“They certainly know it.”
“You did such a good job, my sweet mate,” Dante rasps. “Seeing you with a pulsar in your hand makes me want to mate you right here and right now.”
“I can’t believe you’re even thinking about mating!” I shout over the noise.
“I am always thinking about mating,” Dante says. “Why wouldn’t I, when I have a mate who can take me to the ancestors and bring me back.”
It would appear I have created a sex monster, and he’s all which stands between me and what sounds like annihilation by whatever is coming for us.
On either side, the noise continues to press in on us. I cover my ears, and Dante wraps his arm over my chest, holding me to him. I can’t see anything but the haze of smoke he has released, until finally, horribly, shapes appear, like ghosts.
“So, let’s see if this works,” Dante says.
“Dante, you brought your mate and your crew.” The voice of the Gonoz pierces the veil of smoke. “We could not have asked for more. A way to continue and a way to breed.”
My blood runs cold, sending a shiver down my spine. This is what they want. Sarkarnii to inhabit. I believe in Dante, but I can’t help wondering if this was the best of ideas.
“No matter what,” Dante murmurs in my ear, “I will protect you, my little flame. I have you, I hold you, I will be with you. Don’t forget it.”
Above us, the bundle of wires glows brighter and brighter until I can’t look at it anymore. I have to close my eyes. It has tobe burning Dante so badly. I spin around, shoving my face into his broad chest, wrapping myself as tightly as I can to him.
“Dante!” My call of his name is lost in the noise, the light, the heat, everything.
I cannot lose him a second time. In everything which has happened to me, losing my identity and home on Earth, to being abducted, to falling into space onto a strange planet and being adopted by the Sarkarnii, it all is nothing if I don’t have Dante.
The feral creature who bit me because he knew I was his. Who was unafraid to admit it, to face the consequences of his actions, and who, after everything, was prepared to give me the space to find out who he was…and how much my chaos warlord could mean to me.
“I love you, Dante,” I hear myself say, my heart pounding as somehow the noise and the light get stronger. “I will always love you.”
And everything stops.
Everything.
All there is is white and silence.
ROSALIE
“Little flame?”
Dante’s voice rasps in my ear.
“What’s happening?” I ask. “Where are we?”
“We’re exactly where we need to be.”
I can’t see anything other than his scales because my face is smushed against his chest and white around the edges.
“Where is that?”
“Containment.”
I look up, and Dante is grinning at me.
“You mean we’re contained?”
“We are,” he says. “The Gonoz cannot get to us, and the more they try, the more they get trapped.”
“Trapped in the…conduits?”
