Page 2 of The Erion Triad

They’d very nearly succeeded in their campaign—the temptation to give in and just let someone love her was almost too much to bear. The only thing she couldn’t work out waswhythey wanted her, besides this strange concept of the fated mate bond gifted by the Homeland crystal. She wasn’t right for them. She would never fit in here. She was never going to take another chance with one man, let alone three.

There were beautiful women on this planet. And these men wereroyalty. Next in line to the throne. Apparently, she was now a princess. Laughable really, all things considered.

She wasn’t going to admit, but being a princess wasn’t a temptation. She didn’t care about that status one bit. If they wanted to treat her as a princess, let her live in luxury and dote on her for the rest of the days, well, then, let them. But then reality would step in and stop that line of thought right in its tracks.

If relationships weren’t founded on trust, then the whole thing was a house of cards waiting to crumple to the ground. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait for that to happen again.

If it wasn’t for that damned crystal, she wouldn’t even be here. If only the stupid thing hadn’t lit up like a Christmas tree when those hideous Reptiles had made her hold it. That’s when the attention she didn’t want started, along with the voice in her head. Whatever was meant to be so magical about it had made a mistake with her, which apparently had never happened before in the history of the planet and its civilization.

Well, there was always a first time.

There were three crystals, one for each Homeland on Negari. That was where she was, on a planet called Negari—a place she’d never heard of before—living with a race of people she never knew existed. She had been claimed aswifeon first sight.

These crystals were somehow the life blood of the planet. The very future of the people living on it depended on them. A decade ago, they all had been stolen and no one knew who took them, or where they had gone.

The Ozar Triad had spent years tracking their crystal down, only to recover all three. It had united a planet where infighting mainly prevailed. The Ozar had returned their crystal to their tower and their mate Riley was pregnant. Everyone was in awe. Quads had even started to form again, the first pregnancies announced. The Ozar Homeland was thriving.

The Arabis Triad had also recovered their crystal and they’d found their mate in Evelyn, another of the abducted women Lucie had been caged with by the Reptiles. It seemed human women were their prize.

The Negarian Triads been able to track their crystals because of the unique energy field of the human body. It was extremely strong, particularly so for human women. It was why the crystals had been stolen by the Reptiles who were guided by a larger inter-dimensional entity from the beginning.

They had no idea that human females would initiate the mate-bond and that it would be so overpoweringly strong that it would power their lost crystals and renew their population. The Negarians had no idea that humans existed and inter-species bonding had never occurred before, however they wrote it off to the tremendous power and ultimate knowledge of their Fates rewarding them in the best possible way.

It was all completely amazing to them. Perhaps it was because they had never seen a human before. They certainly had no idea where Earth was. They had no idea if there were any other human females who had been abducted, which was why Lucie was so desperate to talk to Evelyn. She needed a familiar face. A familiarhumanface.

Evelyn’s mates had set up a comm-link from where they’d crash-landed on another planet. Lucie couldn’t believe she’d seen her friend again. She would have given anything to hold Evelyn’s hand and speak to her in private, but she was stranded until a rescue ship could pick them up and bring them back here. It would be weeks before Lucie could see her friend face to face again.

Evelyn had told her something about what had happened to her after they’d been saved, but the voice in her head had started up again and she’d missed most of what Evelyn had said.

She just had to get the voice to stop.

She would doanything.

Desperation led to stupid deeds, but she was worn down. The voice was relentless. She had to do what it told her to before she lost her mind, which was why she found herself hurrying down one of the palace corridors, trying to distance herself from the palace guards behind her without being too obvious.

She knew her mates had told them to keep an eye on her. They were worried about her and didn’t know why she wasn’t responding to their attentions. But she wasn’t one of them. She was human. Humans didn’t have mate-bonds, crystals or higher mystical powers to guide relationships. If they had, perhaps she could have saved herself a lot of pain, but they didn’t, and she couldn’t see how a crystal would ever work for her. She told them numerous times it didn’t work that way, but they didn’t believe her. They either didn’t understand or didn’t believe that she didn’t feel the bond that they obviously did. Nor had they given up. It was an obsession she didn’t have the headspace for.

She felt the guard’s presence looming behind her, catching up.

Go turn in here. Now. She didn’t resist the voice, merely followed its command and stepped into a darkened palace room.Go through that door and close it behind you. Quietly.

She darted through the shadows to the closed door at the back of the room and slipped through, closing it silently after her.Open the window and go out into the garden.Quickly, before the guards come.

Lucie hid behind the gauzy curtain and slid open the window. She swiveled on the sill and jumped the short distance to the grass below. Two moons hung heavy and bright in the sky, casting the garden in a silver glow.

The tower was a massive dark presence in the middle of the garden. It was the main garden in the palace and had been beautifully tended, the plants well maintained, the structure symmetrical and perfect. It reminded her of the gardens in old French palaces scattered around the French countryside. But there were differences. The plants weren’t quite the same. The color of the trees too dark. The grass a little too blue. The leaves a little too bright. The moons—one too many.

She’d seen pictures of the garden in full glow along the palace walls. If they were glowing now, as they did when the tower was lit from the power of the crystal, then she wouldn’t be hiding in shadows. She would be swathed in deep blue and aqua greens. Kira, the Princes’ little sister, had told Lucie that there were flowers here that only opened when the tower glowed. They had been shut tight for ten years. They should be open now that the crystal was back. Only they weren’t.

There was a noise in the room she’d just left. A voice called for her. “Lucie?”

Crap. It was Kyel. The guards must have alerted him. He was the last one she wanted to be caught by. Nothing ever got past him. He’d known something was up with her—well, more up with her—and he hadn’t let up asking her about it. The more he questioned her, the more the voice told her if she said anything, that it would hurt him. Kyel was overbearing and incredibly bossy, but he didn’t deserve to get hurt. None of them did.

“Lucie. Come here.”

Double crap. That was Zaen. Where two went, there would be a third. Juliran was never far away. She’d come to call them the three musketeers. Her own voice in her head was louder this time.Only there were four musketeers, weren’t there? They’ve accepted you as their fourth, haven’t they?She didn’t accept them back, though. She could never shut up that snarky little voice in her head either. Now she had two voices she was trying to ignore.

She continued speaking to herself. You must get away. Get back home. Get back to normal. Go and let them find their true mate. It isn’t you. I’ll make sure the tower is lit and then everything will be returned to the Homeland. The voice was very persuasive.

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