Chapter Eighteen
“Oh no,” Zura said, dropping the book of cloth samples. Her face went pale as she read the message on her comm bracelet. She leaped to her feet.
“What? What’s wrong?” Voljaki was instantly alert. “Where is your friend? Has she been harmed?”
“No, she’s leaving. She’s having my father fly her to the Starcrossed tower to have her memory wiped, and then she’s returning to Earth.”
“No way! Why would she do that?” Allison cried out in dismay.
“She doesn’t want to be with Treffon if she’s not his true mate.”
Voljaki frowned. “I know that you have said he believes he is not her true mate, but I think he is wrong.”
Zura stared at him in shock. “That cannot be. When has a Vulfan ever failed to recognize their true mate?”
Voljaki shook his head. “Your cousin is no ordinary Vulfan. He has subjected himself to brutal extremes of abuse and self-denial for nearly a hundred years. And the savage training of his father taught him to deny his feelings, his wants, his desires.”
“You know, he reallydoesact like he’s her true mate,” Allison suggested. “He anticipates what she wants. He’s completely in tune with her needs and desires. He’s totally crazy about her; he only really seems happy when he’s with her. And the same with her – she seems to know what he’s thinking and feeling. Could she do that if they weren’t true mates?”
It hit Zura like a photon blast. How could she have missed it? When Treffon had stopped feeling the connection to his true mate years ago, it wasn’t because she was dead – it was becausehewas nearly dead, inside.
Violet was his true mate. He just had so much emotional scar tissue around his heart, he hadn’t realized it.
“By the stars, you’re right,” Zura breathed. “I am going to go tell him immediately, so he can stop her from leaving the planet.”
With Allison and Kroi and Voljaki at her heels, she raced out of the castle and to the training grounds. Frantically, she waved Treffon off the field.
He ran over to her. “What happened to Violet? Why is she not with you? I sense she is upset,” Treffon said angrily.
“You sense she is upset because she is your true mate, you fool!” Zura cried out.
Every Vulfan within earshot gasped in horror and took a step back.
Zura glared at her uncle. “Before you eviscerate me, listen. You have been suppressing your feelings for so long that you could not even sense the Var-hool when you met her, but sheisyour true mate, and you know it. You could not sense her feelings if that were not true. I don’t have time to argue with you – she went to Madok and asked him to take her off the planet. Go! You must go now!”
“What? She can’t leave! She’s mine! Mine!” Treffon shouted in fury, sending out a wave of rage that had everyone within fifty paces wincing in pain. He frantically pawed at the comm on his wrist. Violet didn’t answer, so he called Madok.
“I must speak to Violet at once,” he said.
Madok’s reply shocked him, as did his cold, defiant tone. “I think not.”
“You dare disobey an order from your Reginar?” Treffon howled in fury.
Violet is leaving. She must not leave. She is mine.
“You will not be my Reginar much longer.” The insolence in Madok’s voice sent ice rushing through Treffon’s veins.
“Madok.” He bit the word out savagely. “What have you done?”
* * * * *
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Violet shouted as Madok’s men dragged her and Dorcas onto the deck of Madok’s hovercraft.
The Eeplings, running alongside them, sent up a shrill chorus of protest. They had insisted on following her onto the ship, clutching their weird wooden crafts. Madok had shrugged and promised to return them to Allison’s care, but now she was afraid that she’d let them follow her to their doom.
She should have suspected something was up when Madok had brought her and Dorcas to his extra-orbital hovercraft.
She’d been so grief-stricken at the thought of leaving Treffon that she hadn’t been thinking straight. It should have occurred to her that they didn’t need a full-size hovercraft to take them to the Starcrossed tower. This hovercraft was too big to even land in the city; they used much smaller craft to travel from Donnelle to pack lands.
