by Roxie Ray
“Are you seeing him again tonight, then?” Bria asked with a stretch and a yawn from the bed.
“I think so. He said he has something to talk to me about. Sounded serious.” I scooped Kaliope up off of the vanity table where she’d been playing with Bria’s makeup brushes and carried her back over to her mom. I’d left Bria sleeping and kept an eye on Kaliope while I got ready. No matter how long I spent with Bria and Kloran’s little baby girl, it was never really enough. Kaliope was beautiful, with Kloran’s orange skin and purple eyes, Bria’s rich brown hair and smile. She had Bria’s giggle—and Kloran’s temper. Together, she was easily the most charming kid I’d ever met, and that was coming from a kindergarten teacher about a baby who couldn’t even talk yet.
The topic of children had never really come up between Aiden and me. When we did have sex, we’d always used condoms—which, given all his cheating, had probably ended up being the smartest move possible on my part. But condoms didn’t seem to be necessary on Lunaria, where most women struck me as pretty desperate to get pregnant and ovulation cycles were relatively short-lived. And despite the fact that Haelian had managed to pull out the first time we’d made love, he hadn’t last time—or the time after that, or the time after that.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew how babies were made, and so far, I was pretty sure that didn’t change if you were sleeping with a human man or a Lunarian one. If it had been anyone other than Haelian, maybe I would have asked to slow things down or insisted that we find some kind of condom situation to start using. But…
I couldn’t place it, but there was something special about being with Haelian. When he was between my thighs, with his thick cock plunging into my core and his arms wrapped around me tight, there was nothing I wanted more than to feel him let loose inside me. Blame it on hormones or pheromones or magical fertility caves beneath the Lunarian’s nine god-moons, but something about him turned me into… I didn’t know what. A horny little slut, Aiden probably would have called me, but that was one of the many other nice things about Haelian. When he dirty-talked to me, he didn’t degrade me. If anything, I felt like I was being worshipped every time I was in his arms.
“Maybe he’s going to propose,” Bria said with a sly grin. “You might have noticed, but Lunarian men…they move pretty fast.”
“With twenty men for every woman on this planet, I guess they have to.” I giggled as I touched up the last of my makeup. Tonight, I was wearing blue again. Along with gold, Bria had told me that it was House Mihor’s signature color.
“Hey, as long as you’re not turned off by it, I say go for it,” Bria suggested. She made a silly face at Kaliope, and Kaliope burst with laughter. It was one of the cutest sounds I’d ever heard. “I did—and I’ve gotten pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted now. Haelian’s a good guy, too. I like how he looks at you.”
“I like it, too,” I admitted. “A lot, actually.”
Except, when Haelian finally showed up to pick me up for the evening, he didn’t smile like he usually did when he saw me. His mouth was a hard, straight line, and there was a tiny furrow in his brow that wouldn’t go away no matter what I said to him.
Something was wrong. Obviously. Definitely. If there was one thing Lunarians were bad at, it was hiding their feelings. Even when they tried, their eyes gave them away—and every time Haelian thought I wasn’t looking, I saw his purple irises fade to gray.
“Okay. Do you want to tell me what’s up?” I finally asked as we strolled through the gardens. I didn’t want to kill the mood by talking about bad stuff, but at this point, I could pretty much see for sure that the mood had been dead on arrival. If I didn’t ask, I was afraid he’d never say.
“Up?” Haelian turned his head upward, then stared at me in confusion. “I do not see anything over head other than the moons, Sawyer.”
I groaned. “No. I mean, why are you being so weird tonight? I can tell something is wrong. Maybe you could spell it out for me so we can make it right again.”
Haelian sighed. “Yes. Well, we cannot fault your powers of observation.”
“No,” I agreed. “We can’t. I didn’t spend the better part of my adult life on Earth keeping an eye on twenty different kids, all of whom are pretty much constantly trying to run with scissors and put crayons up their nose, for nothin’, you know.”
I expected to at least get a little chuckle out of him for that, but Haelian’s face was set in stone.
“There is something I have not told you, Sawyer.” He stopped and turned to me, taking my hands in his. “Something I should have mentioned days ago. I never sought to lie to you, but now…now I can see that I was lying through omission. And furthermore…” He sighed again. “Now, I fear I have no choice.”
“Okay…” I said slowly. What the heck could he have lied to me about? Normally, I had a pretty good nose for lying. Between sniffing out all of Aiden’s indiscretions and figuring out which five-year-old had stuffed all the teddy bears down the toilet, I’d pretty much become a human lie detector over time. But right now, I didn’t even know enough about Haelian or Lunaria to know what lies could even be told to me. “You’re not already married, are you?”
Haelian blinked at me, then shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. I like to think that, hopefully, you see me as I truly am.”
“I like to think so too.” I forced a smile, but it was getting harder to keep pleasant conversation going. Haelian’s fingers were uncharacteristically cold against mine, and the suspense was killing me. “Do you wanna just come out and say what you need to say so we can go on having a good night?”
“Yes. Of course.” Haelian closed his eyes, then nodded. When he opened them again, his irises were paler than I’d ever seen them. So gray they were almost white. “There has been a…development in regards to the possibility of you returning to Earth. For obvious reasons, I did not wish to tell you, for fear that…that you might choose to go.”
