It was now or never.
It could be months before she had Raphael pinned down again.
Alexa waited for her turn.
It wasn’t long before Raphael looked up and caught her eye. He smiled, called a guard over, and spoke in his ear. The guard came straight for her shortly after.
“He wants you,” he said.
Alexa calmed. She prayed she had the courage to go through with her plan.
She smiled her brightest smile and followed the guard toward Raphael’s smirking form.
Twenty-Seven
After weeks of chasing her,hunting her, and reaching out to Nightheart for help after swallowing his fucking pride, Alexa was finally before him, and all Hysterian wanted to do was throw her over his shoulder and fuck her into loving him.
With her startlingly beautiful hair, she was an ethereal goddess, a mesmerizing blend of both her species. Hysterian stared in awe. Gone was the cold crew hand who used to work for him, replaced by a sprite.
He’d had no idea Alexa was so goddamn beautiful. He swore an oath he would personally destroy all the dye in the universe. Alexa in a dress, lips glistening with clear gloss, made his systems frenetic, made him ache in only the way she could.
He hadn’t been in her presence in nearly six weeks.
Six weeks of utter hell. Six weeks of nothing. Six weeks of scenting her all over his ship, of being stuck in memories of their time together. It was a curse and a gift to have internal databases that recorded everything.
He’d been furious, worried, running about and shouting her name as others watched on. Fear had stolen him even when he’d known she was gone. He had battled through the locusts, invaded other people’s ships, and had threatened the controllers, stopping all travel off of Atrexia.
Alexa was long gone by then, having left hours prior on a ship she’d bought her way onto with all the money she’d made working forhim.
To make matters worse, theQuestorhad been landlocked for days as the locusts bred, feasted, and then bred again.
In those first dark hours, he hadn’t been sure if he would have strangled Alexa had he found her, or tied her to his bed and forced everything he’d wanted to hear out of her throat. Hysterian had been out of his mind from her recklessness, her idiocy.
What being in their right mind thought they could take down one of his kind? It took more than a bullet or a sharp edge. It took planning, the right equipment, and a fuck-ton of luck. It took calculation, precision. A weapon used on one of his brethren might work well on that specific model, but that same weapon might do nothing to another of his kind.
She had come to kill him anyway, and then she’d left him, having done so much worse in that small act.
She’d left him.
She’d left him without saying goodbye—not that he would have let her. She made him feel for her, made him want her more than all others.
Once he’d gotten through those first dark hours, those first days on Atrexia with no one but Pigeon to listen to him while he had raged, Hysterian eventually calmed.
It would’ve been far more merciful for Alexa to have killed him. No, she had to take his hope and wring them out. No one did that to him and not pay for the crime. No one fucking dared.
And then he found the bag of clothes in her old quarters—the lingerie she’d bought—and the whole process started all over again.
This time with his cock in his hand, trying to jack out the rage and confusion.
He took to the stars on a mission to get her back.
Seeing her now, in a little black dress that was still slightly too big for her, swaying absently to bad music, made him forget everything—all the desperate nights he spent worrying. It made him excited.
I found her.
Now that he had her, he wasn’t going to let her get away again.
After Hysterian found out Alexa was on Elyria, her funds verifying it, Hysterian knew what she was going to do. He’d warped through uncharted space to get to her before she risked her life.
