I look at the band of light on my finger and flex it. The skin tingles, and the ring’s pulse beats in time with my own. My grandmother’s gold is gone, erased in a heartbeat and replaced with something alien.
I want to cry. But instead, I trace the ring with my thumb, mesmerized by its glow. It’s final. My old life is gone. Nothing that came before matters anymore.
No. It all matters. My friends matter.
The Stone is still in my head, coaxing me to accept this.
I fight it, gasping.
Rythar stops. The jungle opens up into a small hollow, ringed by trees with thick trunks. He kneels, sets me down against one tree. His eyebrows knit together as I breathe hard.
“Your Stone is in my mind. Get it out,” I hiss at him.
I try to move, but my body is still slow and uncooperative. I flex my fingers, then my toes, like we did in biowarfare training back on New Terra. Sophia’s plan was to pretend to be weak. I don’t need to pretend right now. The ring pulses once as I think of Sophia, and I gasp again as I fight the Stone’s push against my mind.
CHAPTER 10
CLAIMED
ELENA – THE GREEN REACH
Rythar reachesfor me as I gasp. Every muscle in me tightens. He doesn’t say a word, but his eyes miss nothing. He freezes, kneeling there, hand half-extended.
I refuse to flinch. Instead, I square my shoulders and stare straight into his eyes. Gold, ringed in red. I want to say something, anything, but my mouth has gone dry.
He closes the last inch. I think he’s going to grab me, but he just brushes a lock of my hair over my shoulder. His fingers are rough and hot against my skin.
He studies my face, his fingers tracing my jaw, lingering on the pulse fluttering in my throat. There’s hunger in it. Unmistakable desire. They warned us what touch could do to them, before they walked us to the claiming ceremony. His eyes flick to my mouth.
But just as I’m sure he’ll take what he wants, something slices through my head.
Fear and agony, far away.
I gasp, folding forward, clutching my hand. The pain is white hot, radiating from the ring the Stone burned into my finger. It glows under the skin. Rythar catches me before I hit the ground, holding me up with an arm around my waist.
I can’t breathe. The pain becomes a voice, not words but pure sensation.
Terror, suffocation, a scream with no mouth. Then, faint and frantic, a name. Sophia.
She’s inside my head, clawing for help.
My eyes snap to Rythar, desperate. “Sophia. She’s—she’s—” I choke, unable to finish.
His expression hardens, calculating. He scans me, taking in the glowing ring, my shaking, the way I clutch my hand.
He doesn’t ask questions, but I can see them in his eyes. His mouth opens, then shuts. Then he scoops me up. Whatever he was about to say, he swallows, and runs.
The jungle streaks past. My arms wrap around his neck, my face pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. His stride is huge. Each footfall rocks my body.
He’s angry. I can feel it in my mind, too. It’s a dim pressure behind my sternum, different from my connection to Sophia, but there. His jaw locks. His stride falters a half-step. The hesitation feels wrong for him.
My head spins, vision pulsing with every beat of my heart. I feel Sophia’s fear and hopelessness. The certainty that something is coming for her. I paw at Rythar’s chest, desperate to make him understand.
“You have to help Sophia.”
But his hesitation is gone. My protests don’t slow him at all, and Rythar moves faster than should be possible for a man his size. Despite how fast he moves, how steady he keeps me, and how tightly he holds me to him, his breathing remains steady. There’s not even a hint of strain. It’s inhuman.
We break through another thicket, and Rythar stops suddenly. I look up at his chin. He looks into the jungle with a charged stillness. I know this feeling—the look on his face. It’slike the moment before a firefight starts. Something is coming. I wait for the hammer to fall.
