this is from my partial morf. When I'm in my trans-form, I heal extremely quickly."

"Oh! And you started to morf. I thought you said you couldn't do that anymore."

"It was a surprise to me as well. According to the mod scientists, warrior pairs that lose a mate, lose the ability to morf. And until today, I have not been able to, no matter how hard I try." He let out a wry laugh. "I didn't even try today, it was spontaneous."

"So how does it work? I mean, normally you just think, 'Okay, lizard form now,' and voila? How long does it take to morf?"

Raeden smiled at Kim's description of him in his trans-form. He did look kind of like a lizard man. "Yes, usually I can morf in a matter of seconds with just a thought. I have—had—considerable control over my body. For example, I could control my height to a certain extent. When I was fully morfed, I was over eight feet tall. But when we went out in public, I often shrank down to six six or so—not quite scary-monster size. I could also eliminate the scale pattern on my skin entirely if wanted to. It took a bit of effort and if I got excited, sometimes I would forget about it and it would start to show.

"The way I've been since you've seen me here is my natural form. It's the form I take when I'm fully relaxed. It's also the form I'm stuck with when I can't morf, apparently. I'm not sure the scientists at corporate realized that I no longer had the ability to hide my scale patterns, otherwise they probably never would have let me out in public again. Sometimes, for as brilliant as they are, they're not very bright. They're also under a huge amount of pressure from the higher ups at corporate. I think they just wanted me out of their hair."

"How did they happen to let you out?" Kim asked. "I mean, aren't you valuable or dangerous or something? You were just living on the streets in Zonem for months."

Raeden snorted. "They didn't care. A trans-mod who can't morf is worthless. Just a liability. I'm sure they didn't think I'd last long anyway. They cut my contract, gave me my pension, and sent me on my way. And I'm not particularly dangerous—not to anyone but myself."

"And Dr. Marcus," Kim said, remembering the doctor's bulging eyes with a small shudder.

"Yes, and scumbags who try to hurt you," Raeden agreed, rubbing Kim's back soothingly.

Just then his stomach let out another emphatic rumble.

Raeden grinned. "Morfing always makes me super hungry."

"Let me go see what we've got left to eat," Kim said, scrambling to his feet. This time, Raeden let him go.