Chapter 46
CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX
“You said your name was Asher Ruciyah. That you were from Quinzyr.”
Asher nodded, rubbing his hands together. “I lied. You’re the first I’ve spoken my real name to in over twenty cycles.”
Who are you? I’d demanded of him. This was why he hadn’t answered. Because he was a Maker-damned prince of Akahzyr. Which meant… “You weren’t going to sell the stone to the highest bidder.”
“No…I wasn’t.” I rolled my lips together, but when I didn’t say anything else he sighed, head drooping.
“When I was seventeen an emissary of high-level Federation senators, including Senate Leader Antares, visited our planet to discuss trade with my mother. At the time, Akahzyr was a tenuous Class Two member of the Federation, though my mother had been considering pulling out of the alliance completely. While we hosted the delegation, we had no idea they wouldn’t stick to the rules of hospitality.
In the middle of the night, a select crew hired by one of the senators broke into our temple and stole our most powerful and sacred stone.
Trusting them was our downfall. A mistake I’m sure my people will never make again. ”
My hands clenched into fists, pain blossoming across my palms. I’d read an account of the betrayal in one of the texts Zoleka had given me. One of the soldiers had died when he touched the stone with his bare hands but the rest were able to smuggle it out in an ammunition box.
“Once we realized what happened, any travel in or out of the planet was halted. And when it was confirmed that the stone had been taken off world, the responsibility fell on my shoulders to retrieve it.”
Shaking my head, I pressed my fingers to my lids. “Why you? Don’t you have…I don’t know—soldiers? Warriors?”
Asher’s exhale was loud. “They would expect an army of Akahzyrian warriors. We’re a small planet.
My mother had to choose between protecting our home or retrieving the stone.
I was honored by the mission, even with the understanding that to do so I would have to forsake my people, our traditions and beliefs, and even my family name. ”
Twenty cycles since he’d seen his home. Twenty cycles of pretending to be someone else.
I could only stare at him as if it was the first time I’d truly seen him, unable to fathom what that must have been like.
My planet had been ripped from me, my people destroyed, but Asher?
Asher had accepted he might never return to his planet and see his family again, all for the sake of duty.
“I joined a mercenary crew and met a Quinzyr male who took me under his wing. Endron Ruciyah was a good male, for all his faults. He taught me the ways of the Quinzyr, believing me to be yet another orphan desperate for a path. And when I was twenty-five, I took the marks of his people and donned the mask, knowing it would help divert any suspicion of who I might truly be.” He laughed bitterly and shook his head before gathering his hair up and twisting it into a bun on the back of his head.
“Do you remember Senator Jucinda, who was with Lucien on Louxuria?”
I nodded.
“She was one of the officials, though at the time she was a councilwoman and her late husband had been senator. Both of them had come to my planet with the delegation. I was sure she would recognize me even after all these cycles. But no one ever sees past the markings. It’s a mask in and of itself. ”
Another mask, another lie. “So where do I fit in to this?”
His throat clicked with a swallow. He regarded me almost like he was memorizing my face.
“The most cherished story of my people is one that says the universe was created by a great explosion and in its cataclysm the first atoms were made, the first particles, the first pieces of stardust. As time began and the universe expanded, those atoms spread out far and wide. They created stars and planets, trees and creatures, and beings like us.”
Asher took a deep breath, sliding his chair forward a little.
I didn’t understand what this story had to do with me, but before I could say anything, he raised one of those hands to stop me.
“My people believe some of those atoms bonded at the start of the universe, sharing a…connection that spans throughout time and space, through fire and ice and everything in between. Those atoms live in our cells, in our bodies, in our souls, and very rarely we find our mates. The ones our atoms were with at the very beginning of time.”
I froze as his hand reached out to cover mine. My heart skipped at the fear suddenly flickering through my veins, the uncertainty, the ache in my chest.
