AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m Mr. Flint, Quillon-Earth liaison,” the short man said, sounding all sorts of polite. “Ms. Mallory, we’ve been waiting for you and time is against us. I assume you’ve received the Quillon message today?”
Leah’s muscles clenched. The raspy voice. Being calledEarthling. “That wasn’t a joke?”
“Heavens, no. It was all true. You have been Selected as a soulmate for a very important Quillon. You will travel to their planet, meet your esteemed soulmate, and decide if he’s the kind of male you want to marry. The choice is yours, but I don’t have to tell you how important such a connection would be for an Earth-Quillon treaty, do I?”
Leah shook her head. Whether from hunger, stress, or fatigue, she was feeling all kinds of dazed.
“Good. If you like this Quillon, you will marry him and you will live on Quillon permanently.” Flint’s smile had too many edges to be called friendly. “You will leave in a month’s time—”
Leah squared her shoulders. “I don’t remember agreeing to this.”
One of the bodyguards closed the door to the room. Leah’s muscles tensed.
“I don’t remember asking. You can’t say no to the trip, wouldn’t want the Quillons to think we lack manners, now would we?” Flint asked. “But you do have a choice in whether you accept the marriage to your Quillon, Selected or not. I just hope you make the right choice.”
Leah grasped her grandmother’s hand. It was so warm.
Give me strength.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t leave my nana.”
There was no way she was traipsing all over the galaxy to meet whatever a soulmate was when the one person she’d ever loved was slowly wilting away.
“Perfect.” Flint’s smirk grew. “Then I also assume you’d do everything in your power so your nana doesn’t leave us before her time, yes?”
Leah clenched her jaw.
“I understand there’s a problem with her medication.” Flint waited for a few seconds, while Leah’s heart galloped, before he went on, “We can make that problem go away.”
Her world spun out of control again. “This is blackmail.”
“No, this is me offering to help you if you help us.”
No. This was a trap. One she couldn’t escape, because she was responsible for more than her own life.
Leah bit back her tears and looked at her grandmother. She would do anything for her, even leave her for a few months if it meant saving her life. “So if I fly to meet this guy, you’d make sure she gets the pills and she’s okay while I’m gone, yes?”
“I’ll do whatever I can, of course.” Flint took a menacing step forward. “But I can make absolutely sure she gets them. In time. Things have a way of getting lost in transit if one doesn’t keep a close eye on them, as the nurse already told you.”
The tears finally fell, stinging Leah’s cold cheeks. She already knew her answer. From the way Flint chuckled, he already knew it, too.
“I’m going,” she whispered.
“If you want your grandmother to live, you have to do more than that.” Flint’s cold chuckle was ugly and mangled. “You have to doexactlywhat we tell you to.”
2
TARYN
Taryn Ze’Lis pretended to take a sip from his glass as he stared at the fifteen–no, seventeen and counting–Xanashi guards thundering past him, sharp, massive weapons raised high.
Taryn hid his smile in his glass.
Everything was going according to plan.
After all, he hadn’t traveled for an entire werren on board that cold delegation ship for nothing. Officially, he was in this lavish reception hall as an intergalactic representative from Quillon. The excessive celebration marked one hundred cieclles of tentative peace on the Xanashi planet.
Nobody needed to know the unofficial reason, least of all the Xanashis.
