I laughed. “I don’t have any other clothes here.” That was a lie. My gear was stored in a cube in the main living room. The cube was also large enough for me to crawl inside and hide, if needed. The ruse would fool the humans. Scions with advanced scanners would find the cube eventually. Locking myself inside and waiting to be found would be an act of last resort.
“You look like a goddess.” Ethan walked over and wrapped his arms around my waist. “I look like a gym bro in tight sweats.”
“You can always take them off.” My long hair had begun to dry, the tendrils curling around my face. Ethan reached up and wrapped one long strand around his index finger.
“No. I think we need to talk.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk. Or work. Or hunt my enemies. The sooner I found the Silver Scions, the sooner I’d be forced to leave the planet, and Ethan, behind. “All right. I need to run the memory scan. Should have done it already.”
“What memory scan?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” I led Ethan back into the kitchen and stepped over the white doctor’s coat soaked with blood. He followed behind and rubbed his shoulder, as if in pain, when he saw the evidence of his injury.
My she-beast immediately rose up in protest, furious that we hadn’t completely healed him. That he suffered.
Heal! Now!
“Shhh.” I picked up the white coat and placed it in the trash container hidden inside one of the kitchen drawers. Ethan was already rifling through the rest of the drawers and pulled out a medium sized towel I assumed humans used to clean.
“I got this. You do your scan.” Ethan grabbed cleaning supplies that smelled like lemons and bleach from underneath the sink and cleaned the floor until no trace of his blood remained.
I grabbed the ReGen wand out of my tool kit and moved to his side. “I’m sorry. I should have done that.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Why would you say that? It’s my blood.”
“Because you’re m—.” The wordminedied a reluctant death in the back of my throat. Part of me wanted to shout it at him. Scream my claim to the heavens and eliminate anyone who tried to stand in my way. The sane part of me bit my lip and shut the fuck up. “You’re injured.”
“As far as I can figure, when you used your transport beacon to get me out of there, you saved my life.” He took the ReGen wand from my hand and flipped it over in his palm, examining the foreign item. “How do I turn it on?”
I leaned in and indicated the controls, walked him through the adjustments and the healing levels available. “Just hold it over the injured area until the light flashes at you. If you ignore it, or fall asleep, it will turn itself off.”
He sighed with relief when the blue-green section of the wand hovered over his shoulder. “I was feeling pretty good, but we were?—”
“I apologize if I hurt you.” I didn’t want him to finish that sentence. I needed to focus on the task at hand, not relive every orgasmic moment of the last couple hours. “I shouldn’t have?—”
Instantly, he reached out and cupped my cheek with a gentleness that made me want to melt into a puddle on the floor. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”
Don’t say what? That I shouldn’t have jumped on him like an out-of-control maniac? I shouldn’t have begged him to restrain me and fuck my brains out? I shouldn’t have been so undisciplined? Such a… a beast?
“I need to run the scan.” I stepped away from him and stood before my toolbox once more, determined to focus on my mission.
Locking the extraction device into place in the larger DNA scanner, I entered my access code and watched as the device activated.
“What are you doing, exactly?” Ethan stood directly behind me, his chest heating my spine as he peered over my right shoulder. I jumped when his left arm wrapped around my back, and the hand that had been stroking my clit mere minutes ago settled on my hip like he owned me.
Problem was, he did own me. Body and soul. My beast had chosen.
7
Lyra
Claimed us.Mate.
Apparently, my beast approved of his possessive touch.We can’t keep him. We have to go back. We can’t stay on Earth, and he won’t want to leave. He’s human. He doesn’t know what we are. He hates aliens.
Mine.
That one word encapsulated and summarized her entire argument.
