Chapter 41
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
A few minutes earlier.
“What’s she doing?” Hudzon mumbled behind me.
I slipped off my gloves, keeping an eye on Juniper while she rose to her feet.
She’d lost her own on the molten metal edges of the hole she’d made.
My palms spread wide against the door and I pushed outward, energy rippling down my arms and into the metal.
There were locks—so many locks it would take a moment for me to get through them all.
Goddess, she was beautiful. Those green eyes stared right at me from behind her cowl.
Tingling spread out from the back of my neck, the awareness of what she was, the need for her so acute it ached.
And last night, when she had been spread out beneath me?
It’d taken everything in me not to devour her, not to sink my teeth into her flesh and seal her to me, to make her mine completely.
Juniper tugged down her cowl, a few tendrils of hair floating around her temples. For once her face showed all the emotion she kept locked up tight: eyes glassy, lips moving with the barest tremble, a muscle working in her jaw.
“No…” I breathed, slamming a fist on the metal. “Fuck.”
She dipped her fingers beneath her hood and pulled the communicator from her ear, dropped it to the floor.
It smashed beneath her heel with a whine of feedback through the line.
Those soft lips formed an apology, lashes glittering with unshed tears.
Heat crackled through my veins and I almost bowed forward with the force of it.
Our mating bond setting into place.
My chest ached as it set, the separate part of my heart that had never beat suddenly coming alive.
Blood rushed through my limbs. Though my people always spoke of the dizzying strength that came with a mating bond, I’d always thought it was an exaggeration.
Now? Now I knew I could break this door down with my bare hands, manipulation of matter be damned.
“Juniper!” I roared.
But she spun on her heel, running down the line until she stopped before a tall white column. I pressed against the door, the power of my people thundering through my veins. The metal bowed, cracked, just enough to give me purchase.
Behind me, Hudzon cursed, but I could barely focus on them, not when I looked through the window to see Juniper’s hand hovering over the stone. The stone I’d spent over half my life searching for.
I’d been a boy of barely seventeen when the elders of my planet had entrusted me with the task of recovering it.
As the only child of the Valissa, it was my duty to return our remaining sacred artifact above all else.
So, I’d kissed my mother and her kingdom goodbye and for over twenty cycles I hadn’t laid eyes on my home planet.
I’d forsaken my people and their teachings, slipped into another, taking vows and making sacrifices to gods I would never truly serve.
The cycles passed until I could barely remember the golden leaves of our trees or the bubbling rivers that danced through our lands.
I ached for Akahzyr almost as much as I ached for June.
When I’d first heard of the silks dancer on the Daskquah there had been something pushing me toward her, like a finger pressed against my skull.
I hadn’t been wholly honest when I’d told Juniper the reason I’d gone to Lunastra.
Yes, I’d needed someone small who could fit into tight spaces and slip through systems undetected.
There were countless safer places I could have found such a being, but it was the story of the female from Selhveina who danced so fucking prettily on the silks I couldn’t get out of my mind.
The moment I saw her twisting in the air, her hair flying around her face, there was a…
knowing. I hated it, hated it even as I told Lunastra Juniper was perfect for the job.
And I hated Juniper because everything changed.
My purpose for the last twenty cycles disappeared before my eyes as she stepped into Lunastra’s parlor covered in black silk, her blank face a mask and her beauty a quara blade through my heart.
So, I used my words as a weapon, pushing her away, denying the connection already forming with each moment I spent in her orbit.
But I couldn’t deny her pull, couldn’t help but admire her broken strength, her steely fragility.
Juniper was like an asteroid field—made up of countless pieces and deadly the moment you let down your guard.
I had prayed to my goddess for my instincts to be wrong after so many cycles away from my people.
But there had been those small touches when I’d get a sense of her emotions.
And then the final log on the funeral pyre—Juniper bleeding out before me on the floor of the Kuxatana.
I’d ripped off my gloves before thinking better of it and her pain had been mine.
Her injuries had flared through my bones, her fear, her acceptance of death.
I’d known then without question Juniper was my mate.
That night, on Louxuria, I’d been so afraid of what I might do if I slipped into bed beside her without my respirator filtering out her scent.
I’d agonized in the bathroom for over a quarter of an hour before I’d kept it on.
But it hadn’t mattered, not when she was so close—not when her heat slithered across the sheets and settled in my pores.
I’d been sure then the bond would set and I’d pull her into my arms to make her mine.
But that night the goddess had been kind.
Her kindness had not lasted long, however.
