Page 19 of Seized by the Alien Space Warrior (Alien Romance #8)
Chapter Nineteen
H e was still lodged in her body. He should be thanking her for the gift of her body, showering her with soft kisses and whispers of gratefulness. Dawning horror should not be on that beautiful face, nor the stark realisation that she’d seen the bleakness of his soul, or whatever it was a being could call the husk that was inside of him.
He should have been a stronger male and held back. A female as beautiful and as gentle as Ava should never see just who he was. Fate had made a mistake and now he’d compounded it.
She was innocent. She had no idea what he had just done, the curse he had bestowed on her. The abhorrent repercussions.
He eased himself from her body. Their combined fluids slid from her body as he slipped out. He sat on the edge of the pallet, finding her shirt that he’d ripped from her and handed it to her while avoiding her gaze. Coward .
She regarded him before reaching for the shirt with a shaking hand. The brilliance of her blue eyes shone with confusion and hurt. He knew exactly what she was feeling. She broadcast it loudly. Unknowingly. The mate-bond made sure of that, and while she had no idea what was happening, he carefully and methodically worked to create a barrier between them even knowing what he did was blasphemy.
The mate-bond wasn’t fake.
It was real.
Somehow, someway he and Ava shared a mate-bond.
And he was going to destroy it.
Doing this between fated mate-bonds was unheard of. It was an act against the gods. He was throwing the gift of a lifetime back at the gods , at Ava , and for that, there would be no forgiveness. His soul would be damned forever.
It was the only way he could protect her. She’d seen the darkness in his soul. It was for the best she understood nothing about it. That way he wouldn’t soil her beautiful soul with the mistakes of his.
She should never know who he was. What he’d become. The full extent of his failure. She deserved so much more than that. It seemed the gods, for whatever mistaken reason, had chosen to gift him with the mate-bond twice; he could only pray they would do the same for Ava.
“Aekon? What’s going on? Why are you acting like this?” She covered herself with the shirt, shaking so badly she could barely clutch the material. She carefully drew her injured arm through the sleeve, ignoring putting her bandage back on, and brought the rumpled blankets over her legs.
His whole being itched to keep her naked and flush against his body. With a growl he leapt up, finding his pants and whipping them on. He found his shirt and tugged that over his head. His nodes flushed a dull, steel grey and he willed them to cease their lightshow. He wished he was still dead enough inside that they remained dormant.
It was she who had reawakened him.
“Aekon!” Her voice was tense with anger.
Anger was good. Anger he could use.
“I told you this could not happen,” he said, injecting cold into his voice, hating himself even more for doing it.
“What do you mean?” She drew the blanket to her chest, rubbing at the sore spot caused by the ache in their mate-bond.
His own chest bled with the stabbing pain and he doubled his efforts to create an impenetrable wall between them. A wall that would never come down no matter how strong their mate-bond might be.
“I told you there could be nothing between us. It will lead to nothing good,” Aekon said. He paced the length of the tent, burning anger and despair fuelling his steps.
“You mean because you’ve had a bond-mate? I’m not going to stop you loving her, Aekon. I would never do something like that,” Ava said.
Her skin glowed pale in the low light. He felt the truth of her words alongside the piercing hurt. She thought that he was shutting down because of Onda and he latched onto the idea, hating himself that he used Onda in this way. It would be just another mark against his soul, but what was one more added to the hundreds already there, but it was the only way he could protect Ava.
“I have tarnished her memory,” he said.
“I never meant…I didn’t know…” she stammered.
He hated himself even more for making Ava doubt herself. “A bond-mate is for life. It doesn’t matter if one half has already passed through the veil. I am still a mated male. Our mate-bond still exists.”
That part was true. Death was never the end of a mate-bond. Just because Onda was dead, their connection was only paused, never severed.
“A Dhasu cannot take another bond-mate,” he said. “Ever.”
A flush crept up her neck to stain her cheeks, and she smoothed the blanket.
“A bond-mate? I only wanted to share some affection with you. I thought, well, I thought you were also attracted to me. I thought I felt…something. But now I know…there’s nothing there.” Her gaze found his again, dazed and distant. “I…don’t know what it was. I’m sorry if I imagined it, Aekon. I thought we shared something beautiful. Consensual. I should never have acted on …what I thought…I felt.”
She shook her head, as though to dislodge an errant thought in her head.
He crossed his arms, resisting the urge to rub his heart and then to take her back to the pallet and show her just how sorry he was. A thousand-pound weight pressed on his chest, making it hard to breathe, but he ignored the crushing feeling. Just like he was going to ignore the mate-bond they’d ignited between them.
Instead, he kept his expression as stoic as he could, injecting as much warmth as an ice planet at mid hour into his voice. “There can never be two bonded-mates, female. My heart is not mine to give. It was already given to another long before I met you. What happened was a mistake. Whatever you thought was between us was imagined. Human females have a tendency to confuse a warrior doing his job with affection of the heart. I assure you, this is not the case. I have a job to do. That is all.”
“Duty. Yes. You’ve made that abundantly clear,” she whispered.
She collected herself, reaching for her pants he’d thrown to the side in his passion. He watched as she put them on beneath the safety of the covers.
Her taste lingered on his tongue, on his lips. He was the lowest of the low. A bond-mate should never be treated like this, especially with her essence still on his face. He steeled himself, knowing this was the best. For her.
She should think he was nothing more than an opportunist who had second thoughts. In fact, the less she thought of him, the better she would be able to ignore the pull of the mate-bond and settle for another male. A better male.
Irrational jealously stung his chest. Even the thought of her with another male made his nodes flush dull red.
“What does it mean when your nodes flash red like that?” she asked.
“It means I am at the end of my patience,” he said, stalking the tent again.
The air was infused with her scent and the aroma of their joining. If he stayed in this small space with her, he was liable to tell her the truth as the mate-bond demanded he do.
He worked at stacking block by block between them, but it still wasn’t thick enough. Everything she felt filtered through.
She frowned at him, a line appearing between her furrowed brows. “Then what does it mean when they flash that gold colour? Tell me if I’m overstepping. It’s just that it keeps happening. If it’s something I’m doing, you’ll have to let me know so I don’t keep on doing it.”
It meant she was too smart for her own good. It meant something she could never find out.
He let his frustration spill out with his words. “Enough, female! That is a private matter I have no wish to speak to you about.”
If she knew how close that was to the truth, any resistance he had to the mate-bond, to her , would be a shambles. She opened her mouth to speak. A distant scream rent the air outside, echoing throughout the cavern. Sudden shouting accompanied more screams. There was a loud boom and the ground shook. Gravel rained down on the roof of the tent. Heavy footfalls sounded outside the tent, along with yelling and the terrified calls of children.
Ava turned wild eyes to him. She tossed the blanket aside, standing. “What’s happening?”
Aekon knew the sounds of battle well and this had all of the hallmarks of a surprise onslaught. “We’re under attack.”
The tent offered them no protection. He had to get her out of here to safety. There were no weapons in the tent. Rock blasted. Laser fire flashed. The terrible sounds of flesh hitting flesh filtered through the tent. The groans of the injured and dying followed close by.
“We have to leave.”
Aekon took her hand and stalked to the tent opening. The tip of a blaster appeared through the slit and Brenur strode inside, a cold snarl on his face. He aimed the blaster straight at Aekon’s face, leaving no more than an inch of space between them. “Which one of you contacted the Forsica? Who will die first?”