by Mary Auclair
“Why have you come to Aveyn, Prime Councilor?” Arlen spoke with a deadly intelligence as his pale eyes missed nothing of the Mantrilla’s reactions. “Surely your curiosity about humanity is not so great as to endanger your hold on power. There is another reason for your visit. A reason you would rather keep secret.”
Prime Councilor Aav stood motionless for a brief period of time. If Ava could have placed an emotion on her featureless face, it would have been surprise, then shock, and finally wariness. And the wariness made Ava even more aware of the danger.
“You have a keen eye, Commander Arlen.”
Her mandibles clicked steadily, and power radiated from the Mantrilla like a glow. For the first time, Ava understood why she was the Prime Councilor of the entire Ring. She was a creature of power and reason, totally emotionless when it came to making decisions other species would be too afraid or too sensitive to take.
“But I cannot discuss the matter in public.” Her black eyes scanned the crowd that had amassed to witness the scene. “Come to my ship tomorrow. I will explain the issue. And make no mistake, the hour is grave for the Eok nation, just like it is for the entire Ring.”
With this, Prime Councilor Aav made a jerky motion to her Mantrilla soldiers. The insect-like creatures dropped Uril to the ground and the boy scrambled to his feet, running back toward Ava, his face a mask of tears and terror. He stumbled, then got back up before collapsing in Ava’s arms.
“You’re safe,” she whispered as she patted his dark, dark hair, sticking to his forehead with sweat. “You’re truly safe now.”
But he wasn’t, and as Arlen took the boy from her arms, she knew she couldn’t delay things any further. She needed to retrieve the Exo-Heart—immediately.
No matter the cost.
Arlen
“How is he?” Arlen asked Ava as she closed the door behind her. Now that they were alone in their rooms, tension seemed to cling to her body and she looked tired, so very tired and frail.
“He’s sleeping now, but I had to sedate him.” Ava shook her head, her face streaked with tears and dirt, her glorious red hair tangled around her pale face. “I still don’t know how well his heart will take the shock. It could be too much.”
“He will need the Exo-Heart soon,” Arlen agreed. “I tasked Officer Shetak with scanning the surface of the planet for possible buildings that were not found earlier, but he hasn’t been successful.”
Ava stared at him for a long time, her intelligent eyes on him like she was trying to decide what to tell him. How much to tell him. He stayed silent, giving her time to decide for herself whether she trusted him.
“I might have an idea of where the Vault is.” She spoke in a low voice, then bit her lower lip. “It’s nothing certain, just a hunch. Knut has only one residential facility in the entire Southern Hemisphere, right?”
Arlen nodded, encouraging her to continue.
“But why is it so far away? Facility Twenty-One is so remote, it’s dangerous for those who live there. He would have had no reason to build a facility that far into magnetic storm territory. Unless he wanted to cover something up.”
“You think the Vault is near Facility Twenty-One.” The revelation hit him all at once. It was a brilliant deduction. “But there is no other building on the entire continent down there.”
“Not on the surface.”
As Ava spoke, Arlen inhaled deeply. She was right. She was more than right. How could he have missed it?
“I will task Khal with scanning the entire continent for any signs of underground activity. If there is so much as a lost transmitter, he’ll find it.”
“Tell him to hurry.” Ava smiled but it was a pinched smile, full of sadness. “I don’t think Uril can wait too long.”
So many worries, such a fierce heart. Ava was strong—stronger than him or any other Eok. Stronger than anyone he knew.
“You care for him more than you care for your own life.” The statement was simple, but Ava lifted wet, glistening eyes to him. She bit her lip, then nodded.
“He’s all the family I have. I can’t give up on him.”
“I know. And I won’t ask you to.”
She lifted eyes of pure amethyst to him, so beautiful they took his breath away. The way she looked at him: so open, so strong… never in his life had he felt for anyone what he felt for Ava.
