“Watch it, Prillon.” Kai’s gravelly warning caused Helion to shake his head.
“I meant no offense, my lady. I am simply tired of chasing ghosts.”
I stared into the abyss of those eyes as a shiver raced through me. They were staring back at me. I could feel it. I’d seen them once before and blown it off as paranoia and lack of sleep. I did have a vivid imagination. I’d cropped out the eyes and sent the images to my buyers. As soon as I hit ‘send’ on the emails, I’d wiped the bad feeling from memory and convinced myself the feeling of dread was nothing.
I am something, Larkspur. At last I have found you again.
Again? “Did you all hear that?” What did he mean, he found me? Was he looking for me? Through a picture? That didn’t make sense.
“Hear what?” Rachel asked as Kai moved closer to me.
I rushed to my mate and melted against him as his arms closed around me in a protective cocoon. “That voice.”
You are special. You see me. You feel me. You saw me when I arrived to reclaim Maxus, on earth. You recognized my presence when no others were aware. Your mind, your awareness, embedded my image in your photograph. No other has manipulated primal energy in such a way. You are unique, daughter. You will come to me.
“No, I won’t.” I didn’t even know what I supposedly did. Was he saying I somehow sensed his presence and that my mind, somehow, magically made his eyes appear in the picture even though he wasn’t physically at the fight that night? Because that was crazy.
Was I arguing with a figment of my imagination?
Everyone around looked at me with confusion. The Prillon warriors, Thomar and Sebastion, the cousins, had their space blasters out and were looking around. The woman, Danika, Thomar’s mate, had her hands wrapped around her head as her second mate, Varin, crouched over her protectively. They, at least, appeared to be upset.
“Am I going crazy?”
“No.” Thomar’s tone sounded grave. “We hear him as well. Where the fuck is he?”
I am everywhere and nowhere, daughter. Come. Let me teach you. The voice kept talking to me. I struggled to listen to multiple conversations at once—the real ones I could hear with my ears—and the disturbing, telepathic voice inside my head.
“Who?” Helion nudged Willow toward Sebastion and looked around. “Perhaps we should take all the females to safety.”
“Where would that be when he’s in our heads?” I asked.
Helion cursed. “Fuck. Governor, lock down the base until we know what we’re dealing with. Send word to the other bases. We may be dealing with another infiltration.”
Another? As in the Hive had infiltrated The Colony planet before? I thought this place was safe. Then again, the Hive weren’t supposed to be on Earth, either.
Sebastion wrapped his arms around Willow. “It’s a Nexus unit. I don’t know how he’s communicating with Lady Larkspur, but the telepathic signal is strong.” He turned to stare at me over Willow’s head. “Have you spent time with the Hive? Do you have integrations, my lady?”
“No.” I shook my head and clung to Kai. “No. I don’t have anything. I’d never seen one until they tried to kill me.”
You saw me when no one else was aware of my presence. The image you captured linked our minds, our awareness of one another. You see me and I see you. We are linked, one mind, one awareness beyond space and time. Harming you was never our intention. They were to bring you to me. Come.
Why? I thought the word then decided to speak aloud. Not playing this Nexus guy’s mental game, whatever that game happened to be. “Why? Why did you want them to bring me to you? What do you want?” He said he wanted to teach me, but teach me what? How to be blue and scary? How to control the minds of thousands of integrated captives and force them to fight and kill like he did? No way.
Kai’s beast rumbled through him and my mate let him out. His shoulders grew. His face transformed, bigger jaw, wild, aggressive gaze. His size meant additional safety and I held onto my mate and didn’t let go. Not for a second. I could feel a strange pull inside my mind almost like the push-pull of opposing magnets except inside my skull. The sensation was making my stomach roll and my head ache. If the sensations kept up much longer, I was going to be sick.
The screen closest to me flashed, was fuzzy and muddled for a few seconds and then? One of the strangest creatures I’d ever seen stared at me from inside some kind of detention cell. His skin was an unnatural dark blue. His eyes were big, black and dull, like a shark’s. He didn’t have hair, but a grouping of tubelike projections connected the back of his head to the top third of his spine like tentacles. They appeared to be firmly attached, more like computer wires than normal body parts.
Was the blue alien in a prison of some kind? Was he the voice I was hearing in my head? He sat on the floor with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap, calm and collected as if he were meditating or something. There was a small bed in the room but no other furniture. He lifted his chin and stared directly at me through the screen, as if he could see me.
His voice carried through the room on invisible speakers. “Larkspur. You and Catherine are mine. There are others, so many of you. I claim you all, my daughters.”
What. The. Fuck? “I am not your daughter.”
Kai shoved me behind him, blocking my view of the dark blue Nexus unit. Or should I say, blocking his view of me.
Helion walked toward the screen, facing off with the creature. “This is impossible.”
“Zarren. Did you believe this cage effective?” The other screens in the room transformed into flashing, moving images of data, information and images from all over the fleet. “I remained at your Core Command structure to access your data and complete my search.” The images on the screens changed to a rotating selection of human women. I didn’t recognize any of them except myself, of course, and one woman I’d seen on so many Interstellar Brides’ Program advertisements I would know her anywhere—Warden Catherine Egara. She was almost as famous as the Atlans on the Bachelor Beast TV show.
