Page 3 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

Now, of course, what used to take cycles takes days, though cryo still mitigates the unpleasant side effects of wormhole travel.

And if our science seems like magic to humans—well, so too do our natural abilities.

But it doesn’t matter if we have powers beyond human comprehension. Our world has been fucked for centuries.

To change that, the Evans sisters—Lara and her sister Izzy—have to die.

Before I ever set foot on Earth, I already knew what I had to do to save my planet. It took a sacrifice to break the planet. It’ll take an even bigger one to heal it. So I expected to feel guilty when I met Lara.

What I didn’t expect was the way the mere sight of her sent a shiver racing through my entire body. And I definitely didn’t expect to almost turn around and head back to my ship.

After all, when I started this whole cursed business, my goals were simple.

Get the girls.

Use the girls to get the crown.

Use the crown to take the throne.

But it all fell apart from the first moment I laid eyes on Lara—and it’s gotten so damned complicated.

Lara Evans.I roll the name around in my mouth, feeling the strange syllables.

She’s my savior and my torment.

She doesn’t know that, either.

I’ve had to fight myself to keep her ignorantof my reasons for bringing her to my planet, to force myself not to tell her my reasons for purchasing her from the man who sold her to me.

Even now, almost a full Earth-year into her captivity in Starfrost Manor, I find myself wanting to explain it all, beg her forgiveness.

I shake my head silently, contemplating the irony of the Duke of Starfrost explaining anything to a mere human servant.

It might be even more ironic than my current position, spying on that same servant, watching the human female—woman, I remind myself—move through my manor, though she doesn’t know she’s being observed.

At this moment, Lara is in my chambers, clearing out the ashes from this morning’s fire and setting the wood for the next day.

Fire... It’s a luxury I probably should not allow myself. It’s too far outside of my Starfrost Manor forebears’ preferences.

And yet, I find it comforting, a warm reminder of the myriad things I love even when I should not.

A puff of silent laughter escapes me.

Things I want but should not have.

Lara is at the top of that list.

I’ve spent the last year watching her. I could pick her out from a crowd far in the distance. I know her shape, the way she moves, the curve of her lip, her cheek, her hip. The graceful sweep of her arm, even as she completes the most mundane of tasks.

Every time I see her, the same possessive urge screams through me.

She is mine.

Nothing I do to distance myself from her can change that.

Even now, as I stand outside the room she’s in, I’m arrested by the scent that emanates from her. In another place, another time, I would follow that urge. I would claim her as my mate.

But she’s too important for that. As much as I know she belongs to me, I also know I can never have her.

---