“I have to apologize to you.” When she tilted her head, those striking eyes still on him, he continued. “The Mating Venom comes to an Eok, not by choice, but when he finds the one female who is perfect for him. The one female who will make him whole. You, you are that female, and much more. It is extremely rare for a male to find a female so perfect that her very life essence is linked to him. My father had that chance, then my two older brothers, but I never thought it would happen to me. You see, when my brother Karian claimed his bloodmate, I already had a mate.”
Ava’s eyes widened in shock, then squinted in suspicion. “What happened to her?” She looked at him intently, her full, pink mouth just slightly pursed. “Where is your mate now?”
“Her name was Maral.” Arlen spoke the name he hadn’t allowed himself to say since her death. “She was Avonie, and she had been my mate for ten years when she died.”
“You must miss her a lot.”
Arlen shot her a sharp look. Ava’s expression was downcast and she tried to keep her face still, but he saw the way her lips were pulled taut and her gaze fixed to the floor. She thought he still missed Maral, that he still loved his first mate and that was the reason he didn’t want to talk about her.
How wrong she was.
“Maral came to Eokim in the summer I became a warrior. She was the most beautiful of all the females, and she knew it. I was entranced by her beauty, but she wanted nothing to do with me.” It was the truth, as cruel as it was. “She only had eyes for my older brother, Karian, as he was the one who was supposed to become chief of the Erynian tribe after my father. It was only when Karian rejected her that Maral accepted my advances.”
Pain shot through him at the memory of that day, when the Mating Venom had come to him. He had felt so triumphant when she’d accepted his offer of mating.
“I didn’t see what she was back then, or what she did to me. She put Merphysio in a drink we shared.”
“But Merphysio is a powerful aphrodisiac.” Ava’s eyes widened. “It would make any male of any species mad with lust. No wonder the Mating Venom came to you. It would have gone away, though, wouldn’t it?”
Arlen nodded sadly. It was the first time he had talked about this to anyone. Not even his parents knew.
“That’s why she insisted we had to be mated immediately, despite my family’s objections.” Arlen shook his head against the bitter memories. “It was only the next morning that I found the bottle hidden inside her clothing. She laughed at me, called me gullible. An Eok mates for life, and I knew I had made the most terrible mistake of my young life. Every day for the next ten years, I tried to fix it, to mend a bond between us that was never real in the first place.”
“I am so sorry.” Ava reached for him and as her small hand rested on his arm, a flood of warmth invaded his body and mind.
“She wasn’t all bad, like my brothers think she was. They all saw her as this pampered, capricious female, but she wasn’t always like that.” Arlen closed his eyes against the vision of Maral’s face. “I think she honestly thought that by tricking me into producing the Mating Venom for her, I would love her the way all Eoks love their mates: unconditionally, absolutely. But it didn’t work that way.”
“But you tried. You tried every day to make things work.” Ava’s eyes, so similar to an Avonie’s, gazed at him, full of trust and innocence.
Guilt and pain flooded his mind as another face came back to him. He didn’t want to talk about Maral, but he knew he owed it to Ava. Even at the risk of having her reject him for failing his previous mate.
“Yes, I did. I was as faithful and caring as any other, bu
t I think, deep down, she knew I didn’t love her. Not like I should have.”
“But did she love you?” Ava’s stare was intense, her purple eyes missing nothing as she looked at him.
“In the beginning, I think she wanted to.” Arlen shook his head. “But with time, when she understood that I would never truly feel for her what my father felt for my mother, she grew hostile, spiteful. It grew harder to please her, to appease that mean streak in everything she did. So, I left for longer and longer periods of time, looking for my lost brother. Every time I came back, Maral was more resentful, more bitter. She refused to bring any offspring into our lives because I didn’t deserve to be a father as long as I was such a poor mate to her.”
Ava swallowed, hard. “But if you were both so unhappy, why didn’t you leave her?”
“You don’t understand… because you’re human more than anything.” Arlen took her in his arms, then pulled her toward a chair and sat her across his lap. “An Eok mates for life. I had no choice.”