“Haelian…” Was that all? I thought we’d already solved this thing weeks ago. Of course I was staying with him. As soon as I knew everyone I loved thought I was dead, the idea of going back had been banished completely from my mind. I took a deep breath. This time, when I smiled up at him, it wasn’t quite so forced. “You know I don’t have anything to go back to there. As far as anyone who mattered to me knows, I’m gone. In like, a permanent sense of the word. And I’ve already started my life over here on Lunaria.” I laughed a little. “I was kind of thinking that we were starting my life over here, actually. Together. As like, a couple. Right? Or am I way off base?”
A pained look crossed Haelian’s face, though he swept it away so quickly I wondered if maybe I’d just imagined it.
“As I said, the situation has…it has changed, Sawyer. The high council is no longer quite so happy with the idea of having human females here on Lunaria. Yourself included, unfortunately.”
“But…” My mouth fell open a little. I knew we’d gotten a lot of dirty looks in the marketplace the other day, but I hadn’t thought that they were dirty enough to warrant a decision from the high council about my entire race. “But aren’t there other humans still trapped with the Rutharians? What’s going to happen to them?” I blinked, then realized I was asking the wrong questions. I was worried about all the other women who had been taken, yes, but there was a slightly more pressing matter at hand here: my own future. “Are they going to make me leave?”
Haelian shook his head. “No. Of course not. But our agents believe they can convince the authorities on Earth that the body found there is not, in fact, your own. If you wish it, your family would be notified that there has been a mistake. We could arrange for you to be taken home, discovered safe and sound, and reunited with your mother and your father.” He hung his head slightly, unable to meet my eyes. “Your memory would have to be wiped, of course, for your own safety and for ours. The last thing you would remember would be your car accident.” His voice cracked a little, but he pushed onward. “You would have no
memory of Lunaria—or your time with the Rutharians—or of me, for that matter. But you could return home.”
My eyes grew wide. That was…a lot to take in. More than a lot, actually. I felt like someone had just backed a dump truck up to me and upended a crushing load of dirt onto my head.
If I told Haelian that I wanted to go home, I could. I’d see my parents again. Maybe, if I was lucky, I could guilt trip the school I’d worked at into hiring me back. I could eat hotdogs and hamburgers and pizza again, drink sugar-laden soda, watch romance movies and go back to my old life. Not completely, of course—I’d still remember that Aiden was a lying, cheating prick, and there was definitely no way I was going back to him. But otherwise…
Suddenly, I laughed. Why was I even considering it? If Haelian hadn’t made such a big deal of telling me, I didn’t think I would have thought about it at all.
At the sound of my laughter, though, Haelian’s eyes drained of color completely, then flashed blood red.
“Is this humorous to you, Sawyer? Is this how you seek to punish me for failing to tell you as soon as I found out—laughing at my pain?” He threw my hands away from his and took a step back, shoulders heaving with anger. “I have been torturing myself sick over this. For days. Imagining every possible way that I could lose you—and now, you laugh in my face? Incredible.”
He turned abruptly, like he had every intention of storming off. I wished I had been able to stop laughing, but the idea was still kind of ridiculous to me. Instead, I lunged at him and caught his hand in mine. I had to dig my heels into the soft grass beneath my slippers to stop him from stomping off anyway, but at least my efforts made him pause for a second.
“Haelian. Calm down. Please, okay?” When he turned to me, there was still a smile on my lips. “I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to leave you. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I am not being an id-ee-ot,” he snarled back at me. “I am simply—” He cut himself off as my words finally sank in. This time, his eyes flashed from red to purple to a soft, gentle blue. “Wait. You want to stay?”
“Of course I do, dummy.” I rolled my eyes and laughed again. “I made my peace with starting my life here back when Leonix showed us those news reports. Spent an entire week locked away in my room mourning myself, remember?”
“I recall…” Haelian said slowly. “I was furious that Nion went to comfort you before I could try to.”
If I kept rolling my eyes like this, I was pretty sure they were going to fall right out of my head. “Nion was just being nice. You wouldn’t have been so furious if you could have heard all the nice things he was saying about you. I think he was trying to play wingman or something. He’s definitely not into me—or vice versa.” I turned his hand over in my own and took a step closer to him. His body heat radiated off of his skin so strongly, it was like talking to a personal space heater. “I want to be here with you, Haelian. If you want me, I mean—and if your high council isn’t going to boot me off the planet just for being human.”
“Nion…he does not have wings,” Haelian said softly. His brow was all scrunched up like he was still processing what I was saying, but his eyes stayed that same lovely pale blue. The color of an Earthen sky on a rare smogless day. “You want to be with me? To stay here with me? You are certain?”
I giggled. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, honey, but most human women don’t just go sleeping around with guys they don’t kind of see a life with.” I paused, remembering all of the women that Aiden had been with before he started batting for the other team. “Or, at least, I don’t.”
I waited on pins and needles for Haelian to say something back to me. Anything. An I love you, Sawyer, so glad you’re staying, would have been nice, but I would have settled for a simple nod and a Cool beans then, hot stuff. But for once, Haelian seemed to be at a loss for words.
