Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
My mouth dropped as I saw him. He smiled wide with dimples, eyes traveling the length of me.
I nearly squealed when I saw Ollie beside him, in an identical tux looking so stinkin’ cute it wasn’t funny.
I very nearly burst into tears at the sight of my guys.
As I approached my beautiful family, an older gentleman, dressed in a white hooded cloak, stepped out from a little building at the right of the waterfalls.
I looked left and saw the steep drop and felt momentarily woozy. The height was a little daunting. A chilly breeze swept through me.
Zane grabbed for my hand. “Okay, shortcake?”
I nodded. “The height just freaked me out a bit.”
He smiled.
The gentleman that stood there greeted me. “Hello, Tanya. I’m Alphie and I’ll be presiding over your ceremony today. It’s my understanding that you wish to marry this man?”
“She’s already married to him,” Ollie chimed in. “But this is an extra thing to be traditional with a mix of our culture and hers.”
Alphie smiled. So did I.
But, I still felt a little woozy. I swayed a little and decided not to look at that giant rock-lined chasm to my left where all the pink water fell and rushed downstream in pink-water rapids.
The next thing I knew, Zane and my hands were being bound by glittery rope-twine and Ollie was holding out a box with two rings in it.
I looked up into the eyes of the man I loved. Those icy blue prisms were filled with emotion.
“I had these made, baby. Yours will have a stone that matches your ear when you put it on. He sifted his hand through my hair at the side and his expression dropped.
CHAPTER 36
ZANE
“Your ear stone is black.”
“My whole body is hot, Zane. I don’t feel so well.”
“What the fuck?”
The color drained from Tanya’s beautiful face and he caught her as her legs gave way.
A moon flower plant beside the wedding officiant chose that moment to bloom and out of the three blooms dropped large black stones.
***
“What has she eaten? What has she drank?” Zane shouted at the women in their hotel suite yet again. “Have you forgotten something?”
Tanya’s skin was colorless, and her breathing was labored. The stone on her ear was black, as was the stone on her ring finger. He’d slipped the ring on her moments before, unable to figure out why she wasn’t well yet.
“She drank a mimosa. She used her probe and it came up fine,” Elaina told him, looking at Tanya unconscious in the bed. Jetta reached over and took Tanya’s delicate shoes off her feet, wiping away tears of worry off her face. Daxx had gone to his home just fifteen minutes away to fetch some herbs to try as the herbs in Tanya’s medication grew at Fjord’s Edge as well and Daxx believed they’d have a higher concentration of the properties that made them effective. Zane had given her the dose of the allergen medication they had brought with them and it was almost time for another dose and yet she still hadn’t improved.
“Where the fuck is Lunaris? Get her and Oslo in here!” Zane snapped.
“Either in their suite or probably in the lounge with the others, having coffee and waiting for news. I’ll get them,” Quid told him and left the room while Zane paced.
A moment later, the Phallyxian woman Tanya had become friends with appeared with her husband, a man Zane didn’t know well, but who he’d liked. Up until now.
“What did you do?” Zane snapped in her face. Her husband got between them and put his hand on Zane’s chest.
“Back off, Zenith. She’s beside herself with worry.”
“Did Treya get you to spike her food or drink?”
The blonde girl burst into tears. “Never. I wouldn’t. I don’t even speak to Treya any longer.”
“If you’re lying to me and you’ve done something to her, you’ll rot in the Outer Limits in prison. If I don’t wring your neck with my own hands.”
“My wife has not harmed her, Zenith. I’ll consider forgiving you for this when you come to your senses. I tell you, this woman of mine is as pure of heart as yours is. There is no way she did anything. She adores your woman.”
Daxx burst in with an inoculation tool in his hand. Zane immediately took it, put it to the side of her neck and engaged the control to deliver the medicine.
The silence in the room was deafening to him.
Zane thrust his hand through his hair and then scanned Tanya’s body with his device again. The allergen levels were soaring. They’d gone up yet again.
“How is this fucking possible?”
She looked like an angel in her wedding gown, all those flowers in her hair.
He couldn’t lose her. Couldn’t. His mind was raging with images of his daughter in her bed, growing paler, of her skin growing hotter to the touch, so hot at points that he couldn’t touch her little face without it burning his fingers. He couldn’t fathom losing Tanya like this. He half wanted to smash everything in sight and half wanted to roar at the top of his lungs.