Salt air.
Warm sand.
Night-blooming tropical flowers drifting on the breeze through the open balcony door.
And beneath it all, faint but unmistakable, the scent that ruled my every thought. That consumed me.
Tori.
I could still detect her. Here. In this room. On the pillow. In the sheets. In the air.
My mate. Mine. The beast surged forward again.
My jaw tightened. “You cannot. Not yet.”
The growled answer echoed through the quiet suite.
Breaking my contract with the show would be easy. I could find her right now. Lift her into my arms. Place the mating cuffs around our wrists. Leave this fucking place.
The thought alone made my pulse thunder.
The cuffs. The claim. The bond sealed. I would take her back to Atlan. Show her the beauty of my world. Buy her anything she wanted. Allow her to choose our new home. The rulers of Atlan provided significant wealth and properties to any Atlan Warlord who managed to survive their service in the Coalition Fleet. I was rich.
None of it mattered without her.
My hand closed into a fist as frustration ripped through me.
The cuffs still rested in the small case on that damn stage. Untouched. Unworn.
Every time I looked at them, the beast roared with rage.
Tori belonged with me.
But claiming her now would destroy everything. The contract. The show. The chance for every warrior trapped on The Colony to come to Earth and find the same miracle I had.
And Tori…
My gaze drifted toward the balcony where the moonlight spilled across the floor.
Tori would lose the human money Chet promised her. I cared naught for his offerings. But to Tori, they represented freedom. Security. We had laid next to one another in the dark and she had whispered to me of her dreams. I knew she wanted to help animals. She shared her struggles to attend the human university, to purchase food and shelter. Disgust at the greed in the human system boiled in my blood but I said nothing. Only listened as my mate shared herself with me.
I told her about the war. Explained interplanetary politics, when she asked. Mostly she was content to lay in my arms and listen to Atlan folk tales. I sang her some of our songs. Told her nothing of my capture and torture at the hands of the Hive. My integrations were mostly invisible. She did not need to carry such burdens when I could protect her from them. She was softness and light. Nurturing. Kind.
I was none of those things. I hunted. I killed. I destroyed my enemies.
For her, I was gentle. The beast would be so with no other.
Without her? He was madness. Feverish. Out of his mind. All logic gone.
I tried to convince her to allow me to give her more, more wealth than Chet had offered. I could offer her so much more, but she didn’t completely trust me to care for her. To never leave her. Never betray her. Her rejection ate at my soul like parasites taking a thousand tiny bites out of my heart.
Mating cuffs. The beast insisted that our female only doubted because we had not placed our claim on her body. Marked her as ours. Cuffed her as we should.
You make her doubt us. The beast growled again. Her money means nothing.
"To her, it means everything." And that mattered to me. Her dreams mattered. Her happiness mattered.
More than my comfort. More than his.
