Page 91 of Alien Jeopardy
Sitting here isn’t going to get me back to her, though, so I stand up, rage making my wings flare out and my muscles twitch. I will find my mate.
My Ellison.
I take my new location in, along with a deep breath.
A mistake, because my rage means the mechanism for fire deep in my chest triggers. I do not want to change—breathing fire right now would be a mistake, one that could be deadly for me and for my mate.
I force calm.
Force oxygen into my bloodstream.
Force the building fire in the specialized part of my anatomy to calm.
To wait.
I will have use for it soon—but not yet.
First, I must find her.
My Ellison.
My future.
My home.
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
Ellison
“Well, this fucking sucks,” I say, scratching at a new bug bite on my neck. I’ve been slogging through marshy terrain for the last hour at least.
Honestly, I have no idea how much time has actually passed because the damn comms tablet winked out of my grasp when my boy Ken beamed me out to wherever the hell I am now. My hand shields my eye from the glare, and I look up, trying to judge it. The sun is in a different position in the sky.
Revealing that time has, in fact, passed. Shocking, truly. I sigh, smacking at an overly large winged bug.
“Gross.” I stare at the thing, easily the size of a hummingbird, though it looks like a mosquito. That nasty critter would take a pint of my blood at once. A phlebotomist’s dream.
“I miss Ka-Rexsh.”
It’s not the first time I’ve said it, and it won’t be the last.
Mud sucks at my feet with each step I take, and insects buzz around my head at an absolutely infuriating pitch. It’s humid, too, like all the water that flooded the path yesterday has gone airborne.
“Walking in a summer-soupy maze,” I sing. A winter wonderland would be preferable, but my odds for surviving snow in my shortie pajamas would be decidedly lower.
I stop, wide-eyed, at that thought. No, not the snow thought, the other one.
A maze.
That’s what this is—a maze of some sort. I look around, craning my head so fast I almost pull a muscle in my neck.
Shit. Mazes in reality shows aren’t ever straightforward.
“Christ on a bike,” I mutter, groaning at my own unintentional pun.
If I’m right, and this is a maze—and considering that big tree to my right is looking pretty damn familiar, I’m pretty sure I’m right—this is basically going to be a multi-challenge bonanza.
