Page 15 of Starlight Mates

“Polished. Interesting choice of words.” He frowns at his car. “You’re old Nexus blood yourself, and your grandmother likely rivals my own family’s fortune. Taking the piss out of me being rich is ironic, don’t you think?”

I bite my tongue. I didn’t need to know my grandmother on my father’s side is still very much alive. She has to be getting on a hundred now. Even thinking of her brings back awful memories. Onyx misreads my expression. “You don’t like my car. What’s wrong with it? It’s Italian and?—”

“Boring. It’s common and boring,” I answer, and he looks like I just stabbed him. It’s hard not to smile, and the soft look he gives me makes me want to take it back. Onyx is romantic, and I knew he was dangerous for me, but romanticising what I am is a lethal move.

“Fine, I’ll change it.” Before I can tell him not to do that, he asks, “What car would you choose?”

Onyx leads me down the steps, clicking his keys and making the doors roll up into the air until the car looks like a dragon. “Oh, you know what, I’ve never been asked that.” He goes round the car with me and opens the door for me, something I didn’t expect him to do, but it’s very gentleman-like. I slide into the seats, which are all leather, and everything is so shiny in this car. There isn’t a hair, a bit of dirt, just nothing. It’s almost like no one’s ever even driven it before. Onyx climbs in next to me, presses a glowing button to start the engine, but he waits for me to put my seatbelt on before he does his own. Only when thecastle is hard to see behind us do I answer his earlier question. “Probably a Land Rover, something with big wheels and a crazy hot pink that makes Barbie’s car look pale.”

“Pink.” He spits the word out, barely holding the pure disgust in his voice. I’m tempted to remind him that he promised not to be an asshole this whole trip, but it’s quite comical to hear him try to hold in what he really wants to say. He gulps and I see his Adam’s apple moving. “Interesting.”

I almost laugh, and I have to look away to hide my massive smile before he sees it. We settle into a comfortable silence, only stopping when Onyx has to slow down as six highland cows fill the road. I lean forward, enjoying them. “How was your first day?” he asks.

“We’re not close friends, you know. We don’t have to do this small talk while you’re doing Rhodes a favour.” I bite on my lip. Being defensive is all I really know how to do.

He sighs. “Then just humour me. I want to know, how was your first day?” He stops the car completely as a cow sits in the road, its brown fur blowing in the wind. “Rhodes told me about Hollis. He is a brutal tutor, but today was personal. I’m sure Rhodes has spoken to him.”

“My stomach’s still turning from the blaring alarm, but the history lesson was actually informative. Lunch was kind of nice. There were times I only ate randomly for weeks when we were hiding, so it’s nice to have choices.” I don’t mention the times we starved because my parents refused to leave the house to get food and only did when I passed out from hunger. Or one of them did. They were protecting me. I know they were trying their best, but sometimes… “It was fine. I made my choice to come here and train.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know about Hollis,” he softly adds, starting the car again now that the cow has moved on. “I was fucking mad at you for running, again, but you ran yourself intoa worse situation than you were already in. I get it, that first meal was rough, and Hollis…he took your rejection worse than all of us. I mean, we all took it bad, but between him and Alek, I’m not sure who would win that shitty award.”

“What happened with Alek?”

He gives me a tight smile. “That’s his story and I’m not telling you shit that would betray the men I count as brothers.”

A feeling of jealousy sinks in the pit of my stomach. They have each other, and they built something while I had to run. I had to do so much alone. “I hardly doubt Alek will be telling me anything, but I don’t blame him for it.”

Thankfully, he doesn’t reply to me, and I keep my eyes on the window as we enter the edge of the city. Onyx drives me into the right side of the city and parks up in a huge car park before a high street of shops. They have such normal shops here, from HMVs to Next and various human clothing apparels with some little quirky shops. There are magic shops that sell enchantments for our Nexus to get high, but most of it is normal. “How do you get human shops in here and actual humans working in them?”

“We pay, handsomely, for the silence. Any humans in the city are on visas or married to a Nexus,” he explains, “or born here without a Nexus in their soul. It happens sometimes.” Onyx gives me a black credit card with my name on it, tells me how much is on it, which is quite a lot for a month’s work, before leaving me to shop. He follows me around, happily taking bags for me at the tills. I only tap my rune a few times to annoy him, and his eyes tighten each time.

I drag him into the quirkier shops to buy tops with questionable things written on the front of them. He doesn’t say a word though, even though I can see his eyebrow twitching every time I pick up a top that you might see at a child’s shop, like the four Pokémon crop tops, but he stays blissfully silent.After a while, we sit down by a vendor selling boba tea, and I pick a mango flavour with pink edible glitter, and it comes in a pink plastic cup too.

