Page 18 of Guardian's Soul

Strangely, it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would have a couple of months ago. Something inside me was changing.Well, duh, trauma does that to a person. I just wasn't sure if it was for the better or not. I didn't entirely like this new version of myself—the one who was angry at the world and full of snark. She wasn't exactly comfortable to live with. But I had to admit, I liked that she didn't just roll over and laugh everything off. That was a plus.

Still, I missed the gym—especially the Wednesday classes. I missed how my cheerleading actually made a difference. Danny, grinning from ear to ear after finally nailing his form. Shelly, high-fiving me after hitting her personal best. There was this one time Danny joked I should become a motivational speaker. Ilaughed at him, but when I got home that night, I actually looked it up. The idea stuck with me. I liked it. I liked making people feel good like they could do more than they thought they could.

And then the Cryons happened. They didn't just abduct me; they obliterated the entire world. I didn't know if they were still out there or if the Pandraxians had chased them off—yet another question for Thrax.

The choices ahead of me felt just as confusing. Pioneering on Astrionis?

I watchedOutlanderwhen I came down with a bout of the flu, and washing clothes in a bucket and churning milk didn't exactly sound appealing to me. And even if the Pandraxians promised all the comforts of home—or whatever their alien equivalent of home was—I couldn't muster any enthusiasm for building a new world from scratch. Now, if Thrax would be there, running around shirtless… where the hell did that thought come from?Focus, Hannah, I reprimanded myself, forcing my mind back to how to envision my future.

How about going back to Earth?

Sure, rebuilding sounded noble, but I had to honestly ask myself—what did a post-Cryon Earth really look like? Unless the Pandraxians sent in an army, it sounded more like a dystopian gang-roaming nightmare than anything I'd willingly sign up for. BesidesOutlander, I had also watched some sci-fi utopian movies, including dark ones.

I let out a deep sigh, accepting that neither option of my future life appealed to me. The problem was, I didn't know what "me" even was anymore. The bubbly, happy-go-lucky Hannah who spent her time helping people was still there, but she felt buried under all this new anger and snark. Was that who I was now? Was that who I wanted to be?

I knew I should be grateful to have a choice. Not many people were given that privilege anymore, and I really wasgrateful. Maybe I just needed more time to really come to terms with everything that had happened.

Thankfully, I had that. Time to figure out whether old Hannah was worth fighting to bring back or if this new version of me—angry, sarcastic, and all—was here to stay. Time to see if either of these paths started to make sense.

For now, I let those questions simmer. They didn't need an answer just yet. And maybe, just maybe, in a few days, something would finally start to feel right.

"There you are. I was looking for you." Thrax entered the storage area I had made my way to.

"Yeah, sorry. I needed to stretch my legs," I explained. "I'm used to a lot of physical activity and having been kept in a cell for so long…" I trailed off, not one to share my inner musings or play for sympathy.

To my surprise, he didn't goad me. "I get it. Maybe I have something that would appeal to you?"

"Sure." I shrugged. What else was there to do? He already told me that it would take a couple of weeks to get to Astrionis. Whatever that meant in Earth time. We'd probably be ready to kill each other after one week, so I would take a polite offer from him right now unless he meant rolling in the bed. That was sonotgoing to happen…

Beats fighting…

Shut up.

Against my will, my eyes roamed over his handsome body, which was barely hidden underneath the clingy uniform he wore. That man did have a very tight ass. And his quads? With those biceps, he could probably easily do a hundred push-ups, rolling his hips… my eyes glazed over… rolling his hips… fuck, why did my mind have to gothere?

Because you are going to be stranded with him for two weeks, Hannah, and because fucking him would be a lot more fun than arguing with him the entire time.

Well, that was one persuasive argument.

"Here." He stopped, and I nearly ran into him because I had been too busy ogling his body instead of watching what it did. The door to a room I hadn't been in yet opened. I assumed most doors hid bedrooms. By the sight of this, I was wrong. Very wrong.

My eyes nearly bulged out of my head. The entire wall to the left and the ceiling were made of alien glass. Right now, I only saw blackness, but here and there, I caught a glimpse of an incredibly fast-speeding comet or something.

That wasn't what caught my interest, though. No, it was the room and its equipment. Alien or not, those were exercise machines. Very, very high-tech exercise machines. I didn't recognize a single one, yet some of the mechanics were intuitive.

"This will do perfectly," I agreed, stepping toward the first machine without any idea what it would do. A low bench indicated one would lie on it, but it didn't give any indication of how to use it. At one end stood a sleek, dark gray, shiny tower. My fingers trailed over the cool, polished metal.

"This." Thrax lowered himself down, with his back to the bench, calling out, "Activate."

Four metallicarmsappeared from underneath the bench. Each one was put together by metallic links. Curiously, I watched two of thearmswrap around Thrax's legs, the ends adjusting around his feet like stirrups.

The same happened to his arms, only it wasn't stirrups but handles he held on to. I noticed his head rising. Marveling, I looked closer at some sort of neck/head protection rising, like a pillow, adjusting to his body. As a matter of fact, the entire bench was adjusting to his body like a mattress.

"The machine's sensors will gauge how much weight and resistance it will need to work out your arms and legs to your chosen body composition."

Fuck me. I was pretty sure my mouth hung open as I watched him work the arms, or were they working him? It was hard to tell. All of his limbs worked in perfect unison, turning him into anX, then into anI. Three three-dimensional, too. His arms and legs moved up and down, working his abdominal muscles just as hard as the rest of his body. And yes, the machine was working him. His muscles bulged, oh fuck, how they bulged.

You'd think someone like me would be used to watching gorgeous men work out. I thought so, too, until right then. None of the men I had worked with before had turned me on like Thrax. I tried to reason it was the exoticness of his silvery skin, but no… it was more than that. There was a special kind of gracefulness to the way his body moved, and his damn uniform didn't do a thing to hide the play of his muscles underneath.

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