“Where are we going?” she asked instead.
“To my home.”
“Where’s that?”
His expression was stony and unreadable. He didn’t reply.
“Who were those males last night? The ones in the forest looking for you.”
“I think they were looking foryou,rixella,” he mocked, his lips twisting in a cold smirk.
“Why are you so hateful?” she snapped back, already reaching the limits of her patience with him. “What have I even done to you?”
He grew angry and took a step towards her, though she stood her ground.
“Youhave ruined everything! That is what you have done to me.”
Shock swarmed her at the malice she heard in his voice. With a muttered curse, he turned from her, jumped back up onto the hovercraft, and stalked over to the console.
Erin’s gaze darted to the edge of the forest, but she knew it was foolish. She’d tried to escape him twice already when she’d been with Crystal—once as they crossed the black sand desert, though admittedly that had been desperate and ill-advised, and the second time when the Luxirian Ambassador had appeared in the forest.
Both times, they shouldn’t have tried to escape. The Luxirian Ambassador had probably been sent to find them. If Erin and Crystal hadn’t run, they wouldn’t have been separated. Perhaps theybothwould’ve been on their way back to the Golden City by now.
As if reading her mind, Jaxor’an growled, “Run and Iwillfind you, female. You will not like it when I do.”
Another one of his threats. The small bite mark on her neck throbbed a bit as a reminder.
Erin had half a mind to test him. A part of her believed that he wouldn’ttrulyharm her. The other part cautioned her to be wary.
Erin was trying to decide what to do when Jaxor’an finally wrenched something out from underneath the console. It was small and square, no bigger than the size of her palm.
He crunched it in his fist and then tossed it over the side of the hovercraft. It landed in the moss on the other side of the clearing.
When she turned back to look at him, Erin had such a strange feeling. For a moment, she felt crushingdisappointment.
Erin could admit to herself that a small part of her had been envious of the relationships her friends had found themselves in. Kate with Vaxa’an. Beks with Lihvan. Cecelia with Rixavox. Taylor with Vikan. And now Lainey with Kirov, more recently.
What they all had in common was that they were all fated pairings, pushed and sewn together by the Luxirian deities, the Fates.
Erin didn’t completely understand it. She’d listened to each of her friends describe their experiences with their mates, taking silent and diligent notes, but a logical part of her mind always possessed doubts.
What shedidn’tdoubt was the feeling she’d had when she’d seen Jaxor’an for the first time. Like lightning in her chest, jolting and exhilarating. It had made her hands tremble. For a brief moment, she’d felt relief.
Relief that, maybe, it washerturn to have a true partner in life, one that would love her and protect her, as all of her friends’ mates did.
Her relief was short-lived, however. She’d soon realized that Jaxor’an wasnother knight in shining armor. Instead, he was a half-crazed, angry brute in a loincloth.
So yeah, for a moment, Erin wasdisappointed.
Then she pushed that feeling aside with a decided shove and, with as much dignity as she could muster with her hands tied together, she shuffled back onto the hovercraft, trying to keep the hem of her dirty, ripped tunic down.
Whatever Jaxor’an had thrown over the edge, she assumed it was a tracker of some sort. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of asking and having him ignore her question. Nothing else made sense as to why he would want to dispose of it so quickly.
Which meant no one would know where she was. Not anymore.
The grim severity of her situation made her shoulders sag. She truly was at the mercy of her would-be mate and he didn’t seem to know whether he wanted to stare at her all day or throttle her because she’d apparently ‘ruined everything’ for him, whatever that meant.
For once in her life, Erin didn’t know what to do.