Words. Not actions.
“Oof!” I yelped as he dove for me. His arms hooked beneath my knees and cradled my back, easily sweeping me off my feet. I scrambled to wrap my own arms around his neck to hold on with. As soon as I turned my face towards his, his lips captured mine in a steamy, passionate kiss.
“Mine,” he growled. His eyes were a deep, dark blue now. The kind that told me only one thing: Once he took me to wherever we were going, we weren’t going to be wearing these clothes for much longer.
“Yours, big guy.” I giggled as he rushed me back toward the castle, kicking open the doors and racing down the hall to my rooms.
It wasn’t an I love you, but to be fair, I didn’t even know that Lunarians said those anyway. Maybe mine was Haelian’s way of saying the same thing, just in fewer words.
Either way, I was happy. I was in his arms. And most importantly, I was his. I pressed my cheek against his chest as he carried me down the hall, in exactly the same way that I had the first time he’d picked me up. Haelian had only plucked me out of that Rutharian jail cell just a few weeks ago, but after everything that had happened to me since then, it didn’t feel like I was even the same woman anymore.
In fact, now I was pretty sure I was someone different completely. Someone with a better life, a better chance at happiness. Someone who I liked a lot more.
I was just imagining the way Haelian was going to ravish me once he got me to bed when he came to a slow, staggered stop outside my bedroom doors.
“Blood,” he swore. His voice sounded hollow and cold.
I frowned and turned my head. What could have possibly been the problem now? Based on the way he’d been rushing me to the bedroom, I’d been pretty sure that the only issue we were going to have in the foreseeable future was how long it took to get our clothes off.
But then I saw it. At first, I couldn’t quite make out the letters, but then my translator chip blurred them together. When I blinked, they had reshaped into words that I could read.
GO HOME AND DIE, HUMAN SLUT, someone had scrawled across my door.
It wasn’t just the words, though. It was what they were written in: a black, dripping substance that could have been paint…
But I had a nasty feeling that it wasn’t.
In fact, it looked a lot like Rutharian blood.
20
Haelian
At the first tear I saw in Sawyer’s gorgeous blue eyes as I placed her back on her feet, I felt my heart crush inward like a Rutharian berserker had just taken it up in his fist and squeezed.
That very second, I felt a rage roar up inside my ribs that would have left a hundred Rutharians maimed and dying in my wake.
But this was not the work of the Rutharians. In that sense, for once, my fury was misdirected for a change. I moved to the doors and sniffed. The putrid, metallic scent of it confirmed it was indeed Rutharian blood—and in an instant, that ruled out their involvement entirely. The Rutharians were a barbaric, warlike race, true, but that did not mean they were without culture and tradition. Their own blood, they saw as proof of all that was holy. They often kept flasks of it from fallen comrades and departed family members to wear as war paint in open battle, or to conduct their strange rituals when they returned home.
A Rutharian would never have wasted blood in such a manner—and the language on Sawyer’s doors was not written in their alphabet anyway. No, the culprit of this atrocity was Lunarian. Of that, I had no doubt. They had written this threat in our language, using the Rutharian blood to intimidate. To strike fear.
They would realize their mistake, I decided, when I caught whoever had done this. Then, it would not be fear being struck—it would be their own face being struck with my fist, over and over again until it was their own blood they could smell and taste.
But this was not the time for vengeance. Not yet. I was reminded of that as I heard Sawyer whimper behind me. Her eyes were already puffy, the tip of her nose pink as tears streamed down her cheeks.
She was crying, which shocked me. After all she had been through, all her hardships and pain, this of all things was what finally made her
break down?
Impossible—and yet, there she was, gently sobbing as she stared at what some foul creature had done.
I rushed back to her side immediately. Folding her into my arms felt like the most natural thing in the world. She fit there so perfectly, even as she shook and trembled, it was easy to hold her steady, still. I stroked a hand down her hair, smoothing out her waves as I shushed her and dipped to kiss the crown of her head.
“You do not need to cry, precious one,” I purred at her. “You are not in danger. Nothing is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong?” She pulled back, sniffling. Her blue eyes were flooded with salty tears. “They hate me, Haelian. Your people hate me enough to pull strings on Earth in the hopes that they can send me away. I’ve chosen to make my life here, and now—now they’ve done th-this…”
She buried her face in my chest, nuzzling hard against me to hide her next wave of tears. Under any other circumstance, I might have even taken pleasure in holding her like this. I enjoyed comforting her in her time of need more than I expected. But I was too furious to feel true happiness at my ability to hold her just then. Her tears struck a chord in my heart that would not stop ringing out in my ears.
When I discovered who had done this, they would pay dearly for it. We would see how much they enjoyed having their doors painted in blood—this time, their own.
“What’s going on out here?” Bria burst from the rooms she shared with Kloran just down the hall, with a wailing Kaliope in her arms. Her make-up was removed, and she was dressed in a long flowing purple robe and nightgown. “You woke up Kali. If this is some weird sex thing, you two, I swear I’m gonna—oh.”