Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 42969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
“Go daughter and may the Goddess grant you success,” she murmured.
Sylvie nodded again and left her there, standing barefoot in the moonlight.
She hurried through the parklands, towards the tram station that would take her to Kross’s end of the huge Mother Ship. By the time she passed the clusters of restaurants and shops that ringed the lush green center area, she was almost running. If Kross really was leaving, she had to speak to him before he left. She tried to call him through their mental link, but the barrier was still in place, keeping her from getting through.
“Damn it, Kross!” she cursed under her breath. “You’d better still be there when I get to your suite!”
If he was already gone, she didn’t know what she was going to do.
24
KROSS
Kross did a last sweep of his suite to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. It was hard, leaving the Mother Ship like this, but it was the only think he could think to do. After what he’d done to Sylvia, he didn’t deserve to live in any proximity to her. So even though it wounded him deeply to leave his Fated Mate behind, he had decided to go.
Where he was headed, he didn’t exactly know. He had given his notice to Commander Sylvan after a discrete inquiry to the Med Center and let him know that Sylvia was not, in fact, pregnant. His Commanding Officer had seemed both surprised and disappointed by the news.
“Are you certain about this?” he’d asked, when Kross handed in his resignation. “Have you spoken to Sylvia about it?”
Kross shook his head.
“After what happened between us, I don’t think she ever wants to see me again. Not that I blame her,” he added morosely.
“If it makes you feel any better at all, she hasn’t lodged any kind of complaint,” Sylvan had offered. “And she reiterated to me several times on our trip home that the two of you had been drugged by Dr. Barbarous. It’s possible she doesn’t blame you at all for what happened between you.”
“If she doesn’t, she should,” Kross growled. “I took her against her will. And the way she was so eager to part from me lets me know there’s no love lost between us.”
“Do you think she might have been embarrassed?” Sylvan asked, raising one pale blond eyebrow. He was a Blood Kindred and had the blond hair and ice-blue eyes to prove it. “After all, I’m your Superior Officer and I walked in on the two of you while you were…er, stuck together.”
“It’s more than that,” Kross said moodily. “I could feel how much she wanted me out of her—away from her—through our Bond.”
Sylvna’s eyebrows shot up.
“So the two of you actually had Bonding sex? You bit her as well as knotting her?”
“Apparently so—I can’t remember,” Kross admitted. “Everything that happened is just kind of a haze up until I heard her sweet voice in my head.”
He could hear the longing in his own voice but he shut it down fiercely. He didn’t have a right to long for Sylvia anymore—not after the way he had treated her.
“She woke me up—brought me out of the weird animalistic state the drugs Barbarous shot me up with put me into,” he said, making his voice firmer. “And not long after that is when you walked in on us.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Sylvan said mildly. “We were there on a rescue mission. I never expected to see the two of you, er, engaged in Bonding sex.”
“I know you didn’t. I didn’t expect to engage in it either,” Kross had admitted. “Anyway, what’s done is done but Sylvia deserves to live her life without constantly having me at the back of her mind. So I’m going somewhere far away—someplace where we’ll be out of metal contact range.”
“I understand.” Sylvan nodded. “But are you certain you don’t want to talk to her once more before you go?”
Kross had shaken his head firmly.
“No—that wouldn’t be fair to her. She needs to heal and she can’t do that if I keep popping back into her life. I’ll have to let her go.”
His heart felt like a stone in his chest as he said the words…and it felt like a stone now as he looked around his bare suite. Most everything he owned was packed in his long-range cruiser—he was only leaving the furniture and the appliances. He’d only come back to do one final sweep before leaving the Mother Ship for good.
Satisfied at last that he hadn’t forgotten anything, Kross was just putting out a hand for the front door control…when a loud pounding on the door itself stopped him.
“Kross?” he heard a familiar voice shouting. “Kross, are you in there? Open up, God damn you!”
Surprised, he touched the controls and the silver door to his suite slid silently open. Standing on his doorstep, her hair a wild golden-red mass around her head and her eyes wide, was Sylvia. She was panting as she looked up at him and he couldn’t quite read her expression.