Page 20 of Aria's Desire

That last thought made her wonder if there were actually more soldiers than what she was seeing. She hoped so, otherwise this alliance was over before it had even begun.

Reaching back for Rellik, she laid a hand on what she thought was his thigh and waited for him to pull the invisibility from his face, concentrating to pull it back from her own at the same time.

She’d intended to ask him if he’d spotted any concealed troops, but when he revealed himself, she caught the mixed emotions flickering over his handsome features. Sadness and a wary kind of tension fought with yearning, fondness, and what she thought was wistfulness.

Yelling to be heard over the rushing wind, she asked, “You okay?”

His gaze flicked to her and his expression softened, the tension there immediately lessening at her concern. Laying his hand over hers, he lightly stroked her fingers, nodding silently. Hiding how that small caress made her heart beat faster, she drew the invisibility back over her so he couldn’t see her reaction.

But she didn’t move her hand out from beneath his, and he didn’t take his off of hers.

“You see any concealed defenses?”

“No,” he yelled back.

Even expecting his answer, that wasn’t what she was hoping he’d say. Tightening her fingers on his thigh to let him know she heard him, she waited until Sin flew a short distance away and turned, so it would appear as they were just on their approach, then patted his massive, scaled neck to signal him it was time to become visible.

Aria knew the moment the people below caught sight of them. Half froze, their barely perceptible faces tipped up to stare at the sight Sin made. Half ran, their startled shouts sounding like faint bird calls as they reached her ears.

The spectacle they made, appearing as if by magic directly above those people, was calculated. Not only would it let her see how quickly they responded to a potential threat, it put the attention on Sin, giving Kix and Tirox the opportunity to infiltrate undetected.

That was the plan, anyway.

She just had to hope they succeeded. She’d searched for their forms as they flew overhead, but hadn’t seen them. She trusted them implicitly, had every faith in their abilities, and knew they could handle just about anything that came their way, but that didn't stop her from worrying.

She hated being parted from them, hated knowing they were headed into a potentially dangerous situation without her there to watch their backs.

Rellik, always so quick to read her, leaned forward, pressing his chest to her back. He didn’t say anything, just offered her comfort, and, for a brief moment, she took it, relaxing back against him ever so slightly.

Why was he so fucking addictive? From the moment she’d met him in the dungeon, she’d been drawn to touch him. Hell, Sin, too. So, maybe it was her, some previously unknown quirk, because she damn sure hadn’t been the touchy-feely type back on Earth.

Straightening when Sin craned his head around to look at her, asking if she was ready for him to land, she nodded and gestured to the area within the rampart walls.

Stretching his wings out, he glided lower then landed gracefully in the outer bailey, barely disturbing the cloth tents of the nearby stalls. He did, however, startle the hell out of the animals in the stables nearer to the wall on their right.

The beautiful, horse-like creatures were trumpeting with alarm, the colorful, blue crests lining their long necks where a horse would have a mane were stiff and bristling. Their keepers rushed to calm them, waving their arms in a flowing, hypnotic pattern to regain the animals’ attention.

Focusing back on the entrance when she heard the huge double doors creak open, she saw soldiers in shiny silver armor march out in two perfect lines, their steps in sync as they descended the stone stairs.

In the middle of their ranks was a female. Narrowing her eyes, Aria stared. She’d never seen a Gaiaeshi female, not really. By the time she got back to the complex after Salesh—this woman’s firstborn daughter—tried to take over, Vee’s mate, Thorn, had cleaved her head and half her body in two.

She was dressed in a nearly sheer, flowing, white silk dress, the shadow of her… four? black nipples visible through the fabric, even at thirty feet away. The material, loose everywhere else, was stretched tight around the single widest set of hips Aria had ever seen, then billowed out again to flutter around her. A high slit revealed a flash of equally white, long, thin leg with every step. She looked like an alien pinup model with an overly exaggerated figure.

Or one that’s perfectly suited to bear litters of children…

Rellik told them the Queen was capable of bearing multiple children at once, apparently as many as half a dozen, with relative ease. Looking at the width of her hips, Aria believed it. The other Gaiaeshi females in the courtyard had hips more similar to that of humans’, visually confirming his claim that only the Queen had that capability.

Returning her gaze to the Queen, she finished scrutinizing her. The difference between females and males of their species was immediately apparent, but with her, it was more notable. All the females were taller than the males, but she stood head and shoulders taller than anyone else, and looked even more so with the rack of horns rising from her hairline.

Where males had two thick, spiraling horns that curled back over the top of their heads, she had tall, thin, twisting antlers like a male deer, each ending in a sharp point that looked like they could gore someone with ease.

Aside from being significantly larger than the other females’, her horns were adorned with delicate, bejeweled chains that twinkled and glinted as they swung, catching the light like water droplets on a spider web woven in the branches of a tree.

The Queen’s facial features were also different—sharper, predatory, more alien than her devil’s—and her eyes were yellow instead of his fiery orange.

Sexual dimorphism, she thought it was called.

Oddly, considering what was left of Salesh looked to be late twenties by human years, this woman only appeared to be late thirties, early forties at most. Maybe they aged better than humans and she was older than she appeared?

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