Page 11 of Guardian's Soul

I stared at the screens, amazed that I could read them, although they didn't make any sense to me, likeVolty/normal, Xpam/full, RXTM/full.The noise from the bridge and the hum of the engines he must have activated were the only sounds present. If the tension between us would have been able to make sounds, it would have been a constant, screeching alert.

On some level, it angered me that he could so easily wound me with his mere presence, but it also made me feel a certain level of solidarity with him. This bond, this curse, kept forcing us to spend time together and seemed to be drawing us closer together in ways we couldn't even begin to understand.

"So thesemating marks, they're something your species does?"

Finally, he looked up. It seemed I had hit a nerve because I could have sworn I saw flames dance in his eyes.

However, he didn't have the decency to answer my simple question as his fingers continued to dance over the holographic screen in front of him.

Oh, he was irritating.

"Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing," he said after I'd given up any hope he would acknowledge me. Unfortunately, his words didn't fix my unease. If anything, it made it worse.

"What do you mean? Humans don't havemating marksappear on their skin for no apparent reason." I filled him in.

He sighed loudly.

What did that mean?

Suddenly, it hit me. "You don't know?"

His head turned back to me. Yeah, there were definitely flames dancing in his dark eyes. Good. At least we were getting under each other's skin evenly.

"I'll need to do some research," he said, in the same way he had been answering my questions without actually answering them.

"Research what?" I pushed.

He lifted a finger in apparently the intergalactic gesture ofhushorjust a moment.

"Did you just hush me?" I didn't know why I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't deserve that courtesy at all.

Instead of answering, he lifted his finger once again before it continued to tap away in sync with his other hand. My mouth opened to give him a piece of my mind about shushing me when the screens that had been filling the wall ahead of us lifted, opening a view of the spaceport. I stared out the triangular set of windows and felt a tingling running down my neck. Ever so slowly, our ship began to move forward, passing others.

Large hangar doors opened ahead of us, leading into a dark tunnel that seemed to swallow us. I scooted back in my chair, realizing that we were about to take off. Off, as in into space. I screamed in my mind. I just wasn't sure if it was excitement or fear.

"Do I need a seat belt or something?" I pressed out.

The darkness enveloped us whole. I couldn't see it fromwhere I sat, but I imagined the hangar doors behind us closing as the absolute blackness surrounded us.

My hands dug into the armrests, and I pressed myself against the seat, planting my feet on the ground. A low hum moved through the ship, deep and rumbling, making me think of a plane about to gear up as it sped down the runway.

"Oh fuck," I mumbled between clenched teeth. This wasn't my first go around in space, but the other times, I had been held inside a cell or cage, not seeing anything, only assuming what was happening. This time, I had a literal front-row seat.

My heart moved up into my throat, where it pounded away, making it hard to breathe. Another set of hangar doors, similar to the previous ones, moved up. Instead of space, I stared at an alien city. A hysterical bubble of laughter got stuck inside my throat. With all this excitement, I had forgotten that I had been brought to another planet.

The ship rose up. Straight up. With increasing speed. My heart dropped from my throat straight into my stomach. A few years ago, at a carnival, I had been dared to take one of those rides that shoot you up before they toss you down. This was similar, only a hundred times more intense.

Within the blink of an eye, we rushed through clouds. Higher and higher until I saw nothing of the world below us but clouds and a barely visible outline of a continent surrounded by deep purple. I didn't even have time to contemplate if they had a purple ocean before my ears popped, and then we were in space.

The planet below us was no more than a large, white, purple marble. I noticed a few dark spots moving, wondering if those were spaceships as well, but my train of thought was interrupted once again as blackness swallowed us.

"What?" Perplexed, I watched the windows change back to a multitude of screens. "What just happened?"

"We're in hyperspeed," Thrax explained, totally out of character. "There won't be anything to see until we slow down."

"Okay." Sure, got it.Hyperspeed,that made total sense.

"All right, you wanted to talk, so let's go to the nourishing station, eat, and talk." Even though he was finally giving me what I had been asking for the entire time, it sounded like it was a chore from hell for him. I had nearly a mind of telling him to go fuck himself and to let me go to sleep and wake me up when we reached wherever we were going, but I wasn't one to cut off her nose to spite her face. I decided to be the bigger person.

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