“You cannot cut our water. We will literally die. Humans require a minimum baseline of hydration that you are currently ignoring.”
His jaw tightens. A thick knot of muscle ticks under his golden skin. He leans down until his head is exactly level with mine. The sheer wave of heat pouring off his skin hits me full in the face, drowning my senses with the scent of hot stone and spice.
He grinds out a string of harsh syllables. The translator in my ear clicks. “The dust is dry,” it says in a flat, monotone voice. “The clan shares the drought.”
“Your clan has highly evolved alien kidneys,” I shoot right back, actually fighting the urge to lean directly into his heat. “Wedo not. The mated women are fine. The rest of us are failing. Look at me, Kol.”
I grab the thick, rigid muscle of his bare forearm.
The skin underneath my palm is scorching hot, tough as cured hide, and pulsing with too much physical strength. The vibration of it shoots straight up my arm, but I forcefully lock my fingers around him and refuse to let go.
“Look at me,” I repeat, my voice cracking under the sheer exhaustion.
He looks. His intense amber eyes drop agonizingly slowly. They move to my arm that is gripping him, directly to where my bandaged palm is pressed against his golden skin. Then they slowly move back up. To my body. My neck. My chin. He takes in the deep, exhausted hollows under my eyes, the pale color of my skin, the physical toll the planet is taking on my fragile frame.
His glow violently spikes, flaring a chaotic, aggressive gold that strobes forcefully across his chest.That does not mean he is your mate,my brain screams at me.Erika, stop it.
But then the familiar rumble starts deep inside his chest.
A thick, intensely resonantthrump-thrumpgrinds to life behind his ribs. Ragged. Stuttering. Aggressively fast.
The vibration rolls straight through my palm, shooting directly up the bones of my wrist. Every single hair on my body stands up. My grip on his arm tightens on its own, my fingers digging hard into his rigid muscle.
It has no business feeling that good. A sharp, humiliating flush of heat burns straight up my neck. Five other alien warriors are standing in total silence right behind me, listening to the low, feral purr grinding out of their warlord, but I lock my jaw and refuse to break his intense, suffocating stare.
His strength is an actual wall. My anger cracks against it and falls apart. It’s the sheer exhaustion. It’s the terrifying reality of our dehydration. It’s the absolute lack of control I have over any of this.
And because my body actively hates me, my tear ducts choose this exact moment to betray my false strength.
Iloathecrying when I am angry. I clench my jaw, glaring up at him with blurry vision, desperately trying to suck the tears back into my eyes through sheer spite.
Kol moves jarringly fast.
One second his arms are rigidly at his sides, and the next, his broad hand is hovering a fraction of an inch from my face. One sharp claw carefully, almost reverently, sweeps directly beneath my eyelid, catching a single, wet tear before it can fall.
He slowly pulls his hand back and stares intensely at the tiny drop of wetness shining against his claw. His brows slam together in a deep V.
“Broh-ken... eyes?” he forces out, his throat working hard around the syllables.
“I amangrycrying, Kol,” I say, my voice a thick, breathless mess. I swipe blindly at his arm, which is like trying to shove a solid concrete pillar. It does not move him an inch, but it spikes the loud, frantic purr grinding in his chest. “Listen to me!”
Kol ignores my distress. He taps two thick fingers against the center of his own chest. “Dra-dam,” he rumbles.
“I do not care that you are the dra-dam!” I bite out, the furious tears completely spilling over my lashes now. I wipe my cheeks with the back of my bandaged hand and release my tight grip on his scorching arm. I point a shaking finger directly at the stone floor. “I am the one keeping these women alive right now, so sit down!”
Kol stares down at me.
My finger is still pointing at the ground when the undisputed alpha of the entire clan bends his knees, folds his heavily muscled, seven-foot frame beneath him, and sits directly on the hard stone floor before me.
I blink through the unfallen tears.
I cannot hear the mindspace, but the physical reaction around me is instantaneous. Haroth takes a total, involuntary step backward, nearly tripping over a stack of hide. Zan drops his waterskin, catching it just a fraction of an inch before it hits the ground. Jacqui slaps both of her hands hard over her mouth, her eyes practically bulging out of her skull.
Kol ignores every single one of them. His focus is terrifyingly fixed on me.
Now that he has folded his body onto the floor, the severe height difference is completely gone.
Our eyes are exactly level.
