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Chapter Ten

Xaixek

Iwas too distracted by Alliana’s ravishing beauty—plain and simple. I was thinking with my cock instead of my head.

It was starting to cause me an enormous amount of problems and frustrations.

“Happiness comes at a price, Xaixek. Keep your head clear so your heart won’t derail you from what you already know you have to do. This bounty hunt comes at a major price, and you can’t afford to screw it up.”

I tried to give myself a pep talk to ease my qualms with both myself and about the situation in general, but it wasn’t working as effortlessly as I’d hoped.

It was easier said than done.

My mind wanted to do one thing, and my heart wanted to do another. It was challenging to keep the two synchronized.

I was also floored by the fact that Alliana was clearly able to use my powers against me—with just a simple touch of skin to skin contact. I hadn’t been expecting to feel that kind of galaxy-colliding reaction. Judging by her reaction, she didn’t either.

How was any of this even possible in the first place? My mind raced with scenarios, but I kept coming up empty, completely befuddled as to how she was able to do this.

The best conclusion I could come to was simple.

Only one option worked in the situation.

Alliana was a true empath. She had to be.

All beings, even humans, had untapped metaphysical abilities deep within them. Some had abilities that were more pronounced than others. And some abilities were never awakened, left dormant in the human psyche. Empathy. Healing. Telepathy. The abilities worked together. Empaths drew on emotions, but if left to draw emotions from someone like myself with the gift to read thought process and objects, they could use our auras to their benefit, tapping into it on demand. It wasn’t unheard of. Just last season, I’d heard rumors that one of the abducted women happened to come from a bloodline of witches. In turn, she was able to use her gifts draw from memories.

This escalation of events was unnerving to me, to say the least.

None of this mulling back and forth over what had transpired really mattered anyway. More often than not, history had a way of repeating itself. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, as the saying went.

It wasn’t like I could force my brain to stop thinking continuously. The stream of thoughts were there, all the time.

If Alliana touched me, she was going to know exactly what was going through my mind and what emotions I happened to be stricken with at any given time.

Giving into my urges to mate with her could end in heartbreak for one—or even both of us. I sure as hell didn’t want to deal with that, and I didn’t want to force that kind of suffering on her either.

She looked like she’d already endured enough in her life, from what I could gather simply by observing her—and also by what she’d already admitted to me.

I tossed an apprehensive glance over my shoulder to see if she was going to follow me, huffing and ready to argue, but I didn’t see her. She was still in the pod. I wouldn’t step far away. I still had a job to do and keeping tabs on her was essential right now.

I just needed to get some air and maybe a little distance between us too—which couldn’t’ hurt for either one of us. We had been literally roped together for almost two days now, and I felt like I was suffocating. I was a loner at heart, and I wasn’t used to being around someone constantly like this.

I kept my most destructive and damaging thoughts to myself most of the time, but I feared that now, Alliana had a front row seat to listen to the toxicity that rattled around inside my head twenty-four hours a day.

I didn’t want to make the same mistakes that my parents had made in the past. I wanted to learn valuable lessons from the things they did wrong in their lives—things that ultimately lead to their demise. It was the only way to save myself—both emotionally and physically.

My parents had played with fate by betrothing their only children before they were even old enough to talk or walk. I had brothers and sister, now dead, who I’d never met.

My uncle Roult played with fate in his own ways, as well. He bought a human female to have the family he wanted. He never got it. This, in itself, wasn’t enough to cast his valuable name to the wind.

I really couldn’t blame the man for wanting a family of his own, or for wanting the company of a companion or little rugrat offspring to fill an empty void in his life, either.

Now that I have laid eyes on Alliana and her gorgeous face, her perfect bone structure, the way her crimson lips were full and pouty—I understood completely why the idea of a mate—a companion—was so tempting to many warriors, no matter how much one thought he already had.

If I had been in the same situation, it would be difficult for me to deny that I might have done the exact same thing as Roult.

I turned around, gazing at our pod shelter. Alliana still hadn’t emerged, thank the gods above. At the time that I’d received her simply, yet explosive touch, I had been so shocked that she’d been able to read my thoughts.