She left the home-dome and went back outside instead. The shuttle would be here soon–she hoped. She would wait on the landing pad and be ready the minute Iyanna swooped in.
Kiera stood in the bright afternoon light, arms wrapped around herself, scanning the sky for any sign of incoming transport. Her face still felt tight from crying and her chest hurt in that deep, bruised way grief sometimes settled in.
Come on, Iyanna, she thought fiercely. Hurry.
Then the wind shifted and with it came a familiar smell…B.O. and sour cream and onion chips.
Kiera stiffened. Not now! A visit from Higgs was the absolute last thing she needed in this moment of crisis!
She turned to tell him so in no uncertain terms…but just then a huge hand clamped a cloth over her face from behind.
The smell of B.O. and chips was replaced by something cloyingly sweet and chemical. It made her dizzy instantly.
Kiera thrashed in blind panic, clawing at the hand, trying to scream but nothing came out–her nose and mouth were completely covered.
“Hello there, girly—I told you you’d be sorry for disrespecting me,” a horribly familiar voice said.
Kiera tried to fight–tried to breathe shallowly, tried to twist free—but her limbs were already going weak… her thoughts blurring and slowing as the drug hit her all at once.
No, no, no—Brux–I have to get to Brux!
But even that urgent thought was fading. The last thing she saw was Had’lor Prime swimming huge and green—gold above her in the sky.
Then everything went dark.
26
BRUX
Brux stood at the small viewport of the shuttle and watched the animal sanctuary fall away beneath him.
At first, he could still make out individual details—the reddish hills and silver—threaded meadows…the faint shimmer of the enclosure barriers…the rounded shape of Kiera’s home-dome tucked into the landscape as though it belonged there. But the shuttle climbed quickly and soon the sanctuary itself was only a small patch of color on the vast face of the moon.
Plo’nix. The strange, beautiful little world where he had lived in happiness and peace for the first time since his mate died on his home world. The place where Kiera had saved him and brought him back from the void.
It was gone now…all gone.
Brux rested one hand against the cold surface of the viewport and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt terrible. Not physically—though the restraint cuffs on his wrists were uncomfortable and the hard metal deck under his bare feet was far from pleasant. No, the pain was deeper than that…older and heavier.
His sins were finally coming to light, and he had no one to blame but himself.
He never should have stowed away on the Mother Ship in the first place. He knew that now more clearly than ever. When his world had burned and the Darklings had come shrieking across the snowfields and into the forests and villages of his people, he should have stayed behind.
He should have stayed on the Monstrum home world…he should have gone to the Goddess with his mate.
Instead, he had lived…lived through her death…lived through the destruction of everything he had ever known.
He’d lived long enough to become half animal, half ghost–lost in a void of grief and instinct and hunger until he could barely remember his own name.
And now, because of that selfish act of survival—because he had crawled aboard the Mother Ship like a desperate coward—he had brought trouble to Kiera’s door.
His jaw tightened until it ached. No matter what he told himself–no matter how much he wanted to believe the time they had shared was somehow sacred and blessed–this was the truth he could not escape:
He had brought danger and sorrow to the woman he loved.
If the Monstrum Council judged him for what he was—an illegal stowaway… an unstable, unbonded Lykan…a male already granted one mate by the Goddess and therefore unfit to claim another—they would be right.
Wouldn’t they?
