Page 72 of Secretly Married To My Monster Alien Boss
“But not about the time and location. We’d barely decided on those a few days before the ceremony,” Rynar went on, voice rising. “I’m not concerned about my employees talking, that’s what humans do. I want to know who’slistening. Staging an ambush on nothing more than gossip takes planning. Shipping weapons that might take down a Deruzian is an ambitious plan.”
His words vibrated the tall windows around them.
“Someone is watching us,” he rumbled.
Stifling silence met his words. The kind of silence where retribution festered and schemes abounded.
“You’re right,” Yakirian said in his low, rough tone, speaking for the first time since he’d thundered inside the conference room. He always listened, always weighed the situation–and, most importantly, others’ view of the situation–before deciding on any course of action.
Rynar admired that about him. Yakirian had the kind of patience and scheming mind any Deruzian wanted to achieve. He would never admit this out loud, but he’d borrowed some of Yakirian’s tactics for his own. He was the CEO for a reason. “We are being watched and attacked. This will not stand.”
“And what do we plan to do about it?” Rynar seethed. “We have let them call us monsters and thieves on the streets. We even tried to think of their own comfort and safety while they cry for us togo back to hell. Have any of you visited this hell? Because I haven’t.”
“I hear it’s quite warm,” Zaryn said. “And we would fit right in with our horns, from what I understand.”
Rynar rose, resting his palms on the table to keep from shaking in rage. “This isn’t a laughing matter. You would not have been joking if Lily would have had a gun to her head.”
Nazyn tilted his head. “Peace, Rynar. Zaryn didn’t–”
“Or if Darcy would have almost been splashed with that vile liquid,” Rynar went on, close to growling. “Do not ask for peace when my wife was almost killed and I was forbidden from killing the ones who attacked her.”
Rynar hadn’t assassinated those humans. One swipe of his hand and nothing more, that’s all it would have taken. But Deruzia forbade it and the killings would have horrified Alissia. He didn’t want her to view him as the monster some of her people kept calling him and Deruzians. But he also knew that a Deruzian killing a human meant the end of the tentative relationship between his home world and this one.
“So itistrue,” Yakirian said, sounding surprised.
“What is?”
“Alissia is your fated mate. I was not convinced during the ceremony, but now I am. That is great news,” Yakirian went on, as if he was discussing this month’s shipments. “It would have been terribly inconvenient for the first human-Deruzian marriage to end in anything other than complete devotion.”
Rynar stared. Then stared some more at Yakirian, one of the very few Deruzians who outranked him. He had the audacious instinct to call him crazy.
But Yakirian wasn’t crazy, was he?
Rynar had tried to ignore the situation and his feelings since the first signs, but he couldn’t battle the inevitable for eternity.
Yakirian was right–and the realization, spoken so plainly, didn’t send a wave of panic through Rynar, as he’d feared. Instead, he felt calm and triumphant.
“I understand the need to protect your mate, but we cannot retaliate as we’ve been trained,” Yakirian declared with finality.
“I’m not asking that. I want to avoid this situation from happening ever again. Not just with my Alissia–”
“HisAlissia,” Nazyn whispered to Zaryn.
“–but with every other human female audacious enough to fall in love with one of us.” He hesitated on the last few words, because he didn’t know if they were truthful.
Was Alissia in love with him?
Now the panic came. What if she wasn’t? What if he was doomed to pine after her his entire existence? They had signed a contract. She could leave him as soon as the month was up.
But he couldn’t think about that now. They needed a plan.
“We will,” Yakirian said. “With all our Deruzian might.”
“How? We know nothing about who or what we are up against,” Rynar said.
“We do know something. Richard Dyson probably wants revenge on us for what happened at the Forum.” Nazyn cleared his throat. “But those weapons…they weren’t entirely made by humans.”
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