"Take the shirt off," Chloe commanded, snapping a pair of bright pink latex gloves onto her hands.
Julian sat stiffly on the wooden kitchen stool. He looked at the archives clerk, then at the bottle of generic, drugstore rubbing alcohol in her hand.
"If you pour that on my skin," Julian growled, his golden eyes flashing dangerously, "I will throw you out of your own window."
"I live on the second floor, drama queen. You'll just ruin my neighbor's geraniums." Chloe uncapped the bottle with her teeth and spat the plastic cap into the sink. "Shirt. Now. Or I'll cut it off with kitchen shears."
Julian's jaw clenched. He looked at Elara, expecting the auditor to intervene.
Elara was leaning against the peeling wallpaper, her arms crossed tight over her chest. The adrenaline was fading, leaving her feeling hollowed out and freezing cold. "Do what she says, Thorne. If that wound gets infected with sewer bacteria, your medical bills are going to bankrupt me faster than the Vatican."
With a sharp, irritated hiss, Julian reached up with his good arm. He grabbed the torn collar of the neon-green FLOSS LIKE A BOSS shirt and ripped it down the middle. The cheap cotton tore easily. He shrugged the ruined fabric off his broad shoulders, letting it drop to the linoleum floor.
Elara's breath hitched. Not out of romance. Out of pure, clinical shock.
The gash on his left shoulder was horrific. The rusted rebar had torn through the muscle tissue, scraping the collarbone. The navy-blue silk scarf was completely saturated, sticking to the wound like a second skin.
But what shocked her wasn't the depth of the cut. It was the fact that it wasn't healing.
"You ripped a mercenary's spine out yesterday in three seconds," Elara said, her voice sounding loud in the small kitchen. She frowned, walking closer. "You're an Apex predator. Why did a brainless mutant with a rusty pipe almost take your arm off?"
Julian stared straight ahead at the floral wallpaper. The muscles in his back were strung tight as piano wire.
"Federal wards," he spat the words out like poison. "Your pathetic agency lines the basement concrete with silver dust and suppression runes so auditors don't get eaten during tax season. My physical output was restricted by half."
"Half of your output is still enough to dodge a slow, blind swing," Elara countered, her bureaucratic logic refusing to let it go. "You didn't dodge."
"I couldn't dodge." Julian finally turned his head to glare at her. The golden glow in his eyes was muted, flickering with pain and absolute exhaustion. "You were standing directly behind me, Vance. If I stepped aside, that rebar would have crushed your skull like a grape. And since your heartbeat is currently tied to my nervous system, I decided a torn shoulder was less annoying than a dead mate."
Elara froze. The harsh fluorescent kitchen light suddenly felt too bright.
He took the hit for her. Not out of chivalry. Out of a violent, biological math equation.
"And your healing factor?" Chloe interrupted, completely ruining the heavy silence. She peeled the bloody silk scarf off his skin. Julian didn't flinch, but a massive tendon in his neck bulged. "Hybrids usually close wounds in minutes. You're still bleeding like a stuck pig."
"He hasn't fed," Elara answered quietly, staring at the wound.
Julian shot her a warning look, but Elara ignored it.
"I told him to drink the AB-negative in my fridge last night," Elara said, her voice completely flat, addressing Chloe. "But His Majesty felt it was beneath his dignity to drink bagged blood that was sitting next to leftover Chinese takeout."
Chloe let out a loud, highly inappropriate snort of laughter.
"Are you serious?" Chloe looked down at the terrifying billionaire. "You got your ass kicked by a sewer mutant because you're a food snob?"
"I am a pureblood," Julian snarled, his fangs fully descending in humiliated rage. "I do not drink oxidized, preservative-filled garbage from a plastic pouch. It tastes like copper pennies and despair."
"Well, right now, you look like despair," Chloe said cheerfully. She raised the bottle of cheap rubbing alcohol. "This is going to sting. Try not to bite your tongue off."
She dumped a quarter of the bottle directly into the open gash.
Julian's entire body went rigid. A violent, guttural roar ripped out of his throat, shaking the cheap glass windows of the apartment. His claws shot out, gouging four deep, splintering trenches into the seat of the wooden stool.
Across the room, Elara gasped, her knees buckling as a phantom wave of searing, white-hot agony flared across her own shoulder. She grabbed the edge of the sink, panting heavily, her knuckles turning white.
Julian was breathing in sharp, ragged gasps. He looked over at Elara, seeing her clutching the counter in shared pain.
"Tell the witch..." Julian gritted his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead, his voice shaking with absolute, furious misery. "...to use less alcohol."