In the alcove of Listra’s estate, I’d been close to sinking my teeth and my cock into Juniper.
The moment her skin touched mine and the lust roiled through her veins—lust for me—something had broken irreparably.
Her scent had been maddening for hours and I’d almost told her countless times who I was, who she was, and what we were before I stopped myself each and every time.
She wasn’t ready, I knew it even now.
Juniper’s hand hovered over the stone, steady in its descent. I could only see her profile, but there was an awed expression on her face, all her pain leaching away like infection from a wound.
“Don’t touch it!” I roared through the door. “JUNIPER, DO NOT TOUCH THE STONE!”
Hudzon rushed forward but I didn’t need their help, not when her hand closed over the stone.
All I could hope was for our mating bond to be enough for her to survive and harness whatever power it gave her.
I tore the door open with a crash. Soon security would come running, but I didn’t give a damn as I threw myself inside.
A scream pierced through the silence. Her spine arched, energy rippling off her in waves.
I rushed forward but hit an invisible threshold as the power moved through her.
I staggered, shaking my head. Her whole body shook with the force of the stone, hood falling back until her hair spilled over her shoulders.
Rys cursed through the comms. “Maker’s tits. Prepare for company.”
But we didn’t need his warning when the blaster fire rained down on us.
I pushed my hand up, forcing an electrical field around myself and Hudzon before pausing.
The fire had come from the other side of Juniper and the bolts were already racing back to the guards before I’d even had time to think.
She stood upright, waves of electricity dancing around her arms and torso as the guards came into view.
Then fell to the ground, dead from their own weapons.
A black blade shimmered in her hand and she seemed barely aware of anything other than the new set of guards stomping onto the floor. With her teeth, she tugged back her sleeve before bringing the blade down onto her arm.
Dark green blood splattered on the ground around her boots. Juniper tucked the blade back onto her thigh, her eyes trained on the approaching guards. I reeled, confused, while she plunged her fingers into the wound and pulled something small from the gash, throwing it onto the floor.
A tracker.
“Stop right there,” one of the guards commanded, blaster pointed right at her.
But Juniper didn’t. She raised her bloody hand, shoulders hiking high to her ears.
It wasn’t her instinct influencing her, but mine—I could feel the way she unknowingly used the mating bond and the knowledge passed down from my ancestors to me.
The guard lifted a few feet off the floor, a surprised cry ringing out in the air before she thrust her hand to the side and slammed him against the wall.
Hudzon cursed but I pointed my blaster at the other guard who stared in horror, killing him before he could snap out of his daze.
I waited for her to turn and look at me, to say something, but she only pivoted on her heel and leaped over the crumbled glass.
Without hesitation, I followed, all but roaring her name as Hudzon fired behind me at some of the guards.
Black-green blood splatters littered the floor, but she was fast, so much faster than she had been before.
The power of the stone and our mating bond swirled within her, making her into something new.
I couldn’t even imagine what she would feel now, whether she felt the connection between us and how she could harness my strength as well as the stone’s.
But no…she would blame it all on the small rock in her hand.
As a young boy I’d watched how the power of those stones could be harnessed by our warriors.
It was a strength that could level mountains and bring civilizations to their knees.
There were many stones, but the one in her hand was the most powerful of all.
Our people only used it to defend our home, never to conquer.
We used it to connect with our goddess who long slept beneath our rocky shores.
I wondered if she could hear the whispers even here, so far from Akahzyr.
Juniper needed to let go. Power like that could burn someone up from the inside if they didn’t know how to use it.
I pushed the thought through our bond. The frantic beating of her heart blared in my chest, right beside my own.
Hudzon and I followed the blood splatters to the metal chute before Rys’ voice came over the communicator.
“She’s in the hangar, going for a small fighter.”
We both cursed, turning back to the door we’d come from.
A barrage of guards spilled through but I ran at them with a roar, their blaster fire pinging harmlessly off the shield I wrapped around me and Hudzon, ricocheting onto themselves.
Most were dead before I reached the door while the others met the end of my quara blade or Hudzon’s blaster.
I didn’t have time to acknowledge their deaths the way my people should.
I could only jump over the bodies and careen down the hall.
By the time we reached Kal at the hangar his eyes were wide, face pale beneath his black scars. His lips opened and closed in shock, but he reached for me with trembling hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. You have to believe me.”
I could barely pay him any attention, not when June was so close, yet he grabbed me by the arms, shaking me and blocking my path.
“She’s gone, Ash. She’s gone.”