Page 34 of Loved By the Alien King
Were those the air vents in Earth Space Fleet’s underground bunker?
“Whoa…”
My head swam.
The world tilted.
I plummeted to the ground.
Chapter fourteen
Maxx
Iwasn’tsurehowto feel about the possibility of meeting Rain. The Faid who’d saved my life…and taken another’s.
Would she say anything about me in front of Nera? Ask if I’d needed to reboot myself or installed the latest malware detection into my hard drive? Would she even know me?
I’d never met her. All of our communication had been over email, but it wasn’t exactly a secret that I was the king of Xenoxx.
She would know me, I decided, but she wouldn’t bring up what she’d done to help bring me back to life. Not in front of Nera. Their complex relationship, if you could even call it that, was already straddling a single weak thread of a spiderweb. If Rain were really trying to help her, she wouldn’t do anything to hurt or sabotage that relationship.
But if Rain blurted the truth out first thing, then so be it. I’d just have to explain everything to Nera before that happened, like I should’ve already done a long time ago.
“Fuxx,” I muttered, tapping my fingers on the platform’s railing.
“Something on your mind?” the Killian asked from behind me.
Always there. Always watching.
I shook my head at the gilded clouds. The setting sun had spilled the last of its vibrant ink across the sky, and below the platform, the crew scrambled across the sand to set up giant lights while we all waited for Nera.
“Just thinking about Truth or Dare,” I lied.
“Is that something you do often?” The Killian snorted. “Because that’s a little weird.”
“You had the widest, clearest opportunity to ask me for the truth about Earth Space Fleet capturing me,” I said, keeping my voice low, “and you didn’t take it. Why?”
He came up next to me, his footsteps shuddering the wooden planks beneath us. “That particular truth, whatever it may be, isn’t for me to know first. Is it?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Then that question wasn’t for me to ask.”
“But why? You could’ve had the king of Xenoxx cornered on every viewscreen in the universe to make us look weak. To makemelook weak in front of the rest of the Killians. With one simple question.”
“Only it’s not so simple.” He propped his big green arms on the platform’s banister and looked out at the sunlit sea. “I had a funny feeling that the answer would be too big to fit inside one forty-two minute episode ofAlien Love Island.”
For the first time ever, I laughed in front of a Killian, one that came from deep within the hollows of my soul. It was…strange. So was the budding grin on his face.
“Way to look out for the show’s best interests,” I told him, but then a shout stalled my breaths.
“We need some help over here!”
It was Smitha, waving her arms frantically from outside the tent. The tent that Nera had gone into. Smitha’s alarmed face spiked every scale on my body alert.
Nera.
Without hesitation, I launched myself over the platform’s railing and dropped to the sand six feet below. My hearts beat like anvils against my ribs. I ran as fast as I could, but the sand sucked at my feet so that each step felt like a laborious slog. Worry and tension chased all of my thoughts faster than my legs.