Only then does he leave me for a moment to pop into the Apple shop and pick up a new iPhone that Rhodes pre-ordered. It’s got all their numbers on it, and when he hands me the bag, I notice a phone case. It’s got a rune painted in a metallic purple, anSwith small wolves wrapped around the letter. “It’s a lost rune, so your phone can be traced if you lose it. Rhodes thought of everything.” He sits down right next to me, his thigh pressed against mine. He’s not going to be happy to learn that I don’t like phones because my Nexus hates technology for some unknown reason. She will break it, or make it disappear when she takes over eventually. I’m surprised when he takes my drink off me, wraps his lips around the rainbow straw, and drinks it.

I blink, completely shocked as he hands me it back, running his tongue across his bottom lip, and I watch every second. “It tastes like a Barbie house threw up in it, but seeing you want a pink car, it is not that surprising.”

“Boba tea is a life choice for me, so shush.” I wrinkle my nose at him. “You’re way nicer when you’ve not got me locked in one of your rooms in your house and aren’t mad at me.”

He leans back on the bench, looking out across the people filling the high street. No one looks at us, it’s like we are invisible. “I fucked up. Is that what you want to hear?” He turns his heavy gaze on me. “I’m possessive. Sometimes I’ve been called an asshole, and I thought you were going to run away at the first chance that you could. I cannot understand why you rejected the bond and ran. I don’t think we will ever be able to move past that, but hating you? What does that achieve? Rhodes and I are in agreement that getting to know you is worth the risk. Alek, Hollis and Finn might never not hate you, and that’s enough for one person to have on their shoulders.”

My stomach fills with unease as my Nexus watches him from my one eye, taking in his words as he continues. “I didn’t know what to do with you at the beginning. The guys, we’ve become like a family, sort of attached to each other almost because you left, because you rejected us, because we’re the first rejected Nexus bonds in hundreds of years. In our own way, we figured our life is shit now and we were always going to be judged by everyone. Sticking together became our way of keeping safe. Then you’re just back, with no real reason behind all the pain you caused us. You’re just there.” That broken thing in my chest beats around the deep cracks. “I have always believed the Wolf Gods had a plan for us. Something, some reason all of this happened, and my Nexus is more stable than it’s been in forever when I’m near you. I fucked up, and I won’t anymore. I can’t fully forgive you, not ever, Gwen, but I will be your friend.”

The unease in my stomach hits an all-time high. “Onyx, I think—” I stop mid-sentence as I finally register what the feeling is, and I glance up, noticing the surrounding silence. Everyone on the street has frozen in their places, like time has stopped, but they are slowly breaking out of it. The only ones not affected are three hooded Vian who are walking right towards us, and I spin my head back, seeing two more coming in at us from behind. My boba tea slams onto the ground as one of them grabs a nearby Nexus woman, his scarred hand wrapped around her neck. “NO!” I scream, but it’s too late. He drains her in a second, leaving nothing but her dark skin now ash coloured as he drops her body to the floor.

Onyx immediately stands in front of me, and he doesn’t take his eyes off the ones getting close. “Run, Gwen, and hide.”

“No.” There’s no fucking way that I’m leaving him here. Near immediately, he shifts, and it’s magnificent. I’m stuck watching as he shifts, his body morphing into a gigantic wolf. It could rival my own wolf in size and height and width, but his is allblack, almost fluffy, and he growls low. Nexus are never more dangerous than when their mates are in danger. I might be a rejected mate, but he will protect me on instinct, and we both know it without saying a word. But there are too many here for just him. Two Vian are a big risk, but five? Fuck, we are screwed.

This is another reason I never wanted to meet them. White shields of magic appear around me, almost like a dome, as Onyx casts out his magic. He wraps the same shields around every Nexus and human on the street almost easily. Even using an impressive amount of magic, he moves like it’s effortless, and he is on two of them with nothing but teeth and claws. He jumps on them, ripping claws down the one, literally tearing him apart in a spray of blood. The other is grosser, and I almost wish I didn’t see him bite the Vian’s head off completely within seconds. He chases the third, who runs, and I spin around, coming face to face with one who sneaked up. I can tell it’s him who is using power in a city where he shouldn’t be able to use his gifts. There are too many runes protecting every inch of Starlight, but here he is.

“Running a second time won’t work. We can find you anywhere,” he sneers at me, a hiss echoing from him. Hissing usually means he took a power from a Snake Nexus, and a lot of them have a poison gift. He can’t touch me because Vian can easily use powers like that to poison with a single touch. The asshole nods to the shorter Vian next to him, who holds up a glowing yellow hand, and when he touches the shield, electricity buzzes around it.

—BANG—

I stumble back, my eyes stinging. The shield stays, but it’s broken and fractured. The asshole Vian hand goes through the broken parts of the shield to grab me. I wince and fall back out the other side of the shield and the gaps, and it flickers away.

Panicked, my monster riles to the front of my mind, and it looks for its mate before even thinking about running. I feel sick pushing it down so I can get my feet to move.

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