Page 120 of Dancing for the Minotaur

She had been so excited by the Mother Ship and so certain Taurex would keep her safe that she hadn’t really considered how completely isolated she would be if something went wrong.

God, please, she prayed silently as she walked. If you let me get home safely, I swear I’ll never leave my babies again. I’ll stay right there in Tampa where I belong and never do anything this stupid again.

She smelled breakfast before she reached the kitchen, though the savory scent made her stomach tighten rather than growl. When she entered the food preparation area, she saw that Taurex had already made something and set a green leaf plate on the living table for her.

There was a mound of something that looked remarkably like pale green scrambled eggs beside a thick slice of darker green breakfast meat.

Despite everything, Terra immediately thought of Green Eggs and Ham. It had been Lisa’s favorite book when she was little. Terra must have read it to her five hundred times, doing all the silly voices while Lisa sat curled in her lap in footie pajamas.

The memory made her arms physically ache with the need to hold her little girl again. Her babies. God, she wanted her babies!

Then she looked at Taurex and forgot all about the strange breakfast.

He looked awful.

The big Monstrum was sitting at the table in the same loose sleep trousers he had been wearing the night before, his broad shoulders slumped and his hands resting listlessly on his thighs. There were dark shadows beneath his golden eyes, and the usual polish of his horns somehow seemed dimmed by the morning light.

He didn’t look furious. He didn’t even look resentful. He looked exhausted and strangely empty, as though something inside him had simply gone out.

“Uh…are you all right?” she asked, tentatively.

He stirred then, and looked up at her.

“There is food, if you wish to eat,” he said quietly, ignoring her question and nodding toward the leaf plate he had prepared for her.

Terra bit her bottom lip.

“Er, I appreciate you making breakfast,” she told him carefully, still watching his face for any sign that his mood might change. “But my stomach is a little upset right now.” She swallowed, wondering if even that small rejection might offend him, then forced herself to say what she really wanted. “I’d really just rather go home, if you don’t mind.”

Taurex didn’t argue. He didn’t demand to know why she couldn’t stay for breakfast or remind her that they had originally planned to spend another day on the Mother Ship. He simply lowered his gaze for a moment and nodded.

“Of course.”

The lack of resistance surprised Terra so much that she almost didn’t know what to say.

Taurex pushed himself slowly to his feet, and that was when she realized he really was still wearing the same sleep trousers he’d had on when he came to her room the night before. Had he even gone to bed? Looking at the deep circles beneath his eyes, she doubted it.

“Let me get dressed and I will take you back to Earth,” he said. Then he hesitated, his golden gaze meeting hers briefly before sliding away. “Unless you fear me too much to allow me to pilot you there. In which case, I can call a fellow Monstrum to take you home.”

Terra stared at him.

She had been braced for anger…had prepared herself for persuasion, wounded pride, maybe even some attempt to make her feel guilty for rejecting him after everything he had done for her.

Instead, Taurex looked like a man who had already accepted that he’d lost something precious and had no idea how to get it back. There was no anger in his face at all—only sadness and a kind of bleak defeat that made Terra’s chest tighten unexpectedly.

He seemed almost like a man who had lost his will to live, and suddenly she remembered the way he had obeyed her the night before when she asked him to leave. No argument…no threat…no raised voice. He simply left when she asked him to.

“No,” she heard herself saying. “You don’t need to get someone else to take me home. I trust you.”

Taurex looked at her then, and for just a second something flickered in his tired golden eyes.

“Thank you for that,” he said softly.

Then he nodded once and brushed past her on his way back toward his sleeping chamber, leaving Terra alone in the kitchen with her suitcase, the untouched plate of green eggs and ham, and a confusing ache in the middle of her chest she hadn’t expected to feel.

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TERRA