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“Nothing,” I say, and he presses buttons on his smart-watch, the viewing glass of the cockpit darkening as he waves his hand, scanning the ship.

“No bugs. You can speak freely.”

I cross my arms. “I’m supposed to suggest to you that I’m perfectly fine being your wife on paper while you hunt down your Fated Mate and impregnate her, perhaps in the spare bedroom.”

Doman winces. “I know. It’s?—”

“Why didn’t you just tell her? Couldn’t you have saved me literally the most awkward conversation of my life?” I shake my head, and then I have to laugh. “Never mind. You know what, compared to the shit you three have put me through, it was nothing. Let’s go meet up with your brother.”

Doman strides forward, and I have to crane my head to look up at him. Being annoyed at him makes it all the more infuriating. “I’m sorry. If I told my parents you were my Mate… the conversation would have been a lot more awkward. It wouldstart with her asking why Titus’ and Gallien’s eyes are still grey, but it wouldn’t stop there. You’re already going to be under surveillance and security as the Prime Minister of Pentaris and my bride. But if they found out you were my Fated Mate… there would be a hundred Reavers flying over us at every second.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you tell me that when I asked before?”

A cloud goes over his face, and he fingers the black ring on his finger. He looks away for a second, and I see the same flash of pain in Titus and Gallien. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

I swallow. Of course. These three dreamed their entire lives of their Fated Mate.

I was supposed to be their absolution. Their purpose. The Aurelian species’ greatest aspiration is to find the one woman in the universe who can complete them, and it would have been inconceivable that she would deny them the Bond. It must hurt him every time he looks at me, make him feel there is something wrong with him.

I clear my throat. “Okay. It’s fine.”

He bends down, planting a gentle kiss on my lips, then straightens up to his full height. “We need you to be less important than you are, if we’re going to have breathing room to get what we need to do done.”

I look out at the towering walls pressing in on us. “I take it this isn’t just a social call tonight.”

Doman shakes his head.

“No. Tonight I’m going to ask Bruton to help break out Fay.”

35

ADRIANA

My frustration melts away as we shoot straight up, the Reaver humming as Doman pushes it to full power. The anti-grav strains to keep up with Doman’s wild ascent to the heavens as he pilots us skyward.

I gasp as we twist, twirling straight upwards as if he is driving us into the sun, then dives, almost clipping the palace walls as he darts over them and divebombs us downwards.

“Doman!” I yell, the second before we slam against the ground, but he hoots, pulling us upwards and skimming over the fields. I swear we’re less than an inch away from the grass, screaming forward at full speed away from the palace.

I grit my teeth, looking over at Doman to tell him to slow down, but I see the pure focus as he pilots with mastery, joy in his eyes, grinning. “What a rush. Been too damn long since I was in a Reaver!” He seems to sense my tension and glances over, and the attack ship slows, ascending to a safer distance from the ground. “Forgive me. I’ve been in command of a warship so long, I forgot how good it felt to pilot a dogfighter.”

Titus is standing behind the captain’s chair, his hands on the back of it. “You remember in the second year of our hundredwhen we got drunk with Lukas and his boys, and Calien bet they could beat us in a race?”

“Damn good pilots,” says Gallien, somberly, from his seat at the second Orb-Beam gunnery that mirrors mine. “Calien and Tiber were taken from us too soon.”

“What were the terms?” Asks Titus, nostalgic. “No shields, through the iron mine shafts on that hollowed out planet with no maps. It ended up in a tie and two dinged up Reavers and every one of our unit swearing they had no idea what happened.”

Doman chuckles. “I would have won, if it wasn’t for that dead-end shaft we nearly plowed into. And then we all got half rations for a week, but no one ratted us out.”

We fly over the rolling hills where estates, given to those who complete the hundred years of service, spread out as far as the eye can see.

There was a time when each estate was full, when the Aurelian species numbered tenfold its current population. Now, I see more humans working on the homes, tending to the gardens and cleaning the pools, than Aurelians living in them.

Hovering over a sprawling estate, Doman guides us expertly downward, touching down without a jolt beside a Reaver identical to ours. The mansion before us, like everything else on this planet, is ridiculous. Three extravagant stories of marbled, pillared majesty, the stone shining in the late afternoon light. The swimming pool could fit two Olympic-sized lengths, surrounded by a grove of trees and winding paths.

All this, for a single triad and their Fated Mate. If this was a palace reserved for a prince, I could almost fathom it. Bruton gained this palace not by his birth, but by attaining the status of an Elite, and there are hundreds of identical opulent estates spreading out in every direction.

Two servants stand before the entryway of the manor. One is a little older than me, with pleasing rosy cheeks, and the other,matronly and prim, with a freshly pressed uniform and her gray hair in a tight bun, standing behind Bruton’s Mate Evelyn.