“Like you don’t have a choice now?” Ava’s words were careful and her clear, sharp eyes missed nothing of his reaction as she spoke.
“I took Maral because I was blind.” Arlen shook his head. “But with you, my eyes are wide open. I tried to fight it, tried to ignore the call, but it was true. You are the one I have looked for all my life, Ava. And now that I’ve found you, I will never let you go. I will fight for you every day if I have to.”
Time felt suspended as they looked into each other’s eyes without speaking. He had told her more than he had ever told anyone, and still, he regretted nothing.
“Good,” she finally said. “Because I’ve never trusted anyone in my life before you.”
He stared at her for a long time as what she said made its way into his very soul. This wonderful, brave female was giving him her trust. A trust he hadn’t earned, but that he would work his entire life to deserve.
“How did Maral die, Arlen?”
Pain pinched Arlen as memories flooded his mind. Memories of the day he found Karian barely alive in a pool of blood with his mate, Rose. The day he found Maral, dead on the ground, the weapon with which she’d stabbed his brother still in her hands.
“She betrayed us all. She pretended to be heavy with offspring to trick me into bringing her with us to the Ring’s headquarters.” His own voice came from somewhere far above him, like it wasn’t truly he who was speaking, but some stranger who had borrowed his voice. “She plotted my brother’s death, and his mate’s—all so I could become the next chief of the Erynian tribe. All she cared about was power. In the end, that was what killed her. That, and the knife she used to stab Karian and his mate. It was Rose, Karian’s human mate, who killed her.”
“That’s terrible.” Ava stared at him in horror as he relived the awful day on which his entire life had morphed into a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.
“It was my fault.” Arlen shook his head. “I should have seen what she was. What she was capable of.”
A small hand found his own, and Arlen looked at Ava. Really looked at her.
There was no condemnation in her eyes, no judgment for not being able to protect his mate. Only sadness for the pain he’d suffered. And that was enough for him to continue.
“What happened after she died?” Ava’s voice was soft and warm, full of concern and care. It felt like a soothing balm on his raw heart, appeased his burning soul better than any days of violence at the Frontier ever had.
“I carried her body back to her homeland. I buried her with her family, then I left.” Arlen closed his eyes against the vision of Maral, her pale face even paler in death. “I demanded an assignment at the Frontier and I stayed there until I was recalled and sent here.”
Silence wrapped around them and Arlen allowed it. It was a good kind of silence, the kind of silence that let wounds close up and the blood stop flowing.
“Ten years.” Ava stared at him with those eyes carved of jewels. Those eyes he saw every time he closed his own. Those eyes that were etched into his very soul. “You worked hard every day for ten years because you wanted her to love you.”
“No.” He shook his head, sadness emanating from his very core. “At first, I thought so too, but I know different now. I worked every day for ten years because I wanted to love her. But I never could.”
The words were simple, and yet as he spoke, he understood the weight of what he was saying. The weight that had killed the laughter from his life for the past ten years. The weight that had smothered any hope of better days, any hope of true love.
Maral had killed the joy of his youth, had stolen his hope for love when he’d needed it the most.
But now with Ava, everything was different. Everything was possible.
“I’m sorry that happened to you.” Ava cradled his face in her two small hands, her thumbs rubbing along the sides of his jaw.
“I’m not.” As he spoke, he felt it rise, that hope he had thought long dead. “Because without all this, I would never have found you, my little wonder.”
Ava’s lips met his, her touch light and healing. As Arlen answered her kiss, a new storm rose inside him, and soon, lust wiped away everything that wasn’t Ava.
And Ava was everything.
14
Ava
He kissed her like nothing else mattered. Like she was the beginning and the end and everything in between. She could lose herself in that kiss, in those arms that could protect her from everything.
There was a vulnerability about Arlen as he kissed her while she sat on his lap, her head just above his own, her hands on his face. Like he was surrendering himself to his lust for her entirely.
And that made her even more his.
Ava moved, straddling Arlen in the chair. Her sex met a familiar hardness as she pressed against his erection, desire instantly spreading through her.
