Liam kept his eyes closed, his face buried in the crook of Arik’s neck. He was exhausted, his throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sand, and his dignity was currently in tatters.

Worse, Arik knew.

The bond remained open between them, not wide enough for full emotion to bleed through without shape, but open enough that Liam could feel Arik holding himself together with the same ruthless discipline he used to tear enemies apart.

It was deeply irritating.

Also warm.

Also useful.

Liam decided to hate all of that later, when his lungs stopped behaving like a poorly maintained pressure system.

Marin moved beside them with brisk, unforgiving efficiency, already charging another injector from the second vial. The first antidote had burned the poison out. This one looked calmer, a pale blue-gold liquid that shimmered faintly in the small chamber of the autoinjector.

Liam opened one eye.

"No."

Marin did not even look at him. "Yes."

"I just survived one."

"And I congratulated you internally."

"I would prefer external congratulations and no second injection."

"You may have neither."

Arik’s hand moved slightly at Liam’s back, not tightening, but preparing to support him before Liam had even finished considering resistance.

Liam turned his head just enough to glare at him. "Do not help him."

Arik looked down at him, gold eyes still too bright, still too cold at the edges. "I am helping you."

"That is a dangerous interpretation."

Marin stepped closer. "This stabilizer prevents delayed channel spasms. It also keeps the antidote from overcorrecting around the bond-linked circulation points."

Liam stared at him.

Then, very slowly, he looked at Arik.

Arik’s expression did not change.

Liam immediately disliked that.

"Bond-linked circulation points," he repeated.

Marin paused for half a second too long.

Liam’s eyes narrowed.

"Marin."

The physician sighed. "Your channels used His Highness’s pheromones as emergency scaffolding while the poison was active."

Liam closed his eye again.

"Being mated to Arik becomes both exhausting and refreshing." Marin exhaled through his nose and reached for a second vial.

Liam was bent slightly forward against Arik’s hold, one hand twisted in the ruined fabric of Arik’s shirt, his breathing shallow and careful. The first antidote had broken the poison’s grip around his lungs, but it had not made him well. It had only turned immediate danger into something slower, something his body now had to fight through with exhausted channels and a throat that still burned every time he swallowed.

Marin’s expression sobered as he prepared the second injection.

"The stabilizer," he repeated, quieter now. "It will keep the antidote from overcorrecting around the bond-linked circulation and prevent delayed spasms. He may lose consciousness after it. That is expected."

Arik’s arm tightened by a fraction around Liam’s shoulders.

Liam felt it.

He did not have enough strength left to comment.

The second autoinjector pressed against his arm.

There was a soft hiss.

This medicine did not strike like fire.

It spread like deep, heavy cold, pouring through the places the antidote had burned open, sealing what it could, forcing damaged channels to stop convulsing around the poison residue. Liam’s fingers tightened once in Arik’s shirt, then loosened.

His breath shuddered.

Arik lowered his head, his mouth close to Liam’s hair, but he did not speak. His pheromones stayed wrapped around Liam in a steady layer, no longer flooding, no longer shaking the room, only holding, anchoring, giving Liam’s body something stable to lean against while the medicine dragged him under.

Marin watched the scan.

The red lines along Liam’s throat and chest dulled slowly to orange, then to bruised gold. The unstable flicker near the bond points softened. The warning markers stopped spreading.

Only then did Marin breathe properly.

"Good," he said. "It is working."

Liam’s lashes trembled.

He tried to open his eyes and failed halfway.

Through the bond, Arik felt the moment his resistance began to slip. Not surrender. Liam would have hated the word even unconscious. It was simply exhaustion, raw and biological, the body taking control because the mind had been forcing it upright for too long.

"Liam," Arik said, very quietly.

Liam made a small sound against his chest.

Arik’s face changed.

The fury from earlier did not leave him. It settled somewhere deeper, colder, stored away for later. What remained on the surface was worse in its own way: a careful, devastating fear that had learned it could not kill the current problem, so it had to hold still instead.

Marin checked Liam’s pulse, then the scan again.

"He can sleep," he said. "He needs to. The stabilizer will keep him down for a while. Let it."

Arik did not look away from Liam. "His breathing?"

"Clear. Shallow because he is exhausted, not because the poison is spreading."

"Channels?"

"Inflamed. Stable."

"Delayed reaction?"

"I will monitor it."

The answer was calm enough that Arik finally nodded.

Liam’s hand slipped lower on Arik’s shirt.

Arik caught it before it fell, folding Liam’s fingers carefully into his own. The motion was almost painfully gentle, and perhaps that was why Marin said nothing about the frost still melting around the examination bed.

For several minutes, they stayed like that.

Liam’s breathing slowed.

The harsh tension left his shoulders by degrees, not because the pain had vanished, but because consciousness had finally loosened its grip on it. His head rested fully against Arik’s chest now, his face pale beneath the clean cloth Marin had used it to wipe away the blood. He looked younger like this. Not harmless, but worn down past wit and anger into a kind of fragile stillness Arik could barely stand to look at.

Marin lowered the scanner.

"He should not stay in the office," he said. "The bed here is for treatment, not recovery. Take him to your room. Slowly. No spatial fold. No ether shortcuts. I will set a remote monitor and come in if anything changes."

Arik looked at him then.

Marin held his gaze. "He is stable enough to move if you carry him properly."

Arik slid one arm beneath Liam’s knees and the other around his back.

Liam did not wake.

That hurt too.

Arik lifted him with a care so complete it made the earlier violence seem like something from another life. Liam’s head shifted against his shoulder, and Arik adjusted immediately, supporting his neck, keeping his breathing unobstructed, shielding him from even the smallest unnecessary movement.

Marin attached a slim monitoring seal beneath Liam’s collarbone, then another at the side of his throat.

"Tell Standford and Mezos to wait for me in my sitting room." Arik said before exiting the room.

"Yes, Your Highness," Marin said, understanding that bloodshed would follow soon.