Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 88265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
The king pulls Aruan and me aside and ensures us he’ll continue the search for the person—or persons—who sabotaged the bridge. He makes it sound as if we’re going away for a month when Aruan agreed to a week.
My aunt and uncle leave straight after breakfast, going ahead of us. One minute, we’re saying goodbye to Aruan’s family in front of the portal his mother has pulled up in her reception room, and the next, we walk out onto a white shore that glitters like snow under a pale sun.
Aruan kisses the back of my hand. “All right?”
“Yes.” Just excited and nervous.
Gaia advised me to wear a nice dress, but I figured my pants, shirt, and boots were more practical for exploring. I hope I’m not going to stick out like a sore thumb. Aruan is dressed in his habitual tunic and boots, his hair tied at his nape. He’s scanning the surroundings with vigilance.
I look around me. Turquoise water laps at the shore. The sea is calm and flat, not black and turbulent with crushing waves like back in Lona. The water is so clear I spot pink, blue, and orange corals on the shallow reefs. Hybodus are gliding over the sand bed. I recognize the prehistoric sharks by the strange horns on the tops of their heads. How cool. They have two sets of teeth, one for gripping slippery prey and another for crushing shells. They float by soundlessly, on the hunt for prey.
A kalligrammatid flutters by and disappears in the vegetation. Bright green ferns taller than I am sway gently from side to side despite the fact that there’s no air movement, not even a breeze. Their leaves rustle as they unfurl and curl up again.
See-through, tube-shaped plants grow on the fringe of the beach. Black veins knit through their walls, contracting and expanding with a lazy rhythm. Behind them, thin, black, stick-like trees the height of a three-story building sprout into the air. At the top, their offshoots are connected, forming a circle of hugging branches without leaves. Maybe it’s one big body and not several trees. Pink clusters of delicate little bell flowers hang like chandeliers from the pin-like branches. Beyond the border of the trees, cycads with red fruit resembling pineapples grow wild, each fruit sporting a white candy floss beard.
We must be on a high plateau because the air feels thinner and less humid. It smells sweet, like lilies. The sky is light blue with a pinkish hue, and although it’s clear, the cries of pterosaurs are audible in the distance. I can sense their presence all around us, the dinosaur population here much denser than in Lona.
I turn to Aruan. “Have you been here before?”
“Many times.” He stares off in the direction of a shimmery white cliff that frames the water. “I’ve been coming to this place ever since they told me you were dead. But I just got to know the surroundings and the animal and plant life here. I could never bring myself to go inside the palace.”
The forlorn, desolate feeling that reaches me through the bond is harrowing. The cold emptiness is like a parasite sucking the life out of every other emotion that’s left.
The bleak, grim hollowness jars me, unsettling me in a way I didn’t think was possible.
Is this what it feels like to lose a mate? All this time, Aruan suffered these painful emotions, and I was blissfully unaware of any of it. I lived my life on Earth, not knowing I had a mate in a different world, a mate who was slowly dying inside because a part of him—me—was gone.
I never really understood before. Now that I do, I don’t know if I can leave him. I don’t want him to go through something like that ever again.
I never want to hurt him.
Slipping my hand into his, I stare up at him. “Is this how I’ll feel if you’re gone?”
He meets my gaze, his silver eyes brimming with emotions, yet his lips curve into a smile. “That’s the fate of all men and women who lose a mate.”
That sad smile breaks my heart. “I’m sorry, Aruan. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I had no idea.”
He tightens his grip on my hand. “You don’t have to apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”
But rejecting him will be. Not being able to give him a completed bond is my fault. He said so himself… on various occasions. And I have no idea how to fix that. Maybe sending me to Earth harmed more than my body. Maybe it damaged our bond for good. Now Aruan is forced to exist like this, having found his mate who came back from the dead, only to live with a bond that will never be whole.
The thought floors me. A stone sinks in my stomach. I can never be the mate to Aruan he deserves. I’ve wondered whether he would’ve been better off if the Phaelix had never decided to kidnap me, but now I know better. His existence would’ve been nothing but loneliness and pain. And I don’t know what’s more perilous for Zerra: my presence or my absence. I suspect that an unfeeling Aruan is a hundredfold more dangerous than a feeling one, even when he’s angry. If he had no emotions left, no remorse or affection for anyone or anything, there’d be nothing to prevent him from unleashing the full force of his lethal power.