Their kiss deepened as Arlen’s hands explored her body, running from the small of her back to her breasts, hot and hard, pressing against her flesh as he took control of their encounter.
She could feel the wetness spreading between her legs, delicious and feminine. Demanding possession like a scream.
Wordlessly, he pulled her sweater over her head and discarded it to the floor, his gaze fixed on her naked skin with blatant hunger. Ava reached down to wrap her fingers around his sex, but he stopped her.
“No,” Arlen ordered. “I want to savor you. I want to remember this moment.”
There was a need in his voice, a demand that was as deep as the wounds of his past. She surrendered, allowing him to take control of her body, to hold her like he owned every inch of her. And he did. More than that, she wanted him to.
Arlen grabbed the back of her neck, tilting her head back, bracing her weight in his arms. She leaned into his hold as his mouth ran over her throat, his tongue lapping at her heartbeat. His fangs raked her skin, spreading erotic arousal all the way to her core.
She wanted his male flesh inside her. She tried to move but he held her still, her body hanging halfway in the air, completely under his control.
He kissed her elongated throat, his lips hard and warm, then moved down to her chest. His gaze lifted to her face as he pinched a nipple, trapping the pink, hard nub between his thumb and index finger, rolling it lightly. Sensations shot through her flesh, shooting straight to her sex as her walls clenched painfully.
“Please, take me.” Her voice was plaintive, breathless. “I want it so bad it hurts.”
“I know.” Arlen smiled, the grin wicked and sexy, almost mocking. “But I won’t take you yet. I want to hear you scream my name before this night is over.”
Then he bent and took her other nipple between his teeth, applying just enough pressure to make her squirm with hot, needy pleasure. She pressed herself harder against his bulge but Arlen’s hold on her neck tightened, immobilizing her.
He didn’t want her to move. He only wanted her to feel what he allowed her to feel. And she was loving e
very delicious bit of it.
“Don’t move,” he growled against her flesh, and the ripples went all the way to her pussy.
Arlen stood up, lifting her like she weighed nothing. Her ankles hooked behind his back as he walked her to the bedroom, then he lowered her beneath him. In a few efficient movements, he removed her cotton pants and discarded them on the floor.
When she lay naked on the bed, he straightened, leaving her on her back as he stood, then kicked his vest and pants to the floor. Ava’s gaze was fixed on the sheer glory of him. His body was an ode to male beauty, all hardness and angles, nothing soft, nothing giving, only strength and power.
He was perfect in every way.
His pale moonlight colored eyes settled on her with raw need as his long, thick member pointed directly toward her. More wetness spread between her thighs, hot and full of need as her core clenched. Arlen’s eyes sharpened as his nostrils twitched. She knew he’d caught the scent from her arousal and it made her even more full of need. His member twitched, a pearl of pre-cum glistening at the tip.
“Spread yourself for me.”
Ava gasped at the pure domination of his words, but she obeyed. Somehow, obeying made even more wetness spread between the lips of her sex. She did as he ordered, spreading her bare lips, exposing the wet, glittering flesh inside. She tried to imagine what he saw. Did her sex look as red and engorged with arousal as she thought? The lips swollen and dark pink, the flesh within wet and quivering.
She panted as Arlen bent between her legs, his gaze intense and ravenous. She couldn’t look away and she couldn’t talk. All she could do was watch as he pulled the lips of her sex further apart, then ran a light fingertip up and down the sensitive flesh.
“You smell so good.” His voice was dreamy, like he didn’t care if she heard him or not. “Your flesh is so pink. I could feast on you for days.”
Then he bent between her thighs, his slightly raspy tongue lapping the length of her slit, then flicking her clit. Ava whimpered at the intense sensation, pressing her head back against the pillow. Her eyes shot closed as Arlen dove into her pussy again. His tongue was merciless, sliding up and down her slit, diving into the opening of her channel just to tease her, then up to circle her clit and suck it for just a second.