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This felt inevitable. Right, as nothing had before.
The closest Taryn had ever gotten to this sensation was breaking free from his family. The exhilaration. Finally tasting liberty.
Now he tasted balance. He hadn’t met his Lightmate–hadn’t even seen her–but it felt true.
“Let’s start the rest of our lives, however they may unravel,” Kyren said.
“Spoken like a true Rohin.” Zandyr ran his hand up his horn one last time, before righting himself as the feared Quillon Ambassador he was. “Though let us hope they will not unravel. We’re already in danger of dying, let’s not think of worse alternatives.”
Taryn took a step forward, restless. He had to meet his Lightmate. “Nothing can be worse than death.”
Even as he said it, a sense of dread took over his energy.
Something was very, very wrong with his Lightmate.
He had to find her.
4
LEAH
Leah couldn’t remember the last time her legs had been so jittery.
Her knees shook underneath her white silk dress, which tried so hard to hug her bean pole of a body. She’d lost whatever curves she’d had about a month after being forced to sell her childhood home. Between working and running every waking second, not having time to eat, and stress, her body had adjusted. Her boobs had always been small, though. Couldn’t blame her shitty life for her A cup.
To be honest, it felt like A- in this dress, the same one all the other Selected human soulmates were wearing–and they were wearing theirs much better than her.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dawn, one of the other soulmates, asked from the corner of her mouth as the human ship’s platform descended onto the Quillon docking station. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I’ve seen a ghoul, she thought as she looked at her reflection in the shiny metal platform. Herself.
“Yep. Peachy,” she lied, for the hundredth time.
She was notpeachy. She shouldn’t be here, doing what she was about to do.
The past two months on the ship had been torture. Flying through space had been bad enough in that hi-tech metal casket, as Sara, another soulmate, called it. It was cold, the food was even worse than back on Earth, and the politicians who’d insisted on coming to this first human-Quillon meeting were just awful. Sticking their noses high in the air whenever they passed the Selected matches, as if their hides were the ones saving Earth, not the other way around.
But the guilt had been the worse. Eating Leah alive every time she closed her eyes at night. Every time Flint sent another message about Nana’s health.
He pretended they were polite updates, but Leah saw their true purpose. To remind her that she either played by his rules or her grandmother would die.
“It was very difficult to obtain the medication. It’s on its way to the hospital right now,” he’d said in his last message, which she’d listened to while locked away in the bathroom. No holo-vid, thankfully. His voice was snakey and oily and made her skin crawl. “We’re keeping averyclose eye on the shipment. It would be such a shame if anything happened to it in transit. Your grandmother’s life depends on it.”
Leah inhaled a stuttered breath.
She had to do this. There was no other way.
“It’s going to be over soon.” Erin, the last soulmate, ran a hand over her auburn bun, which had started to unravel. “One month and we’ll be heading back home.”
Ifthey didn’t decide to stay. Or get kicked off the planet. Or–Leah gulped–be discovered and tasted Quillon justice.
Did they have the death penalty here?
She hoped not. She liked her head very much attached to the rest of her body, scrawny as it was.
The rest of the soulmates were all nervous–who wouldn’t be when meeting their supposed fated mates, from an alien species they’d never seen? But none of them carried the cloud of gloom and doom Leah had hovering over her.
Of course they didn’t. None of the other matches were forced to betray their so-called soulmates.
