Page 24 of The Highseer's Mate

“Hold on tight, Mate.”

Before I can ask where we’re going, he slips through a crevice and hikes up the inclining rock. I cling to him shamelessly, my arms wrapped around his thick, muscular neck.

“Varek—” I squeak as he launches off the rock across a massive chasm. We land safely on the other side but my heart is pounding in my chest. The asshole just chuckles.

“I will not let you fall.”

I grumble. “I’m worried about both of us falling. Where are we going?”

“I want to show you something else. My favorite place.”

He jumps and climbs further up, the incline growing higher and higher until finally the rocky walls fade away and we are on top of the mountain. We emerge into the cool air and Varek’s grip on me tightens as he slows to a walk.

“Look up,” he says.

I do. The sky is a dull gray—but that’s the only way I’ve seen it since he snatched me from the ship yesterday. Gray. Rainy. Misty.

I’m not even sure where the sun is, if this place has a sun, or if we’re just below a shelf of clouds so thick that we might never see it.

“Keep watching,” he tells me as he finds a spot on the rocky mountainside. Satisfied, he sits, holding me close to his chest so I’m forced to straddle his lap. My cheeks burn, but I pretend to keep looking up into the sky.

I’m not at all bothered by the hard bulge pressing between my legs, or the way his fingers draw loving little circles on the small of my back.

But the sky starts to darken into something I haven’t seen before. Shadows trickle out from behind the clouds and the gray gives way to something else.

Something that seems to swipe the clouds away like a strong wind.

Behind them lies a white sky, burning bright. I squint, but keep watching as the source of the light fades and fades.

Muted shades of lavender and dusky orange bleed into one another, blurring the line between the heavens and the mist-laden ground. The colors are soft, almost ghostly, but not scary.

It’s strange. Like I’m not watching something real. I feel like I’m in a dream that doesn’t make sense, but I still can’t look away.

The mist catches what little light remained, turning the air itself into a glowing, shimmering haze. Dark silhouettes from the voraliths stood like ancient sentinels, their massive forms shrouded in the fog, as the unseen sun’s pale glow painted the edges of their branches in faint gold. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, the light receded, swallowed by the ever-present gloom, leaving the planet in darkness.

“Wow,” I breathe.

“Beautiful,” Varek says.

I look down and realize he’s staring at me. Not the sky.

My belly dips as his rough hand cups my cheek. With the sun gone, the air grows cooler and a chill rattles through my bones. I sink closer to Varek—to my mate—because he’s warm.

And he feels… good.

I clear my throat. “When you were showing me around, I noticed that most of the Vruts were male. Do the women spend time somewhere you haven’t shown me?”

His eyes lower as he shakes his head. “There are few women.”

“Why?”

He pushes a lock of my hair out of the way, watching the curve of my neck as he explains. “Our kind can only conceive with our glow-blessed mate. Even among the couples who are lucky enough to have found their other half, female birth rates are low. They have declined slowly over the years and as a result, our numbers have dwindled.”

“Oh,” I whisper as I process that.

“Some males defected from the glowhollow to try and seek out their mates from other species but none have returned successfully. Since there are so few females born, I had no hope of finding my own mate.”

His voice lowers. His throat bobs as he stares into my eyes, his finger sliding up and down my pulse point. I suck in a deep breath as the sensation elicits an intense sense of calm over me. My muscles relax and I’m chest to chest with him, my palms flat on the spot where his glows burn bright for me.

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