AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Everything ran so smoothly, so unlike the beeps and rusted grinding the machines back home had been reduced to.
A wave of disappointment washed over her.
“I wished you would have helped Earth already.” The words spilled past her lips before she could stop them.
Leah squinted her eyes shut. She shouldn’t have said that. Flint had told her to be as detached as possible, to not arouse suspicion.
And here she was, asking questions that felt more like accusations.
But whyhadn’tQuillon intervened against the Zavorians? A lot of people on Earth had been waiting for years, including Leah.
“It’s, as you humans say,complicated,” Taryn said after a few seconds of silence. “We can’t until the treaty is signed, like I’ve said.”
“But why?” she asked, part curious, part desperate. “Why are the terms so unbelievably annoying? So the Zavorians used to live here, so what? Now they’re out there destroying us and a lot of other planets, most likely.”
If Quillon had pushed the Zavorians back, then Leah wouldn’t have been forced to come here under the circumstances she had to live with now.
“Quillons have a bloody history. Before Kyren’s Dynasty took over in the Great War and commanded peace on our planet, we were violent and proud of it,” Taryn said. “One of the unstated rules was to not battle our own without a noble reason. Becoming Earth’s ally is the only way we can fight the Zavorians.”
“Your own?” Leah frowned. “But that means–”
She gasped.
No. Oh, no.
No, no, no, no. No!
“You’re related to the Zavorians?” she asked in a nervous whisper. Of course they were.
When he’d said the Zavorians used to live here, Leah had imagined they’d stopped by on Quillon, tried to conquer it as well, and then flew off when they hadn’t been successful.
Instead, they were relatives.
“Some more than others, unfortunately.” A corner of his mouth ticked up, one of the few expressions that had crossed his beautiful face since they’d met. “Does that bother you?”
A weird, tense silence fell over them.
Did it bother her that Zavorians, the aliens who had tried to cower Earth, were related to the Quillons, one of which Leah was supposedly soulmates with?
No.
Not really.
But in Leah’s situation, this information could become dangerous. Shehadto make it dangerous.
“We can’t help who we’re related to,” she said, and meant it, too. “I lucked out with Nana, but a lot of people–and aliens–aren’t as lucky. It’s one of the few things we have no control over.”
“Yes, one of them,” he said, being all mysterious. And gorgeous. And tempting. And–
Leah shook her head.
Shesoshould not have been thinking that. She needed her head in the game, not mooning over a dude she’d just met. Leah ripped her gaze away from Taryn’s before she could get lost in his silvery eyes and gazed outside. The sky had changed, in only a few short minutes.
Menacing clouds had bulged in the distance, darkening everything in their path. Her heart began beating louder.
“Don’t worry,” Taryn said in a deep, soothing tone, his right hand gliding over the control system.
Leah gulped. “I’m not worried.”
