Page 40 of Shadows of Stardust

The surreality of it all hits me again, ricocheting up my arm from where Zandrel has my hand held tightly.

My lungs tighten, my heart races, and I wonder if he can hear it. I wonder if he’s glad to know he’s got me right where he wants me, what moves he’s already planning to make, what the hell possessed him to agree to any of this.

We make it back to the bungalow and he drops my hand, nodding toward the scanner on the door.

“I doubt they’ve had time to update it with my biometrics.”

Numbly, I step forward and lay my palm across the sensor to release the lock. As I do, he steps into the space just behind me, big body curling around mine and a hand settling on my hip.

“What are you—” I hiss, but don’t get to finish my question.

“We’ve still got eyes on us,” he murmurs, leaning even closer to speak the words into the sensitive skin just below my ear.

My stomach rolls at the proximity, the hint of arrogant teasing in his voice, but… he’s not wrong.

He’s not moving, either, shifting closer, pressing into me, and…

Fuck.

I don’t need the reminder.

I don’t need to remember what we did by the pool, the way I kissed him, let him touch me. The way he pulled me up against him and ran his hands over my hips, his fangs over my lip, his…

I swing open the door and step inside, hurrying to the other side of the room and waiting until he shuts it behind us before I open my mouth. To say what, I’m not sure. My brain hasn’t exactly worked itself that far ahead yet, but I don’t get the chance to speak.

Zandrel holds up a hand in a wordless command for silence. Choking back my indignation, I watch as he turns to the comms display beside the door.

With a few deft touches to the screen, then the band on his wrist, then the screen again, it lets out a series of quick metallic chirps. I can’t fully make out what he’s doing with his bulky frame in the way, but I catch glimpses of the commands he enters for the security system, the tech running the house, even a brief flash on the screen that looks to show the location of the nearest hovercams relative to where the bungalow is situated on the beach.

Watching him work, the clunky, rusted gears of my mind turn until a few more answers fall into place.

The cameras mysteriously disappearing and reappearing. The heavy black cuff he wears. The fact that of-fucking-course an Aux soldier would have access to tech like that.

A demoted Aux soldier,I remind myself, an Aux soldier who found himself on assignment far, far below his station.

Zandrel, finished with whatever it is he was doing to the comms screen, turns back to face me.

“You were controlling the cameras,” I say, not a question. “On the beach. And near the pool when I was trying to escape.”

“Yes.”

I should be surprised.

All I actually am is numb.

Why he’d do something like that, what was in it for him, I don’t know and I can’t care. Not now. Not when my brain is all scorched earth and shell-shock.

“And in here?”

He shakes his head. “There are no cameras in here, but I did program the sensors so they wouldn’t trip when you snuck out.”

Silver supernovas swirl in his black eyes as he watches me and waits for my response.

I have none.

Where there should be panic, or anger, or fear, there’s just… nothing. Dull static and exhaustion. A strange buoyant sense of surreality as I try to process the fact that I’m here, he’s here, that I’ve landed in a situation no amount of preparation and planning could have ever made me ready to face.

Somewhere, though, in the distant corner of my mind that’s still capable of feeling, a sharp kernel of grief breaks through that static.

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