Page 21 of Destinies of Diamond
She nodded, but she still seemed concerned. Even if she must have realized my loss of temper was caused by hormonal imbalance, it didn’t sit well with her to leave me on my own.
Sphinx didn’t give her a choice. She grabbed me in her paw and slid me into the cockpit without waiting for my permission. Meanwhile, she nudged Penelope slightly, making the other young woman groan in distress. My mother had to intervene and do her duty.
“Goodbye, Mother,” I remembered to say just before the cockpit hatch closed.
The words held a striking degree of finality, more so than I myself intended. But they came out anyway, and I couldn’t help but think that it was for a reason.
I felt strange, as if my body didn’t belong to me anymore. My control was shot. My focus was all over the place. I’d worked so very hard to learn how to control my skills, but none of those lessons would help me now.
“Don’t panic, Selene,”my chimera told me.“Just breathe. Slowly now. Remember who you are. Remember your goals. Focus.”
I was relieved that she didn’t swamp me with empty reassurances, but I still wanted to tell her that following her advice wasn’t that easy. I didn’t know who I was, not anymore. Had I ever really known it?
I’d thought I was Unblessed and that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’d thought I was a member of the Grand Chimera Unit, and while that was officially true, my reality was much grimmer.
But staying here in New Washington wouldn’t help me either, so I connected with Sphinx and launched myself into the air. I intended to go back to Tartarus Base, but before I could do so, a strange, familiar power reached out to me.
The systems of the Sphinx weren’t affected, but they did respond to the energy.“The apsid,”Sphinx hissed in displeasure.“He’s here somewhere.”
I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jared since we’d first dropped him off on Terra, immediately after our return from the Apsid Quasar. I didn’t know if I even wanted to see him. My feelings for him were… mixed.
Or were they? This was all his fault, damn it. If he hadn’t kidnapped me, if he hadn’t decided I was to be his mate and we’d happily go on to have a family together, I wouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place.
“Why don’t we track him down and see what he wants, Sphinx?” I asked darkly. “I think we need to have a longer, honest conversation.”
Sphinx didn’t need to be told twice. She carried us unerringly over the city, to our destination. Jared was waiting for me in the outskirts of New Washington, in an area that had yet to be terra-formed. The levels of radiation weren’t very high, but would have probably been dangerous for an Unblessed.
For me, it was oddly soothing. When Sphinx let me out of her metallic embrace and I set foot on the still contaminated soil, I felt something inside me settle. I was very grateful for that, since it meant I managed to control my bubbling power and remain coherent enough to actually speak. “Jared,” I greeted him. “I see you’ve managed to stay under the radar.”
“Were you concerned about my well-being, my beautiful Terran?” He smiled sharply. “I don’t think that’s why you’re here.”
“I’m here because you asked me to come. I could feel your power reaching out to me.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but I wasn’t going to admit I needed him, not just yet. Jared accepted my explanation. “I wasn’t sure you would. We didn’t part ways under the best circumstances.”
We sat together on the still barren ground, staring at the sky. It looked bright and clear, even at night, and if I squinted, I thought I could see the glow of Tartarus Base.
It was naturally, just, an illusion, but it was one that reminded me of my lovers. “I fucked the others again,” I blurted out.
I didn’t know why I felt the need to say that. Maybe I just wanted to hurt him. It worked beautifully. Jared recoiled as if I’d struck him. He stared at me, breathing heavily, taken aback by my hostility. Or maybe he didn’t believe me. I could always elaborate. “I didn’t intend it, I admit, but we went to take a shower together and I just couldn’t resist. I just had to have them.”
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked between gritted teeth.
“Very much,” I replied. “I never thought I’d like taking two cocks up my ass, but every day, I learn new things about my body.”
He smiled, an unexpected and unpleasant twist of lips that reminded me of the days he’d spent at Chimera Academy. “I suppose that’s true. You didn’t think you’d enjoy getting fucked by an alien plant either, but you liked that also.”
It was my turn to be shocked, but my response to it wasn’t nearly as sedate. Infuriated, I slapped him hard across the face. My palm left a red handprint on his cheek. “How dare you be so smug about this, after everything that’s happened? Did you mean even a single word of what you said in Eos?”
Jared flinched. “Sorry. Yes, of course I meant what I said. It’s just… This isn’t the way things are supposed to be.” He clenched his fists, his eyes lit up from within. “If you could see into my heart, read my body, you’d understand, Selene. I never wanted to hurt you. All I wanted was for you to be happy.”
The strangest thing was that he meant it, and he truly did believe that he could’ve made me happy like that. It was a fundamental cultural difference, a twist and separation between our respective psyches. But before Jared had been a Heliad, he’d been human, so maybe I could still make him understand my point of view. “I was never going to be happy while trapped in a cage of your making.”
“It would have only been for a little while, until you grew accustomed to the thought of being my mate.”
“Your whore, you mean,” I corrected him. “The slutty Terran you wanted to breed. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me, Jared? Do you even grasp how difficult it will be for me to carry this child?”
It was a rhetorical question, but he actually answered. “I do, yes. There’s a reason we resort to the Phaeton Hearts, Selene. Heliads aren’t the best at reproducing naturally and pregnancies often tend to go awry. If we had been in Eos, we could have made sure it wasn’t an issue, but here…” He groaned and buried his face in his palms. “The Great Mother said you can do this, that you’re prepared to be a parent. I’m not so sure.”