“When that happens, we can experience what the other is feeling through physical touch. And when our blood is exchanged, there is a mental link between mates allowing us to share our innermost thoughts. That link helps us to find each other no matter how far apart we might be, to share our strength, our power, and our abilities.”
I blinked at him, finally understanding what he was saying.
I’d read about it in the book Zoleka gave me.
The mating bond was such a powerful force it even rewrote their biology.
Once an Akahzyrian found their mate and the bond set, their strength grew tenfold, their ability to manipulate matter exponentially increased.
That was nothing to say of their ability to influence others, the intense power of persuasion they had.
Asher had torn a two-foot-thick metal door to get to me.
He’d crushed a fighter into pieces.
The laugh that burst from my chest was bitter, but it was a laugh all the same. I laughed until tears sprang at the corners of my eyes, until I was choking. And all the while Asher watched with a mix of heartbreak and longing on his face.
“I’m your mate.”
He nodded, eyes sparkling in the dim light. “Yes.”
Though his joy slipped through the bond, I found it could not touch me. “So you have no choice.”
The fingers around my hand tightened. “In a thousand lifetimes, June, I would choose you. With or without this bond.”
But I was shaking my head, trying to pull my hand from his. “No, in a thousand lifetimes you would still have no choice. You don’t even know me.”
“No…I don’t, not fully—not in the way you mean,” he agreed. “But I want to.”
I thought back now to every time he’d touched me, the understanding I’d thought we’d had. Bitterness tinged the memories as I realized it was merely this forced connection between us. His choice had been taken, just as mine had. There was still no such thing as freedom, even in our hearts.
In our hearts.
The thought was a tap at the back of my skull and I remembered the confusion I’d felt with the stone. How I’d been able to fly the fighter so easily, how I’d just seemed to know where the outpost was to remove the tracker. “It wasn’t the stone that helped me.”
The curve of his shoulders hiked ever so slightly, trepidation slipping across my skin. “The stone strengthened your bond to me even without the bite, allowing you to draw on my knowledge and skills to protect yourself.”
But there was something else, something he wasn’t saying.
“Did you use the bond to influence me?”
Asher’s face fell and I didn’t need his next words, gentle as they might have been. “I used it to guide you to me on Wuaxia, yes.”
To guide you to me. My stomach twisted and I ripped my hands from his, refusing the apologies that he pressed through the connection.
“That is…wrong,” I rasped, twisting my hands into the sheets and leaning away as he reached for me again.
“You manipulated me, just like you manipulated all those people on Louxuria, didn’t you?
Convincing them of your plans, your role and status.
Is what I feel for you even real, or is it just another byproduct of your power? ”
Asher reared back as if I’d struck him, mouth agape. “I would never do that to you, June—”
“Don’t call me that.”
He raised his hands in supplication, as if I had trained a blaster on him. “You have to trust me—”
“Trust you? I don’t know you.”
“Yes, you do.” He stood, gripping my chin. “You know me. I am the same male you have tormented from day one with your silence, the same male who danced with you on the observation deck, who held you in his arms, who tasted you.”
I shook my head, fighting against his grip. It wasn’t painful, but it was enough to hold me in place.
“Deny this bond all you want. Use whatever excuse you need to try to push me away. But there is nowhere you can go in this universe that I will not follow, no corner you can hide in where I will not find you.” He leaned down until we were eye to eye.
“I am your mate and I will wait as long as it takes for you to realize it.”
Jerking my chin out of his grasp, I forced a sneer to curl at my lip. “It sounds like you’re my yeska.”
His answering grin was deadly in its sincerity. “I would rather spend a lifetime supplicating at your feet than a second missing your warmth.”
We stared at each other for one long moment, the implication of his words pounding at the back of my skull.
There was no one I could rely on in this universe beside myself and lately, even I had proven to be a bit of an unknown given the way I’d wielded the stone.
But I didn’t know this male—he was more of a stranger to me than ever before.
As the silence lengthened, my heart beat so painfully in my chest I couldn’t help but put a hand over it.
“Leave.”