In the back of his mind, however, he wondered why the Fates had chosen her for him…and him for her.
It was a strange match.
His Instinct demanded he remain close to her.Vrax, his Instinct demanded more than that. He wanted to touch her, hold her. He wanted to strip her nude right there in the forest and do a million wicked things to her with his tongue, his hands, and his cock, but he held his control in a tight grip. Something told him that one misstep could cost him forever.
It wasn’t comfortable.
A little while after they’d left their makeshift, temporary camp, they came across the area where Cruxan had tackled Crystal, where Jaxor’an had taken Erin.
Cruxan pulled up short. Behind him, he sensed Crystal stopping in her tracks, unmoving.
“Here?” she asked quietly. Her golden hair rustled around her shoulders, telling him she looked around the clearing.
“Tev.”
“How can you be sure? It was so dark.”
“I can scent it,” he told her, mirroring the words he’d said to her earlier.
She went quiet and Cruxan couldn’t help but look over his shoulder at her. He caught her staring at his bared back, but her gaze darted away immediately.
Clearing her throat, she asked, “Do you know which direction they went?”
He jerked his chin back towards the Golden City. “Towards his sandcraft.”
They moved on. Despite Cruxan wishing that he could carry hisluxivain his arms again, he knew that she would never allow it, even if they made faster time. TheMeviraxwere nowhere to be seen—or heard, or scented, for that matter—so Cruxan deemed it safe enough for her to trail behind him. He would sense any danger long before it ever got within attack range of them.
They’d only been walking for another handful of moments before she surprised him by asking, “How did you learn how to track?”
“I cheated,” he murmured, his lips quirking, though he kept his gaze firmly in front of him.
She made a sound in the back of her throat. “What?”
“I was born with better senses than most,” he told her. “So it was natural. I have an advantage that most will never have, an advantage that cannot be taught or learned.”
Cruxan sensed her walking closer and his breath hitched, his fists squeezing to keep from reaching out to touch her. For all his mental doubts that they were a match, his body certainly didn’t have any qualms about theFates’ decision.
When she appeared at his side, though keeping an arm’s length distance between them, Cruxan slid his gaze over to her.
“That’s a gift. It’s not cheating,” she told him. “You truly have better senses?”
He gestured in the direction they were walking. “What is the furthest thing you can see?”
She blinked, tearing her eyes away from him, and then squinted, her delicate nose scrunching slightly. Cruxan’s lips quirked. “Um, I see white trees. Andmorewhite trees.”
Cruxan looked at the scene in front of him and told her, “I see the edge. I see the black sand that gives way into the desert. I see white trees, as you call them. They are calledpillerva. I see their husks and their roots crawling from the moss. I see the texture on their pods. I smell the sickening sweetness of their rot on the earth and the scent of a cold breeze from the north that tells me a storm is approaching.”
Her pink lips were parted as she blinked up at him. In that moment, she looked at him unguarded, possibly for the first time, and Cruxan jolted, sucking in a lungful of crisp air too fast, making his lungs squeeze.
Vrax, she was beautiful. Lovely, in her strange, alien, human way. In that moment, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything lovelier.
He swallowed past the knot lodged in his throat as she asked, “Doesn’t that ever get tiring? Being soawareall the time?”
“I have been this way all my life,” he said, taking in the shimmering green of her eyes. She had golden threads going through her irises, just like her hair.Mesmerizing. “If I had normal senses, knowing what could be, I think I would be frustrated by the limitations.”
He grinned when she said, “Then that’s unfortunate for us lesser beings, to never know what could be.”
Her light tone told him she wasteasing. When she saw him smiling, her own lips quirked, her white teeth peeking through, and Cruxan felt another piece of his soul leave his body, attaching itself to her.
