Page 47 of Loved By the Alien King
Yes, I needed her help. Yes, I had found happiness like she hoped I would when she signed me up forAlien Love Island. Despite the treacherous planet and the heartache, I’d never been happier. That didn’t even make sense to me, but there it was, practically glowing in all its confusing glory.
I didn’t want her help, but I needed it, and just because I needed it didn’t mean I forgave her. Even if what she’d said was the truth. Especially if it was the truth.
Rain’s face was the last one my baby saw before Rain snuffed out her light, and that kind of betrayal, no matter whose fault it was, was unforgivable.
Did I believe that she’d been hacked and that the Faid War was a total scam? That Earth Space Fleet, my employer for years and years, was the real supervillain?
Honestly? I wasn’t sure. Rain could’ve cherry-picked all those newspaper headlines to help her fabricate this make-believe story.
But why though? Why would she bother? Why would she bother signing me up forAlien Love Islandif not to prove something to me?
Like that she cares. Or to draw me into a trap.
On the way down the cliff from her place, Maxx stuck close to my side, his firm grip on my hand offering support. He stayed silent while he swept his gaze around, and every crackle of rocks beneath our feet tightened the tension riding his shoulders even more.
“They won’t sneak up on me in the dark, Maxx,” I assured him. “They’ll make their presence known.”
“If only their presence were our only problem on this planet,” he reminded me. “Do you think that they know that you know?”
“Without Rain’s interference, they’re already tracking me. If they’re as bad as she says, they could be listening in too. They knew I’d find out eventually.” I sounded so cavalier about it all even though my stomach burned and my molars ached from grinding them.
So maybe I should’ve kept Rain’s staticky interference in my ears, but it wouldn’t have really changed anything except my ability to hear. They would’ve eventually figured out I knew the truth anyway.
“Then what now?” Maxx growled, his voice so low I almost didn’t hear him.
I shook my head. No sense in making a plan if they’d just overhear it and then thwart it. I needed to get the trackers out of my head, and doing that meant going under the knife. Getting them in was much easier than getting them out since they had this nasty little burrowing habit. Like night crawlers, only smaller. Given that some ofAlien Love Island’s crewmembers were in cahoots with Earth Space Fleet, I trusted no one to come anywhere near me with a knife.
Except Doc on my ship, thousands of parsecs away.
Before Maxx pushed our boat into the water, he locked his purple lightning eyes on me. The silver glow of the moon gave them a beautiful, preternatural glow that sucked me into their depths like a moth to a flame.
“What do you need me to do? I would do anything for you, Nera. Anything.”
“Feed me tacos and tell me I’m pretty?”
He smoothed a lock of hair behind my ear, so gently that it almost broke my heart. “You’re beyond pretty, but I don’t have any tacos. I’ll get some for you though. What else?”
I shrugged nonchalantly even though his kindness warmed my chilled soul. “Just hold me? Be here for me?”
“Always.” He locked his arms tightly around me, and I breathed in his comforting leather and spice scent.
“I love you, Maxx. I don’t know if I’ve told you that in the last ten minutes, but I mean it. You make everything much more bearable.”
“I love you too,” he said while he petted my hair. “We’ll be okay. I swear it.”
I nodded. With him, I believed it.
Once we were in the boat and headed back to the beach house, the gentle swaying and the soft lapping of the water against the sides coaxed my eyes closed. When Maxx took my oar from me and settled me by his side, I gave in to sleep.
Sometimelater,Iawokenot inside the beach house but in one of the bungalows. With bleary eyes and a haphazard pat of the big bed, I soon realized I was alone.
Well, not totally. Next to me, hungry caterpillar number one happily chomped away on a fresh leaf inside his shopping cart. And from outside, hungry caterpillar number two’s voice filtered through the wall, as well as Miekil’s.
“You ever think that this is all someone’s dream, the stars, the planets, the universe, all of us?” Miekil asked.
“No.”
I chuckled at Maxx’s clipped answer. So moody, that one.
