Page 101 of The Edge of Dawn

“Yes,” Dragek said simply, and this time, there wasn’t even a shadow of doubt in his heart.

THIRTY-FOUR

The lines between reality and fantasy had blurred so much that Jade couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Her existence was wrapped up in the ephemeral fabric of dreams and wild skeins of hope. She lay on a bed of soft alien moss, staring up at a sunless, starry sky where wispy, featherlike foliage swayed back and forth in slow motion, like underwater plants in a fish tank.

The treetops were painted in shades of lilac, blue, and pink—as if an artist had swept across them with a watercolor brush.

When she first arrived, there wasn’t any color.

She’d done that.

He’d allowed her to.

He’d invited her to stay here for as long as she wanted while he took off on some ultra-dangerous mission halfway across the Universe.

For a brief while, she’d spun off, drifting between sleep and wakefulness, and she’d fuzzily wondered how she could fall asleep in her dreams.

She’d wanted to leave—with him.

Don’t. You need rest.

How stoic he’d been. How completely unflustered, as if going off on some life-threatening job was just in a day’s work for him. And she knew he was going to have to fight and possibly kill people. From their brief, violent encounter in the mine, she knew just how lethal he could be.

And yet, he was more concerned about the fact that she needed to sleep.

What am I even doing here? There was no way she could idle here, in his secret sanctuary, while he was flying into danger. Besides, this place wasn’t half as magical without him here.

She yearned for him. So badly it surprised her.

She couldn’t believe that any single person could feel so good. The sensation of his touch was burned into her mind.

If this was what it was like to be obsessed with a man, then she now understood that she’d never been obsessed with anyone before. Her past relationship with Cameron paled in comparison. Theirs had been a marriage of societal rules and lukewarm affection.

She’d been young.

She thought that’s what love was supposed to be. Friends, career, partner, family. She’d had it all worked out—or so she thought.

Until the accident.

Until she’d changed.

And it turned out that life could be a whole lot more complicated than what she’d believed. She should have known that from the start… going through law school, handling messy divorces and difficult wills. Why had she assumed she was immune from it all, that it would never happen to her? Why did she always take people at face value, even though she should know better?

How naive she’d been. But back then, she’d wanted to be. She’d needed to be. Raised in a family like hers, she was always expected to be perfect. Her father had laid it all out for her. As the head of a successful minerals exploration company, he’d wanted his children to take over the family business when he retired. That meant each of them—Jade and her older brother and sister—were expected to go to university, establish a career in their own right, learn to manage their own money, and then take up the reins when they’d proved themselves.

Only Jade had never been interested in her stake in the family company, Corion Minerals.

Cameron was, though.

She let out a groan of misery. Good lord. What a fucking mess.

If she never had to deal with any of that again, she’d be overjoyed.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to.

She was a different person now, and the universe outside Earth was bigger and wilder than anything she could ever have imagined.

Scarier, too.

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